Our worldwide expedition has reached its fourth week, and miraculously, the crew is still on speaking terms—a minor miracle considering the tight quarters and living within each other’s pockets constantly. For anyone envisioning idyllic island cruising filled with sunsets, cocktails, and waterfalls, let me set the record straight: it's more like a never-ending saga of plumbing disasters, boat chores, and seasickness. There is only one toilet aboard November Rain, usually occupied when you need it. After a couple of days at anchor, it develops a personality of its own and is now the least popular member of the crew. When the smell becomes unbearable, it's our cue to head back to sea and dump it. We have the luxury of a washing machine, but water and power rationing limit it to 18-minute loads, not quite long enough to erase the funk. The lack of a dryer means we have to hang our laundry on the flybridge, giving a trailer trash look, not to mention, clothes never really dry in the humidity and frequent rain. There’s plenty of hot water, thanks to an on-demand water heater, but the options are either nuclear hot or ambient tropical. The ice machine pumps out ice into a tray that melts it just as fast as it makes it. Starlink has kept us connected to the rest of the world but at the cost of keeping us connected to the rest of the world.
With time on our hands, we are learning each other’s life stories as well as a few secrets. We’ve learned that young Elmo, the real estate agent, was a champion Grand Prix show jumper in his youth, which is confusing to us as Elmo seems pretty clumsy around the boat. Victor, the Chinese-American businessman, owns several hundred acres of land in Northern California, specifically so he can go bear hunting once a year and Dave once moved his entire family to Turks and Caicos for a job. The secrets will stay secret until they don't.
Sea days are often rough and it’s safest to avoid moving around, intentionally or otherwise. Each crew member has their favorite spot to ride out the waves and pass the time. Victor is often in his bunk, either asleep or engrossed in movies on his phone. Elmo sprawls in the saloon, glued to the internet, while Dave reads a novel or works on his laptop from the flybridge. Dave is telecommuting as a consultant, and it’s a marvel to see him keeping his cool, leading a Zoom meeting while being tossed around like a sock in a washing machine. Everyone sports bruises that they can't explain away.
Captain Garry’s spot is primarily the helm chair, but occasionally, he has to vacate it, to prime the water maker, which is in the port hull, or change the LPG bottle in the starboard hull. Recently, he was called out for a sink drain, blocked by potato peelings. Initial efforts to clear the blockage with the plunger failed when the rubber disintegrated from age. Unfortunately, that was one spare we failed to foresee, so he was forced to disassemble the line. (A banana cream pie smoothed things over between us). One thing we know for sure, maintenance issues will lurk silently, and will only present themselves, once the weather becomes incompatible with standing upright.
I spend much of my time as the galley wench. It’s a special challenge to feed baby birds with gaping mouths...The Crew—who seem to have a bottomless pit where their stomachs should be. There are few convenience foods available on the islands, so every meal has to be prepared fresh and from scratch, both lunches and dinners. There aren’t grocery stores around the next wave, so a lot of time goes into menu planning and proper food storage. I don’t mind, it gives me something to focus on and my crew are the guinea pigs of my experimental cuisine. Fortunately, they feed like feral pigs invading a NiVan’s garden, so no food is wasted.
Between meal prep, I bounce around the cabins, opening hatches and windows for fresh air, then immediately circling back, closing them as the wind, sea or rain gets up. As I pass by the electrical panel, I’ll have to reset the fridge, maybe start the generator, empty the ice tray for the twentieth time, and add in a load of laundry. If a reel goes off, it’s drop everything and go fishing. Then, it's back to defrosting the fridge.
The crew is tasked with meal clean-ups and they are excellent dishwashers, but we are currently in remedial training for proper storage of my cookware. I haven’t seen my cheese grater in days and my measuring cups are spread out in three different locations.
After dinner, we usually settle in for a friendly game of cards, Texas Hold ‘Em at Victor’s insistence. Elmo’s been taking a lot of ribbing for not knowing the finer points of the game, so Victor spent an afternoon, getting him up to speed, only to lose his shirt to Elmo that same night. A lot of good-natured banter keeps us in good spirits, but to date, the fishing has been mediocre.
In the past month, we’ve managed one short-billed spearfish, half a dozen yellowfin tuna, one blue marlin, a couple of mahi-mahi, and about five or six stinkin’ barracuda. To be fair, most of our fishing has been travel fishing, i.e., dragging lines while on our way from point A to B, not targeted banks. The best is yet to come, so Garry keeps telling us.
As we were approaching the island of Espiritu Santo, we hooked up to a small MahiMahi. Careful not to jinx it, no one informed the fish that it was the VIP dinner guest. Garry swung the fish into the boat on the line, avoiding the gaff altogether, not wanting to upset it. High fives all around and I was nominated for the fry up.
Victor was very animated about the catch, announcing he was going to make his famous fish-head soup. I had to firmly shut him down, explaining that the soup would have to wait until tomorrow, as there wasn’t room for two cooks in the galley and fish and chips were already in play. The rest of the crew looked somewhat relieved.
Garry dropped the hook in 30 meters, in front of our former holiday home, a waterfront block of land with a small cabin overlooking the water. Aore Island is an expat haven, separated from the bustle of Luganville by a 2 km wide channel. Other than a couple of resorts and a few small local villages scattered among the jungle, there are no services and no shops. We had sold the property a few months ago, it no longer fit into our long-term plans, but it was nice to see that the place was looking neat and tidy, thanks to the efforts of Banie and Rebecca, the local caretakers. It was even nicer to know that we could focus on fishing in Vanuatu and beyond, rather than be saddled down by home ownership.
Our former neighbor, Bob, was waiting for us on his dock, to welcome us back to the island, along with his wife, Leone. Garry and I had a catch-up on the local gossip and Bob offered to ferry us into town the next morning for some shopping. Over Messenger, I prearranged a return to the island with Banie in his water taxi.
Luganville is the second largest town, after Port Vila, in Vanuatu. While it is much like PV in many ways, only on a smaller scale, there are some key differences. During World War II, the island of Espiritu Santo was the base of the largest U.S. Pacific Fleet, outside of Hawaii. Reminders of the war are peppered throughout the island if you know where to look. Long forgotten iron wharves, Quonset huts, ammo bunkers, old airfields, and well-paved roads, along with the friendly-fire sunken warship, the Coolidge, which is a world-class wreck dive. Million Dollar Point is an interesting place to snorkel and take note of the U.S. Military’s approach to waste management. There have been massive efforts by the expat community, alongside the Vanuatu Government, to preserve the area’s history, which is showcased at the WWII South Pacific Museum.
In the morning, Bob picked up the crew off November Rain and ferried the six of us across the channel in his 6-meter boat for a day on the town. Victor rolled the dice on a local barbershop for a haircut, and after 45 minutes in the chair, the barber confessed he wasn’t skilled in cutting Chinese hair but could slam out an afro in 5 minutes. Garry and I opted for the “Salon” that catered to the expat community. We walked into an empty shop for his and her haircuts and Garry asked for a “chop-chop”, which is what they gave us. Sometimes you can be too literal.
Our shopping finished up an hour before our scheduled water taxi, and as Bob was still in town, he offered to run me back with the cold stuff while the rest of the crew waited at the wharf for Banie to arrive. Victor came along with me to help to help with the heavy lifting.
By now the wind had picked up and was blowing a gale, at least 30 knots, straight into Luganville. Small watercraft were slamming into the rickety wooden jetty and a large copra ship picked up its anchor in search of better ground. The 15-minute boat ride back was really wet and a bit scary. Bob suggested that we all go swimming to dry off.
As I unloaded the groceries, Victor got straight into making the fish head soup. He pan-fried the head first, then put it in a pot of water, adding only salt for seasoning. I managed to scrounge a lone spring onion from the fridge as my contribution, it was a “no gat” day at the fresh market.
We waited two hours for the rest of the crew, Victor’s soup already on the table in anticipation of their scheduled return. My suspicion of the crew taking lunch in town to avoid “the soup” soon proved to be wrong.
Unbeknownst to us, Banie, the water taxi pilot, had spotted Bob dropping Victor and me off at November Rain and just assumed his pre-scheduled Uber service had been canceled. Meanwhile, Garry, Elmo, and Dave, tired of getting windburn, tracked down a local who provided them with Banie’s number. Once he got the call, he raced over to collect and return them to the boat. The guys were now hungry enough to give the soup a try and admittedly, in the words of Victor, “It was soooo gooood”
The next couple of days were quietly spent on Aore, doing short treks in the jungle to see bat-ridden ammo bunkers, mosquito feeding, and a visit to the Aore Island Coffee Cafe, where the caretakers opened the doors, started up the generator and brewed us local coffee, after Victor’s cry outs of “Helloooo..Hellooo, anyone home?”… We ended our visit to the island with dinner at the idyllic Aore Resort, where we had a few laughs, and the boys took the piss out of each other. Garry warned the crew that there was to be no fishing in front of the resort, as the local fish were “pets”, hand-fed by guests.
The next morning, we relocated across the channel, to be closer to Luganville. Elmo, Dave, and Victor tiki-toured around, doing touristy things such as the Blue Hole and the Millennium Cave, somewhat overwhelmed with the physical challenges and extreme risk of injury. Unfortunately, both Dave and Victor’s phones became waterlogged in the lazy river float, despite being in a (not-so)waterproof bag. Surprisingly, both of the men had spare phones as backups, leading me to wonder just why they needed burner phones in the first place.
The toilet was signaling that it was time to shove off again, and we decided to head for the Banks group of islands in the morning. We woke up to drizzle and though the wind was light, the seas were confused and the swells were large. So much for “picking the weather”, as Garry had promised me when we set off on this adventure a month ago. On the way north, we hooked into a small marlin, which I played for about 5 minutes before feeling the noose slip off, dropping the fish. We had two more hits but nothing stuck that day.
At Port Orly, Garry and I enjoyed our first paddle together on the new kayaks, beach combing for shells on the nearby sandy spit. We weren’t keen on smuggling them back to New Zealand, a good five years down the track, so the specimens sat on the bait board overnight, to be temporarily admired, before we tossed them back in the ocean. Garry finished the romantic sunset hour, down in the starboard hull, replacing the generator impeller, so that I could finish cooking dinner for the hogs.
Just after dark, Elmo, Victor, and Dave were stowing the kayaks on deck, when Elmo dropped one of the paddles over the side. Rather than jump in immediately for it, despite Dave’s very rational suggestion, Elmo decided to cast a popper lure and try to hook it. Unfortunately, to his horror, the paddle filled with water and sank in 11 meters of black, murky water. Garry, in the shower at the time, heard the kerfuffle and rushed out in a towel to direct the rescue operations. Elmo and Victor spent 30 minutes in the water with lights, searching around the boat before Victor finally located the paddle on the bottom, aided by his mini-scooter. Elmo’s keel hauling was cancelled and we sat down to a very late dinner.
Victor’s burner phone wasn’t receiving two-factor verifications or text messages, apparently because it was a Chinese model, banned in the U.S. It was going to be difficult to run his business and banking back in the U.S without it and he was a bit stressed, knowing it would be another week before we would be anywhere near a cell phone store. After some back and forth with his wife back home, mostly in Chinese, along with some calls to T-Mobile in the U.S., he was able to add his e-sim onto my iPhone. We are now sharing a phone for the next few days until he can find a replacement in Luganville. I warned him I could now steal all his money and he warned me he could steal all my data.
On the 80 NM trip north, Garry worked a sea mount, where we went a dismal 0 from 7 hits. I suggested to Garry that we swap to light gauge hooks, but he countered that at least one of the seven marlin was over 200kgs. I countered that maybe we could have hooked one of the six little ones. When one of the lures was pulled in for a swap out, the hook was wrapped around the leader, which is why we didn’t hook up on a couple of them. Another lure had been chop-chopped by a wahoo. A lesson learned; always, always, always, reel it in the lure after a strike to double-check.
We arrived at the east coast of Vanua Lava, just on sunset, with double waterfalls cascading down the cliff face as the backdrop. Maybe this cruising life isn’t so harsh after all. Garry got to work on the toilet's intermittently failing water pump, which inexplicably started working again, so he put off the job for another day. I suspect that the pump was plotting for rougher weather, to fail again.
The crew hemmed and hawed about swimming to the nearby black sand beach, something not recommended according to the cruiser's guide, Noonsite. Victor rationalized that bull sharks are afraid of flashing lights and lobster hunting is a bloodless sport, unlikely to attract predators. No one seemed convinced.
A long boat full of a dozen NiVans passed close to us, waving a greeting as they went past. We expected them to stop and "trade" with us, but they were on a direct mission to the shoreline. Victor was hopeful that they were hunting lobsters. However, no one got in the water, so the next theory bantered around was that they were hunting bats, as it was dusk. We finally agreed that they were hunting coconut crabs, as we watched their lanterns move down the shoreline. Victor waited until NiVans had left the area, around 8 pm, then slipped into the water, and was halfway to shore before we even noticed he was gone. The rest of us are in awe of his madness.
Victor returned after the rest of the crew had gone to bed, so he had to wait until morning to share his successes, two small, but legal lobsters and one giant crab.
That morning we finally got off the cruise ship and started real fishing.
First up, Elmo lands a small sailfish, which doesn't stay around long enough for a photo. After that, it was doggie after doggie, piled up with more doggies, with a few barracudas thrown in to disappoint. We towed smaller lures with light gauge double rigs off the outriggers, but the real action was the Talicas running Rapalas.
We had a lot of firsts that day, including our first treble hook puncture ever on NR. All the money was on Elmo to get the first real injury, but it was Victor who took the hit. He leadered a doggie into the pod, and while trying to remove the hooks, the fish thrashed around. Victor started screaming, one of the trebles had embedded halfway up his middle finger. After some fluffing around to find the correct pair of split-ring pliers to remove the extra hooks, Garry removed the hook, using the fishing line technique while Elmo provided anesthesia in the form of Johnny Walker. When I sent Elmo on a hunt for the first-aid kit, he replied, "Where is it?", I replied, "In the saloon drawer, next to the batteries.", which Elmo took to mean the house batteries, not the AAAs. I looked into the saloon to see what was taking him so long, to see that he'd ripped apart the entire settee, muttering under his breath, "Why would anyone put the first aid kit next to the batteries?" I'm still chuckling about that one.
We moved to the reef outside Ureparapara, aka PacMan Island, where we had a triple strike on yellowfin tuna, boating two, then released a couple of more doggies, and a couple of rainbow runners. One of the releases was pretty comical, when Dave pushed the doggie off the duckboard back into the sea, Elmo's hook, still dangling the water, jagged the fish and he had to reel it in again! We finished out the afternoon with Elmo fighting a large oceanic white-tip shark for a good 20 minutes, releasing it without retrieving the Rapala.
We heading into Diver's Bay for the night. We've visited Ureparara three times before, the last time in 2018, and we are looking forward to returning with plenty of fish to share with the village. Be sure to check back in a couple of weeks to hear what happens next.
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We'd love to hear your comments below!
As always a good read Lori, you’re a natural.
Surely the blokes can ‘man up’ and discretely poop in a bucket outside? This would leave the Powder Room free for your use only.
Yes, also nice to see the fish coming on now the more North you are.
Melbourne is cold and bleak and 3/4 the way through its AFL Footy season. This means regardless of what happens around the rest of the Globe, most Peons here don’t care as long as their Footy team is performing well.
Cheers,
Tight lines and plentiful of Detol on those cut fingers.
Greg.