July 5, 1995

We left Luganville on Tuesday, May 30 with full water tanks and lots of meat and bread and stuff. The weather was starting to kick up, so we decided to just go around the corner to Palikula Bay, on the east coast of Santo. Quick trip in, a bit tricky snaking one’s way around and through the reefs, but no drama, and anchored in 25’ a bit further off the shore than the four other yachts already here. With lots and lots of wind all of a sudden, we figured we’d stay for a few days until the weather improved, and then work our way south. Instead, for more than a week we had high winds, cloudy skies and rain, so we didn’t go anywhere else.  With all that wind driving the Wind Bugger, I had lots of electricity to work on my shells again (with no wind all those months in the Solomons, I just couldn’t justify using my Dremel, and working the shells is so dusty I like a lot of wind to blow most of it away). 

We just saw a video, “Pacific Rescue” about the June 1994 meteorological “bomb” that hit the regatta fleet leaving NZ for Tonga and Fiji (called the “Queen’s Birthday Storm”), where nine boats were lost. Scary as hell. Peter and I discussed the conditions that made the crew of the eight yachts that were rescued abandon ship. Of course, we weren’t there, so we don’t know what would have happened to us, or how we would have reacted, but there were other yachts going through the same thing as these eight yachts who didn’t evacuate. Of the eight yachts where crew was rescued (a ninth yacht has never been heard from, only its empty life raft was sighted), three did not lose their mast and the crews were uninjured — and two of those yachts were recovered (the third, a catamaran that had lost steering and engines, was smashed and sunk by the rescuing freighter at the request of the yacht’s owner). One dismasted yacht whose skipper was badly injured and whose entire crew chose to be rescued ran aground several weeks later, was washed off the reef and drifted some more, only to be finally lost when it again ran up on a reef and was plundered. No doubt that the injured skipper should have been evacuated, but we wonder if the yacht would have survived if its crew had stayed with the boat; although you can’t blame them for wanting off - the motion of a dismasted sailboat is horrendous in calm to moderate conditions, in those it must have been hellish. As far as we could tell from the video, only one yacht was in immediate danger of sinking, with a severely disabled owner aboard.  He broke his leg at the hip when the yacht pitchpoled and then rolled 360° while he was at the wheel. His wife wasn’t able to cut away the mast, which was wrapped around the hull, and the mast started pounding a hole in the hull in 80 knots of wind and enormous seas. They were smart enough to realize that in those conditions they could never have survived had they tried to get into their life raft. In our opinion they were the toughest of the bunch. Interestingly, most of the evacuations were videotaped by the rescuing ships so you really get to see both the sea conditions and the way these things are done. 

If you can find the video, you should take a couple of Valium and watch it. Well done, and informative. It isn’t intended to teach people how to cope in such a storm, doesn’t analyze what was different for the yachts that made it (though keeping one’s mast seems to be one of the most important factors), but it sure makes you think. If you do see it, after listening to the woman on HEARTLINE you will get an idea of what we dislike about the most extreme of the southern Californians. 

We wound up going to Vila a lot sooner than we expected because a pinched nerve in my neck was getting bad and we couldn’t release the pressure, so decided I needed a physiotherapist [see http://www.cruiser.co.za/hostmelon47.asp, East Coast Australia to Darwin for the outcome of this problem]. Vila is even better than it was two years ago. Lots of building, good food (Peter’s in heaven with croissants, raisin rolls, French bread, good pâté and cheese - we’re going get fat again), and everything’s clean. A few yachts that we met several years earlier are here, so we are not feeling so isolated. Heard from Gary and Ingrid on OBSESSION, we expect to meet up with them again in Fiji (assuming that they do indeed make the beat across from the Solomons). It will be good to see them again after three years. They’re finally going to get married when they reach Fiji. We are looking forward to a great party. 

How thankful we are that our mail forwarder marked the number of packages being sent to us (“1 of 6”, etc.), because mail delivery was a disaster here. The first package (“1 of 6”) arrived June 19, but that was it. We kept asking about the other packages, nobody knew anything. Finally on Monday, June 26 I went into the Post Office with the one envelope I had and asked them to please look for the rest of the mail. The fellow came out with a second envelope. I explained that I was still waiting for four more, would he please look again – I knew that at least one of them was a box. Nope, said he. Well, while I was at the Post Office, Peter got a notice that the parcel section of the Post Office was holding some parcels for us pending customs inspection, so Peter went down and got them, so it all arrived safely, but this was not an easy process, but now we know that Vanuatu is not the place to get lots of stuff. We’ve been spoiled by the courteous and hassle-free mail service in the Solomons. With two large envelopes and four boxes, it felt like Christmas (even though Peter griped about how much the postage cost, I think he was pleased). 

The best news we got was that Elizabeth and her husband arrive in Fiji on August 26 (at 2 in the morning, lord, lord) and will be with us for three weeks. I’m just so excited. 

It’s great for us that there are so many things with watermelons on them. We have watermelon old-fashioned glasses, a watermelon bowl, watermelon oven mitts, watermelon post-it-notes, a watermelon purse to go with my Watermelon dresses, a watermelon stamp, and even a few watermelon cocktail napkins. I’d get even more but we don’t have the room for “stuff”, so everything has to be practical (phooey). Peter has been trying to get rid of “stuff” for some time now. I worry that he’s going to leave us with nothing on the boat except his tools and spare parts – “clothes? Who needs them?”  

To answer the question as to why we didn’t go to Santa Cruz:  we had checked out in Honiara, didn’t really want to go to Santa Cruz, that was really hard on the wind (as it turned out, if we had decided to motor sail to Santa Cruz we couldn’t have gotten fuel and would not have had enough to get to Santo. Nendo is a lousy anchorage to boot, and GANDALF wasn’t that happy about being stuck in Utupua during that lousy weather we were sailing in).  We were anxious to get to Vanuatu and then on to Fiji.  All things considered, it wasn’t that bad - but we would hope that we don’t have to repeat it going to Fiji. As far as dealing with it coolly, what choice do we have? I’ve talked with other happy cruisers (as opposed to those who found this wasn’t really as good as they expected but don’t know how to get out of it), and the general consensus is that we really forget the bad times very quickly. Oh, we can talk about the awful sail we had from island A to Island B, but our bodies don’t remember, just our minds. Hard to explain, but once it’s over, it just doesn’t seem so bad – we can think of worse times (and maybe they’re just worse in our imaginations), so we talk about the nasty things that happen, but it’s an intellectual exercise - we just don’t feel it - almost as if we’re describing something that happened to somebody else. 

During the time that the Watermelon was being tossed around as if she were in a washing machine, we spent most of our time lying in our bunks - very comfortable, if a bit boring. The ‘Melon is a very seaworthy boat so we don’t worry about her handling the stuff the weather dishes out, and we just don’t push ourselves when it’s nasty (though, never having had to ride out a storm even remotely like that NZ “bomb”, we haven’t experienced anywhere near the worst that the seas can offer). One of the best lessons Peter has taught me is that one has lots of time to do things right when things go wrong.  One does not have to rush around frantically. You take things slowly, carefully, and do it right the first time, safely.  It makes all the difference in the world. So we rarely have dramas (sailing over an underwater volcano is a drama, in my opinion. Bad weather is just a damn nuisance). Peter doesn’t like long passages as much as I do. I like to sail for five or eight days or so and then land somewhere and just sit and enjoy.  Peter would rather day sail from anchorage to anchorage and bag the passages. We do a little of both so we’re both happy. And when you try to imagine washing out all your linen and clothing, remember, I do it in a five-gallon bucket!!!!!! (Such a martyr I am, sigh). But for all that washing, we hadn’t been able to wash the sails that got wet up there, and by the time we got to Vila the forward cabin smelled so badly that I was getting sick. Wound up taking everything out of there, cloroxing it down, washing everything that had or hadn’t been washed before, and cleaning and airing the sails. This time we’re at a dock, have unlimited water and electricity, so it’s not such a big deal (though for the first week until my back improved, I was pretty useless). Oh, and to be absolutely sure that the boat was really clean, I also filled the bilges with water to wash them out. It was really an accident, and Peter wasn’t too happy with me, as we were up until late pumping and sponging it all out. But the bilges are clean. 

When I mentioned to a couple of Aussies my observation that the French were better colonialists than any of the English-speaking countries, they got a bit defensive.  One of them said, “…but the French just destroy the local culture and make everyone into little Frenchmen - they teach French in the schools,” as if in British colonies something other than English was taught or spoken. Australians and Kiwis are very touchy, and are even more prejudiced against the French than Americans, I think. In my view, the French do not destroy the local culture, and in fact in French Polynesia it’s supported to an extent that we don’t see in the other island nations. But since they haven’t been to French Polynesia, they don’t have anything to compare what they’ve seen against the French way.  The French have their problems, and the prejudice against them in the Caribbean is justified, but there is another side to it. There are a lot of French cruisers who are real pigs. There are not many bums out cruising because it’s tough to get up enough money to buy a yacht and then have the money to cruise in it. But it’s quite easy to do in France, so you see a lot of unemployed Frenchmen buying a cheap steel sailboat and setting out.  They give the good French a bad name. It’s also a language problem, and prejudice, and the French certainly haven’t helped their image here in the South Pacific with their nuclear testing in the Tuomotus, and their bombing and sinking the RAINBOW WARRIOR ten years ago when it was protesting France’s nuclear testing in the South Pacific. 

We’ve just met a Kiwi couple about our ages that are just starting out cruising.  They came by to try to buy our Solomon Islands charts, but the fellow thought that we wanted too much money for them, half of which were photocopied. Foolish man, we sold the charts to another fellow, and then the Kiwi went out to get some of the same charts we were selling photocopied - he spent the same amount of money as we were asking for sixteen charts to have seven charts photocopied. The woman has never sailed, doesn’t know how to swim, and until they got on the boat (he sailed to Vanuatu, she flew up to meet him) they had never lived together. Talk about jumping in with all four feet!  I’m going to try to figure out their electronics for them. We gave them a bunch of cruising information, and my “hints” [what is now my Cruising Dictionary]. One of those people who “doesn’t know what he doesn’t know”.  He went to see the “Pacific Rescue” video, too, and he was critical of Keri Keri radio for not telling the yachts in trouble what to do.  He just doesn’t understand. At least they’re both enthusiastic. But oh, my goodness, they don’t know what they’re getting into, and I’m afraid that they’re going to scare themselves silly and give up before they learn enough to avoid trouble, or get out of it once they’re in it.
  

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