Explore Sailing Voyages in Vanuatu 🇻🇺

This passage was a mixed bag. We left Vanuatu in winds of 20-25knots and made excellent speed over the first part of the journey. By the last few days, we had 6-10knots and slowly crawled our way up the east coast past the Great Barrier Reef. In the beginning it was a white knuckle ride. With us only leaving the cockpit if necessary. The waves ranged from 3-4m and occasionally would brake ontop of the solar panels. With the excellent surf we managed a 7knot average. We even had a record breaking 24hours managing 180miles. Just over half way, we had a huge storm. It began with a large clash of thunder, that rattled through the boat. It was then followed by endless rain and an increase in the wind. With the winds reaching over 30knots, we had reefed the main sail and started to furled away the jib. Through the night, we sailed with just the main sail and still managed to maintain speeds of 6.5knots. Penny handled it well and eventually the wind subsided. After the storm the weather was a total contrast. The last few days were light and fair. We have even had to use the engine as the boat speed dropped below 2knots. We arrived in Cairns at 9am and headed into the marina. On arrival, boarder force and customs officers were waiting for us on the dock. They even had a sniffer dog who went around and searched Penny. After the customs team left, we had bio security onboard. They removed any fresh produce that was left from the passage and also checked the boat for infestation. The whole check in process went smoothly and by 11am were free to leave the boat. We cannot believe we have sailed across the South Pacific Ocean. We are immensely proud of this achievement and have loved every second of it! Although it contains many long passages, the islands you arrive at are definitely worth it. It truly is one of the greatest cruising grounds.

This passage was short but sweet. Sometimes we find the shorter journeys harder as you struggle to get into a routine. However this one was very enjoyable. We received our new main sail in Fiji however it was too big, due to an error with the manufacturer. Thankfully as it was the company’s error, they paid for the new sail to be cut down to size. As an added bonus they are making us a new sail (to the correct measurements this time) in Australia. This passage gave us an opportunity to test the newly cut sail and even after that it still didn’t quite fit the boat. However it was nice to have a sail that wasn’t ripped and was a newer material! On the passage we caught a beautiful sail fish. This was our first time catching this type of fish and it was delicious! We enjoyed it as filets and also in a Thai curry. Big blue (our spinnaker) made an appearance again and allowed us to make excellent speed. We love having a kite to be able to increase our SOG (speed over ground) on the lighter days. It also helps to stabilise the boat and stops it wallowing around in the waves. We arrived in Vanuatu at 1:30am and to our surprise the town was still partying! We however went straight to bed. The sea bed had a lot of coral heads so it took us 3 attempts at anchoring. Once we finally got it to hold and we packed away the boat and got into a nice flat bed.

This was a meant to be a delivery to Sydney but we diverted to Vanuatu after breaking an upper shroud. Skipper: Dale Barcham, Crew: Chris Barcham and Robbie Greer.