Passage from Tanna to Noumea, 10-13 Oct 2014

For the couple of days right after visiting the volcano on Tanna, there were good conditions for sailing to Noumea.  We wanted to visit the neighboring “John Frum” village for their weekly gathering, though, and that wasn’t till Friday.  The John Frum movement is at the outer reaches of absurdity.  Robyn wrote a note about it, but you might want to Google it to learn more.  Anyway, we missed that good weather.

The forecast for Saturday and Sunday was poor, so we settled in to wait at least till Monday.  Saturday morning, however, the weather for that day looked much better than it had been forecasted the day before.  It’s hard to change gears, and scramble for an ocean passage at a moment’s notice, and the forecast looked even better for Monday, so we decided to wait.  Big mistake.  Take it when you get it.  Monday’s weather deteriorated, followed by worse and worse weather.  Thursday had torrential rain and dramatic thunderstorms.  We didn’t get out until Friday, and the weather that day was none too good.

The direct line between Tanna and the pass into the lagoon at New Caledonia runs right through Maré, one of the Loyalty Islands (part of New Caledonia).  We planned to pass around the south end, a shorter distance and a better wind angle for the rest of the way to the pass.  There was a front between Tanna and Maré, though, which had other ideas.  Besides being unpleasant, it forced us well off course.  Starting out, the wind was from the west, forcing us to beat well to the south.  Mintaka doesn’t much like beating to windward, so neither do we.  Each wave we hit pitches us up and slows us noticeably, after which she falls off to leeward to accelerate, only to do it all over again, and again, and again.  Sometime during the night, we passed through the front, after which the wind was from the south, forcing us to beat again, this time to the north.  After another whole day of this, we still couldn’t weather the south (upwind) end of Maré, so we bore off downwind to go around the north end.  That yielded a faster and more comfortable ride, but a longer distance, and set us up for a worse beat even further upwind to the pass.

Before we had gone very far from Tanna, before the front and all, I took a bad fall in the cockpit.  I was retying some bananas hanging on the mizzen gallows to keep them from swinging so wildly when the boat lurched and I lost my balance.  Spinning as I fell, I landed hard against a winch, breaking a rib just below my scapula.  Kind of a bad situation.  Excrutiating, but we still had to sail.  Noumea was a couple of days away, yet.  Robyn took over many of my jobs, but I still had work to do.

Because of the broken rib and unfavorable winds, we decided to stop briefly at Maré.  Unable to launch the dinghy, we stayed only long enough to catch our breath, and to time our arrival at the pass.  The wind was more favorable by that evening when we weighed anchor again, and the ride over to the pass, sixty-five miles away, was fantastic.  Mintaka flew fast and smoothly under clear skies and a gibbous moon.  We sailed in through the pass just as the tide turned to flood, and rode that flood all the forty miles through the lagoon to Noumea.  A great sail, despite the pain.

The exertions since the fracture didn’t do me any good, and by the time we dropped anchor in Noumea, I was in bad shape.  No rest for the wicked, though.  Still unable to launch the dinghy, another yachtie gave us a ride to shore to clear in.  Returning after a bit, we found the harbor authorities about to tow us out of the way of the cruise ship entering the harbor — we were infringing on the fairway because the anchorage was so crowded.  Just in time, we janked the hook and moved.  Still not finding any space within the anchorage boundaries, and with a strong wind blowing, and my back screaming at me, a friendly local dinghied up to us and offered his mooring.  Needless to say, we gratefully accepted.

OK.  Now we’re safely moored, but we still can’t launch the dinghy to get ashore.  And there are no open berths in any of the marinas.  But, it’s nice to have friends, particularly local friends who have a little influence.  Steffan and Carolyne, the friends we came here to visit, have a very large slip for their long and narrow boat.  There was actually enough room within their slip for us, too, without infringing on their neighbor’s space.  They arranged permission for us to tie up to them, nestled closely between their boat and their neighbor, a highly unusual arrangement.  They even rounded up some helpers for us to come in at 0600 this morning, before the daily wind began to rise.  So, happy ending.  We’re safely tied up, and all I have to do is rest and heal over the next few weeks.

John Frum Village, 3 Oct 2014

This entry was written by Robyn.

We thought it would be interesting to go see the weekly ceremonies of the John Frum adherents.  This religion, sometimes called a “cargo cult”, started in 1936 with the brief visit of its mysterious namesake, John Frum.  It exists only on Tanna.  Among its tenets are that John Frum will come back, bringing great quantities of material goods to all the believers.  During WWII, as the GIs stationed here had huge quantities of equipment, and were friendly and generous, John Frum became associated with America.  According to the Lonely Planet guidebook,  “Some supporters made radio aerials out of tin cans and wire to contact Jon Frum. Others built an airfield in the bush and constructed wooden aircraft to entice his cargo planes to land. Still others erected wharves where his ships could berth. Small red crosses were placed all over Tanna and remain a feature in Jon Frum villages, where flags are raised each evening to this god of their collective imagination.”

I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but it seemed like it might be interesting.  Thirteen of us, nine yachties and two land tourists, piled in the back of a truck for an hour’s 4WD ride to the thatched-roof village.  A tattered American flag flew over a concrete community building, but other than some kids playing, not much was going on.  We hung out until dusk, when dozens of people began gathering in an open-sided thatched structure. They sat down on the woven mats which covered the ground and began singing to the accompaniment of  guitars.  Just outside, little boys break-danced to the music, gyrating and hopping around energetically.  Behind them, girls and young women danced sedately, colorful grass skirts swaying.  More of a rhythmic walk, they took eight or ten steps forward with arms swaying, did a quick pivot, then the same distance back, again and again.

Every Friday the singing and dancing goes on all through the night.  Members from four different villages come together, and each village takes its turn playing and singing hymns.  After a few hours it was clear that the rest of the night would be pretty much the same.  The singing was very nice, but by then we were all ready to return to our boats and call it a night.

Upwind to Tanna, 2 Oct 2014

All the while sailing north a month ago to attend the festival on Vanua Lava, I was wondering how difficult the sail would be back south against the Trades.  Between luck and patience, though, we had no great difficulty as far as Port Vila.  We had accompished one of our three goals here in Vanuatu, attending that festival.  We missed out on the second, the volcano on Ambrym, due to weather.  But the third, visiting the volcano on Tanna, remained.  The 130 n.m. from Vila to Tanna is normally straight upwind, unpleasant at best, maybe not even possible for us.  Watching the weather forecast in Port Vila last week, though, it looked like our luck might hold.  There was a prediction of calm and then light air for the several days after a frontal passage due last Sunday, so we prepared for an early Monday departure.

Until mid-afternoon on Monday, the wind was indeed calm, and we enjoyed motoring to the southeast on a gently rolling, barely rippled sea.  From mid-afternoon on, though, the wind was well above the prediction, and we slogged along, motoring, struggling for every mile, using the lee of the islands, mired in a couple of “washing machines” in the dark, eventually reaching Port Resolution here on Tanna at dawn yesterday after forty-nine hours of motoring.  Unpleasant barely describes it, but it was just possible.

But it was worth every minute of it.  We arranged a tour yesterday afternoon to Mt. Yasur, the “world’s most accessible active volcano”.  Nine of us yachties piled into the back of a pickup for the hour-long, kidney-dislodging ride to the volcano car park.  From there, a ten-minute walk up a steep cement trail brought is to the rim, where we could look straight down into Vulcan’s furnace.  Magnificent even before sunset, the display was absolutely spectacular afterwards.  Periodic explosions sent titanic showers of glowing molten rock high into the air, thudding on the inside slopes of the crater like olympean lumps of pudding.

Back on Mintaka later that evening, the loss of sleep over the past two days finally caught up with me.  Mt. Yasur could have blown itself completely into ash last night without waking me.