Port Resolution Yacht Club - gifts ceremony

To start the proceedings, each WARC skipper was asked to introduce their boat and crew. I said how pleased I was to return to Tanna after my first visit here 14 years ago on a smaller boat from New Zealand, and this time to be able to bring my family to this very special place. I thanked the chief, all the villagers and particularly Moni and Wherry (who run the Yacht Club) for their warm and generous welcome, and we look forward to sailing back here again in the future.

All the skippers in the World ARC fleet boats were then asked to place their respective gift items on the grass; the villagers made their pile beside it, comprised mostly of woven baskets filled with fruit from their gardens, and beautiful home made small decorative bags. The chief picked up a large bundle of kava root symbolising his acceptance of our offerings, then Stefano collected 'our' kava root on behalf of all the sailors.

After songs from the school children and speeches we were asked to pick up the gifts from the villagers; our baskets contained fresh papayas, limes, peppers, passion fruit, spring onions and lots of decorative flowers, plus a green vegetable we have never seen before. (Laura and Matthew took the decorative woven bags back to Canada as NZ Quarantine / Biosecurity rules prohibit them.)

Our gifts to the villagers were carefully shared out between all the families, seemingly very fairly and with no arguments. We hope that Tintin's various gifts of pots/ cooking utensils, a machete, clothing, first aid items, sunglasses, baseball caps and writing materials and paper are well received by the villagers and the school.

All dressed up for the giving and receiving of gifts Port Resolution

Nicki again,
We gave some freshly caught fish to a lady in the village, Moni, to feed her family; (the villagers struggle to go far outside the reef in their small boats. ) She gave us some lettuce, limes papayas and spring onions by way of thanking us, and showed us around her small house and garden, proudly showing us her mother pig with several tiny piglets.

So, prior to the ceremony, I asked her if I was appropriately dressed to meet the chief - she insisted that I should wear one of her dresses, very generously introducing me to all the many family members getting ready in her living room and taking me into the sleeping room and giving me a colourful 'mother Hubbard' dress which was carefully stored in a suitcase. it was light cotton and very colourful, she wanted me to keep it as a memory of our visit to Tanna. How wonderfully generous of her, when they have so little in the way of material timings. (as skipper I was required to speak briefly to all the assembled crowd and hand over Tintin's gifts to the chief).

Every one of the sailors was given a coconut and a woven hat to wear - very fetching! the schoolchildren wore their school uniforms and sang for us, and the women mostly wore colourful dresses, painted their faces and dressed their small children in their Sunday best clothes. The lady in the last photo below is Moni's cousin, Alice, listening to one of the elders speaking.

Port Resolution Dancing

The WARC fleet were invited ashore to be welcomed formally by the villagers, who danced very enthusiastically in a small clearing of trees with much stomping of feet, whooping and dust rising; clearly they were enjoying themselves! The men formed a circle in the middle with the more spectacularly dressed women and children skipping around the outside, and a number of rangy dogs getting involved in the action too.

Plumbing challenges

On passage from Fiji in boisterous conditions the fresh water pump stopped working....which meant that although the recently fixed watermaker enabled us to have full water tanks we couldn't have showers (washing up dishes using a foot pump to the galley sink still worked OK, we could get water for cooking and drinking. )

Once in calm anchorage at Port Resolution, we investigated the cause. This required emptying out a food cupboard to access the pump and involved everyone; Richard and Matthew in the cockpit fillling and blowing down a pipe giving a 2 metre head , Laura on the pump switch and me sucking on the shower hose in the head....

Eventually we identified a likely blockage from port water tank. Hoping to have cleared it, unfortunately the problem recurred 3 days later, so have now transferred most of the fresh water from port into starboard tank and will run off that for now. Happy Days!
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Port Resolution

Richard here - Port Resolution on the Island of Tanna was our entry point into Vanuatu. Captain Cook landed here in 1774 drawn by the great glow of the still active volcano, Mt Yasur, and he named the area Port Resolution after his vessel HMS Resolution.

It is a lovely location with a great natural harbour/anchorage. In addition to the volcano there are some thermal vents in the anchorage that steam and spit into the sea, creating hot spots that are a little too warm for comfort in places if you swim too close! There was some great snorkelling here with quite different corals from that which we have seen elsewhere with some beautiful red gorgonian fans.

They have a "yacht club" ashore where you can hang out and where they have put their scarce resources into being able to provide cold beer!

The World ARC fleet took up most of the available anchoring spaces, we stayed an extra day and were then one of only 3 boats left in the harbour which gave it a very different feel.

Trip to Mt. Yasur

Matthew and Laura here,

We are back in Vancouver now after 9 days aboard Tintin. It was an action-packed trip and we had an amazing time relaxing in Musket Cove, having a "boisterous" sail to Vanuatu, meeting the locals and seeing a different way of life in Port Resolution and enjoying the night life in Port Vila. Probably the most magical experience though was the trip we took up the volcano on Tanna, Mt. Yasur.

An hour's drive by 4x4 over rough dirt tracks from Port Resolution, Mt. Yasur is a desolate landscape in the middle of a tropical paradise and the contrast makes both all the more beautiful.

After arriving at the base of the mountain we were treated to a ceremony by a local chief and took part in a traditional "volcano dance" to appease the spirits that inhabit it. Next was a further bumpy ride, a short trek and we reached the rim. It was relatively quiet when we first arrived but as the sun went down there were displays of magma being thrown up every ten minutes or so and we were torn between trying to get some good pictures to share and not wanting to miss a thing.

It's hard to do justice to such an awesome experience but we hope the photos give you some idea!

Many thanks to Rob and Jo for allowing us aboard the mighty Tintin, to Nicki for her fine skippering (as the only female skipper on the Arc to boot), and to Richard the fisherman, whose exploits have been well documented, for keeping us well fed.

Tintin Angling Society Update

The trip from Fiji to Vanuatu provided some great fishing. We landed 5 fish and only fished about half of the trip.

We caught a small mackerel and skipjack tuna on the way out of the reef departing Fiji.

This was followed the following evening by a double hook up on small yellow fin tuna - one we got to the boat for sashimi the other was taken by something larger that obviously was hungrier than we were……

Nicki had been requesting that I try and catch a Mahi Mahi, one of the boats sailing close by us caught one but I was still failing to deliver. Overnight a flying fish had jumped on deck and I took a couple of fillets off this and attached them to the hook on one of the lures, not long after we had a 1m Mahi Mahi on board

A few hours later I remembered the other flying fish fillet and attached that to the lure on the other rod and it worked again with a 1.2m Mahi Mahi coming aboard - Great fish from both but the second Mahi Mahi threw itself off the gaff on the foredecks we had some fish wrangling going on to stop it getting over the side.

We are getting our daily Omega 3's as well as supplementing this of others in the fleet and some of the local villagers (the locals here have small outrigger canes which limits their options for getting too far offshore and Vanuatu is a high risk area for Ciguatera from reef fish so are very pleased to have pelagic fish from outside the reef)