Which way is starboard again?

Apologies for twee Simon and Garfunkel reference but it’s the best I can do at such short notice!

We’re leaving for NZ. Tomorrow. Not next week, not in a few days, but to-bloody-morrow. We’ve got a weather window that we really can’t ignore (a great big high pressure system) followed by a rubbish weather for the next few weeks. I wouldn’t really object to being stuck here for a few more weeks, but we can’t really predict what will come after that. Also, the rest of the fleet is leaving, and it makes me feel a teensy bit better knowing there are others out there with us!

I’m afraid this is going to be a short blog because I am snatching a few minutes to write in between cooking meals we can freeze and reheat on passage (I’m so not into cooking at sea!) sorting out everything on the boat to keep customs happy and generally stowing everything away. I guess it’s a good thing in a way because I don’t really have the time to get stressed out about it. When we left NZ we were held up for a week and that gave me plenty of time to scare myself witless. This time we just have to get on with it. I also know what to expect now and am feeling heaps more confident.

All going well the trip home should take about seven days. The first couple of days will be rubbish with the wind on the nose but after that the wind should swing to a decent direction for us to sail in. We are picking up our extra crew member Mike tomorrow and we are really looking forward to having another set of hands on deck. I feel really bad for him though because we all thought we would have more time in New Caledonia. Now we are meeting him at the airport, hauling him off to immigration and packing him off to sea for the next week. Bloody weather!

We will be spending a good chunk of time sailing around the Bay of Islands though so at least he’ll get to see some pretty places there!

We are thinking of you all and will be in touch when we are back in the land of the long white cloud,

Love Anna and Paddy xx

Arriving in Noumea was a bit of a culture shock. It was the first time we had seen traffic crossing signals, movie theatres and regular busses for nearly six months and I wasn’t sure if I actually knew what to do with them anymore!

We were also greeted with those other trappings of civilsation – McDonalds ads, litter and people, drunk or passed out in the street in the middle of the day – which made me feel sad for what the ‘first world’ has done.

Once we got over the initial sensory overload we began to explore Noumea and discovered it was quite a funky little town – though a town quite divided in many ways.

The divide is particularly stark when it comes to the shops. There’s the Chinatown area where, in among the junk shops and Chinese takeaways, there are some quite cool, quite affordable little shops. This is where most of the Kanak population seems to shop, and most of the stores are Kanak run. A few blocks away however, is an entirely different world, full of French shops and boutiques for just about every designer label you can think of – with prices to match. These were full of scrawny European girls with no hips, thighs or bums. I picked up a couple of skirts, looked at the size of the waists and put them straight back down again. I checked out a couple of gift shops instead and was gob smacked at the prices. If it had French writing on it, they whacked an extra couple of zeros on, even if it was just a tea towel.

So back to Chinatown it was for Anna! Where I managed to track down some bargains (funky coloured clothes and bits and pieces from a craft market they run by the waterfront) and came away happy. Paddy found all the bits he needed to make a few running repairs on the boat (including a navigation light to replace the one that got munched by the anchor swinging during our last anchoring dance). He managed to hitch a ride out to the industrial side of town with an Australian chap who had gone native and had been living in New Caledonia for the past 12 years. He dropped Paddy off in a rather rough looking part of town with large blocks of ‘projects’ style tenement houses and all sorts of manly industrial type businesses, and told him to ask for Charlie. ‘Charlie’ turned out to be a Kanak guy with a huge afro who didn’t speak much English. With the help of Paddy’s pidgin French and a lot of hand gestures, the two managed to communicate successfully and Charlie made up the fitting P
addy needed for Big Red (our engine’s) heat exchanger. Paddy came back to the boat full of testosterone and pleased with a bloke’s job well done. Meanwhile, I shopped. While we were sorting out the boat maintenance we stayed at the Port Moselle marina for a few days and it was a real novelty for me to be able to step off the boat any time I liked and walk into town, so of course I made the most of it!

While we were there we had the opportunity to listen to some seriously emo radio stations. The formula seems to be; a mournful or angry young woman singing about her dysfunctions in either English or French, to some sort of rock beat. It was the kind of music I probably would have approved of when I was 14 and thought Alanis Morissette lyrics were deep. English swearwords are obviously not so much of a problem here either, because on busses and in the middle of supermarkets you can hear said angry young women belting out ‘eff this’ and ‘eff that’ over the stereo speakers while people cheerfully go about their business, children in tow.

What did strike me though was the lack of any real indigenous music – pretty much everything they play here is either in French or English. Everywhere else we have been there has been a thriving local music scene. Granted, most of it sounded the same (string bands with tea chest basses), but it was always there and the locals were always very proud of it. There doesn’t seem to be anything like that here – or if there is it’s not very obvious (we have only been here for a week though so I admit we may be missing something). There is Kanak music, I have heard Kanak kids listening to it on the side of the road, but it certainly isn’t what they are playing in McDonalds (we only went there for the wifi – honest!). Don’t get me wrong, we have met some lovely, friendly Kanaks and some lovely friendly French folk, but there are a lot of disenfranchised people here.

My French is still rubbish but, between Paddy’s schoolboy French and my phrasebook, we have managed to muddle our way through. It also helps that, on hearing us butcher their language, a lot of people are pretty quick to start speaking to us in English! It has still been a bit of a challenge though – particularly amusing was Paddy and I attempting to read a Chinese menu, written in French with a waiter who spoke no English. The restaurant was nice and clean and the food looked good, so we decided to stick with it and we got there in the end – we even managed to get what we thought we’d ordered!

One of the highlights of Noumea for me is the amazing aquarium they have here. They have live coral reefs and all sorts of amazing fish, sharks, crabs and other critters. The tanks are huge and clear and the fish and coral come in the most incredible colours. They have fluorescent coral and deep sea fish in a darkened room and I got to see what the critters inside those beautiful nautilus shells actually look like. I’m not usually big on keeping animals in captivity, but the spaces the fish were in were large and about as close to their natural environment that you can get. They did have sharks, but they were only little reef ones and they seemed to have plenty of area to swim in. I guess if a set up as well done as this is used to help educate people about these amazing creatures and their environment and help preserve them, then it is a type of captivity I am okay with. I have taken a tonne of fishy photos (they don’t mind as long as you don’t use a flash) which I will bore you all to death with once we get some decent internet connectivity again.

We are going to have to get out of here soon though or the food is going to kill us. Everywhere you look there are patisseries that sell pastries, croissants and all manner of sweet things so beautifully made they are more works of art than food. Then there is the fact that they put chocolate in absolutely everything – even their cornflakes have little curls of chocolate in them! Our real problem is of a more savory variety though. In a word – cheese. Cheese, cheese, cheese, cheese, cheese – it’s everywhere, it’s cheap, there are more than 370 different types of it and it goes really well with the ham, salami, fresh bread and cheap red wine that is also everywhere.

When I first got here I was genuinely puzzled at how the local women managed to stay so skinny when surrounded by so much lovely food, but after a couple of days I managed to work it out. They smoke. Everyone smokes – everywhere, all the time. There are ashtrays on the tables in the restaurants, ashtrays in the pubs, even ashtrays in the toilets (in case you have a sudden need for a nicotine hit while you are going for a pee.) One of our fellow cruisers was quite surprised to spot a guy in the marina bathroom having a smoke and a shave simultaneously. I guess you could say it is a national pastime. For me this was like stepping into a timewarp. About seven years ago the New Zealand government banned smoking indoors just about everywhere, and I understand a similar thing is happening in Australia too. This was both a good and a bad thing for me. I don’t smoke, I never have. The fact is cigarette smoke sets off terrible allergies in me and if I smoked I would be allergic to mys
elf! A lot of my friends did smoke however and I guess – though the passive smoking was probably not doing me any good – I built up a bit of a tolerance to it by being around smokers. When they put the kybosh on smoking in pubs it was really great to be able to go home and not have to throw smoke reeking clothes straight into the wash. Unfortunately though an unexpected side effect was that, now I was no longer exposed to it, my tolerance had gone right down and even the slightest whiff of smoke made me feel like I had an army of feather-wielding smurfs running around my nasal passages. So you can imagine how much fun it was for me during my first few days here.

I think my smoke tolerance is building up again though, because I have been able to spend more time in pubs and restaurants without sneezing my head off. This was particularly useful in the marina bar while we were watching the NZ/Aussie rugby match. Neither Paddy or I are rugby heads and we were quietly relieved to be able to avoid the Rugby World Cup craziness back home in New Zealand. We have however watched a couple of the games and there is a bit of a friendly rivalry between the Aussies and the Kiwis in the fleet. I find watching the people watching the game much more entertaining than the game itself (though I must admit I caught myself shouting at the screen a couple of times – I am disgusted with myself and blame my Cantabrian roots) and the crowd watching the last NZ/Oz game was hilarious. There were a lot of nervous French folk who were obviously terrified the All Blacks would win and they would have to play them (their eyes would widen every time there was a shot
of a bloodied player – and it seemed to me that everyone was bleeding at some point during that game!) Then there was the occasional “for eff’s sake!” coming from the Aussie supporters, and similar sound effects from the Kiwis when our lot stuffed up. One of the cruisers had her phrasebook out and was gleefully calling out the new French expletives she had learned, which was also highly entertaining! So, although it was not something I had planned to do, it looks like I will be watching the final. We will be back in Noumea for a clearance briefing and to pick up our crew and I think the people watching opportunities afforded by being here during a NZ/France final will more than make up for having to sit through another rugby game!

We have really enjoyed our time here in Noumea but think we have had our fill of civilization for a bit – so we are about to head off to some of the outer bays and lagoons around here to fill up on some more beauty before we have to think about returning to the real world. It is really hard to believe this is our last country before we head back to New Zealand. We are planning on taking our time and cruising round the Bay of Islands when we get back. That is a part of New Zealand we haven’t really seen a lot of and we are both really looking forward to checking it out.

Thinking of you all back home and looking forward to catching up again soon xx

“You know what to do and do it all by the book,
So how come you lose it when you drop the hook?”

Irene Quinn – The anchoring dance

You’ve reached the end of a passage, you are physically and mentally knackered and all you want to do is collapse in a salty heap. But there’s no relaxing just yet, there’s still one more job to do – you have to anchor the boat.

It sounds simple enough – find an appropriate spot (preferably where you can swing 360 degrees and not plough into your neighbours) drop the anchor and reverse until it sticks into the bottom of the ocean. And it is that simple – provided the wind is blowing in the right direction, there is minimal swell, there’s nothing to bang into, the seabed isn’t covered in chunks of coral waiting to snag your anchor chain, and your anchor decides to stay put.

Unfortunately you are unlikely to come across this magical collection of conditions very often and so anchoring, particularly if you are a bit sleep deprived, can sometimes be a teensy bit stressful. It is also one activity in sailing that is particularly famous for the domestics it causes.

Usually anchoring involves one person in the cockpit steering the boat and one up front on the foredeck giving directions (often hand signals are used, but sometimes hollering can be involved.) I have heard tale of a particularly tricky harbour where disagreements between couples attempting to maneuver their boats were so frequent that some less-than-charitable folk would sit in deck chairs and rate the arguments out of 10 using paper plates.

So far Paddy and I have managed to avoid any anchoring battles. We do however have our own, slightly different, version of the anchoring dance. Because Wildflower is a big steel boat, she has a big steel anchor (80 pounds) and a ridiculous amount of chain (160 meters). Having a lot of chain is good, but really we only need about 100m. A conservative amount of chain is five times the depth of water you are anchoring in so, since we seldom anchor in more than 20m of water, 160m is a bit of an overkill. It means we are carrying more weight than we really should and it also means there is a lot of chain to get tangled when you are pulling the anchor up.

Here is where Anna the Anchor Chain Wrangler comes in. Basically my job (being the more compact of the two of us) is to crawl into the anchor locker and layer the chain as Paddy winches it up, to stop it tangling the next time we put the anchor down. While I am usually busiest when we are pulling the anchor up, it still doesn’t mean I am off the hook when we are dropping ours. Paddy is very particular when it comes to anchoring and if he is even remotely unhappy about the situation we haul it up and start again. If we are anchoring in sand or gravel then all that happens is I get a decent arm work-out, if we are anchoring in mud however, it is an entirely different story. There have been a number of times when I have crawled out of the anchor locker looking like the creature from the black lagoon after repeatedly hauling up an anchor chain covered in muddy goo.

It is worthwhile getting slimed every now and again for the peace of mind of knowing you are securely fastened to the bottom of the Pacific. Dragging an anchor, particularly at night, is no small thing. If you are anchored near other boats there is the danger you can drift down onto them. If a strong wind suddenly blows up and this happens you can do a lot of damage to other boats, as well as your own. There is also the danger of hitting coral reefs, land or shallow ground and the chance of drifting in the way of oncoming vessels. We have also heard of people returning from a day on land to discover their boat has gone walkabout with nobody on board, which is always a little exciting! So, in light of that, I don’t really begrudge Paddy his old-womanish tendencies when it comes to anchoring.

When we were leaving the small island town of We to head to New Caledonia’s capital Noumea however, Paddy had to do some anchor wrangling that put all of my efforts to shame. It was the usual routine – me in the anchor locker and Paddy remotely winching up the chain – but this time I noticed a somewhat smokey smell. I alerted Paddy to this and he gave the anchor winch a bit of a rest, but on attempting to resume hauling up the chain, the winch refused to play ball. Paddy was repeatedly pressing buttons and absolutely nothing was happening.

After working out it wasn’t a connection problem he gave the solenoid a couple of whacks with a winch handle to see if it was jammed (it wasn’t.) At this point we were no longer attached to the bottom of the ocean and we had a bunch of chain and an 80 pound anchor dangling below us. There were a couple of reefs nearby and land masses to keep an eye on so we steered Wildflower out of the way the best we could and tried to manually haul the chain up. This meant I was up front keeping an eye on where we were drifting and looking out for other traffic, while Paddy tried all manner of ways to haul the anchor up on board. He must have been channeling the Incredible Hulk or something, because he managed to haul an 80 pound hunk of steel and 10 metres of chain up to the bow of the boat. At that stage the problem was getting it up over the front of the boat, which was pretty much impossible to do. First he tackled it with a boat hook but it wasn’t going to come that easily – tying the
spinnaker and genoa halyards (ropes) around the anchor and hauling it up with the electric winch met with more success however. Unfortunately, in the process of this, the anchor swung back and forth and crunched into the front of the boat. It didn’t do any serious damage but it took a few chunks out of poor old Wildflower and made a ghastly noise in the process. After the adrenalin died down the Incredible Hulk developed a few aches and pains too (hardly surprising!) but after a bit of paint and some TLC the pair of them should be fine.

NOTE FOR MOTHER: At no point were either of us in any danger during this incident. We just motored around in circles until we managed to sort it out xx :

The epilogue to this little story is almost as frustrating as the incident itself. A little while after Paddy had managed to get the anchor and chain on board, he decided to tidy the rest of the chain up. After a bit of playing around I suddenly heard the anchor winch making all the appropriate noises, followed by a quiet “do you want to hear the good news?” (possibly said through gritted teeth) from Paddy. It seemed our anchor winch had decided it was going to work again.

It turned out our anchor winch had an undocumented feature – thermal overload protection – which kicks in when it gets overheated (we were pulling up the anchor in quite a bit of wind so it wasn’t really surprising.) Basically this means, if it gets too hot, it simply stops for half an hour, has a wee rest and then starts up again. (We were pulling up the anchor in quite a bit of wind so it wasn’t really surprising that it got a bit warm.) Unfortunately there was no mention of this feature in the instructions that came with the anchor winch, otherwise we could have just bobbed around, keeping an eye on things, until it had cooled down again.

We had resigned ourselves to the fact we would be looking for a mooring or a marina berth while we fixed up the anchor winch, so not having to do that was definitely a bonus. But both captain and boat would probably have preferred to give the unnecessary bumps and bruises a miss!

We have been in Noumea for a few days now and it has been a bit of a culture shock. It is the first time we have seen traffic crossing signals and busses and McDonalds advertisements in six months and it is a little scary! It has been nice to get back to civilization and stock up on stuff though, and the aquarium here is supposed to be spectacular (it has its own live coral reef) so I’m really looking forward to checking that out. Stay tuned for the Noumea blog.

Thinking of you all,

Anna and Paddy xx

New Caledonia is both beautiful and uncomfortable.

For the past week we have been living in anchorages of picture postcard beauty – white sand beaches, gorgeous greenery, stunning volcanic cliffs and one of the world’s largest lagoons with turquoise water so clear you can see the bottom when anchored in 18 metres. I have taken a tonne of photos but none of them really do it justice. On the flip side of this is that, once ashore, you get the feeling that some (though not all) of the locals would rather you weren’t there.

It is vastly different to Vanuatu (which was officially voted the happiest place on earth again this year) where everyone said hello and seemed genuinely friendly. We are only 250 miles from Port Vila but we are unquestionably in a very different place.

New Caledonia is our first taste of the French controlled Pacific. Unlike most Pacific islands, it does not particularly need the tourist dollar. It is streaks ahead of the rest in terms infrastructure with paved roads, schools, sports grounds and a huge gendarmerie (cop shop) – mostly paid for by the French. But it is also the closest we have been to staying in an occupied country. As a French protectorate it is not technically controlled by France, but neither is it truly independent.

France officially claimed New Caledonia in 1853, initially establishing it as a penal colony. The original convicts were a mish-mash of prisoners from Noumea and Paris as well as political prisoners from an Arab revolt against the French colonial government in Algeria. Once they had served their sentences a number decided to stay and were given concessions to farm. As more settlers arrived an increasing amount of land belonging to indigenous Melanesians was taken over, leading to the first native uprising – and the native Kanaks have pretty much been fighting for some form of independence ever since.

Random fact: After World War II the Kanaks were progressively given the vote and in 1953 the first political party involving Kanaks was formed.

One of the main attractions of New Caledonia for the French has been its minerals, most specifically nickel. A nickel boom in the 60s and 70s attracted a lot of French migrants which created even more social upheaval, and New Caledonia is now the third largest nickel producer in the world. An agreement with the French government in 1998, The Noumea Accord, set forth a 15-20 year plan for “the gradual transfer of administrative powers from the government of France to the government of New Caledonia, culminating in a referendum on independence.” We are told however that the country is likely to remain under French control until the nickel runs out.

We were warned that the nickel mining has devastated much of the country, which is a real shame. Some members of the rally are planning to do a lot of miles which will cover much of this ruined landscape but we are going to skip most of this. We plan to visit some of the Loyalty Islands, check out Noumea – the main centre – and then head south to the Isle of Pines, which is supposed to be beautiful. This will mean we get to spend more time in places we like instead of doing the one-anchorage-a-day thing, which I am quite pleased about.

Our first real stop was the atoll of Ouvea – an absolutely stunning spot that is famous in NZ as the place the Rainbow Warrior bombers were sent to serve their “prison” sentence (some punishment!) One of them got pregnant and had to go back to France for “health reasons” and the other wasn’t far behind her (Paddy reckons he’d already got a good suntan.) The place is absolutely gorgeous and the water crystal clear. The Mouli Bridge gives a stunning view over the Ouvea lagoon, where there are all sorts of fascinating critters. There are a couple of very photogenic turtles and you can see stingrays leaping out of the water like flying fish and skimming across the surface for about 20 feet. I could have stood and watched them for hours.

Initially we were a little surprised when our first brush with the Ouvea locals gave us a rather unfriendly vibe. We didn’t at any point feel threatened and some were actually quite nice, but there was definitely a sullen feel to several people we bumped into.

It wasn’t until one of our fellow cruisers pointed out the history of the place that we began to understand why. Near where we were anchored on the island of Mouley there is a large memorial which, we found out later, is a tribute to “The 19.” In the 1980s the Kanak pro-independence movement was struggling with the French authorities on the mainland so many of its members relocated to the outlying islands – including the islands around Ouvea. In 1988, 19 Ouvean Kanaks were killed in an ill-fated rebellion when a number of gendarmes (French policemen) were kidnapped and four killed during the hostage taking. In what can best be described as a poorly executed piece of diplomacy the French special forces stormed the cave the prisoners were held in and not only killed the 19 Kanaks but a number of the gendarmes they were ‘rescuing’. The following year two Kanak pro-independence leaders were killed by an angry Ouvean who thought they had ceded too much to France.

So unbeknownst to us, we had anchored in a hotbed of Kanak separatism – though the Kanak flags and slogan carved into trees all round the island should have given us a clue. But it certainly explained why some of the locals weren’t too enamored of Europeans!

There is a lot of tension here and in some places it is very close to the surface. This was particularly apparent when it came to some of the outlying islands. We are required by law and maritime convention to fly each country’s courtesy flag while we are sailing there and New Caledonia’s flag is the same as the French flag (Le Tri Color). A couple of the boats from the fleet went to one of the outlying islands in the lagoon to go snorkeling. While there are areas designated as sacred sites or marine reserves this was not one of them. They were approached by the locals and told the area was Tabu and they were not able to snorkel there. If they prepared to lower their French courtesy however, the chief would happily make an exception.

There is a further complication in that there is a third group in New Caledonia who have a bit of an identity crisis – those who were born in New Caledonia but have French roots. They may be forth generation New Caledonians but in not being native Kanaks they sort of fall into an anthropological no-mans land.

We expect that what we have seen is more common in outlying areas because most of the guide books I have read describe the Kanaks as a bit shy but very friendly once you break the ice. We have heard fantastic things about the main centre, Noumea, which is also supposed to be very culturally diverse.

There is definitely a language barrier for us here though. There are more than 30 Kanak dialects so the official language of New Caledonia is French and, as I mentioned before, my French stinks. I dropped out pretty early at school (after doing enough to get the chocolate gateaux they bribed us with) and then staged a little protest about Muroroa Atoll by plastering the French class with anti-nuke posters, so I probably wouldn’t have been welcome even if I had decided to pick it up again!

I know “Bonjour”, “Merci beaucoup” and “Mon chat” (of course!) but that’s about my limit. We picked up a French phrasebook to help us bumble through and while there are some very useful things in it, there are others I’m really not so sure about..

Just as an example, here are a few things the Lonely Planet thinks it would be helpful to know how to say in French:

C’est uniquement pour mon usage personnel
(This drug is for personal use)

Jen e fais pas mon age
(I’m younger than I look)

Je cherche des sous-vetements
(I’m looking for underwear)

Jamais de la vie!
(Not if you were the last person on earth!)

Est-ce que tu as un fetiche?
(Do you have a fetish?)

Jen e suis qu’un objet sex pour toi
(You are just using me for sex)

Non, c’est moi qui dis ca, ce n’est pas l’alcool qui parle
(No, it isn’t the alcohol talking)

Je peux avoir un avocet
(Can I have a lawyer?)

And I’ll leave you with my personal favourite – a quote from Charles de Gaulle

Comment est-il possible de gouverner un pays qui produit plus de trios cent soixante-dix fromages differents?

(How is it possible to govern a country that produces more than 370 different cheeses?)

There’s something about the word ‘race’ that brings out the petrol/sail head in many skippers, regardless of how fast their boats are.

As I have mentioned before Wildflower is not exactly a speed demon, but that doesn’t stop Paddy from trying to make her go faster. On the way to Port Vila Paddy tried to race a catamaran (though I am pretty sure its owners were unaware they were ‘racing’). We were on a pretty good tack and had a decent breeze so Captain Bogan decided to make the most of it. It was quite exhausting to watch, every time it looked like he was going to sit down he leapt up again to tweak yet another sail.

My idea of good sailing and Paddy’s differ slightly in one aspect. As far as I am concerned, if you are going in the right direction reasonably comfortably and not too slowly, then I am all for sitting back, relaxing and letting the boat take us forward. Paddy on the other hand is from a different genus – the Boat Bogan (or Boatgan as I prefer to call them) – and if there is the teensiest chance of getting things to move an iota faster, he will take it. (Paddy is also a member of a sub-species of Dinghy Bogans – or Dogans – but that is an entirely different story.)

We didn’t win the ‘race’ with the cat but we did manage to gain on them a little, which made the captain happy. He did get another chance to stretch his legs though, and this time in an actual race – though not aboard Wildflower. When it comes to footing it with the converted racing boats that make up some of the fleet, sadly the poor girl doesn’t stand a chance.

There was, however, another boat – Kharisma II – in need of crew for an inter-fleet fun race and Captain Boatgan jumped at the chance. He volunteered me as crew as well, which I was actually a little apprehensive about – having never raced before. Luckily there were plenty of other enthusiastic hands on deck so I was able to master the art of being what is known as ‘rail meat’ (sitting on the rail to help make the boat go faster) with the occasional rope pulling duty thrown in. Paddy was in charge of the genoa (head sail)and spent most of the time pole dancing. This isn’t as dodgy as it sounds (though still highly entertaining) – basically it involves leaping around on the foredeck wielding a spinnaker pole like a lance in order to hold out the headsail to prevent it from collapsing.

The race itself was great fun and the insults traded between the boats hilarious. Cries of “starboard”(as in “I’m on a starboard tack so you guys have to give way”) were met with equally loud cries of “horseshit!” and the odd “eff off” – which makes me think it’s probably a good thing the sound on the America’s Cup coverage doesn’t extend to what they are hollering at eachother! It was all in good fun though and nothing was taken particularly seriously.

Kharisma II is a Bavaria 44 and quite a speedy little number, so Paddy was in his element – and the water bogans on board weren’t far behind in enthusiasm. We had John (one of the ICA organisers) as skipper, Kharisma’s owners’ Jens and Ros, Harley who was crewing on another boat – Summer Soul – and myself. Ros and I got pretty good at keeping out of the way of the boatgan brothers as they wielded ropes and winch handles. In fact Kharisma II was such a speedy little number that we were the first over both the start and finish lines. I can’t really go into detail about our winning strategy – other than it seemed to work – but if Paddy fancies putting more detail in, he is more than welcome.
He was quite taken with the fact that the fastest boat in the fleet (for that afternoon at least) was crewed by people from the slowest boat in the fleet.

In saying that, Wildflower may not be able to claim the tortoise title for much longer. We’ve actually managed to beat a few boats to a couple of anchorages lately. We had a sail maker look her over in Vila and tweak the second-hand headsail we bought in Denerau. He also remarked that the boat’s rigging was loose – so one day, while I was grocery shopping in Vila, Paddy set about tightening it.

When I returned, I found him sitting on the plank leading up to our boat – sopping wet.
I should add a word about this plank – which was helpfully provided when we tied up to the dock in Vila, because there were no moorings left by the time we arrived. It was similar to our plank at Savusavu yacht club in Fiji (which also happened to provide a red carpet for squillions of ants to board our boat.) That plank was a bit more manageable however because we were tied to the wharf stern to (arse first) which meant there were lots of lovely handholds to help get on and off the boat. In Vila there was no real space or opportunity for use to turn Wildflower backwards so we ended up tied on bow to (front first), which meant no handholds at all. The plank was wobblier, further away and mocked my little munchkin legs every time the tide changed by making itself steeper.

As you can imagine, when I caught sight of a soggy Paddy straddling my planky nemesis, I immediately thought the worst. It turned out that Paddy had had an unexpected swim, but what happened was much scarier than I thought. He had been tightening the rigging at the front of the boat when the rigging screw he was tightening failed. The forestay (the main wire holding the mast up) had several tones of pressure on it and it let go with an explosion. The stay shot up and hit Paddy in the side of the head and knocked him off his perch. He grazed his ear on the anchor on the way down and was hauled out of the water by our neighbours on the dock. It was a very close call since there were a lot of things besides the anchor that he could have hit on the way down and it gave us both quite a fright. I felt terrible that I wasn’t there when it happened but there wasn’t really anything I could have done to stop it anyway. By the time I got back Paddy had dusted himself off and was back to rigging tightening. Although it would be unlikely that we would be tightening the rigging at sea, it was still better that it happened at Vila Harbour where there was lots of help around. Despite the mishap, the tightened rigging and newly tweaked sail has definitely made a difference in our speed though and Paddy has been quite pleased with our progress.

On a much slower note, before we left Vanuatu, we decided to have a luxury night on land. Not counting our stay at the Jungle Oasis on Tanna (which, although loads of fun, was a little on the uncomfy side) it was the first proper night we had spent on land since leaving New Zealand. We stayed at a very cool resort called Mangoes, which is run by a family friend, Michelle, and her fiancé Callum (please feel free to correct any stuffed up spelling Michelle!). For a night we grotty yachties lived in, what for us was, the lap of luxury. We had drinks and dinner with Michelle, Callum and some of their friends from Christchurch and I got my first taste of coconut crab – freshly arrived that day. They arrive alive and we are told they are quite a fearsome sight corralled in the kitchen with their huge snapping claws (apparently if one of them manages to escape into the garden there is a distinct shortage of volunteers to go out and catch it!) The crab was huge and delicious and incredibly messy to eat. By the time Paddy and I had managed to completely dismember ours the others were looking at the dessert menu – it was great fun!

We slept in a huge double king sized bed and the room had its own swimming pool, which I spent a blissful morning sitting in and drinking coffee while reading a book. The best part of the whole experience for me though was that the room came complete with a Crazy Cat Lady Option – in the form of a kitten called Leo who pretty much has the run of the resort.

DISCLAIMER: If you are not a cat person you may want to skip this next bit

Since I am missing my own moggy terribly, this appealed to me immensely. Leo was a rescue kitten who was brought to the resort after his mother had been hit by a car, and he has certainly landed on his feet. He has the entire resort at his disposal and, if guests allow him, he’ll waltz in and out of their rooms, sleep in their luggage and even cuddle up with them for the night. So, of course, poor old Paddy had to share the humungous bed with me and a kitten. He was pretty good though and stayed curled up in the same spot, not bugging us until 5.30am when he wanted breakfast (at which point I palmed him off to his real Mummy).

My Ollie was a rescue kitten too and arrived at about the same age as Leo (3 weeks). I found the tiny creature in the middle of the night squawking in the bushes of one of my flats when I was at university. I was told not to get attached to him because, having been abandoned by his mother, he was likely to die – but he had other ideas. Nearly nine years later he has been carted from one end of the country to the other, ruling each household with an iron paw. Because he has moved so much he doesn’t know how to be territorial and tends to settle in pretty much anywhere as long as I am there. Not knowing that he is actually a cat may have something to do with this too (apparently Leo has this issue as well.) Paddy dubbed Ollie ‘Little Lion Man’ because, although he grew into a rather large cat, he’s a bit of a wuss. (I once saw him cornered by a mouse that was giving him a severe ticking off in its squeaky little voice.)

He really is my fur child – so you can probably imagine how traumatic it was for me to leave him for 6+ months. The thought of leaving him at a cattery broke my heart and I don’t think he would have gotten on too well with my parents’ lovely, but rather enthusiastic, Cocker Spaniel Molly. I was at my wits end when Paddy’s dad David saved the day by offering to take him. He lives out in the country and has a big house, a huge garden and lots of heaters (in short, a moggy paradise). There were a few hiccups when we tried to settle Ollie in – including me waking the entire household up at 6am because I was convinced he had fallen out an open window and hurt himself (it turned out that the crying I heard was a weird sounding bird and he had been hiding under the bed the whole time). There was also an episode involving Ollie in the garage stuck behind an old fridge, Paddy trying to fish him out with a brush on the end of a long pole, and me wringing my hands and crying every time he let out an unimpressed yowl. By the time we left though Ollie was confident enough to prowl around the house, eat his food and let David give him a pat. Paddy assured me he would be fine but it was the cat Mummy that had the issues more than the cat.

David has been great though, putting up with my tragic phone calls checking up on Ollie. I even talked to the cat on the phone and felt heaps better when I heard him purr back at me. Last time we talked Ollie was settled and happy and giving David lots of cuddles, so I am feeling a lot better about things. I do sometimes worry that he won’t recognise me when I get back, but I’m trying not to think about that. Paddy reckons I’m worrying unnecessarily and he’s probably right, but cat lady genes are hard to fight!

PS – yes I am aware that I am a country behind, but this is the last Vanuatu blog and a New Caledonia one is on the way, honest! New Cal is an interesting place. It is picture postcard perfect but suffering from a serious identity crisis. Although it is not technically it is still the closest to an occupied country we have been in so far, but I’ll leave that for the next blog xx

Hi all,

Just a quick not to let you know we have safely arrived in New Caledonia. We are anchored in a beautiful place called Ile Moulet on Ouvea atoll which looks just like a postcard with lovely blue water and white sand. We are stuck on the boat until customs arrive on a 9am flight from the capital tomorrow and we are really looking forward to exploring once we have cleared. In the meantime we are planning on catching up on a bit of sleep!

I’ll put together a more detailed post a bit later on along with another Vanuatu blog.

Thinking of you all,

Anna and Paddy xxx

On Friday night Paddy and I got a good look at the Earth’s insides.
They are red hot, angry and utterly terrifying, but also fascinating and beautiful.

When I sit back and think about it, crawling around on top of an erupting volcano is possibly one of the loonier things I have done, but it is also one of the most exhilarating.

Mt Yasur on Vanuatu’s Tanna Island is one of the world’s most accessible volcanoes. It fluctuates between being tourist friendly and dangerous, and when the danger level exceeds 3 (it was level 2 while we were there) it is advisable to steer clear.

We flew to Tanna from Port Vila because the wind was blowing in the wrong direction and 35 minutes in a plane seemed preferable to two days of bashing to windward in a boat.

The flights, accommodation and trip up the volcano were my Christmas present from Paddy and – while for some having molten lava flung at them may not be their idea of a romantic gift from their beloved – I was stoked.

It was a two hour four wheel drive from Tanna airport to our accommodation – an eco resort called the Jungle Oasis – and during that time those of us sitting in the back got to know eachother pretty well. Paddy and I went with our friends Chris and John from Sara II and Chris, Paddy and I were squished into the back seat. Luckily there were only four of us because a couple of times we passed vehicles with some rather uncomfortable looking folk bouncing about in 4WD trailers.

The road wasn’t just bumpy – in some places it was still being created (I think it will be a shortened version of what was a much longer route). At one point we had to crawl behind a digger that was actually in the process of pushing the earth out of the way of the road as we drove on it! We were all so hyped up, nervous and excited about the impending volcano trip that it didn’t really bother us. In fact on more than one occasion Chris and I burst into hysterical giggles as we slammed against eachother. I was sitting in the middle so got more of a workout than the rest, but the way I figured it was like doing 5 million stomach crunches so was better than going to the gym. The drive back the next day however was a much sleepier affair!

Part of the trip involved driving across the ash plain, where the smoke and ash from the volcano has smothered the land to give it an eerie alien-like quality. This ancient lunar landscape was stunning, with flattened black plains disappearing into the distance and huge canyon-like structures formed by lava flows from previous, more violent eruptions. We hopped out of the 4WD and snapped some photos before heading on our way. I was fascinated and could have spent hours there but I knew we had a volcano to get to!

We arrived at our accommodation, which was literally in the middle of nowhere, threw down our bags and got ready to head up the hill. We had been told the best time to view the volcano was at dusk. The Jungle Oasis is so close to Mt Yasur that you can hear the rumbles and explosions from the huts you are sleeping in. Chris remarked that spending the night on the side of an active volcano may have been one of the loonier things she had done. I felt comforted that we were all loonies together.

We drove up to the volcano as far as we could go and then climbed the rest of the way, eying uneasily the large rocks and boulders (called bombs) that Mt Yasur had previously flung forth. We could hear the volcano rumbling as we walked and see the steam rising. We had been a little concerned on the way up that we wouldn’t see much because it seemed to be rather foggy, but we needn’t have worried – molten lava is never going to let a little fog get in the way.

Then we reached the highest point of the ledge we were climbing and found ourselves looking right down into the planet’s innards. We were actually standing on the rim of a crater on an active volcano.

I find it hard to describe what it felt like seeing the earth laid bare like that, staring straight into the firey core of the land we walk over every day in blissful ignorance. To say it made me feel small and insignificant would be twee – I think it was more of an example of how much bigger and more powerful the universe is than we will ever understand. It made me feel very human.

And that was before the excitement started!
When we arrived up top we could see two fissures steaming away with the molten hot inner core of one plainly visible. I was pretty impressed by this, but it also seemed rather far away. I guess I had figured we would get a bit closer. Then, as I was just starting to snap photos, Mt Yasur gave a mighty belch and started flinging red hot rocks upwards (I guess if my insides were roiling about like that I’d want to get a bit off my chest too). Despite the fact most of the boulders were still landing hundreds of meters away from us, we all scuttled back pretty quickly! Our guide politely said to me, “you have to stand still if you want to take photos!”

You know when you are watching a big fireworks display and it seems like they are coming straight for you? Well it was like that but much scarier. It was also utterly beautiful. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. After the initial eruption died down you could see the chunks of molten lava littering the crater and hear the thud of boulders landing that were no doubt the size of cars. One of the closest rocks landed about 75 meters away from us, which is pretty much as close as I would like to get to molten rock thank-you-very-much! All would go quiet, an eerie red light would stain the smoke and then it would start all over again. You couldn’t really predict when it would happen so whenever it did it elicited stunned gasps and high pitched shrieks. Paddy got some wonderful video footage (some admittedly involving me squealing like a little girl) which I will link to the blog once we find a way of making it web-friendly.

When we finally got tired and hungry we reluctantly turned our back on the pyrotechnics and headed back to our accommodation where we had a lovely dinner cooked for us from local ingredients. Jungle Oasis is a beautiful place with lovely green gardens growing from the ash coated ground (volcanic soil is actually very fertile), but it is also very basic. The huts have electricity (via some pretty dodgy wiring) only when the generator is running and the bed is pretty much just a thin mattress on a chunk of wood, covered with a mosquito net. I also choose to believe that the critter with the long tail I saw scampering across the rafters was just a really big, furry looking, lizard. While all this is good fun and adds to the charm, sadly it doesn’t really make for a good night’s sleep. Jungle Oasis definitely has the plus of being close to the volcano though. Others who came to see Mt Yasur then had to turn around and take the two hour pot-hole fest back to their accommodation by the airport, while we just had to go down the road. We also had extra sound effects and I actually found it rather comforting listening to Yasur rumbling in the background when I couldn’t sleep. At that point it felt like we were old friends.

Our room also came complete with an island alarm clock – a rather vocal rooster right behind our hut. Being half asleep neither of us were in any position to deal with it but we were relieved when the crowing morphed into an angered squawking followed by silence. Paddy reckons this was someone engaging an ‘island snooze alarm’ (most likely a rock or a big stick!). Unfortunately, with the rooster silenced and Paddy and I just starting to doze off, the seventh day Adventists started. There was a sort of tent revival going on just across the road with lots of bell ringing and singing and preaching. The singing was actually quite nice to listen to (after a couple of cups of island coffee) but at stupid-o’clock in the morning I’m afraid my musical appreciation was at a bit of a low ebb. From what I could make out with my broken Bislama the revival was going to go on for the following week, followed by numerous other activities in the coming months. I guess the area would be ripe ground for that sort of thing, having hellfire and brimstone pretty much right on the doorstep.

All in all Tanna and Mt Yasur were unforgettable in so many ways and I am so glad we did it. There really is something magical about the place.

For those that are interested I have volcano photos up on my facebook page. I’ll post a public link to them on here shortly. I’ll let you all know when the video is good to go too.