We’re heading south to Noumea, New Caledonia within the hour. It’s so sad to see our time in this enchanted place come to an end but we need to get south for cyclone season.
Here’s how we spent our last afternoon here in Port Vila…
Lunch at the War Horse Tavern, and swimming (and drinks) at the Iririki resort. Oh yea, and also the not-so-nice things like visiting various government office to check out (after a few tries at finding them), provisioning, and paying bills!
It’s not like life’s so bad for us – don’t feel sorry. In about two days we’ll be in New Caledonia… French food, fresh fish, beautiful islands… -Rich
This was the view from our boat last night while anchored off Mele Beach Bar during their Friday night fire show.
Mele Beach is just a few miles from Port Vila where we’ll check out in a week or so to go south to New Zealand for cyclone season (maybe with a stop in New Caledonia or Fiji, depending on which way the wind blows). -Rich
We’ve been without internet for a while now. We’re able to claw out a few bits and bytes this morning here at Craig Bay on Ambrym so here’s a brief update. Our lives have included volcanos (see the post below), waterfalls, villagers, some sailing, some motoring and in general, really good times.
Waterfall on Penticost Island, Vanuatu
We left Santo a while ago – maybe two weeks or so (we’ve completely lost track of days, dates and time) and headed to Maewo via a brief stop at Ambae. We worked our way south along Maewo’s 30 mile long west coast, with little difficulty. It can be hard getting south in the strong southeast trade winds here, but with the shelter of Maewo, it wasn’t too hard.
Next up was Pentecost and Ambrym (where we are as I write this). It was a surprise, or rather the wind was a surprise. It turned northeast. That’s great for getting south but bad for virtually all of the anchorages on the northwest coast of the island with an uncomfortable swell rolling into the bays. After briefly anchoring, we traveled the length of Ambrym to anchor in Craig Bay on the southwest corner of the island. It’s nice here but so smokey!
This morning, we’ll sail for Malakula Island, or Epi Island, or maybe even Efate. We’ll see where the boat wants to go when we get out there. In general, it’ll be somewhere south as we’re trying to get to Port Vila on Efate where we can provision and check out of this amazing, wonderful, beautiful, lovely, peaceful country and get south for cyclone season. -Rich
Manaro Voui volcano steams on Ambae Island, Vanuatu
The volcano on Ambae Island (here in Vanuatu) has been erupting. All 11,000 island residents have been evacuated to neighboring islands. We thought we wouldn’t be able to stop at Ambae because of this eruption, but in recent days it has gone from a level 4 (out of 5) to level 3. The island is still evacuated but as we sailed past Ambae on our way to Maewo we saw the Vanuatu police boat Takoro and since it was getting late and we wouldn’t make Maewo until after dark, we asked if we could spend a night. “It’s OK” came the reply, so we dropped anchor up at the northeast tip in a place called Vanihe Bay.
As you can see in the photo above, the volcano looked to be putting out mostly steam with little smoke. That might still be from lava running down from the cone into the lake that surrounds the cone. We didn’t see any red glow at night nor did we hear any of the explosions we were told about. All was calm in our little bay.
Vanihe Bay anchorage on Ambae Island, Vanuatu
This is a beautiful island and we hope things calm down quickly and the displaced residents can return home soon. I wish we could have gone ashore and explored but we felt like we were pushing our luck as it was. We’re happy to have seen what we did and avoided the being incinerated part of the experience. -Rich
Update: October 22, 2017
After our night at Ambae, we moved on to Maewo. All did not remain peaceful at Ambae. First we saw huge clouds above the volcano, then we heard thunderous booms. Cyndi even got quite a picture at night of the glow of the lava.
Despite this, we’ve heard that volcano is calming down and that the Vanuatu government will start returning evacuees any day now. We’re glad they get to go home.
Update: October 23, 2017
Speaking of volcanos, we anchored in Craig Bay on Ambrym last night. It’s really smokey. Some of it might be from two fires we saw burning in the hills, but I think most is from the active volcano on this island. Here’s what sunrise looked like…
Smoky Sunrise at Craig Bay, Ambrym, Vanuatu
And sunset…
Ambrym Sunset in the Volcano Smoke
And below is a picture of the Benbow volcano on Ambrym Island before we left from Penticost…
We’re going to head out in a few minutes, bound for islands on the east side of Vanuatu. In parting, here’s why the sad face at the thought of leaving this wonderful place.
Our farewell dinner at Aore Island Resort last night.My farewell meal – Santo Beef! This was probably the best steak I’ve ever had.
In all likelihood, we’ll be out of touch for a while. I’m not expecting much from the internet in Maewo, Pentecost or Ambrym. Eventually, we should get to Port Vila (where we’ll check out to leave the tropics for cyclone season) and there we’ll be able to update our blog. There are lots of pictures of our time here coming. -Rich
