Nearing Australia!

Tonga was great but sad too. Many of the boats we crossed the Pacific with have strayed to visit separate islands and we've not seen them for ages but they all came together at Tonga to gather for the leg to New Zealand. So there were lots of opportunities for get togethers and an amount of partying. Then of course we were going on to Oz and most of them to NZ so it was very sad too. Anyway there was another excuse for a leaving party. This was rolled into Sophie's 15th Birthday for which we yachties took over the dance floor of a hotel that looks out over the beach. It was a lot of fun and the Tongan islands are rightly named the Friendly Islands.

Tonga to Fiji was the next leg and we got to Suva, the capital of Fiji which is known as Soggy Suva as it is on the rainy side of the islands. As a result we spent a lot of time keeping dry which we managed by shopping for whatever we needed for the yacht as well as food. There is a large Asian influence in Fiji which makes the markets and shops very dynamic as you may imagine. The girls also met some other youngsters and even a Cinema! (In English - a rare treat!)

We sat out some pretty dismal weather until we got a fair wind for Vanuatu where they were expecting a telephone system we have carried all the way from Plymouth. - donated by the Friends of Vanuatu. As a result we were taken into the community there and driven around the island by new friends Roger and Judy Craddock who took us to drinks with the British High Commissioner. We also sorted out our visas to get into Australia (So now we are all set for the last leg)

The capital of Vanuatu (Port Vila) was our base then for two weeks while we explored the island and some nearby sailing. We took our Vanuatu friends out for a couple of day sails and were entertained again by the High Commission to a dinner where the cabaret was provided by a British Magician who had won some major awards with 2 weeks in Vanuatu as the prize, He was incredible, doing close up magic at the table! Truly staggering stuff. Before I hurry on from Vanuatu I should tell you that the islands were jointly ruled by the French and the Brits for several decades prior to independence in 1980 odd. It was such a "fair" division of control that there were British style Bobbies and French Gendarmes roaming the streets and you could even elect which to be arrested by!!!

Since then the islands have had their own government and - in an attempt to manage the 140 languages spoken by the 200,00 inhabitants - they have developed their own language "Bislama" which is an incredible formalisation of Pidgin and as such has developed a life of its own and sounds like a completely new and unintelligible language.

Now on Halloween we have left Port Vila and left for Oz. We covered some 500 miles and stopped at Chesterfield Reef - a barely awash sand bar and coral island where turtles lay there eggs and Boobies and Noddies (NO they are birds!!) nest and rear their young.

We were astonished to find 12 cruising boats anchored at the reef - a place we had not even heard of until we got to Vanuatu - talk about well kept secrets so last night we spent a couple of hours sitting quietly on the beach and were rewarded by seeing several HUGE loggerhead turtles struggle out of the sea and up the beach to dig an equally huge hole in the sand to lay there eggs. It was like being part of a David Attenborough film, sitting on a tiny reef 500 miles from land and watching the moon rise.

We will be off about the middle of next week and hope to reach Oz (Bundeberg) in time for Sally's birthday on the 12th November. Research Machines and Sight Savers have arranged for TV to cover our arrival - bringing us full circle from when we left UK in August last year.

On that note I would like to thank RM again for their help with the girls schooling and especially for the help they gave Sight Savers by supplying the aid equipment for our trip up the Gambia ( a year ago this week.)

It would be wrong not to say an equally big thank you to Inmarsat for their invaluable mini-M and the e-mail that has allowed us; Agfa for the incredibly versatile digital cameras ( I have literally hundreds of pictures to sort through as soon as we get to Australia); ARIS for posting the text and photos to the Website. On the sailing side we must thank Navico for their instrumentation - and particularly the autopilot (The hardest working member of the crew with over 3000 hours of almost non-stop operation.); Henri Lloyd and their wet-weather gear. We didn't expect to need these as much as we have and believe me, when the rain does arrive in the tropics it is usually accompanied by titanic lightening storms. Finally the Honda engined Zodiac whose super-lightweight inflatable floor has been the envy of everyone as the girls carry the dinghy up the beach one handed!

Zodiac also provided the life raft but we hope we won't need to see the inside of that yet!

Loquax has added 14000 to the 12000 she did last time. She desperately needs hauling out and a lick of paint. But apart from that (and the fact that the main sail and nearly every rope, halyard or sheet is worn out) She is ready to do it all over again.

Hope you all had a SCARY Halloween