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Mischief - Up to Mischief again: Log 60 Further adventures of S/Y Mischief through the eyes and ears of Chas Baynes



Anyone interested enough to read these blogs and is wondering why there is no number 59 it is because there are two 58's - forgot to change the last one sorry!

Friday, 13th July 2018 - To Dillons Bay, Erromondo, Vanuatu

We left Port Resolution at 0600 at sunrise. The volcano was belching forth smoke and fumes as we left. We were one of the later boats to leave and so we joined a long procession of boats motoring headed for Erromondo, some 50 miles to the north west. The wind was very light so no sailing practical for a while.

After a couple of hours there was sufficient wind to start sailing, even to set the spinnaker, the sun came out and we ended up having a glorious days sailing. I noticed there was a bit of daylight coming through the spinnaker once it was set which is a bit of a worry, especially on Friday 13th so took some rip-stop tape up to the bow and hung over the front, grabbed the bottom panel with the tear and slapped the tape on which solved the problem for now at least; the offender I traced to a split pin on the guard rail which had become uncovered so re-taped that too.

Our destination, Dillons Bay is on the west coast of Erromondo and we were sailing along the coast about one mile off. The interesting/alarming thing is that the Navionics charts had us situated on the shore and about to make our way up a mountain! Don't you just love electronic charts?

We dropped the spinnaker late afternoon and sailed into Dillons Bay. We were cleared in advance by 'Chief Jason' to go ashore so we went for a walk along to the local school and a look around some of the village; some 500 live here and all that we met on our walk were extremely friendly, albeit they were armed to the teeth with machetes and kitchen knives - tools of the trade rather than offensive weapons! Once again, their names were predominantly from the bible, all except Charlie my namesake that is. We were informed that this island is even poorer than Tanna but the build quality of housing here seems better than in Port Resolution and we were passed by a brand new tractor, worth at least £50,000 according to Dave who knows these things, being a farmer. Many also had mobile phones so I really don't think this is any poorer, maybe the opposite.

Mindy came over the VHF to say that some local fishermen were planning a fishing trip overnight to catch some lobster which they were willing to trade for beer and wine. We don't know the exchange rate as yet! You can't buy alcohol ashore so its not surprising they want to barter.

I think I have drunk some orange juice or something that is off as feeling particularly dodgy this evening. Wendy is skipping dinner too but that is because she doesn't like the fish curry Trevor is making - smells really good to me but I'm going to give it a miss nevertheless; Wendy is making up by drinking beer instead!

Saturday, 14th July 2018 - Dillons Bay, Erromondo, Vanuatu

Up half the night with stomach issues. It turns out that many others in the fleet have a similar condition so it may have something to do with the anti-malaria tablets we are taking which do have certain side effects, or the dinner we had in Port Resolution had something there that didn't agree with us. Whatever, I was up every hour on the hour all night! There were rumours of an earthquake in the Tanna area during last night. Some apparently felt the tremors, but I didn't, besides it was probably my stomach rumbling away rather than Mt Yasur!

It is a lovely sunny morning this morning. Chief Jason has dropped by to collect the various gifts from each boat to save us having to cart them all ashore individually. We had held some of the clothing back from Tanna to give here and cleared out the fishing tackle box for kit we have not used nor likely to use. The guys on the boat went straight to these and seemed very interested in the reels and bits so that seems a hit.

There is a trip organized for this morning to a cave just along the coast where there are ancient relics of one sort or another but I very much doubt it is close to a public convenience so I am going to have to give it a miss I'm afraid…….likewise, the feast ashore in the yacht club I am going to miss too.

Dave and Trevor came back from the cave trip saying that these relics were actually remnants of humans; bones and skulls neatly arranged, including that of the first missionary here, somebody Williams! Startlingly, it transpires that cannibalism was still practiced here even into the 1970's! The chap showing them around suggested that as this was still so relatively recent some on the island still had a taste for it, which apparently made Dave feel a little uncomfortable as he possibly had more meat on him than the others in the party!

Having slept for most of the day, we then raised the anchor an hour earlier than planned at 1545 and set off towards Port Vila some 80 odd miles to the north west again, the capital of the Vanuatu islands. The forecast is for a massive Beaufort 0 - 1 so not much then. We did manage to sail to the end of the island then the wind did drop right off so we motored for about three hours when it picked back up again sufficient to sail at 5 knots. At least it was warm, and the stars were all out in abundance. It is going to be a long slow night but there is not much point in going much quicker because we can't get onto the marina wall until 8 am in any case as the staff there hand you the bow line attached to the bottom and they don't start work until then!

I spotted the loom of the lights from Efate island about 17 miles off the coast - it must be some size to light up like that, much more than I was expecting.

0145 Position: 18 degs 05.4' S 168 degs 32.6' E C: 335 SOG: 5 knts DTR: 26 nm

Sunday, 15th July 2018 - Port Vila, Efate, Vanuatu

We arrived spot on time at 0745 and made our way into the harbor. The smell of the scented trees on the air was amazing. The town looks huge compared to what we have seen for a long while, there is even a container dock taking up one end of the harbor, and an old ferry boat seemingly 'parked' half way ashore at a crazy angle presumably a victim of a cyclone blowing through here a few years ago.

We had to come into the marina stern to the wall but the initial place the boatmen were suggesting looked a trifle shallow, indeed if we went in there the ground would have knocked our rudder off as it was only about half a meter deep at low water.

Immediately we landed we were invited to the yacht club over the harbor, a short bus ride away, for a barbeque and fund raising dinghy racing which seemed a great idea. So we got there for 1230 and had a very nice T-bone steak and a couple of beers before we launched a few of the clubs dinghies for the racing. They have three Lasers, one full rig and two radials; three or four RS Quba's and numerous little RS Tera's. The latter boats were far too small for me and as the Lasers were both already taken I had one of the Quba's but put the tiny jib on it first. I only just got in it/on it but I actually liked it as a boat just not really built for someone my size and weight.

The yacht club arranged a committee boat start and we were soon off around the two-lap course. I absolutely loved it with the wind shifting all over the place making it quite interesting. Bones from Emily Morgan won the Lasers and I kept up the Mischief end by winning the Quba's. We had a couple of beers to celebrate in the yacht club which has a great atmosphere and is a recognized RYA sailing instruction centre. Bones offered to go back and do some Laser coaching for their local hot-shot, a young chap called 'Hero'; Bones not only is a magic engineer he was/is also a national Laser coach - there seems no end to the man's talent.

A really great day altogether finished off by fish and chips in the Waterfront Bar right behind the boat as I was now fully recovered from the stomach bug thing and was starving!

Monday, 16th July 2018 - Port Vila marina, Efate, Vanuatu

I was up ridiculously early this morning at 0145 to watch the World Cup final between France and Croatia as there were a few people saying they wanted to see it and the Waterfront Bar offered to leave their telly on; Dave had borrowed a Croatian shirt to tease Dennis and Brigit (from the French yacht Pretaixt) but as it happened he didn't wake up to his alarm so the joke was lost. It was a really good game and worth getting up for: the French won 4:2 for the record.

A few hours sleep later we jumped onto a bus for a round the island tour. There is a road around the island of about 120km mostly tarmac but very lumpy and bumpy in places and I'm surprised the mini bus suspension stood up to it. The island is the least picturesque of the others we have visited, with fairly flat ground and green open spaces reminiscent to me of the New Forest in aspects. We stopped off at a few places of interest:

" A cultural centre where we were met by warriors threatening with spears, and followed by a few cameos of village life including 'Fire Walking', dancing and a very unusual band with home made instruments. It was nice but a bit contrived for tourists whereas we as a group had seen more real situations in villages and their cultures only very recently. Good band though;
" The Blue Lagoon - a water park essentially with a blue blue lake into which you can dive from a 10 meter tree and jump in off swing ropes etc or, indeed, swim! I had to dive off the tree into relatively shallow water as Freddie from Lunatix and his crew had done it (and survived) so I had to keep the Mischief end up again - besides they were German!
" The Hot Springs - there were as it says on the tin, hot springs. Some were too hot;
" The water cascade - actually a waterfall but we were supposed to pay extra to walk up to it after our lunch but we all went anyway ignoring the guide's protestations - mob rule!
" The coffee factory - really interesting; it turns out that the major growers of coffee in the region were on Tanna island where we had recently been yet seen no sign of it nor any mention. The factory was actually a tiny operation with a roaster machine and a grinder machine with manual labour to sort the beans and bag them. They have ten employees earning VT 200 per hour, about £1! They export over the world under the trade name 'Tanna coffee' and have about one thousand farmers they look after, very impressive. They do export to the UK too.

We arrived back from our tour late afternoon to be met by a group of Hash House Runners congregated behind our boat just about to set off. As I was already wearing my running shoes and shorts I jumped onto the boat to grab a vest before asking directions and heading off after them. I soon overtook a few walkers then soon after another runner coming the other way. I carried on for a bit then one of the walkers said that he thought the runners had gone the other way, so I turned and ran after the runner I'd seen who I soon caught up, an ex-pat called Craig from Edinburgh. He was shuffling about in the gutter looking for something that transpired to be a small pile of ticker-tape paper that marked a route - it was a paper chase. Trouble was it was nearly dark so difficult to see the trail so we went up and down a good few wrong turnings before giving up and running back to the start. We did at least the 5K it was supposed to be just in wrong turnings. Back at the finish are there was a pickup with a barrel of beer and a load of tankards and the participants were guzzling away for a couple of hours playing drinking games and shouting and chanting very loudly. Seems these Hash people have a drinking club with a running problem, which is their motto. Good fun though!

Dave was taking Wendy out for a 'date night' which they should do more often, but hardly anywhere was open as it was gone 8pm - places shut early here it seems and afterwards joined myself and the Emily Morgan crowd in the Waterfront bar for a nightcap and there endeth another day. Tomorrow we have a few boat jobs to do in preparation for our flit over to Australia leaving Thursday morning.




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