Category Archives: Cruising Life

Describes an experience regarding the boating lifestyle of our travel.

Vanuatu to Cairns Dolphin Show

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Today is day five of nine on the passage from Vanuatu to Australia. To celebrate making it to the halfway mark, we had a pod of dolphins come and do a show for us. Eric and Jaime spotted the dolphins at about 14:30 (2:30 pm). We went outside to get a better look. There was a big pod of them surfing the waves around us. Many of them stuck their noses out of the water and dived down, arching their backs out of the water, as they surfed along. A couple of them even turned mid stream so we could see their belly arch out of the water instead of their backs, which was exciting because we haven’t seen them do that before. Out of nowhere, one of the dolphins fully jumped straight up out of the water, fully vertical to the sea, and several feet up. We were all stunned. After that initial breach, the dolphins put on quite the show for us. There were several more fully body breaches like the first one. There were several partial body breaches where they seemed to stick their heads up out of the water to say hi. They would sometimes dive forward off the top of a cresting wave, which would send them flying up about a foot above the descending water level before they plunged back into the ocean. They seemed to be having a lot of fun playing in the waves and showing off for us.

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All the other dolphins we have seen seem to Continue reading →

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 →

From Waya Back to Denaru

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Our walk with Tooey was on Tuesday. On Tuesday night, heavy rain began that continued through the next day. Local custom requires that you tell the chief in person when you are leaving the anchorage. It was raining really hard and we figured the chief would understand if we didn’t trek out in the rain to say goodbye.

We wanted to check out on Thursday morning, so the plan was Continue reading →

Visit to the Chief of Waya Island in Yalobi Village

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Lat 17.20S, Long 177.08 E, In Fiji, once you get outside the cities, most of the land is owned by villages. A village not only owns the land, they also own the water around the land. In this culture, it is of utmost importance to obtain permission to be in their territory. It is considered very bad form to not ask permission to stay. There is a special ritual that is to be followed in order for permission to be granted. The importance of  Continue reading →