Category Archives: Passage

Time spent between destinations travelling on the water.

Passage from Luagnville, Vanuatu to Cairns, Australia

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We left for a nine day passage to Cairns, Australia. Being that it is such a long passage, we had some serious getting ready to do. We spent all day Thursday and most of the day Friday doing chores.

Jaime volunteered to scrub the waterline, which delighted Christi. Christi thinks that the waterline is by far her hardest job duty. She was pretty happy about passing it off onto Adrienne, and even happier to have gotten out of it a second time in a row. He hopped in and hopped right back out, realizing that there was no way he could fight the aggressive two knot current. At slack tide he hopped in and got to work, but wasn’t able to finish the job before the tide picked back up. When the tide was slack again, he got in to finish the job. Jaime is planning on buying a Nordhavn and is trying to decide between a 43 and a 47. After finally completing the waterline, he came inside and announced that he had decided on the 43 he couldn’t possibly take doing the waterline of the 47, which is actually 50 and a half feet

Christi did the bottom when Jaime finished the water line. As she prepared to get in, she managed to break Continue reading →

Welcome to Luganville, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu

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15.35S, 167.08E – We headed out to another island, called Espiritu Santo, yesterday morning. It is located about 120 nautical miles northwest of Efate. Espiritu Santo is the largest island in all of Vanuatu and has a population of 33,000. During World War II the Americans set up a large military base in Luganville, with half a million troops and 100 boats.

During the ride up to Santo we were often protected by islands we were passing, so overall the ride was calm and smooth, though when we were out from under the protection of the islands it got a bit rough. Many moons ago, Christi had written a blog about how the food in the refrigerator jumps out and attacks you while at sea . Jaime had posted a comment saying what she had written was hilarious. His comment must have angered the refrigerator god, because as soon as we got to a rocky stretch Continue reading →

Welcome to Port Vila, Efate, Vanuatu

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Lat 17.44S, Long 168.18E. Vanuatu is made up of 83 islands over an area of 450,000 square kilometers. Like Fiji, some of the islands are volcanic and some are raised coral islands. Like Tonga, Vanuatu lies on the squarely on the Pacific Ring of Fire. There are nine active volcanoes and earthquakes are commonplace.

The vast majority of the population are native Vanuatu (called ni-vans), and most live in traditional rural villages that are much the same as they were before the arrival of Europeans. Both culture and language vary greatly from village to village. Vanuatu has the highest concentration in the world of Continue reading →

Some Comments on the Fijian Political Situation

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Day two at sea is exactly the same as day one, which is slow, rocky and not fun. We have accepted that it is impossible to make it to Vila before sunset and have slowed the RPM’s down to 1700, which is closer to what we ideally like to cruise at. The moon is rising around 2300 (11:00 pm) right now, so we need to slow down so we have moonlight to see by as we approach the pass. If we come in too early in the evening, it will be pitch black.

We wanted to take a moment to comment on the “political turmoil” in Fiji. We were surprised to find  Continue reading →

Passage from Lautoka to Port Vila, Vanuatu

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Much to our dismay, the customs guy contacted us yesterday afternoon to let us know he would be out of the office until 10:00. We needed to check out right at 08:00 if we were going to make it to Port Vila before dark on Monday. This really messed up our plans. Should we leave late in the afternoon and come in on Tuesday morning instead? We have a friend who was already in Port Vila waiting on us, and we hated to make him wait yet another day.

On the dock in Denaru we met another cruiser who was also going to go to Lautoka to check out at the same time we were. He said he would give us a dinghy ride in and out of customs. Without having to deal with the dinghy, we could well be on our way by 10:30. We decided  Continue reading →