RTW Leg 21: Vanuatu and The Coral Sea

Our landfall on Tanna, Vanuatu

Up before dawn, we left New Caledonia through the Havannah Pass, heading east toward the rising sun. This was to be a short two-day overnight passage to Vanuatu accompanied by Uhuru, a very smart fully crewed, British flagged 62’ Oyster. She negotiated the pass two hours behind Broadsword. Yachties like to muse that one yacht is a mobile swimming platform while two yachts; its a race. However, in this race the odds would be stacked very much against Broadsword, it would be a bit like Land Rover racing a Bentley.

Port Resolution named by Captain Cooke after his ship on his second voyage to the Pacific. Broadsword second from left, behind.

Vanuatu is a scattering of some eighteen islands and it is here that Prince Phillip was revered as a god. Seemingly his remark “do you fellows still throw spears at each other?” was lost in translation or he may well have found himself on the wrong end of a BBQ that he so enjoyed. Vanuatu’s last recorded act of Cannibalism was in 1989, not long after Prince Philip visited on an official commonwealth tour in 1974. Back then, Vanuatu was called The New Hebrides and I would take great delight informing all I met that we lived in The Hebrides, the islands in Scotland after which Captain Cook named these lands.

Lucy wonders the village.

We arrived in in Port Resolution on the southernmost island of Tanna as dusk was falling and two hours ahead of Uhuru. My triumph secure, I looked out the Union Jack, a recording of God Save the King and a bottle of Moet for the hastily organized podium ceremony for which I cut a lonely figure as the sole attendee. Port Resolution is a grand name for a modest settlement. The village of a hundred or so lived in a primitive collection of huts with earth floors, woven walls and grass roofs. It’s beauty and dignity was only surpassed by those gracious people whose home it was and who were without exception friendly, welcoming and kind.

The Tanna Volcano

The highlight of Tanna was reserved for the volcano. Late that afternoon, the crews of Broadsword and Dreamer clambered onto the back of well dented moderately rusted Toyota pick up and proceeded along a narrow strip of mud, rock and massive holes with occasional fallen trees barring the way, all generously referred to as “the road”. Two hours later in the dusk we arrived dismounted and started our ascent towards the smoking summit that emitted the occasional deep guttural rumble soliciting from Lucy a nervous groan of doom. Achieving the rim of the crater afforded a precarious vantage, the closer to the edge the better the view, the more tenuous the situation. The edge formed of loose powdery gravel slopped steeply towards the cauldron of lava far below. The temptation to inch ever closer for a better look was irresistible. Thank god for Lucy for keeping me in check: “JOHN, will you fecking well get back…NOW”. It was as dark as pitch, accentuating the drama of the magma in the depths beneath. Our patience suddenly rewarded with an eruption that deafened and shocked as lumps of molten rock thundered through the air as if an asteroid from a distant galaxy had exploded right in front of us. It was the proximity of it all. Can you imagine this back home? You’d be forced to wear a body sized oven glove with a welder’s helmet and even at that the fun police wouldn’t let you within a mile of the place.

Warning: May include scenes of a distressing and violent nature including sweary words from an excitable Kiwi

We left Tanna and worked our way north on day sails visiting islands as we came upon them; Efate, Emae, Epi and Ambrym. It was Pentecost that left the most indelible mark on our memories. Pentecost is the only island in Vanuatu and the only place in the world, where Land Diving is performed by a small selection of villages at a very particular time of year. As chance would have it, we were in the right place at the right time. For this extraordinary excursion we teamed up with Andrew and Carolyn of Askari, another gorgeous Oyster. These fellow Brits had traveled beyond the dark side and emigrated to Australia but mercifully retained their delicious Yorkshire accents.

Delivery day on Epi.

We arranged to meet the village spokesman early in the morning on the beach where we clambered into another dented pick up to be taken through the coconut plantations, then the jungles and on up into the high lands to our destination, the village of Ratap Nagol. This was a “custom” village, so called to denote its traditional values, without a church or a school. The men were naked but for their penis sheaves and the woman wore grass skirts. Some wore shirts but these were not to protect their modesty but to provide some warmth in the cooler mountain air. Their huts were of woven leaves and thatched roofs hunkered down low to the ground to provide some resilience to the relentless cyclones. Dominating the village was the tower perched on a ridge overlooking the steep slopes extending below. Its seemingly shambolic construction of random poles and vines belied the architectural splendor. Built on nine vertical poles with a height of 18.9m, facing the sea it had a distinctive curve representing the human form arching back looking toward the sky.

In the village of Ratap Nagol

We spent an hour or two wondering through the busy village, chatting to the diminutive people and immersing ourselves in its simplicity. Lucy said it was the first time she ever felt tall. I laughed.

Ready to catch and recover an adult diving from the very top

Like a union leader on a picket line, proceedings were commenced by the village chief and his loudhailer. The whole village gathered under the tower taking up position on bamboo benches while a dozen or so naked men sang, stamped and chanted while a similar number of women in grass skirts sang, swayed, whistled and looked beautiful. If I could have turned a dial and switched to black and white with some blizzardy static, it would have been a scene from a 1960’s David Attenburgh anthropological film. As the atmosphere built, six or so men were busy on the tower arranging long hanging vines and setting various platforms. Imagine a full-size swimming pool and at the deep end an array of diving boards staggered at increasing heights to the eye watering top. Our first land diver was a fragile twelve year old boy, as nervous as fledgling guillemot abandoning the cliff edge nest. At least he wasn’t at the top. The young’uns would go halfway up and as they got older, they went higher, the tops reserved for the adults. That first leap was terrifying… for me! I watch with my eyes screwed half shut and my head half turned, trying not to look but like a grim horror film, compulsion drew me in against my will. As the men’s chanting and the women’s whistling intensified to a frenzy, the boy; head up, shoulders pulled, back arched, arms outstretched, eyes firmly shut, launched himself out into the abyss to the rapturous cheer of the villagers all around. Mercifully he survived and we all could breathe again.

This is the first land dive, by a twelve year old boy!

And so, the morning unfolded with ten or so land dives from increasing heights. Its easy to throw superlatives around like a game of scrabble, but this really was something else. It was without exception, with no comparison, undeniably the richest experience of our odyssey.

Back on Broadsword we weighed anchor at 0400 in the dark of the night and set sail for Hog Harbor on our final island of Espirito Santo. Arriving at sunset, we spent a glorious three days in a stunning bay all to ourselves enjoying a swimming trip to a fresh water blue hole and an exclusive use evening meal on Champagne Beach, reputably the bonniest beach in Vanuatu. Lucy had her new favorite dish Coconut Crab, apparently out of this world and nothing like crab back home.

Champagne Beach, Hog Harbor

Our final port where we would clear out was Luganville, but not before we dived the SS President Coolidge. She was the latest and one of the most luxurious ocean liners of the 30’s, requisitioned and repurposed as a troop transporter when the US entered the war. With 3000 men on board, she hit two American mines and began to list. The captain had the presence of mind to drive her onto a reef certainly resulting in all hands saved bar two. Today her bow rests 50m from the shoreline in 25m of water while her stern is 65m down. It is regarded as one of the top five dive sites in the world.

USS President Coolidge, as she lies. Note No.1 Cargo Hold toward the bow, our dive target

Our loyal readers may care to remember that Lucy does not do small dark spaces. Her extreme claustrophobia was a generous childhood gift from her brothers who would delight in stuffing her down a sleeping bag and not letting her out. The prospect of going into a cargo hold twenty five meters down, in the pitch dark rendered her a massive dose of the heebee-geebees. Brave pants back on the outside of her wet suit, down we went with our instructor Cheemie. The visibility was poor, perhaps ten meters and so when the huge hull immerged from the gloom we were literally on it. Lying on her side, the deck was therefore a vertical cliff drawing us downwards still deeper into the dark. Number one cargo hold revealed itself like the ominous mouth of a mine shaft, utterly black offering no hint of its secrets beyond. We turned our torches on. As timorous as a Burns beastie, in we crept, our beams cutting the shadows like light sabers, then picking out recognisable forms from its tumbled cargo: Jeeps, fifteen of them.

Lucy in No.1 Cargo Hold of the SS President Coolidge

Lucy and I were both trepidous of our impending voyage to Mackay in Australia given our recent seat of the pants affair from New Zealand and the fearsome reputation of the Coral Sea. It does not take the brains of an Archbishop to work out why its called “The Coral Sea”, strewn with reefs hidden below sea level and ready to ambush the unwary mercilessly. It’s a 1200 mile passage which would take Broadsword seven or eight days and given a weather forecast’s accuracy extended to around five days, there would hang a disconcerting uncertainty of what would lie ahead. Having negotiated three hours of torturous bureaucracy of clearing out, we left Vanuatu at 1100 on Friday morning. The wind would be on our beam from the south east for the first few days and with a short sea it made for very uncomfortable sailing, constantly being rolled and pitched and impossible to relax into a rhythm and routine and difficult to sleep whilst off watch. I could tell Lucy was not enjoying it, but stoic as a statue, she did not grumble or complain.

Easy reaching with the gennaker

We did not see a single yacht or ship for the entire passage and our one moment of excitement was a visit from a pair of Brown Boobies. Brown Boobies enjoy hitching a ride at night which sounds fun but they crap all over your boat and there is little you can do to discourage them when they are on your spreader near the top of the mast. However, these Boobies made the fatal error of trying to land on our solar panel beside which our wind turbine spins fast enough to amputate your hand if you were foolish enough to put it in the way. The spinning blades are all but invisible in daylight, but in the dark, nae chance. The first one was whacked at 1930. I was off watch asleep in the saloon and woke in a frightful panic to Lucy shouting thinking she had gone overboard. Lucy had heard a loud bang, followed by a splash accompanied with a cartoon puff of feathers. Boobies are not known for their intelligence. The second one followed suit and hour later.

The doomed boobie

The final approach to Mackay required planning for the Great Barrier Reef, the only living organism visible from the moon. There are a limited number of passes through the reef and as we were expecting strong southerlies, we opted to go south to the Capricorn Channel and then turn north for the 200 mile final leg within the barrier reef. Seven days and thirteen hours after our start, we approached Mackay Harbor at midnight in the dark. Always tricky to pick out the leading lights* in amongst all the other illuminated paraphernalia of a commercial harbor, we crept cautiously in with the dark shadow of a huge tanker slowly taking shape and looming ahead. My mind momentarily lost, I imagined I was the Commander of an X Craft midget submarine, closing on the Tirpitz in Tromso.

In brisk conditions, heavily reefed with staysail.

*Leading Lights assist vessels entering a harbor at night. Sited on terra firma, one light is set back from and above the front light. When approaching at the wrong angle, the lights will be misaligned. When on the correct line, the lights will be directly in line, one above the other.

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