6 weeks out and counting...

Our reward for staying out so long

At six weeks, this is the longest we’ve ever been ‘out.’  We refuelled in Vila on the 13^th of September, and sailed out of there, full of food and water a couple of days later.  In Australia a scarcity of food outside supermarkets meant that we had to duck back into port to re-provision fairly often and the longest we’ve made it before is about three weeks between marinas.

Everyone has gardens in Vanuatu and we can trade or buy food wherever we go, and we’ve been able to collect and filter water in several places, so we’re not dying of thirst.  We left Vila with 400 litres of diesel and we’ve had pretty good sailing conditions, so we could keep going for much longer.  However…

We’re all out of UHT milk, thus also yoghurt; we’re out of honey, peanut butter, vegemite, chips, crackers, alcohol, cheese, meat, eggs, tahini and we’re dangerously low on chocolate (1 block).  The Cannery and the Shop are almost bare, and the fridge is spookily clean.  Yesterday we turned off the freezer.

Looking on the bright side, we still have toilet paper, plenty of rice, lots of GF pasta, three sticks of butter, a few heads of garlic and various dried pulses.  Depending on where we land and what’s in season, we can augment our diet with paw paw, eating bananas, cooking bananas, choko sprouts, island cabbage, bok choy, spring onions, star fruits, mangoes, rose apples, coconuts at various stages of ripeness, chokos, tiny capsicums, yams, sweet potatoes, manioc and just lately, mangoes.  Also ‘snake beans’, if I could figure out a way to cook them that didn’t make everyone retch and threaten to mutiny.

Miles pumping his tenth jerry can

The biggest loss to our diet has been eggs, which are almost impossible to come by on the islands.  There are soooo many chickens but they all free range and people have told us that they eat the eggs only when they find them.  On Ambrym we heard a rumour about a kind of jungle chook called malau that digs holes in leaf litter, lays its eggs in it and covers them back up, sometimes two foot deep.  These chickens, from all reports, look exactly like normal chickens but their eggs are twice as big!  Malachy is as keen as I am to sight the stretchy-cloaca-emu-egg-tarzan-hen and we keep our eyes and ears peeled whenever we wander through the jungle.  It’s possible the locals are having us on.

Island tucker - notice the cacao pods top right

Pretty sure this is not an egg-laying malau, but it doesn't hurt to be vigilant

Another consequence of being away from ‘civilisation’ for so long is that we’ve had to get over a few mood humps.  We’ve found ourselves saying things like, ‘god I would kill for a timtam,’ or ‘get me off this godamned boat and fly me to the nearest 5 star resort or I’ll scratch your eyeballs out.’

The island of Ambrym was the site of my most severe mood hump.  Ambrym is renowned for its sorcerers and black magic and I can only assume that I was hexed on arrival.  How else to explain the dread sense of foreboding, the debilitating heat, the swarms of flies, the rolly anchorages, the snappish paranoid shrew I turned into?  Ambrym is weird and spooky.  Hot water bubbles out of the ground, two volcanoes shroud the peaks in smoke and steam, the sand is black, the sky is grey and even though there are millions and millions and millions of chickens, there are no fecking eggs!  Our efforts to climb the volcano came to naught as the sky closed in and promised zero views for the ten hour return slog, we got kicked out of the Rom dance (for, er, trying to sneak in with some rich tourists)^* and as we went to pull up the anchor and get the flock out of there, we discovered we had no steering.  One of us spent three hours cooking himself in the engine room fixing a leak to the hydraulic line and the other of us spent three hours saying, can we go yet can we go yet can we go yet, like a seven year old.^**

Cooled lava

Rock cliffs that we obtained permission to jump off

This river is so hot it would boil your feet if you stood in it for too long - which didn't stop Budi from running through it

The twin volcanoes of Ambrym

(* Although we would never have pulled such a stunt under normal circumstances, one of the tourist ship’s crew invited us to join the grey melee, his boss agreed and we were only stymied by the local bouncer who demanded cruise ship prices for admission, i.e. $300 for the family.  Are you kidding me? Don’t these people realise there are gradations of wealth in the whitefella hierarchy and that retirees paying $1500 per person per day for their three week cruise are at the top of the heap and that scumbag cruising families who trade the shirts off their backs for a bag of mangoes are at the bottom???

** Not the actual seven year old on board, as it happens.)

Latitude 16

At latitude 16 (which is the same as Cooktown) something inevitably snapped and Rems and I waged war on our hair.  We booked in with our funk-sistah-hair-cutting-whizbang Beth Proudley at the Bella Luna salon and she cut the lion's share off first Reminy's and then my hair. 

Stage one - conservative

We were briefly satisfied with our new cuts, but then in a frenzy of sweat and humidity, I went back to beg more off, and one night soon after Reminy took my sewing scissors into the aft head and hacked off her already short ponytail.  It's getting seriously hot up here and we have no regrets.

Stage 2 - just get it off my head already

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.