PEACE AT LAST

Jul 14^th 2013 Port Vila, Vanuata

‘Hey, Jen!’

‘Yes, Dave?’

‘Jen, you can’t say that was a terrible passage!’

‘But it was!!!’

‘It was very uncomfortable, but nothing went wrong or broke!’

‘It was more than uncomfortable Dave, it was horrrrrrrriiiiiiidddddd!!!!!’

‘I know, it was horrid for me too. Never read so many books in one go’.

‘Do you know we could not get into the cockpit for five whole days except to dice with death to put the engine on for battery charging?’

‘Never again. It was all New Zealand’s fault starting that weather system that squeezed our bit of the wind up. Nasty Kiwis. Except for Ninja Steve of course!’

‘Isn’t it nice to be sort of still again. And getting stiffer by the minute!’.

So the undaunted duo are now safely sitting on the sturdy anchor in the harbour at Port Vila waiting for the quarantine man to let them go ashore. We have managed to find most of the escaped rice from under the cooker, which looked like maggots gone wrong, swept up the worst of the stray odds and ends, ready for inspection. I can vouch that we have no pets (sob, sob) apart from Dave, no meat except in tins and fruit and veg or live plants. We then go ashore for the customs and immigration bit – that will get rid of the rest of the day at this rate.

The last week was not the nicest at all – the seas were high and confused, more like the southern ocean than the pacific, grey with spindrift off the tops. The boat however is immensely strong – which is why we got steel instead of plastic. The slamming we got and the water over the decks would have daunted a lot of lighter ones. The best we could do was keep an eye on the course, and sit tight in our bunks as best we could. The other thing hard to describe is the noise of crashing waves and crashing things. Every so often there would be an extra lurch and a few extra things would fly around the floor. But we only had one breakage and that was in the cupboard! We were safe enough, just rocking and rolling more than we wanted to – no knitting possible at all, and sewing far out of the question!!

Coming in was interesting as the wind got up even more and we pounded in under trysail and engine alone . The harbour here has a large bay to cross before you get to the inner anchorage and thankfully things died down a bit and we were able to find our way to the quarantine area and anchor just before the light failed. The day had been as grey as grey and heavy with cloud, seas grey and high as well. Today it is grey and raining – so much for the tropical paradise the old man promised!