Friday 22 October 2010

Luganville, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu; Friday 22 October 2010 בס"ד

My wake up call said it was nice out, but when I came on deck, a squall came and passed over us very quickly. It was clear for the next hour and a half, then I cleaned the galley with Megan and Josh. It began raining again, and I slacked the running rigging and got totally soaking wet in the process (ahh freshwater rinse, nice). Stood fourth helm steering NW xW. Back to bed for a bit. An all-hands wakeup in the morning, and we dropped anchor in the channel between Espiritu Santo and Aore. The Captain went ashore for a bit, and when he returned, we weighed anchor without taking it up to the hawse and relocated before dropping it again. The water here is deep, so quite a bit of cable was paid out. Then the skiffs took groups out to Aore island, which has a resort on it where we were kind of going to base ourselves out of. It's not quite a yacht club though, and not really set up to handle people coming in and going, especially not as many as us. I had two beers with the bros as we waited for the resort ferry to take us across to Luganville. A young Australian woman staying at the resort came over and made some moves on us, but as a whole, we were far more interested in adventures on Santo then that kind of entertainment at a resort. A water taxi ended up coming, and I guess the ship made a deal with this guy to be our transport man, since the skiff couldn't do these runs alone, and so we piled in and the cost was 100vt a person (about a dollar). A group of us went to a cafe and had lunch and beers. It was pouring rain, and so I went to the Hotel Santo down the block and hung out in their hotel lounge playing drinking card games with [person] and [person] for a few hours. Donald and I agreed to be roommates for the night and split a room. Since it continued pouring down rain, I ended up staying at the hotel drinking beers and eating pizza, which is always the best, then went to bed.