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09/13/2006: "Vanuatu at last"

Chaotic harmony has endured a 620 nautical mile beat to windward from Honiara to Luganville, Espirito Santo, Vanuatu. We spent six days without sighting land and it was a welcome relief to finally anchor. Our initial plan was to island hop with the biggest crossing being some 200 miles. At the end of the second day of beating hard into a 20 knot easterly we were making on slow but steady progress against the wind, current and short wave action. A weather enveloped occurred and the wind was to remain in the east, moving slightly into the north east so we turned southward toward the Torres and banks islands. As these approached the wind changed again so we remained hard on the wind but could only make Santo without tacking. Each day I would say to the kids 'nearly there'. Fletcher (4) asked me where all the land had gone as at the end of the day we had decided to keep moving.
Enroute we had many dolphins play with our bows, Catherine let a frigate bird sit on the spreaders (Gavin spent two hours cleaning up the mess when he came up for the dawn watch) and we had a little bit of a hair-raising moment when a Tiawanese fishing boat trailed us, crossed on collision course, came back at us and swered away only at the last moment. I am uncertain if they were teasing or actually threatening. Either way it was not fun and we got into 'pirate threat' mode for a while.
Now to cruise south through the Vanuatua chain, dodging volcanoes, reefs and vine bungee jumpers.