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24 hrs

Things on board are going well, with everyone settled into their rhythm of watches and daytime naps. I never thought in my life I would ever say I am looking forward to going to the supermarket, but after the outrageous prices in French Polynesia and the scarcity in Tonga of anything more exotic than Spam, I am really looking forward to the supermarket in Port Vila! The breeze has been up and down, giving us periods of motoring and steady sailing. A big plus is that we have been seeing patches of blue sky and even some stars at night, though it’s still far from tropical. At this point, blue sky is becoming an event worth mentioning. Charles Dickens had a similar writing spot We are on track to arrive first thing Friday morning and, in fact, will have to slow down a little to make sure we don’t arrive at 3am. The area to anchor in Port Vila while you wait for clearance is squashed in between a few reefs and I would much prefer to arrive in daylight. The long-term weather fo...
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Recent posts

A Nautical Kerfuffle

 It’s funny how one thing leads to another and you start pulling the thread and everything falls apart. I follow two broad rules: “picking it will only make it worse” and “it’s not going to get more broken if it’s already broken”, and I interchange them as I see fit.  In this case, however, I had to make up a new rule: “It’s not quite broken, so let’s pick at it and make it worse — but not so much that it actually gets broken". Yesterday we noticed the AIS screen on one of the instruments said “No AIS”, which was a bit of a head scratcher as it had been working a few days ago — we had seen traffic, so we knew it was working. A bit of troubleshooting showed all the wiring was good, but the AIS wasn’t showing on the network menu of the chart plotter. Something must have happened when we reset the chart plotter, and this was the thread that started to get pulled. It ended up with us having to stack the small stools from the saloon on top of each other and climb 3.5 meters into th...
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SQUAAAWK!

 It's still not tropical or warm, and I don't regret buying a fleece hoodie in Tonga. I actually wish I had bought a woolly hat as well. What's saving me at the moment is a pretty classy move - Crocs 'n' socks. There was a moment of horror yesterday as Fiji was fading into the distance. I turned the Starlink on and it took forever to come online. When it finally did, there was a message saying, "You seem to be in an unusual location – check your subscription." I looked out of the window. We were completely surrounded by water and definitely at sea on a boat, and I thought, this isn't unusual I'm always at sea on a boat. It would be unusual if I was in a desert. It turned out I was right. It wasn't unusual, and Starlink started working, which was a double-sided result as now we can get weather and communicate, but I still have to think of things for the blog. Plus, our deadline for arriving in Mackay is zooming closer, and that is also Starlink-...
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Ground Blog Day

 These posts start to become like 'Ground Blog Day' as there isn't a lot to write about when your sailing like this. The wind was pretty light during the night, and we ran with one engine and the headsail to try and grab a bit of extra speed - by extra speed I mean 1 knt so around 2kph! There were a few ships coming up and down the channel, and it was nice to see the lights of Suva as we went past. Around 6am, we gradually got a few extra knots of wind as we cleared the islands of Fiji, and we are now running downwind with just the headsail and surrounded by big grey clouds. Its good to be away from the land and reefs again and in to open water. The islands do add a new dimension and its something to look at. But as I have said loads of times 'all the wrecks are on the rocks' so its definitely more relaxing to be away from charted objects labelled "2 miles further". Plus its 499nm to Port Vila which is very exciting. We aren't going exactly the right w...
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Laughing In The Face Of Fear

 Everything went as planned yesterday, and we had a great trip through the passage between the reefs. We were in the lee of the reef, so the waves were minimal, and we made great time. We exited the other side around midday and carried on through Fiji waters.   There is a large swell running from the south, and the surfers in Fiji must be loving it. It's gentle enough, and the space between the waves is so large that it's not really noticeable to us unless you look out of the saloon window and suddenly see just how big the swells are. The wind died down as we approached the reef yesterday to around 16knts and during the night at times was dropping below our threshold of 10knts apparent and it was great (and much safer!) to start the engine by pushing a button rather than twisting some wires together or getting a screwdriver depending on which engine we wanted to start. We have around 125 nm until we clear the islands of Fiji, with a few obstacles in front of us to ...
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Approaching Fiji

The breeze eased off yesterday to next to nothing, and the forecast was showing a southerly coming up at around midnight. We were 175 nm northeast of the reefs at Fiji that stretch all the way down the eastern side. If we had continued on our same course, we would have had strong headwinds going through the pass and would have been in a poor position when we exited the reefs to sail through Fiji. So, with full tanks and trusty new water pumps on both engines, it was time to do some strategic motoring. You may have seen the course change as we started positioning ourselves for the breeze, and then another course change when the wind started. It was a few hours earlier than expected, but it didn't really affect our overall plan. It was pouring rain almost all night, with gusty winds up to around 25 knots, but it has settled down now to 18 knots from the SSE. I'm hoping it starts to come around to the south as we get into Fiji waters. We also had a bit of an adventure with the cha...
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Vortex of Doom

 Well, two important things happened yesterday – we left Vava'u, and it went on the list of places I don't want to go back to. Getting anything done was next to impossible. Even shopping was a struggle. One shop would sell garden forks, tomatoes, tin openers and pasta. The next had washing machines, tinned tuna, bacon and hoodies. The next would have bread, random car parts, noodles and size 6 boots. Since I needed to get some engine work done and didn't have a dinghy, getting to and from the boat was tricky. I found someone who was willing to rent me some dock space for a few days as he didn't have a boat on it. He came up with a daily rate of AU$900 a night. So that didnt happen. I managed to hitchhike a few times with people in dinghies, someone lent me what I called a 'wet bum' kayak for three days, and someone else eventually lent me a rowing dinghy. So somehow I managed to get around and get the things done that needed doing. We had the engine parts we nee...
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