Port Lenakel, Tanna Island, Vanuatu

Greetings from Vanuatu!

Looks like I am not very good at keeping this up to date, the next few posts will be about our travels and experiences over the last three weeks. Since we left Fiji we have stopped at Tanna Island, hung out at Port Lenakel, visited a customs village, attempted to sail to Port Resolution, bailed and anchored in the lee of Tanna, did some snorkelling/spearfishing, checked out a live volcano and finally sailed to Efete and are anchored off Port Villa where I am writing this. I will break this up into a few different posts in hopes that people might actually read it all.

Our sail, going to take a bit of getting used to saying that, from Fiji to Tanna Island was shit. This was Cara’s first ocean passage and she handled it extremely well. Cara has worked for the Coast Guard so she has some sea time but a tiny sailboat has a different motion than a massive buoy tender or fishing vessel and this passage was probably one of the worst introductions to small boat cruising, oh well. The winds blew relentlessly and a fairly big swell was running contrary to the wind making for confused seas, the wind was behind us enough that we got the downwind roll but at least we made pretty good time. Pretty much the whole time we ran with three reefs in the main and a staysail, we covered the around 500nm’s in 4 days at which time Cara was stomping her feet and yelling “I want to be on land!” Cute. The chain plate for my innerstay runs straight through the foredeck and is bolted to a bulkhead with two bolts, one sheared and the other started ripping up through the bulkhead; I discovered the bulkhead was a bit rotten from constantly getting wet from the anchor hawsers but still a pretty good indication that we had some wind.

After a passage, especially a rough one, a protected harbour, and calm anchorage is a very welcome sight, Port Lenakel was neither of these, very disappointing. Port Lenakel wasn’t even really a bay, more just a dent in the coast, the swell wrapped around the island and there where gnarly breaking waves on the reef on one side and the smaller waves smashed on the rocks and concrete jetty on the other side, we motored around a couple times contemplating if this was a safe place or not, contemplated our options and decided to anchor and check in. Everything we had heard about Tanna, mostly about the volcano, indicated that this was a must see stop, I decided the anchorage was safe enough but it was going to be uncomfortable. In retrospect we should have gotten prior permission from customs to check in at Port Resolution but from what I had read it sounded like they preferred people to check in at Lenakel. Turns out this wasn’t the case, on my first attempt to visit customs there was a note on the door for me saying they were at Port Resolution checking yachts in and they would be back later in the day.

We endured a few nights at this anchorage, got checked in, wondered around the town, Cara met some schoolgirls and the lovely Rita invited us to her home where she lived with her Grandparents as her parents were working in Port Villa so they could pay for her to go to school. They lived very simply with an outdoor cooking area where a fire is always going, every family seems to have some chickens and some pigs. They showed us their garden and explained how they were still rebuilding after Cyclone Pam. People were constantly coming and going and everybody was always smiling and laughing. They suggested we check out a customs village, (traditional,) and we set out to try and arrange transport.

My next post will be about the customs village and after that Yasur Volcano, please stay tuned for more short stories and some great pictures.