Day 138, Year 2: Arrival in Havannah Harbor
Date: Sunday, September 9, 2007
Weather: Mostly Overcast and No Wind
Latitude: 17 degrees 33.156 minutes
Longitude: 168 degrees 16.928 minutes
Location: Sema (Esema) Bay Anchorage, Havannah Harbor, Efate

We arrived in Havannah Harbor this morning at 8 AM after an uneventful overnight passage. We motored all the way as there was virtually no wind. But on a passage south it is much better to have no wind than the normal south or southeast winds on the nose. Port Havannah is on the mainland of Efate Island and there are a number of islands that form an exterior barrier. We are in the water between the mainland and the islands which is referred to as Havannah Harbor. The little bay we are in is
almost like a pond with the low winds we are experiencing and huge sea turtles abound here. People who have been here for a few days say they have seen a number of dugongs as well, so maybe we will we finally see these elusive critters.

We invited Bob and Dianna of White Swan, Joe and Cindy of Maggie Drum, and Paul and Marie of Ranger over for a taco dinner tonight. The soft and hard taco shells traveled here from New Zealand with us. They are not available here, so it was a treat to have Mexican out here in the Pacific. You can get gringo Mexican at restaurants in most major cities, but it was more fun having them onboard with friends. White Swan and Maggie Drum will be leaving tomorrow and heading north. We will probably
stay in this anchorage one more day and then move to one of the other anchorages on the outside of the “pond” where the snorkeling is better. From there we will head back to Port Vila to get ready for our passage south to New Caledonia.

Before dinner, we shared our pictures and a few videos from the festival we attended in Ambrym with White Swan and Maggie Drum. Every time I look at those pictures I am just amazed that I was there. It looks much more like something you read about in National Geographic, not something you actually get to experience. We all talked about where to from here. Joe and Cindy on Maggie Drum are having some the same struggles as we are with financing this circumnavigation. They are still trying to decide
whether or not they can continue or just need to turn around and head back to Hawaii and the West Coast of the US. That is home for them. Ranger and White Swan are both hoping to sell their boats in Australia and head home to start new adventures. We are going on, but Joe threw a kink in our plans today with some news he got while in Port Vila. We are planning on going from Australia through Indonesia with the Sail Indonesia Rally beginning next July. Joe says the Indonesian government just
resurrected an old law that requires boats to pay somewhere between 15 and 50 per cent of the value of the boat as an entry fee. Whoa! There’s no way we can do that, so we’ll have to watch the news and see what happens with this new law. If it sticks, we will have to skip Indonesia and go straight from Australia to the Indian Ocean. That will make the trip shorter for us, but we were so looking forward to seeing those orangutans in Borneo, so we won’t give up yet.