We pulled in to Port Vila in Vanuatu late in the evening last Monday, the 11th. We don’t like to enter new ports after dark — we don’t like to enter familiar ones after dark either — but Port Vila is an easy entry, even in the dark, and the full moon gave considerable light, despite the overcast. It didn’t help, though, that the last of our three autopilots had become unreliable (occasionally generating an uncommanded hard turn, not a good thing in tight places), so I had to hand steer the last few miles. The entry into the port follows what is called a lighted range. That consists of two distinct lights, one above and further inland than the other. If you are on the range, the two lights will appear one directly above the other. If you are off the range, one light will appear to one side of the other. This range defines a line with perfect accuracy, which is set up to ensure a safe enry. It didn’t help, though, that only one of the lights was operating. Fortunately, we have other means of following such a line. It didn’t help, too, to find quite a few boats anchored in the small and awkward and dark quarantine anchorage, two quite large, and several of the others unlit (very bad form not to have an anchor light on at night). Well, we finally found a suitable spot, and got the anchor down, six and a half rough, wet and salty days from Futuna.
I should go back to leaving Wallis, though, where I posted my last blog entry.
Wallis is an atoll with only one significant pass through the fringing reef. The tidal currents in such a place can run quite strongly, so you have to time your transit of the pass accordingly. With an unavoidably strong wind against us, we needed a bit of current behind us to help, so we left about an hour before low tide. Wind against current can set up some impressive waves, which was the case here. The tongue of water rushing out the pass bore a distinct resemblance to the log flume at Disney World. Tall but short and steep waves sent us alternately soaring skyward or falling down, down, down. Didn’t last too long, but it sure was wild.
The wind was at right angles to our course for Futuna, some hundred and thirty miles or so away, and was blowing around twenty-five knots. This made for a fast but wet ride. The waves were coming up beam on, with an occasional one peaking at just the right moment to smack hard against the side of the boat (sounds like a gun shot down below when one does that). Well, the wave energy has to go somewhere, so it shoots straight up, whereupon the wind blows it onto the deck, into the cockpit, and now and then a bit down the hatch. Didn’t take long to get very wet and salty. The conditions eased just a bit along the way, but were still up when we arrived at Futuna.
The anchorage at Futuna is just a small notch in the fringing coral reef. There was just enough protection to make the anchorage tenable, but not by much. A heavy swell rolled in continuously, making us pitch uncomfortably. And the wind was now at an angle to the swell, so it allowed us to roll miserably. We wound up using three anchors, two off the bow to hold us in the notch, and one off the stern to hold us facing the swell to stop the rolling. With the three anchors holding us in place, conditions were tolerable, but not very comfortable. I was a little nervous the whole week we were there.
Futuna was nice enough — I’ll describe our time there in the next blog post — but when the weather allowed us to leave, I was quite ready. The conditions had only dropped back down to what we had coming over from Wallis, though, still blowing 20-25 kts with rough seas. Once again, it didn’t take long to get very wet and salty.
We had intended our first stop in Vanuatu to be at Tanna island, where there is an easily accessible active volcano. You can get a ride by truck up to a short walk from the rim of the crater, where you can look down into Dante’s inferno. The volcano bubbles and spits, and occasionally sends blobs of lava skyward to get the attention of visitors — the recommendation is not to run, but to look up so you can avoid the blobs as they land. I can’t really say that it’s a safe, or smart thing to do, but countless tourists have gone up there over the years, with only a couple of accidents.
The problem is that the port of entry on Tanna is on the wrong side of the island, and doesn’t have much of an anchorage. Considering the rough weather we were experiencing, we finally decided to skip Tanna for now, and head directly to Port Vila, the capitol of Vanuatu, where we are now.
We’ve had a couple of good night’s sleep now, washed all the salt off, and are enjoying the town and the company of other cruisers. I’ll write about Futuna soon, as well as Port Vila. Stay tuned.
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