August 29, 2009

Pt Vila: Stores and Internet
Since the last general newsletter we have wrapped up our months long stay in Havanna Harbor, North Efate Island, and sailed back around to the capital city. We had scheduled to meet friends from New Zealand, who were flying in for a conference and would be staying in Port Vila for a few days. That meeting came off just as planned, and was quite a pleasant interlude. Now we're focused on preparing for the coming short sail down to New Caledonia, which could happen any time in the next 3 weeks. New Cal is conveniently located along the best wind route to NZ, and since it levies no charges for clearance in and out, there's no economic deterrent to visiting there. I say it's on the wind route, but if you look at it on the map you'll see it is NOT on the direct direction line between Efate and NZ. The southeast winds that prevail at these latitudes make it near impossible to sail directly to Opua, but allow us to go south to around latitude 28 south, where the winds begin to frequently come from the west. So, the plan is to wait for a prediction of east southeast winds, for an easy 2 day reach to Noumea. There we can get a 30 day permit to look around and use up a little more of the NZ winter, while we're still in the relative warmth of the tropics. Even in late October it's going to be pretty cool and blustery in northern NZ, so later is better. But when a moderate high pressure system starts to move east from Australia, it will give us those fair westerly breezes for what we hope will be an easy one week sail, southeast to Opua.
It's a little bit of a shock to the system to come from the undeveloped quiet of North Efate back to the 24 hour rumble and clatter, and the all night glare of Port Vila Harbor. Again, anchoring near town is pretty limited, so we're eating up the bank balance on a mooring for $12 a day. That does encourage us to move south sooner rather than later. On the plus side, it's an easy walk to many stores. Having eaten almost everything in the food lockers except some of the rice and beans, it was time to re-stock. The continuous flow of fresh fruit and vegetables in Havanna Harbor certainly kept us in good nutrition, but for an ocean passage we want to have stores of flour, eggs, coffee, peanut butter.......easily prepared, easily stored foods. Those things, the gardens of Tassarikki could not supply. And, as we're still addicted to communications and news, having internet access is stimulating. We came back to a couple hundred messages on the hotmail inbox. Many of those are back issues of the New York Times online page, which I will try to scan through for items of interest and value. But also there were a few messages from friends, including several from people we haven't heard from for years. Those are by far the best part of the internet. The intellectual stimulation, and the entertainment available add to the pleasures of life, but the ability to connect with our far flung community of friends is the best. Don't forget to write to your friends and family. Ted