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Birdless

 It’s been pretty breezy since yesterday, with gusts over 30 knots and waves coming over the back of the boat into the cockpit. My socks got wet which was annoying. There are some very impressive waves, but it’s impossible to take a photo of a wave because they always look four times smaller in a photograph. You end up with a picture that makes it look like you’re sailing on a slightly choppy lake. The weather has impacted our arrival time into Mackay Q berth for clearance with ABF, and it’s now looking like Saturday evening around 7pm, so I have no idea if ABF will clear us then. I suspect we will have to wait until the following day. I had been expecting over 10 birds to turn up, and around sunset they started flying around the boat, no doubt eyeing up a spot to land while looking for a snack before they turned in for the night. And then they all disappeared. We didn’t have any birds. I was pleased about this. We have had to reef the headsail very heavily as the wind is al...
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Birdaggedan

 Gosh. My feathery nemesis returned with six of his friends. For some reason, they all decided to sit on the windward lifelines with the output end facing inwards. Initially, they were sitting aft of the shrouds, which meant any fishy output would be blown all over the cockpit and, more importantly, me. So I spent a good two hours whacking them with a stick and poking them in a delicate area (still using the stick!) every time they came back. They really didn’t like it and got quite angry. And let me be very clear: these are not Walt Disney birds of the forest, smelling of berries. They are wild, vicious predators the size of a backpack and they stink of fish. They slowly moved forwards and spent the night sitting near the bow. Some hills are not worth dying on, so I was happy with the compromise and only gave them a whack if one of them forgot the rules and moved aft. We have blustery conditions with two reefs in the main and heavy reefs in the headsail. There is...
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Birds and Water

Well, the last 24 hours have been interesting. And I don't like interesting or exciting when I am sailing. I like boring and repetitive. Exciting generally means something terrible is about to happen if you're not careful. It turned out the water pump we replaced yesterday isn’t an exact drop-in replacement as they said it was, which was actually a good thing in a way. We can now confirm that we do have a plumbing issue and we are losing water somewhere. The intermittent cycling of the original pump had largely been put down to a faulty diaphragm, and the new pump worked perfectly, which of course reinforced the original diagnosis. And the original diagnosis was correct. But we now know there is a faulty diaphragm in addition to the plumbing issue. We had already investigated the suspected leak and didn’t find anything. It’s extremely hard to find dripping water in a wet bilge, and you can’t hear it because we are surrounded by splashing water. So it was with some horror that ...
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Sunshine

 We had a great day sailing yesterday, with 15–18 knots of breeze and the wind sitting around 100 degrees apparent. Yesterday was a day of emotional peaks and troughs, as we had an extremely exciting encounter with a superyacht which was also heading to Mackay. It came past us at around 12 knots.  The reason for the excitement was that it was something else to look at, and it soon disappeared over the horizon, with Ocean Breeze gallantly chasing along behind at a steady 6.5 knots. Poor wee thing was trying her hardest! It has been nice to have a few days of sunshine and blue sky after all the cloudy, rainy and cold weather earlier in the trip. It is also definitely getting warmer, which I hadn’t expected. I expected it would get cooler as we approached Mackay. After spending so much time in jackets, long trousers and socks, it’s quite nice to be back in conditions where you can actually remember that we are supposed to be sailing in the tropics. On the ...
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Eau de Surprise

We made good miles yesterday, averaging 6.5 knots over 24 hours, which gives us 156 nm, so not too shabby. I have another note to add to my area of general knowledge concerning the buying of bottled water, in addition to my previous discovery that 'eau gazeuse' means sparkling water, which was discovered 12 hours after leaving port on a previous passage. The new information is that water “fortified with extra calcium and magnesium” makes milk curdle. It’s a strange discovery to make at 2am in the pitch black when you’re having a coffee to keep alert and suddenly think, “Hmmmm, something is not right. Is this lumpy lemon milk?” We have now begun the process of threading through the reefs above New Caledonia. They extend for miles, with only small patches of clear water before you approach the next set of reefs, and then the next set, for hundreds of miles. I think I mentioned in an earlier blog that sailors used to name places as a form of navigational information, and the names...
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In and Out

We got the anchor down in the quarantine area in Port Vila right on sunrise and then had to wait for a few hours while everyone woke up. We called a few times on the VHF and sent some emails to see if anyone was awake, but didn’t get a response until 9am. We had to take the boat to the fuel wharf to deal with the authorities because we don't have a dinghy, which I think actually made things easier, even if they didn’t want to admit it. It meant they could all come when they had time and didn’t have to get a dinghy out to the boat or synchronise their trip with other departments, which is a considerably more complicated operation. The biggest blow of the day was that I didn’t get to go to the supermarket. Instead, I was busy filling in forms, going to the ATM to pay a bill, going back to the ATM to pay another one, getting a form from one office to take to another, and dealing with the fact that no one could understand why we only wanted fuel and water and were leaving immediately. ...
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Blogless

 We are 2nm off the entrance to Port Vila and just waiting for daylight to go in the bay to anchor in the quarantine area.  So there wont be a blog as its not the time to be staring at the laptop. But we are hoping to get the entry formalities completed first thing this morning and if all goes smoothly we are aiming to leave this afternoon - finger crossed!
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