Update from Australia.

Rather like it here. Quite expensive but really like it. And want to see a lot more of it.

So….. 13,000 miles in and  ½ way around the world we are going to take a break from the Rally for a while. We will base in Australia and explore this side of the planet. On a slower pace. We were blasting through the world so fast that we missed most of it. Next year we will probably head back to French Polynesia and retrace our route back to Aus on a slower timetable. Pick up the ARC again and continue the circumnavigation. 

But in the mean time……   the adventure continues with the Whitsundays, maybe a month or two there, then inland in Aus, then probably New Zealand, by camper maybe, or……   whatever we feel like. Which is a pretty good feeling. Went from 1000 miles an hour to a walking pace. And I feel about 1000 pounds lighter. 

More to follow

peace

M

Passage to Mackay

Getting the posts a bit out of order. Took me a while to spel chik dis stori and I got bored of it. ADD kicked in. This is the passage to Mackay. Older posts have us already there so sorry for any cornfusion!!

So it goes…….

I have 7 or 8 days and 1125 miles to pen this up so you know it might get a bit wordy.

So, Port Villa Vanuatu to Mackay Australia….    here we go.

Odd weather pattern coming up. Not liking it. Looks like a beating. Left on a good wind. Died. Clocked. Motored. Very uneventful first night out. Out of 7 or 8 nights for this passage. Easy watch schedule. 2 hours on, 10 off. Had a great match race with our friends on Nexus. We both had the same sail up. Mine being the one they loaned me in Tonga. So it becomes a trimming contest. They are a tick faster being 10,000 pounds lighter but the wind died before they got past me. Then its motor city. Which none of us enjoy. They have two speed props and 2X the fuel I have. They can motor fast and far. So they’re gone baby gone. Into the dead air and good bye. We go putt putt on one engine at 2000 rpm and I watch the fuel gauge. Well, I would if the darn thing worked. But it doesn’t, so I remove the inspection cover on the main tank every couple of days and stick the tank with a graduated pole. Somewhat for information purposes, somewhat because if I don’t get diesel stink all over me every couple of days I just don’t know what to do with myself. And opening the inspection port in 2 meter seas on the nose will get it done right quick.

Don’t know why but I can never sleep for the first couple of nights on passage. You get a little run down. So I go take a snooze after lunch on day two and when I come on deck the crew has this MONSTER Mahi Mahi lying there on the transom. 54 inch, maybe 45 pounds. Biggest fish that was ever landed on Vivo. “What the heck is that?” “We caught it!” “When?” “While you were sleeping!” I guess I should go to sleep more often. So for now we are done fishing. We have plenty. This will be 3 or 4 dinners for the six of us. And Australia prohibits the import of a lot of different varieties of foods. Including most of what we have in the freezer. So we have a whole lot of eating to do over the next week or we lose it when we clear in in Mackay. Most boats are in the same situation. We are going to have to do some power walking in Aus to work off this passage.

We are down to 20 boats now. Rumor has it a couple of boats will join us in Aus but not sure on that one. But we all kind of like the 20 boat number. Radio check ins are faster. We don’t swamp the local bars and restaurants as badly as when we were 39. And we are getting to know each other better being smaller scale. We’ve also sailed ½ way around the world together.

Day and night three were not fun. Big wind and seas on the nose. The crew in the forward berths were airborne ½ the time. Exhaustion will set in and people will start to get some sleep but for now it’s not too much fun. Everyone is tired. I’m on about 50 hours with 2 hours sleep. The fish nap. But I’m just about tired enough to sleep soon.

Day six now and I really cant remember the ones in between. It goes like that on passages. Doing a lot of reading and watching movies. Crew Dave has crew Italy hooked on Breaking Bad. His contribution to international relations. Lorenzo and Glada love it. Well, me, too.      The food is good. The Italian kids are fantastic cooks. Even when they are hampered by not being able to have to many pans on the stove. Like, only one. Or they get tossed when we broach the seas. Gets a bit chilly at night now as well. We have taken to wearing our foulies to stay warm on watch. 19 deg south of the equator and its wintertime here. But nothing like winter in good O’l Chicago baby!

Day seven. Maybe six. Not sure. But a beautiful day of sailing. First one since we left. Seas laid down. Great winds. Romping along doing 8-10 knots and quite comfortable doing it. Dinner might be a four-pan deal. Its safe enough I can cut them lose to cook their little hearts out. And that always turns out well. Its 11:00 PM and we have about 150 miles till we get to the Great Barrier Reef. Then 125 miles threading through the reef passage to Mackay. Still in VHF contact with a couple of the boats and everyone is very excited about making Australia. An Italian boat 4 miles south of us has radio issues and is down to a short range handheld. We help keep them in touch with the others up and down the range. The ones we can reach anyway.  A British boat is coming up about 10 miles behind us. We will all merge up and go through the reef passage together. Then “crack some tins” as the brits said tonight over the VHF. I think they mean beers. If they mean tins of spam that’s fine as long as there is beer to go with it. The first beer after a weeklong dry passage tastes like heaven. Tastes like the beer you used to steal out of the O’l mans fridge in the garage when you were a little kid. Just like that.

After drafting this up we crossed the finish line and entered the passage through the Great Barrier Reef. That’s when the wheels came off the cart. I will post the story sometime. Its not pretty.

peace

M

Mackay

We got hauled out the other day for bottom paint and some other issues that we could not get taken care of in Fiji. Nice yard, nice folks, but holy !@#$!@#$ is this place expensive! Filters that I can get for 8 bucks at home are 35 bucks here. Beers are 6 bucks. Nice dinner 50. Minimum wage is 25 grand a year so everything escalates from there. 

We ride the bus into town where they have a mall that is the size of a small suburb. There they have everything…… except what you need for a boat. Going from Vanuatu to here is a bit of a shocker. But we are enjoying Mackay. Hope to get back in the water and on our way by the end of the week. We’ll see.

Sad day for Vivo as we saw Lorenzo and Giada off to walkabout in Aus. They will be in Aus for a year. They, and their cooking, will be missed. We wish them the best in their continued travels and expect to hear great things.         So we have a cabin open. Anybody game?

There is a good story behind this great catch. I will post it soon. 

Bye kids! Safe travels.

All for now.

M

A few more photos. Apologies if one or more are a repost. These are some of my favorites.

Made it to Mackay. Interesting passage. More on that on another post. WIFI in Aus is almost non existent. Very odd. They have a beautiful new marina and the WIFI you would have in your home office. Even in town there are no internet cafes of WIFI hot spots. Its like the US ten years ago. The bars, restuants coffee shops. Nothing.

Anyway got some WIFI in an oddball place that Dave found. Actually he fixed the WIFI for them so they gave us their password. So I will take this opportunity to post some pix that I have been holding onto.

Port Villa Vanuatu

Big difference. Tanna to here. This is the big city. Traffic, dust, diesel, lots of people. Good provisioning and restaurants. Just the big city. Never our favorite.

Did the island tour. Don’t know why. I swore off the bus tours some time back. But apparently enough time had gone by that I forgotten why I had sworn off the bus tours. 9 ½ hours! Circumnavigated the island. There are really only a couple of stops of interest but that wouldn’t take nearly long enough. Stopped at a farm and planted taro. Stopped at 2 schools for the kids to say hi. Stopped in at a village. Stopped at two beaches. Never seen one of those before. The reported highlight on the tour was to be the WWII museum. Which turns out is a roadside shack with some debris from WWII AND the largest coke bottle collection in Vanuatu. All on display. 347 vintage coke bottles. And we were shown all of them. And shown on the bottom of the bottle the name of the town in the US where it was bottled. So now I can cross that off by bucket list.

WIFI is slow here. Pix not really a download option. I will try when we get to Australia. I have some really good ones to post.

Leaving for Mackay in a day or so. Not digging the weather forecast though. Going to be a couple of rough days it looks like. This will probably be the last post till we get Internet again in Australia.

All for now. Wish us luck!

M

So we arrive. Tanna Island in the Vanuatu group.

Nice place. Nice people. English spoken widely and everyone greets you as you go by. The World Cup soccer matches are a huge deal here. Both with the Europeans in the ARC and the locals. The kids make flags out of whatever they can find and run around cheering for their favorites. And they really know who’s who on all the teams. No idea how. There is no TV or Internet here. Cell service yes, but the rest is like a throw back 100 years. The village is very simple. Thatched huts. No electricity or running water in most of the huts. A couple of cinderblock buildings for school. Very poor but very content. I kind of envy the simplicity of their existence. They share in everything. Paradise really.

One HECK of a volcano!

So we did the island tour. We were curious as to why it takes 3 ½ hours to get to the other side of the island where the airport is. And we found out. It’s basically a one lane dirt, potholed, 4 wheel drive path. And that’s the main drag. The only road in fact. 12 of us in a pickup truck for the tour Bouncing along getting the crap beat out of us. Visited a village for a rather contrived touristy dance show. Then on to the volcano. Having visited a couple before my expectations were of a smoking hole in the ground and some noxious fumes. Wow was I wrong. We hiked up the cinder pile and stood on the rim looking down. No railings, no path, no signs that say you may or may not live through this. The sounds coming out of the volcano were incredible. Like a giant belching steam train. The concussions were felt in your chest. We were there for a couple of minutes soaking it in when it started to erupt. Blowing magma hundreds of feet into the air. Glowing, shape changing, globs of very liquid rock. I’ve seen it on film before but this was up close and personal. Every 5 minutes or so another eruption and another fire show. When I get some fast wifi I will post a video or two. We were so close it filled the cameras frame without zooming in. The heat felt like standing by a nice campfire on a cold night. I could have watched all night. A spectacular fireworks show. Then back in the truck for an hour long beating back to the village where we beach our dinghies.

No zoom. Its that close. 

The view as we left Tanna. At night it sets up a glowing fireworks display that must be incredible to see. Seems rather precarious. The hillsides will vent steam on some days but not others. It seems a little unstable. Wishing the best for them.

The following night was a gift exchange. The ARC has kind of adopted this village. This is the 5^th or 6^th time they have come through here. The village elders had provided a wish list of items. Cookware, school supplies, etc.. Each boat brought a pile of items. The roof and floor for the school were donated by ARC members. This year it’s a dorm type housing structure so they can house additional teachers for the school. They need 5 grand and are ½ way there. I think we will make sure they fill that pot. The gift exchange was a formal affair. Co-Hosted by the Chief and the ARC representative. We introduce ourselves and our crews and bring our gift pile forward. Then the village comes in with theirs. A couple thousand pounds of produce in hand woven baskets. And some other hand woven crafts. Not to mention the 100+ hand made woven hats they gave to every ARC sailor. We now have two huge hammocks of fruit and vegetables for our trip to Australia. Then a dinner put on by the village. Local foods. Pig, goat, fish, dozens of vegetable and fruit side dishes. I have no idea what all I ate. Had a great time and the kids sure had fun. They are big on dancing here. Must have been 200 people all jumping and dancing around. Local fellows playing their two chord songs. Really cool sight. Just a bunch of people enjoying each other’s company. From two completely different worlds. And literally from all over the world.

Kids are the same all over the world. Which is to say, awesome. This crew was a hoot.

I brought reading glasses with me and have trucked them ½ way around the world. I had about ½ dozen in my backpack and sat down with a couple of the older women to see if they might be able to make use of them. The younger people all speak English but a lot of the older villagers do not. I was kind of getting the message across when a local fellow sat down and offered to translate. Got them set up with a couple of pair and they seemed rather pleased. Then the translator, Nelson, asked if he could see a pair. He was about my age I would guess. I didn’t think to ask if he could use a pair. He tried out a pair and could read the fine print on a water bottle. He had a very large grin on his face when he was able to do that. He immediately called over a couple other villagers whom he knew to have the same issue and I ran out of glasses pretty quick. Later on that night I got a message from shore via VHF that Nelson had 6 more women who needed them.  Before we left Bob and I took in the remaining ones that I had. 14 pairs. And some sunglasses they also had been asking about. I paid 60 cents a pair for the glasses at a surplus shop. And it made a difference in someone’s life. Next time I will bring 100 pair. Or more. I know by morning word had spread to the next village. I leave it to Nelson to see that they get distributed fairly and I’m sure they will. They have a tremendous sense of sharing and community there.

Tanna was a very memorable stop for us. The people and the volcano were incredible. The closest interaction with local indigenous peoples of the trip so far. And from here forward it gets more civilized so that might have been the best and final.

Off to Port Villa, or the big city, where I doubt we will have this kind of interaction. We'll see.

M