Phase2: New Caledonia to Vanuatu

Wednesday, 27 July 2016

New Caledonia to Vanuatu

Monday, 18 July to Thursday, 21 July 2016

Warren went to Customs and Immigration to clear out first thing on Monday morning, while I did a final shop. We left the marina to fill up our fuel tanks with duty free fuel - 68 Pacific Franks (less than $1) per litre. Entice (Greg and Karen) and Pied–a-Mer 3 (Eric and Pam) were also leaving at the same time though they were both headed for Fiji.

Rainbow approaching Canal Woodin

We elected to tack into the SE wind and reached Anse Majic at 1900. We didn’t want to go through Havannah Pass at night so picked up a mooring and left at first light on Tuesday for Lifou. We had a 1-2 knot adverse current as we went through the pass so we were glad to clear the banks and head NW. We set the spinnaker and as is often the case, the predicted ESE wind was more in the south so it was directly behind us. This made for slower going than we had hoped. We anchored in the SW corner of Lifou just before midnight to get a few hours sleep before tackling the 200nm to Port Vila. We had sailed 117nm in 17 hours. We left at 0630 on Wednesday and once clear of Lifou we set course almost due north in a ESE wind on the beam.

The seas were slight and the wind was a steady 15-20 knots, occasionally getting up over 20 knots as a rain squall went past.

Squalls in the distance

We had averaged 7.6 knots when we put in our double reef as the sun went down. During the night we passed over the deepest water we have been in to date, over 6300m. We continued to average over 7 knots during the night and just after sunrise we sighted the island of Efate in Vanuatu.

We dropped anchor at 1300 near the quarantine buoy and contacted Customs. We cleared in and by 1500 we were on a buoy at Yachting World Vanuatu looking forward to exploring a new country.