Aradonna's blog

Last night we caught up with fellow yachties, one couple each from from ALBA, Cadeceus and Chez Nous. Over a few drinks and plates of fall-off-the-bone-tangy beef ribs, we swapped our boating stories, with focus on the places we had visited in Vanuatu and which villages were in need of what. Between us, a plan was hatched. Much needed large tarpaulins for the school roof in Futuna island are now being organised. Chez Nous is going to make contact with people who have access to helicopters to see if aid can be delivered to Green Point in Tanna island, they ares till cut off by road and impossible to reach by sea. The Sea Mercy boats, stationed in Emae are making deliveries of goods to the Shepherd Islands and they need seeds. We will seek them out tomorrow in Emae and distribute seeds to these vessels for transport to the tiny isolated communities of Buninga Island and others in the Shepherd group - they were thumped by the cyclone.
There is a container load of tools, such as crow bars, bush knives etc, about 30 tonne of it, arriving into Efate at the beginning of June. The only way to get these supplies to other islands is to divide up the 30 tonnes amongst as many yachts as possible for transport. We will come back to Efate in a couple of weeks and collect as many tools as we can carry, departing Efate again on the 11th June for islands in the north who are waiting for these items.
Please spread the word to all other boaties that if they have room, they are needed to take tools to the northern islands. If they contact us on Aradonna we will be able to give more details.
We are constantly amazed by all the yachties we meet. Every one of them has been doing as much as they can to help. Clothing, bedding, tools, food, medical supplies - many cruisers have packed their spare cabin space up to the ceiling with supplies to donate to villages here. ALBA delivered a nebuliser to a health clinic in Aneityum after hearing about one of the villagers that died of an asthma attack in the clinic because they did not have one. We understadn that other medical clinics are in need of nebulisers if anyone is able to bring some from NZ. It is wonderful to be part of this amazing community. We are kindred spirits in our love of the sea and our love of sailing, but more importantly we share the same values. We all know that we are very very fortunate to be in a position to enjoy the cruising life and we all love to help. We have special friends in this community! We had another treat today. Our friends from ALBA arrived into the same bay as us later in the day today. They did some fishing on the way to Havannah Harbour and dropped off a large fresh fillet of Tuna for our dinner. It was superb!

Last night we celebrated Karl's birthday, only 10 days late, but here in Port Vila is the first real restaurant we have found. Heather treated Karl to dinner at the French restauarant "Cafe du Village". A wonderful cocktail called a Toblerone started the meal, followed by eye fillet steak cooked to perfection (tender and juicy) and hazelnut meringue with fruit and cream for dessert. Heavenly! It was a balmy evening and we enjoyed sitting on the terrace with our fine food and wine, overlooking the harbour with Aradonna in view. Karl exclaimed "Life couldn't be much better than this!" Today we explored the large supermarket, called Bon Marche. There is a definite French influence in the goods stocked here and everything you can imagine is on the shelves. A world away from the poor villages in the outer islands. We learned today that this supermarket chain is owned by Chinese investors, who also own large amounts of real estate here and are currently building a huge convention centre in Vila. Many shops have chinese writing on the front as well as English and French. We found some other items we needed for the boat by visiting a local hardware store, computer store and the auto parts store. It seems most things are available if you know who to ask! An interesting observation we have made is that many people in Vanuatu have no idea when their birthday is. It is common for births not to be registered and often parents are a bit hazy about their children's ages. Many adults are not really sure how old they are. Several times when we have been speaking with locals, especially in the outer islands but also in Vila, a local will tell us "I am about, 39, maybe 40 or something like that." When we ask how old their children are, we get answers like "My daughter is maybe 7 or maybe 9 I think". Once we asked a man how many children he had and he said, maybe 3 or maybe 4! For the locals that get a job in Vila, if they want their wages to be put into a bank account, they have to have a birth certificate. Only then do they try to find out a date they were born and get a birth certificate. People that do not work, or get paid in cash, may never get a birth certificate. It must be a nightmare for officials to know how many people there are in this country - it would be a wild guess!! Tonight we are meeting up with some fellow yachties at the Waterfront Bar for happy hour, there are several yachts moored in Vila right now.
Tomorrow morning we will set sail for islands in the north, hopping our way up to Pentecost to see some land diving (weather permitting).

We headed out of our anchorage in Tanna at 7am and had a wonderful sail to Erromango. Flat seas and 20-25 knot wind gave us speeds of 8 and sometimes 9 knots. Arrived in Dillons Bay in time for a swim before lunch and then we set off for the village. David welcomed us on shore and we took our gifts of seeds and fishing gear to the community centre. Everything will be divided up by the committee here for the 500 plus residents of this village. The community council gave us a formal welcome and thank you speech, showing appreciation of our gifts. We then asked directions for the school so we could donate some educational supplies. David offered some advice, he said we should follow the road until we came to the big mango tree and then turn up the hill. I should explain at this point that the island is called Erromango, which translates, literally, to "Land of Mangoes". There are hundreds, if not thousands of mango trees to be seen in one sweeping glance. Still, we managed to find the r ight mango tree, and the school. Pens and books and other materials gifted, we turned back to explore the village some more. We met Donald who has a sandalwood nursery here. He explained the process of planting the seeds and transplanting the seedlings into bigger and bigger pots until they were ready to plant in the fields. Donald had met David and Patricia some years before and was excited to learn that we knew these good people. By the time we had had a tour of the nursery and chatted about David and Patricia we were new found friends. We have been invited to lunch tomorrow, which we insisted will be a "pot luck" lunch so we can contribute to it as well.
The community of Dillons Bay has a very pretty setting, with a fresh water river running beside the village and out to sea. They have rich fertile soil, sandalwood, mangoes, plenty of fresh water and an idyllic bay. Unfortunately cyclone Pam conspired against them, with strong winds stripping all the fruit and all the branches off the mango trees, and, torrential rain causing flooding of the river and the village. All of their crops were destroyed. The people here have been very busy however, and have already repaired much of the damage to houses and replanted many gardens. They take pride in their surroundings here and place a huge emphasis on education. After school, we saw children sitting in the fields diligently doing their homework. The school motto is "Nothing without education and labour" and this sums up the culture we saw in the village. As we headed back to our dinghy on shore, David met up with us again and showed us the yacht club he has been building for the last 7 years. What a wonderful setting and a great facility he is creating! He will have it completed in time for the next cruising season and it will be a popular spot for yachties to watch the sunset over a cold beer. Dillons Bay is a "must do" for any cruisers who visit Vanuatu.

We had an early start yesterday, ferried two dinghy loads of seeds and other goods to shore by 8am and had everything loaded in the pick up truck shortly after. Karl and Heather squeezed into the front seat next to the driver, it was only a single cab ute. A few local villagers climbed on board the tray of the truck to accompany our load of goodies. More items were added from goods previously left in Port Resolution by other yachties and a dead pig was donated from one local village. We set off at 8.30am, headed for what the locals call the 'south island' which means the southern part of Tanna. The road was little more than a narrow dirt track, full of boulders. Cyclone Pam had caused slips in many places and the road had subsided into gullies along the way. Numerous trees had fallen across the road and had been cut to allow us through. The road had been repaired in several places the day before, in preparation for our journey, using hand tools. At one point there was a bridge, with a rusty, fragile structure. As we went across the bridge, the tyres of the truck dipped down into the holes left by missing planks, more revs were needed to get us up onto the next plank and on our way again. I squeezed my eyes shut and waited until we were across the other side before opening my eyes again. For 90% of the journey the truck was in first gear, low ratio. We had a very good driver who was very experienced in driving these local roads, we would not have attempted to do it ourselves. The road wound around the base of Mt Melen, through the undulating folds of the foothills. Every now and again the truck would stop, for a village along the way. Many times there was no sign of a village from the road, but a walk down a bush track revealed a cluster of huts nestled in a valley or on a plateau perched high above the sea. These were very isolated communities! We delivered our parcels to 8 villages, but could not go all the way to Green Point. Our driver informed us that the road was too bad to go any further. Having already travelled over roads we thought were impassable, we did not argue with the driver when he said he could go no further. They needed a bulldozer he said, it was too much to fix by hand. We felt very sorry for the communities further south and around the south western shore of Tanna, they are truly cut off from supplies by road. We spent some time at the southern most village we could get to, we were the first visitors they had seen since cyclone Pam. The chief of these 360 people gave a speech in his local language and presented us with some kava, a woven basket and some coloured feathers to say thank you for our gifts. Our driver translated for us and introduced us to one of the two men in the village that spoke English, a young man by the name of Sam. Sam took us on a tour of the village. He explained that there is no school here and the people in the village have no education at all. (More than half of the village is made up of children) He had been sent to Port Resolution as a child and was the only person in the village with an education. He was now back in the village helping them build houses again after the cyclone. The only other man in the village who spoke English was a very old man who had fought in world war two. He still recalled the names of the soldiers he was serving with, but his English w as very rusty.
Evidence of cyclone damage was everywhere, huts destroyed, trees blown over and gardens stripped. Many new huts had already been built and many more were in the making. For the village, it was the first time they had experienced a cyclone and they had been terrified. The people here have strong beliefs in the spirits. They believe they can make rain for the garden by talking to the gods. To get good crops they rub two leaves together and hold their spiritual stone. A little 6 year old girl had gone missing for two days, lost in the bush, she had just been found the day before we arrived. The village people said it was a punishment. If the people do not obey the rules of the gods the gods will take one of their children away. It is hard for us to imagine, but these are deeply help beliefs! We watched some of the local women checking their children's hair for head lice. They stood in a group, sorting through the mass of frizzy hair on each head. With swift movements the women's hands parted hair, sorted though and then darted into their mouth. Back and forth, from their childs head, to their mouth, eating each louse they found. At some point I managed to drag my eyes away from this unbelievable sight, only then did I realise my mouth was gaping open in horror! They live in a different world.
By the time we arrived back in Port Resolution mid afternoon, we were exhausted from our journey, but pleased to have helped at least some of the villages - and happy our bumpy ride was over.
This morning we sailed around the southern coast of Tanna and could see some of the villages we visited from the shore, perched high above the sea. As we passed Green Point we searched the coastline, hoping for somewhere to anchor, somewhere to go ashore. But is was impossible. This is a very rugged coast, with giant waves crashing into the rocks that lie at the foot of high cliffs. The water is over 100m deep even very close to the rocks, so there is nowhere to anchor it is not safe to get close at all. Any vessel that would attempt it would risk being swept against the rocks and smashed to pieces. We had to abandon our mission here, Green Point was just too difficult to reach.
This afternoon, after a swim in crystal clear water, we went ashore at Lononloma Bay. There is a village, a Bible College and several clusters of family groups scattered along the coast here. OUr guide, Clifford, showed us around. We handed out seeds to several family groups and they were very grateful. The Red Cross had visited last week and given them bean seeds. Today we gave them seeds for cucumber, carrot, watermelon, pumpkin and chinese cabbage. All the village huts here had blown away during the cyclone. Village people sheltered in caves to hide from flying branches, coconuts and other debris picked up by the wind. After the cyclone, the whole community lived together in the two concrete buildings in the village for three weeks until they could start building their huts again. The mango trees were still standing but had lost all of their branches. New growth was sprouting out of the ravaged tree trunks, so the trees will survive, but it will be a couple of years before they ge t mangoes again here. The main source of income for this village is Sandalwood. Trees are ready to harvest in about 7 years. They strip the bark and cut it into pieces and sell it to merchants who then take it for processing into fragrances. Luckliy, many sandalwood trees survived the cyclone. Tomorrow we will continue our journey northwards and stop at Dillons Bay - the island of Erromango.