Spent a couple of beautiful days anchored in this spot behind a reef in the Maskelyne Islands.

We’ve decided to head to Australia from here. Twenty years ago Australia was a welcoming place. Show up, get a six-month visa on the spot, and get it extended pretty much all you like. Those days are behind them, apparently. These days you can have three months and then you need to leave. Wanting to spend more time there we applied for a longer term tourist visa online. For an application fee of about $120 they will consider you. But that fee is just the beginning. You also need to submit a chest x-ray and blood sample. Seriously. I had read that, but didn’t think they could be serious. They were. We were notified we’d need to complete those before they’d look at our applications. There was a recognized clinic back in Port Vila, apparently, that could do the tests for us.

So, back we went. After the bonfire on the beach, we raised the anchor and headed back overnight to Port Vila. In the morning this group of dolphins joined us briefly. Notice the babies? They are the best.

Well, as long as we’re back in town. Seventy cents each, and so hot I was snapping my fingers after picking them up.

And, well, I couldn’t very well walk right past the butcher.

As long as we were back in town, it was time to spring our autopilot part free from the DHL office. Our part had arrived a week earlier, when we were in town, but we were told it was going to take Customs three days to release it. We were leaving, so we decided we’d pick it up another time. Now that we were here again, we weren’t leaving without it.

The lady at DHL that was helping me was super nice, and I could tell she really did want to get me that box, but that Customs just didn’t care one bit. First she had assured me it would be available on Tuesday. I went in, and no, it wasn’t. She asked me to email again Wednesday morning. “It’s been released! Come at 3 pm.”

We showed up at 2, hoping it would be ready early. It wasn’t, so we went across the street and had lunch and shot some darts. At 3 it still wasn’t ready.

The family went back to the boat and I parked myself in the office to wait. While sitting there I pondered the price of knock-off band-aids and used shipping containers. At 4:55 she told me, “You will leave here with your package today.” At 5:00 DHL and Customs were both closed. At 5:15 she told me she was sorry. Apparently, all Customs had to do, at any point during the day, was come sign a piece of paper.

We had our chest x-rays and bloodwork done (surprise, no tuberculosis!) at a brand new clinic run by a couple of French doctors who knew exactly what we needed and were plugged directly into Australia’s system. For about $600 we were given the tests we needed and all the paperwork was submitted. Call me cynical, but I’m guessing this particular clinic didn’t exist here before Australia’s visa requirements, and wouldn’t exist any longer if Australia cancelled the requirement. There were four such clinics in Port Vila, and none anywhere else in the country.

The next morning DHL emailed that our package was really free. For real this time. I picked it up and we set off north again. The autopilot had been working the past few days, so I didn’t bother installing the new rudder sensor. Yet.

We were flying along nicely when the line attaching the clew chafed through. Fortunately, it was within reach, and I was able to get a line on it and bring it back in. A quick repair to the line and we were back in business without even dropping the sail.

Sunset ahead of an uneventful overnight sail.

Port Sandwich. A deep well-protected bay where the only thing we knew ahead of time was that there were reports of fresh bread being baked somewhere nearby.

It was a couple miles from the anchorage to the main village, and it was a lovely walk. All along the way we were greeted by the adults, handed fresh Pamplemousse, and followed by children. At one point we heard loud squealing, men yelling, and dogs barking. Seconds later our group was split in two as a pig screamed across the road between us. In hot pursuit were a handful of men with spears and machetes and a couple dozen dogs. The squealing didn’t last long after that.

Huge banyan trees are everywhere in Vanuatu.

Another perfectly calm starlit night.