Today we headed north back up to Tanna Island, this time going up the west coast. The only real place to anchor is in front of the White Grass Resort. This is just up from the airstrip where Phil departed from. We passed the only town on the island called Lenekal, which didn’t have any good write ups, but is the main customs office for the island. We paid for the customs guys to drive over to Port Resolution where we checked in. We had a great sail up with nice constant winds getting up to the low 20’s in between the islands, so we made good progress.
We arrived around three in good light as there is a lot of reef about. No other boats anchored here, which is great to have the pick of the anchorage. We needed to get in close enough to be in shallow water but keeping well away of the reef. We got the anchor down in about 15m of water, Rowan went to swim over it, the water was so clear he could see the anchor was well dug into a large sandy area. We could relax. We phoned into the resort and they were happy for us to come ashore for dinner.
We needed to leave well before dark as it looked rather tricky getting through the reef. The resort has a long walkway over the reef where we planned to tie onto. It was high tide and really quite bouncy getting to the end of the jetty and jumping off. We then could not find anywhere suitable for JeldiJeldi to tie onto with out getting bashed to pieces. Thankfully Charlie, a local guy, ambled down the walkway and said we should tie on with a stern line, and helped us get secure. Rowan had to tie the front onto a very slippery manky old rope, luckily he had learnt online how to do a fancy knot (a rolling hitch) that did the trick splendidly. Charlie and I managed with the stern line to get JeldiJeldi back towards the jetty, Rowan had to do a perilous jump to join us. Really quite hairy as JedliJeldi bucked around on the high tide waves that were lapping over the reef. We deserved a good sunset drink after that. Charlie was very helpful and works at the resort, he told us he watched us anchor, and saw a huge pod of dolphins chasing us, they were doing big jumps out the water. Goodness knows how we missed them, most probably we were too anxiously making sure we were keeping well away from the reef! So sad we missed them.
The resort was empty, all their guests were visiting the Yasur volcano, and arriving back later. We are only the third yacht visiting this month, not many people come this way. It was a magnificent sunset, but we decided to gobble our food down and not hang about too long as we thought getting back onto JeldiJeldi might be quite difficult. We opted for just a main course, I had the most delicious tuna steak with a papaya and basil salsa, on a bed of roasted veg, mainly aubergine. Rowan had a very good beef curry. Charlie helped us get back onto JeldiJeldi, it turned out to be much easier as the tide had dropped significantly and the water was a lot calmer. We also discovered Charlie was the chef! Luckily we could genuinely rave about his food.
We were safely back on board by 7:30pm, another early night for us!
Leaving the rainy island Aneityum
Big breaking waves on the reef we had to navigate past
Dramatic lush scenery
Showing our progress from Aneityum to White Grass resort
Land of rainbows
The reef around the resort with the two blue holes
White Grass resort, we enquired after the name and apparently from the air it looks like there is white grass growing
Heading in for supper
PolePole sitting happily away from the reef
Gorgeous sunset while we dock JeldiJeldi
Tying JeldiJeldi up without getting her bashed up was a real challenge
We kept a beady eye out for poor JeldiJeldi being thrown around by the high tide waves
PolePole all on her own. The resort had a beautiful lush garden, and this magnificently huge clam shell
Twilight
Real after glow of the sunset
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