In-laws, Out-laws and Captain Smallbeard

Over the past 6 weeks we’ve hosted several loved ones, off and on Pandion, stretching out her elastic sides for some fabulous catch-ups.

One condition of visiting the Good Ship Pandion is that all who arrive must hand over the maximum permissible quantity of honey (1 litre), so the excitement of greeting visitors as they arrive is super-sized by an anticipatory sugar-high.

*Note: there’s an unspoken rule at play on Pandion in these times of hardship and rationing and it is this: if a luxury item is packaged and sealed, nobody will touch it, although everybody will jealously monitor its exact location in the Joy Locker.  The moment somebody cracks the seal, all bets are off.  I was naively eking out the tahini a molecule at a time until I noticed that the level was falling like a Havannah Pass tidal race and I realised that if I wanted to get my fair share I was going to have to either hide the jar (which is deemed foul play by all) or pog in.  I pogged in.  (Er, guess who cracks the seal 9.9 times out of 10?  By his claw marks we know him.)

The Mother and Son Extravaganza

Matching grey cardies!

First to arrive, back in Noumea, were Grandma and Grandad.  They’d timed their arrival to synchronise important birthdays (80 & 45.)  We whipped them out of the airport and drove them straight up into the mountains we’d been lusting after ever since we’d arrived.   

Our gite came with homemade croissants for breakfast

Reminy loved the garden art. This is only one of 5 million pictures she took.

As gites go, the gite we stayed at up in Farino was pretty nice. (A “gite” is not an insult – it’s a small, locally run accommodation option.)

I love this photo.  While Miles is busy advertising toothpaste, Grandma takes the opportunity to blow out their single, shared candle.  Grandad just looks mildly cynical – he’s seen this kind of behaviour before.

Stage Two of Barbara and Terry’s trip was a stay in a hotel in Anse Vata with magical sunset views.

They came and checked out the Noumea municipal markets with us and witnessed a somewhat baffling performance by the local Australian regiment bag-pipe band performing “the Aussie set” which included Waltzing Matilda and The Road to Gundagai.  It was Bastille Day and every epaulette and service medal in Noumea had been dusted off and polished and was out on display and blocking the traffic. Another day Grandad and Grandma played hooky and took themselves off to towno – they had a wonderful time wandering around and ended up in our favourite patisserie for lunch, Le Petite Choux.

Stage Three was a couple of nights out at Ilot Maitre, which is a marine park but also has a luxurious resort we could anchor Pandion off.  Grandad nearly drowned himself with his super-enthusiastic Jacques Cousteau-inspired back flip off the tender in full snorkeling regalia, which we have reproduced here for your viewing pleasure.  After multiple screenings it still brings tears to my eyes. 

While they were reclining in their waterfront lodgings in terry toweling robes, we weathered a squall out on Pandion but came gratefully in out of the cold to make full use of their (wait for it) BATH.

Back in Noumea they treated us to a farewell lunch at Marmites which might be one of the best meals we’ve ever eaten.  Warning: gastroporn ahead.

Budi being quietly satisfied with his guinea-fowl

Reminy awaiting the arrival of her duck

Sylvie being slightly daunted by her dessert

My amazing salad

We loved seeing you both – we had so much fun.

 

The Adventures of Captain Smallbeard

This map, created by all the crew at the Vila airport as he was leaving us, represents Yani’s three-weeks- plus stay aboard Pandion.  He joined us in Noumea, traveled out to some of the marine parks nearby, cleared out of the country with us, moseyed around in Prony while we waited for a weather window, made the passage to Vanuatu with us (2 days 2 nights), stayed on Tanna with us for over a week and then made the two jumps to Erromango and then Efate with us.  What can I say?  Yani is NO TROUBLE WHATSOEVER as a house guest, even if your house is the size of a caravan.  It wasn’t just the constant “Is there anything I can do to help?” (Yes, almost always), it was his perpetual good cheer, even when struck down by the Welcome to Vanuatu Spewfest.  One of my favourite things about Yani is the daggy, child-like side that asks questions like, “Would you rather swim naked through 50 metres of blue-bottles or put your hand in the wind generator?”

P.s. Swim through blue bottles, duh.

P.s. Yani is on Instagram where he’s posted a short film of his travels on Pandion.  Check him out at yanisurfer.

Yani and Rems looking for turtles

 

The temporary fourth child

On our way to the volcano

Yani getting a lesson on de-husking mature coconuts

 

Yani enjoying his parrot fish, at last

The Gardener & the Fisherman

Like the bold, ready-for-anything world travelers they are, my parents arranged to meet us in Port Vila with all of five days’ notice.  We picked them up at the airport, stowed them in a spacious apartment on the waterfront with a WASHING MACHINE and a DRYER (and also the world’s stinkiest fridge) and then dragged them around Vila to help us provision for our next stint.  Poppy went off to the fishing and tackle shop with the boys, Mama came on a local bus with me up the hill to the supermarket, and everyone rendezvoused at the markets where we inexplicably doubled up on chokos and tomatoes.

Early on day three we picked them up from the dingy wharf, dropped the mooring and headed around Devil’s Point and up into the protected waters of Havannah Harbour.  

The fun started when we hooked a wahoo the size of China, tried to gaff it, lost the gaff, lost Miles (who jumped in after the gaff), and then lost the darn fish.  Found the gaff.  Found Miles.  Nearly lost Mama, who tried to float out the pass and head north under her own steam.

Around that time Poppy also lost a decent portion of his scalp to the vicious end of The Hobbit Hole known as Rachel Mackenzie (nothing personal Rackll), in spite of regular warnings by the youngest crew member  - “There are no birds on Pandion, Poppy, so when you see a sign that says “Duck!” you should straightaway duck."

We were playing Around the Compass with the wind, so we went further into the harbour and anchored off the gardens of a local village.  Taking in a queenfish as currency, we went ashore, met the chief, exchanged the fish for green coconuts and general goodwill and went wandering through the gardens trying to find someone to sell us plantains.  We met Morris and his family camped out at their gardens for the two-week school holidays and he offered to show us how he grows tomatoes and yams, which was completely thrilling for the Visiting Botanist on board. 

Morris' yam patch, newly planted

So many tomatoes even Mama couldn't eat them all (although she tried)

We treated Mum and Dad to some local food and made Lap lap one night and got them to help out with our cottage industry – FYI, 12 coconuts makes a measly 250 ml of coconut oil.  And it’s pretty messy.

Poppy working hard on the coconut grater

One of the many fish Poppy did end up landing - a golden trevally.

Loved seeing you guys – it always goes way too fast.

The Knitting Nanas

The Fellas

The total amount of goods muled in by visitors to Pandion thus far:

3 litres honey

10 + blocks of chocolate

3.5 kilos almond meal

1 kg Colby cheese

2.5 kg peanut butter

1 jar tahini

Many kilos of boat parts- including a tube of butyl mastik that looks suspiciously like plastic explosive.

2 bottles gin

8 packets of stoopenwaffle

A mega variety pack of men’s underwear in rainbow hues. (Thank God, the kids were being scarred for life by Miles’ Droopers.)

Medihoney, Travelcalm red, dettol and chlorsig ointment

I’m sure there’s more.

Thank you all, it is so very appreciated.  And also mostly gone.

Best of Ile de Pins

So easy to botch up in another language.  Some French speaking locals gently informed us that we'd been calling the Ilse of Pines the Ilse of Penises. 

Here's a video from Rems about our time on the Penis Ilse.

Farewell to New Cal

A video from Rems about our last days in New Cal. We pinballed between Ilot Signal and Ilot Nge, both marine zones.

The Good and the Bad

We’ve been hijacked by Vanuatu, which is so lavishly vibrant and distracting that I haven’t blogged for ages.  Apologies to our fan (that’s you Mama).

And since we’ve arrived my opinions about the place have see-sawed and changed about every five minutes so that blog posts that I’ve been composing in my head have become redundant by the next day.

So, here’s some stuff about Vanuatu; not all of it, because that would take too long.

The good:

Hoist the plantains!

Fresh food! In New Cal we couldn’t afford to eat bananas, which cost about $20 a hand.  In Vanuatu, people keep giving us bananas.  We’re like, sinking under the weight of bananas.  We have banana pancakes, banana cakes, fried bananas, curried bananas, baked bananas, grated and steamed bananas.  Some of the bananas are actually plantains, but when they ripen they’re essentially a banana.  Everywhere you go you can get fresh fruit and veg.  Sometimes it comes out to you in a canoe, sometimes you have to go and find it, but it’s there and it’s cheap, local and organic.

Riding in the back of a ute!  Everywhere we went on Tanna we travelled by ute and before the novelty wore off, we all crammed in the back to bounce along dirt roads hallooing at locals, dodging pigs and chickens and marvelling at the massive banyan trees passing by overhead.  Er, then the novelty wore off, but that’s another story.

Thermal activity!  Visiting Mt Yasur, “the world’s most accessible volcano”, has been on our to-do list for two years.  By “accessible” they mean that it’s possible to misjudge your step and find yourself sliding down a vertical beach into an exploding lava pit.  The tours run at dusk, so the chances of tripping on the way down in the pitch dark, perhaps startled by the earth-rattling boom of another eruption, are actually quite high.  Some of us struggled with that.  At one point Budi went into the foetal position, pulled his hoodie over his head and tearfully refused to move.  “You’ve wasted all your money on me,” he wept.  It’s true, the volcano tour is an expensive trip and that did occur to me as I tried to cajole him to his feet and get his damned money’s worth.  But one of the exceptional guides gently took his hand and led him to the top of the crater rim from where you get the really spine-tingling experience of looking down into three lava pits, which reliably explode and toss molten rock up at you every ten minutes or so. 

“How come you went with him and not us?” Miles asked Budi afterwards. 

“I didn’t think I had choice,” said Budi. 

He’s glad he went all the way to the top though, and as soon as we got back down to the lower viewing area his bravado came back in full force and he started shouting typical Budi-like things at the volcano like, “Is that all you’ve got?  Come on big fella, show me some lava!”

Lava

Shiny happy people!  Okay, the Ni-vans are unbelievably friendly, crazy friendly.  When we wave at an overloaded boatload of folk driving by, they all wave back, some of them stand up in spite of zero freeboard, and many of them do the two-arm wave.  People are helpful, generous and endlessly amused when they see me (for example) trying to get a volleyball back over the net.  We’re talking doubled-up, legs-crossed, eye-wiping laughter.  I’ve never been so funny.

Look at the size of Morris's yam!  And look how stoked he is about it!

No plastic!  The island of Tanna officially discourages plastic bags, and the rest of Vanuatu is following suit.  Instead of plastic bags at the markets, there's these awesome baskets woven out of coconut leaves.

 

Reminy making a shopping basket with the help of the wonderful Jill.

Trading! It’s possible to get your laundry done by someone in the village for the price of a few op-shop t-shirts.  You can trade a couple of litres of petrol for a crayfish, a pawpaw, some bananas, a bag of limes, and some things that you thought at first were cucumbers but which turned out to be weird squishy gourds.  But here the awesomeness of trading starts to get muddy and it’s time I moved over to:

The Bad:

Trading! Okay.  So all we wanted was a pawpaw.  We’d anchored up in a bay on Erromango and motored in to the village to find some fresh fruit.  Before we knew it we’d been siphoned up the hill to a guest house run by a lovely couple who sat us down under their shady pergola, promised us fruit and veg “for free” and insisted that they cook us dinner or lunch the next day.  Then the talk turned to our boat.  How big was she?  How many people could sleep on her?  How much cargo could she hold?  Alarm bells were blaring in my head but Nobnuts on the other side of the table was blithely talking up the cargo capacities of our boat and before we knew it we’d been roped into taking half a tonne of Sandalwood and its grower to Vila, a 20 hour trip.

On the upside, we got two free meals (one with lobster), lots of free fruit and veg, a tour of the food gardens and permission to swim in the local swimming hole.  Also, the boat smelled amazing, especially the front cabin which we don’t use on passages and which was piled high with bags of sandalwood.

One of our trading meals.  Note large platter of lobster.

On the downside, we had to strap 8 tree trunks and their root balls to the deck, climb over bags of sandalwood to use the aft head and find room for another body to sleep in an already full boat on an uncomfortable overnight passage.  And our guest had a nasty cold, which we all caught.

Oh, one more upside: when the sandalwood was unloaded and the boat went back to housing a measly 5 people, Pandion felt HUGE.  But our childlike enthusiasm for trading with the locals has become slightly tempered with caution.

Pandion: Pacific Island Trader

Disease! Since arriving in Vanuatu gastro has swept through the boat twice, Miles has been on antibiotics for a nasty sea ulcer and we’re just weathering the tail end of the Sandalwood Influenza.  From here on northwards, we run the risk of contracting malaria if we’re not diligent.

Land ownership! Every beach, every reef, every anchorage, every piece of land in Vanuatu is owned by somebody, so dropping the pick, tendering ashore and going for a leg-stretching walk is suddenly not as straightforward as it’s been in New Cal and Oz.  I’m not complaining – I love it that Ni-vans own their land and I’m sure it contributes to their obvious well-being – but it means a well-timed conversation with people on shore soon after arrival and a possible bout of “coutume” before everyone feels comfortable.  For someone who likes to walk solitary long distances as often as possible, it can feel a little stifling.

No cheese! A 2 kg block of gouda (the only kind available) costs $56 in the Port Vila supermarche.  I couldn’t justify it, so as well as being on strict peanut butter, honey, tahini and esiyo rations, we’re also down to two small blocks of Colby, muled in by Mama and Poppy a week ago (thank you!).  

Cheese substitute.

 We're currently anchored in Havannah Harbour waiting to go diving for RJ's 15th birthday present.

Love rainbows, hate boats

I once made myself unpopular with a group of kiwis (people not birds) by announcing that I hate rainbows.  Rainbows are up there with kittens, fairies, balloons and babies and you’re supposed to like them.  I wasn’t being flippant, I really don't like rainbows very much.  Rainbows usually mean the end of rain and I can never get enough rain. 

Or so I thought…

Rain in a house is a fabulous thing: cosy, refreshing, soothing…

Rain on a boat just sucks.  Everything gets damp (including spirits), everything starts to smell (including people) and everything’s just that little bit harder. Rain is great for filling up the water tanks.  It's rotten for getting sheets dry.  

If the person you love most insists that once through the industrial marina dryer will definitely get the clothes dry and then when it doesn’t you discover that the marina office has shut and there won’t be anyone to sell you little gold laundry tokens for two days, your salon might end up looking like this:

You will want to wash yourself because like everything else on the boat, you’re beginning to grow mould, but all the towels will be sodden rags hanging on the railings growing their own ecosystems.  A spell of sunshine will send you into a pegging out frenzy and the outside of the boat will rapidly disappear under a hopeful, brightly-coloured patchwork tent of damp fabric, but then the skies will darken and you’ll scowl and go into a different kind of frenzy, shaking your fist at the sky as you throw all the still-damp fabric back into a compost heap on the cockpit floor.

All the things you once took for granted - clean clothes, dry linen, a ready supply of fresh food, a car to get from A to B, a bath, white goods, a room of your own - will all seem tinged with a golden, mythical, otherworldly glow.

I would give anything for a boring, easy life on land, you will think.  Anything.

But then the sun will come out, really come out, a towel-drying breeze will blow up, and you'll finally get to that varnishing job on deck, watching turtles and sharks cruise around the boat in water so clear it gives you vertigo to look down.

Love boats.

Snorkelling underground

Mama, it's okay, we all lived.