Commodore
July 6, 2025

Monday 7 July – preparing to go to the Solomon islands

We had arranged to pick Laura and Ian up at 8am to take them over to Luganville town, they are checking out of Vanuatu today, heading for PNG. It was also our last chance of provisioning before heading to the Solomon Islands. Most importantly Rowan had to try and get a new phone. We headed across with our 5 jerry cans to top up with diesel, there is no fuel dock here, we have to go to a petrol station in town to fill the cans and take them back in the dinghy. This is also our last chance for fuel in a while. We will be checking into the Solomon Islands at a remote southern island and we are not sure where we will next get fuel.

Laura and Ian took over 2 hours to check out, customs and immigration were in separate buildings, and nothing online, so all their forms had to be filled out again on paper. They finally got done. Luckily Ian asked if we had paid our Ports and Harbour fees, which of course we had not done, a charge that can only be done in Port Vila and Luganville, the officially stamped form has to be shown at check out. So Rowan dashed off to the Harbour offices, paid and we now have the paper work to check out. We will go to the next tiny chain of islands called The Banks, where there is an official who can check us out of Vanuatu. This is essential as you can only enter a new country with your departure forms from the previous country.

Amazingly Rowan went to the Vodaphone shop who had assured him when he called on my phone that they had no phones in stock but could order one for him. He was hugely surprised when the assistant said she would check the back office and there she found three brand new Iphone 15s. That was a major success! All Rowan’s banking etc is on his phone, so he is lost without it. He took his old phone to a phone repair shop and left it with the guy who said he would have it dried out by the afternoon. Rowan has also managed to be in touch with Starlink about our broken dish, they have already sent a replacement and said he just had to return it all with a prepaid Fedex voucher. Poor Rowan went to the Fedex office, he thinks the guy was having a serious cava hangover as he was incoherent. He found at the DHL office a very switched on lady who said she would sort it all out and send it to the Fedex office in Port Villa, the guy here she said was useless.

I did the last supermarket shop and then went to the market to pick up fresh fruit and veg. We all met at a cafe for a coffee, the last one we will see in a long time I should think. We had a very loaded dinghy going back with all the full diesel cans and our grocery shopping, plus Laura and Ian with their last provisioning shop. It is about 2kms across the water and was pretty splashy. We dropped Laura and Ian off and within 10 minutes they had their anchor up and were off.

Rowan had to wait until later in the afternoon to see if his phone was fixed and also decided to fill our BBQ gas tanks. So back across the waters he went. Sadly the phone was no repairable, absolutely water saturated. He popped in to see the DHL lady as she could not get the voucher to work, Rowan had in the meantime contacted Starlink to say we were struggling to ship it, they finally said, don’t bother! They have already shipped a new one to Mettingham! So now we have the old one back on board taking up a lot of room. Our little mini is working perfectly, using far less power and the contract a third of the price.

It was too late to move on so we spent another night on the mooring ball. We will head off tomorrow morning.

The market was doing a roaring trade, but sadly no avocados like last time!

A local band was playing at the market, singing about the island. This island is called Espiritu Santo (Holy Ghost), A Portuguese explorer Pedro Fernandes de Queirós was the first European to arrive in Vanuatu, in 1606. He named Espiritu Santo, it is the largest island in Vanuatu.