Explore Sailing Voyages in Vanuatu 🇻🇺

Fast first day and next, tailed off to a day motoring then 2 days champagne sailing then 3 mental days of 3.5m swell and 20-35kn, then entering GBR, half a day of motoring into swell then the most beautiful afternoon of sailing and seeing whales

Motored around thunderstorms leaving Vanuatu, then pretty calm for 2 days. Reasonably good sailing, though a bit bumpy. We double reefed the main and triple reefed the jib to make a smoother ride. Still made around 8 knots for a couple of days. Caught the tide race wrong coming in via Hydrographers Passage through the Barrier Reef. At one point, we had the engines at full throttle and were making 1.7 knots SOG! Water speed was 8.5 knots. That’s some tidal flow! The border control folks laughed about it and said a lot of folks don’t know about it and get caught out like we did. They said that it’s not in any of the usual reference materials, charts, etc and you don’t find out unless you look for it specifically. Then laughed again. I guess it’s some kind of rite of passage (pun intended). Had one of the PFDs deploy at 4 in the morning! We left it on the bench in the cockpit and it got submerged when we had a wave break over the side and flood the cockpit. Good to see it deployed correctly. It needed to be serviced next month anyway, so no harm done, and we got a few good laughs! Tied up in Mackay watching the tide come in- today is about 14’ from low to high tide. Which explains the amount of tidal flow we experienced.

Run north to Luganville today. 12-15?knots on our tail. Occasional gusts to 22 made flying the ParaSailor a bit risky. OCEAN doesn’t like DDW very well without the kite, so it was a bit of a slog with the sails slapping and the tackle banging about. I guess it can’t all be perfect, but we can dream… Check out of Vanuatu tomorrow. Next stop- Mackay in Australia. Weather window looks good for a crossing.

Started with delightful ParaSailor run, but wind built too much. We hit 11 knots (AWS was too much, though). Pretty place.

Motored. Glass. No wind.

Light winds. Perfect for a lazy ParaSailor day. Averaged 6 knots in about 10 knots of wind DDW. Close to flat seas. That’s what we’re talking about!

Amazing crossing! This was as close to a perfect weather window as one will get coming north from NZ this time of year! 7.6 knot average. 20-25 knot wind from 120-135° TWA, on starboard the whole way! Waves 3-5m following virtually the whole way. Surfed up into the teens regularly. A bit bumpy, but eminently manageable. Put up the sails initially with a single reef in the main and jib fully deployed, then double reefed the main and triple reefed the jib in the middle of the second day as the wind built. Then didn’t touch the sails the rest of the entire trip! The new autopilot system worked flawlessly, the boat stayed dry, the food was epic. The only bummer was we got strep throat a couple of days prior to departure from NZ, and were pretty sick for several days. Thankful for antibiotics! Anchored in Port Vila harbor at the Q buoy at precisely 5pm! Perfect time for the beer! The crew is happy, we can’t wait to clear customs and get to diving!