Indrek Lepson
On our way to New Zealand, we stopped at Esperito Santo Island in New Hebrides to clear customs. New Hebrides at that time was under French and English jurisdiction.
How that came to be, I have no idea. Both countries had consulates there, so Barbara had to go to the British consulate with her passport, and I went to the French with mine. New Hebrides, consisting of many islands, has since chucked the dual governance, and become the independent nation of Vanuatu.
Esperito Santo is the largest of the New Hebrides islands and the seat of the government. It was a fairly modern island for that time (1979) with traffic and shops and restaurants, but on a small scale. I don’t remember all that much anymore, that being over 40 years ago, but what is difficult to forget were the clusters of native men (there were no women) that came out of the bush to look at the way that the white people lived. They were usually in groups of three or four, with their bows and arrows and spears, not posing any threat, more like tourists, and they were 99% naked, their only attire being a penis sheath of woven pandanus grass. They ignored the passersby and vica-versa. Apparently, it was a common occurrence.
I don’t remember if it was a tourist destination then, as it is now, it being a modern bustling city with big hotels.
From there we sailed to Port Vila, where we stayed for about three weeks, made friends with the locals, did some touristing, and took part in a local race, as there were many transient boats there, one was even from Poland.
As with any race, ashore or afloat, we all started at the same time, heading for a distant marker. We were only halfway there when most of the boats had already rounded the marker and were heading back. We turned around, hoping to beat them, but they all passed us and we were the last boat. A rousing good time was had by all.
It is the custom of deep-water sailors to mark each thousand miles passed in some way.
We provisioned the boat with food, water and fuel – she had an engine – and made sure that the boat was made ready for the next segment of our journey.
As we would reach our two-thousand-mile mark somewhere between the New Hebrides and New Zealand, I prepared for that occasion with a special dinner, with steaks – the boat had a small refrigerator with a freezer compartment for perishables – and a bottle of fine French wine to go with this special meal. I also stocked up on sufficient quantities of beer, rum, and wine to last for the rest of the journey. Since Barbara likes white wine, I selected a bottle of above average Sauternes. I remembered that Sauternes was a dry white wine, and the bottle was well-chilled. When we reached the proximity of the 2000-mile mark, a fair storm had brewed up, and to make things more tolerable below, I reefed the sail to a small triangle and a storm jib. We were still heeled over about 30 degrees, but she was a lot calmer with the reduced sail and didn’t pitch and roll as much. Try to imagine this: amid this tempest with huge waves and a cold howling wind, a small, lighted cocoon of comfort bobbing in the dark on the waves.
I propped one side of the table up to be nearly level. Barbara had cooked the steaks on our primitive alcohol stove and what else we had I don’t remember, but probably potatoes and some vegetables since we did have a small fridge.
Dinner was ready, I took one last look around the deck to make sure that everything was shipshape, then went below to enjoy the evening. Andante had a primitive self-steering apparatus, activated by the wind on a vane, that kept the boat on a course relative to the direction of the wind on the vane, not a compass course.
Barbara served the meal, I pulled the cork and poured the wine. We toasted to a successful, adventure-filled journey of 2000 miles, with less than a thousand miles to go.
I took a healthy swig, and my throat clamped shut at the shock. It was a cloyingly sweet, syrupy wine that burned my throat and brought tears to my eyes. I saw a similar look of shock on Barbara’s face. It was horrible. The sink was right across from us, and I emptied our glasses into it, followed by the bottle. Fortunately, I had stocked up on libations, and we had a pleasant dinner.
It was that evening, contented with a fine meal and the pleasant afterglow of the rest of the wine, that we tuned in to the daily marine broadcast, and heard the chilling news to be on the lookout for a missing sailor. I wrote about that in a previous segment.
