landed in Australia

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Lots of great videos, photos and stories at: www.svlavie.blogspot.com

Well it’s been over 2 months since the last update and we have had a complete change of plans. Instead of going to the Solomon Islands for Cyclone season, we decided to head to Australia. We had a wonderful 7 day passage getting here (caught a white tip shark on the way!). We got here last Friday and are in the Port of Bundaberg, the rum capital of Australia. But that’s lost on us as neither one of us care much for that particular poison.

After leaving Port Vila in September we tried to get to the very north most remote islands of Vanuatu, the Banks, at a rapid clip. There was an indigenous Festival there that we wanted to get to. It took us several days to get up there, with stops at the islands of Epi, Malekula, Espirito Santo and then finally to our destination Gaua Island. We also made a 2 night stop and a very remote reef called Cook Reef. Its miles from any island with only a few rocks and pieces of coral above water. It was an extremely calm period with very little wind and waves so it made for an ideal time to stop. The water was beautiful shades of blue and we could see 90 feet deep. Getting into the anchorage was a bit tricky as the water was so clear that it looked like we were going to run over reefs, but they happened to be very deep. We as usual did some exploring and lots of snorkeling. On our way out we caught a huge, maybe 5.5 feet Wahoo. We gave ½ to the next village we stopped at and gave giant filets to other cruisers and we still had enough to feed us for weeks.

When we got to the Gaua Island we learned that indeed that the 3 day festival was still on starting the following day. This was a sort of arts festival where the villages from around the island compete with each other. Competitions include numerous dances with traditional costumes, water music, musical bands, singing, farming and gardening. I won’t go into detail here as we have already explained much of this on the other blog, www.svlavie.blogspot.com. We have just uploaded many photos and some wonderful videos. These are a must see!

From here we headed further north up the Banks Islands and found our favorite anchorage, Waterfall Bay on Vanua Lava Island. There are 3 families that live along this long beautiful shoreline where fresh water springs come out to the sea along with the spectacular twin waterfalls that crash along the beach. We stayed for a while and came back again, staying for probably 3 weeks in total. We also visited the administrative capital of the Banks, Sola. This is a large village with such amenities as Post office, customs, a sort of a bank, and a baker. Of course there were also numerous Kava bars, 13 in all, for a population of just 300!

From here we went to visit Ureparapara Island. The giant bay is a huge crater from an extinct volcano. The scenery was stunning. We stayed here for over a week which culminated with the much talked about arrival of the 145ft tall ship the Soren Larsen. There were many festivities planned such as a soccer tournament, music and food, which we joined in on. I’m happy to report that my soccer team won.

By now the cruising season is coming to a close so we start heading back down south to Sola to check out of the country and move on. We stopped at another beautiful reef on the way down. The snorkeling was fantastic. We saw several Manta Rays and 2 were even copulating!

After checking out we attempted to sail on to Australia but we had a few false starts. First the weather wasn’t quite right, and then the starter blew up. Fortunately, Dave the mechanical electric wiz that he is was able to fix that once we sailed back into the bay and anchored. Our third attempt also greeted us with lousy uncomfortable waves with not enough wind to compensate in order to hold the sails set…so we turned and stayed in Southwest Bay on Malekula Island. We did some of the most amazing snorkeling I think I’ve ever done here. There were schools of giant Maori Wrasse and schools of giant Trevaly. The Wrasse only munch on coral but I didn’t want them to mistake my toes for a chunk of lunch. We saw white tip and black tip sharks, no worry there BUT we did see a large unidentified gray shark. It was not a gray tip reef but it couldn’t have been a bull shark (very very dangerous). At this point we were quite far from the dingy, so I suggested we head back, at a fast clip. Then we dingied to another reef that was even better. Dave got out of the water before me and suddenly I saw another one of those unidentified gray sharks and I swear it was coming straight towards me. I swam faster than I ever have in my life and literally flew into the dingy.

Ok, enough for now. Now that we are in civilization with regular cheap internet I will update the blog more often. Thanks for keeping track of me! If rhere is anything in particular you would like to hear about just let me know.

Kathy

For more stories and pictures see Dave’s blog at: www.svlavie.blogspot.com

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