Luganville, Espirito Santo

From Vao we headed a short hop up to the island of Espirito Santo and the town of Luganville. We powered through the Segond Channel and hit the tides and resultant currents just right. We normally cruise at about 6 knots but we were seeing speeds over the ground of over 10 knots because of the swift current. We followed our guide book reservations and grabbed a mooring at Aore Resort.

 

According to the guides, they had about 10 moorings and offered great protection from the prevailing SW winds. The protection was as advertised but the moorings were something else indeed. The resort did not answer our repeated calls on VHF so we motored right up to their small dock to get their attention and get them to turn on their radio. Once we established contact we were directed to their "hurricane mooring" due to our weight. We found that the mooring was all tangled up and the eye to which we were supposed to attach to was 6 feet under water (at low tide). Rather than wait for the inattentive staff, Kim hopped into the water with a line in her teeth (while I motored in circles) and connected our line to temporarily attach the stern of our boat. After about 30 minutes the staff came out, admitted the moorings needed attention and they properly connected our two bow lines to their mooring. We later found out that a smaller boat dragged on one of their lighter moorings and that only 4 of the original 10 moorings were left. Apparently, they are just abandoning them when they break. Not very good service for (about $20 US) 1500 Vatu per night.

We took their small ferry (for more Vatu) into Luganville for provisioning. We found a nice public market and several hardware stores that had some of the items we needed. I even met a local who drove me around to get a board cut to make our very own coconut grater. One night at the Aore Resort we attended a nice buffet dinner with Kastom dancing from the Banks islands and a traditional Vanuatu string band. The ladies of Emily Grace received flowered headbands and we had front row seats for the show.

After about a week at Aore, we took the 3 hour trip up the east side of Espirito Santo to visit a protected bay called Peterson. There is an outer anchorage that is fairly easy to enter but was rolly. There is also an inner anchorage with Oyster Bay resort, but it requires going through a narrow pass in the reef that only has enough water for us to pass at high tide. We anchored the big boat in the outer anchorage and took our dingy to scope out the depths and to locate the pass. We had spoken to several boats that had hit this reef recently and we understandably anxious. There were 4 boats inside and Gisselle gave us waypoints and helped us figure out the times of high tides. The next day we slowly entered the pass and with less than 1 foot below the keel we glided in and found a flat calm anchorage with free (slow) WiFi from Oyster Bay resort.

We kayaked up a small river to see a fresh water blue hole and did some snorkeling around Peterson Bay. One morning we found a small poisonous sea snake crawling around our toes inside the boat. The fearless captain grabbed it with a towel, returned him to the water and asked him to look for another home.

 

After we were there about 3 days we were joined by about 20 boats from New Zealand on a rally. Two of the boats brought kids and Emily had a few play dates. One day Tom pulled them around the anchorage with the dingy and our tow-toy for two hours.

We attended another buffet and cultural show put on for the rally boats and enjoyed our first "water dance". Local ladies waded into waist deep water and splashed the water to make music and a beat. It was actually pretty good but the pictures were a little dark since it was performed at sunset.

We spent our last few days shuttling back to Luganville to get duty free fuel, checkout and then back to Oyster Island to wait for weather for our passage west. Tom was finally over his cold, so one day the entire crew of Emily Grace did SCUBA dives on The Coolidge and Million Dollar point. The Coolidge was a 600 foot long WWII American war ship that was sunk by friendly mines in about 80 feet of water. Million dollar point is a site where the American's dumped more than a million dollars worth of equipment. At the end of the war, the US authorities asked the returning British and French governments if they would like to buy up some of the road-building and other equipment that they would otherwise have to ship stateside; the British (cannily, they thought) said "No", guessing the American would leave it anyway; they did leave it, but bulldozed it into the sea rather than let the Brits have it for nothing. It was amazing to see such a large collection of equipment just abandoned on one spot, but due to the passage of time, much of it was unrecognizable. We saw a bunch of rubber tires and some tracks probably from a bull dozer but coral and fish are slowly taking over.

 

After being delayed for a few days by a persistent low pressure system, Emily Grace plotted a course to Bundaberg, Australia and headed west. If weather permits, we may stop at Chesterfield Reef to break up the 1000 mile passage. Wish us well, Dear reader, as we head out to sea again…

Tom