Tanna to Port Vila (3rd July)

Well two out of three ain't bad - sounds like the title for a song.
The shopping went well and early in the afternoon Thomas returned with a good supply of Paw Paw, Ponpamoose, Spring Onions and Limes in exchange for 4 x D Cell batteries.  We also had a nice snorkel on the reef (not too difficult when the water temperature is around 26C) followed by a soak in the hot springs! We also confirmed our trip up to the Volcano (Mt Yasur) for 3.30pm on Sunday - the only thing missing are the 2 crayfish however, we were not that confident that they would be arriving so not too disappointed.


A BIG Warning to Navigators in these waters!

We ended up with 9 of us (plus guides) that went up to Mt Yasur from Port Resolution.  The standard transport is a 4WD drive ute so we crammed 8 of us in the back of the ute for the 7km drive up to the car park at the volcano.  Doesn't sound all that bad until you find out it takes the best part of 1 hour to get to the car park over some pretty rough roads that have been made even more challenging due to the recent heavy rain.

The whole experience of visiting the volcano is pretty hard to describe.  As you are driving towards it you see these mammoth clouds of volcanic ash in the sky and the car park looks more like a scene from the moon.  Apparently this is the only active volcano in the world that you can view from the crater edge and you can kind of understand why when you get there as it does have a bad reputation and we have heard that there have been some recent fatalities.  The viewing area is on the edge of the main crater, naturally on the upwind side.  We turned up at dusk which seems to be the most popular time as the lava explosions and volcanic fireworks are a lot more impressive as the sun goes down.  All we can say is that it something one should do if they ever get the chance.

Once the volcano tour was done it was time to get going again so we up anchored on Monday morning (1st July) to do the overnight passage of around 130nm to Port Vila.  We had a lovely sail with moderate easterly winds blowing - not too shabby at all.  We arrived at PV around 8.30am on Tuesday morning (water temp 27C) and are now tied up at the Yachting World wharf.  We have had a bit on an explore around town and had a great meal last night at the Waterfront Bar & Grill.  We were also able to catch up with Peter and his family for a quick cuppa and a chat in the arvo which was great. 

We had another surprise this morning while walking the mean streets of PV we happened to look out in to the bay only to see Gramac V from Martha Cove dropping her anchor - how far do you have to go!

We are expecting to stay in PV until Sunday when we will start our 2 weeks cruise along the west coast of Efate which Miss Amanda who is arriving on Friday.

On another subject we have now also set up a second BLOG page (yes painful) which we can update via our satellite phone as we do not often have access to the internet.
Unfortunately it is text only but it is better than nothing although it does have the added feature of position reporting on Google Earth which is kind of neat..  We will also keep this one going when we can so that we can upload some photos.
The link to the new BLOG is http://blog.mailasail.com/mustangsallycruising