Monday, May 28, 2018

A NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC special experience.

While in Port Villa Carol and I got dive certified in in anticipation of the Great Barrier Reef .

Leaving Port Villa we worked our way north sailing past another volcano (Ambryn island) and had a nice light show reflected off the steam cloud as we passed by at night on our way to Pentecost island.  Sharon on SHALEN had arranged for a group of us to get a tour and see the Land Divers.  Awesome!

Sulphur clouds made the sunset look petty wild. 


A bamboo straw for my coconut water. This would solve that plastic straw problem. 

The land diving tower. It only looks rickety.



The Chief of the village.


Uh, NO!


Pretty sad looking windsock

Out in the middle of Nowhere on Pentecost Island Vanuatu 

This plane landed, disembarked, loaded up and took off, all in about 15 min.

We spent a night in the most idyllic cove with a waterfall and great snorkeling and the headed for Luganville in preparation for the passage to Australia.   On the way e caught and landed a 27+kg (60lb) 5ft yellowfin tuna! That put 15 bags of tuna steak in the freezer, about 35 lbs worth!
Waterfall on Maewo island . 

5+feet, 60+lbs!

ONE of several buckets of tuna steak Carol packaged.


Blue starfish. 

Mon 5/28  We left Vanuatu last Saturday the 19th, Carol’s birthday. This is at least the 4th time in the past 7 years she has spent her birthday at sea moving a boat.  The night before we had surf and turf (tuna and steak) plus a lopsided birthday cake.  We motored out for an hour and then popped the symmetrical spin which stayed up for over 45 hours.  Took it down Monday morning as the wind had gone forward and increased.  Carol and I both were still suffering our colds and even today haven't completely shaken them. We had a great, fast, passage and came through the Great Barrier reef at night and arrived at 0230 local time. 139:25 passage, avg 8 knots!

So we tie up at the Q dock and the next morning clear in.  First the sniffer dog goes on looking for drugs and cash, even finding Don’s bankroll.  Cash is okay but you have to declare any over  $10,000. Then Customs and Immigration come on board for paperwork and to poke around the  boat.  They could not believe how little liquor we carried, nor that we didn't have any heavy duty drugs in the med kit.  So then the Biosecurity guy comes and does his paperwork and looks around for bugs and takes our fresh vegetables, garlic and a few other things.  Fortunately we had eaten all the chicken!

Carol had run into Sharon from SHALEN, another Oyster yacht, while in the gallery and we were invited to go see the wallabys and kangaroos on the beach the next morning.
Carol photobombs the 'roos.


See the Joey peeking out?



So now we're getting ready to head out to the Whitsunday islands for some cruising, snorkeling and relaxing.  We'll be in Oz til the last week in July and hope to do a short land tour.  In the meantime,   G'day mate!
 

1 comment:

S/V Via Bella said...

What a wonderful adventure! --Nancy