Vila to Brisbane and back again- Part 2

As aforementioned, between children, grandchildren and packing our house, meeting with real estate agents, we were crazy busy in Australia. Particularly the last three days as our deadline loomed, we were increasingly frantic and got less and less sleep. Our last night we went up to have dinner at Lauren and Blakes and say good bye to our precious grandbabies. We then returned home and worked through until 4am. What ever we hadn’t done to make the house ready for rental, the real estate agent was going to have to organise.

As an aside, we personally feel real estate is ridiculously high so when we were discussing what rate to go with, we said to the agent we didn’t want to go top dollar. We’d rather get a family who would be happy and want to look after the place. We were also committed to not putting up the rent over the duration. I still feel the rate is exorbitant but we had a family on the first day it was on the market. The estate agents couldn’t quite work out what to make of us, and said it was the first time they had had a conversation like this. Other people want to charge top dollar and put up their rates by large amounts, while we were saying no we want to be reasonable and not screw people for every dollar they have. A very interesting social problem we are facing.

Anyway we had time to go to our hotel, have a shower, then on to the airport. Straight away we ascertained there was a problem. Apparently Port Vila airport had very low cloud and massive amounts of rain the day before. The people on that flight from Sydney had been diverted to Espiritu Santo, an Island of Vanuatu North of Vila. They had spent all day on the tarmac, waiting for a weather window to land, which had never eventuated. Unable to disembark at this location, the flight had returned to Brisbane. It must have been very frustrating for the people who were actually destined for there, because it is a popular stop. Anyway these people were flown back the next day, and since Air Vanuatu still only have one plane, our flight was then delayed as a follow on.

We were given a $20 voucher to buy breakfast while we waited for hotel checkout time, then they put us in a hotel for the day in the hope that we would try again for a take off at 2200. With next to no sleep in the previous 72 hours we were exhausted.

Eventually we were all allocated hotels and coaches were organised to take us to our designated locations and we were placed at Voco Hotel in the city. We had kindly been given another $25 voucher each for lunch and since by this stage Dean and I were nearly asleep on our feet we thought we’d order room service then fall into bed and sleep until we needed to return to the airport.
We went to our room, I opened the door. Oh no, someone was in our room already. Luckily it was a person from our flight who had literally walked in with their bags moments before so there was nothing compromising to see! We hastily withdrew, got our new room and tried to stick to our plan. Neither of us are total tech dweebs, but do you think we could bring the menu up on the TV or make the phone work to ring room service? So we googled their menu on our phone and Dean physically walked downstairs to place our order!

The coach was returning to pick us up at 1830 and it had been lovely to get that rest in. It was much more than I expected for a delayed flight. Unfortunately our adventure was not over. We checked in and got some dinner and had a drink. Here I am, bags under my eyes, with what I feel was a well deserved Margarita (that beer in the picture is not mine!). But when we made our way to the departure lounge, boarding time came and went. Unable to function I curled up on a seat and slept but Dean went to check out what was going on. Apparently there was a mechanical problem loading luggage.

There were a few unhappy people but most were really patient, outwardly anyway. What kept my frustrations at bay was that old adage “there is always someone else worse off”. We had the opportunity to get to know each other during the long waits and when we had been in one of our many lines there were a family in front of me with two very young children, speaking a language I didn’t recognise. I asked the man if they were on holiday. Oh my goodness how wrong my assumption was. This lovely family were Russian. When the war started they packed a single suitcase, locked their front door and left. That small suitcase they had contained their worldly possessions. If they were Ukranian they would be treated as refugees, but as Russians, who didn’t want to be a part of killing their own relatives who live in the Ukraine, they are homeless. They can only stay in Australia for the duration of their visa so they were leaving for a few days before coming back on a new visa. He was amazingly frank and we had a great talk about their perspective and the lead up to the invasion but there was not a complaint from them. There is always someone worse off. I can’t get that family out of my head and still think of them every day. I hope they will be okay. I feel there will be no winners in this war.

We finally arrived back in Vila 3am local time, 16 hours late. We had notified the boatyard so they had left our boat keys out for us, and the security guard was given the okay to let us in. We were under the pump, we had to get our boat back in the water today (Wednesday), otherwise we wouldn’t have another opportunity until next Monday due to the high tide being too late in the day.
Dean took me to the shower to freshen up. I can rough it to a certain extent, but no I would not be able to stay here a week, this was horrible. I opted out of the shower, hesitantly used the toilet through lack of choice and we crashed for a couple of hours before getting up to do the jobs we needed to do before the boat went in. Our deadline was 1300 for the men to start preparing the boat.

Our prop had been bent slightly from when we had been stuck on the FAD so Dean had got one of the men to build him a “tool” to straighten it. He had planned to do the work all day Tuesday but of course with the delay we had lost that time. Billy who had made the tool helped with the process thankfully, because I wasn’t strong enough to rachet the straps and tighten bolts etc Unfortunately Billy also had the “flu”. No no not Covid, just the flu. Haha, great. We had just had our Covid booster so our immunity was never going to be better. We both later got sore throats and a runny nose but that was it.

Once the jobs were completed I could not even stand up straight anymore. My feet had swelled up like balloons before we had even boarded the plane and were really sore which was very weird, because I have never had swollen feet before in my life. My head was woozy and I generally felt unwell, so I thought I’d lie down for a while and get up when the boat was being launched. And that was basically the last thing I remember clearly until I heard the engine start and Dean was motoring us to our mooring.

Apparently while I slept, there were men crawling all over the boat tying it down, attaching it to the cradle. Oh I really hope they didn’t look down through the hatch and see me spread eagled on the bed! I am so glad I don’t have to see those men again. A tractor dragged it down to the water over the bumpy ground where it was on a steep angle being lowered in the water (luckily for my feet I was legs up).

As evidenced by the photos Dean took men were diving along side. Below is a photo of Billy with his bits of wood he was jamming the boat up with. There was then not much activity as the boat was in place and the tide had to come in to finish refloating it.

Briefly I remember Dean rousing me to make sure I was alive and checking my blood pressure to make sure nothing serious was going on, and made me drink some electrolytes. He decided I was suffering from exhaustion and let me sleep.

After a day of rest we started putting the boat back together. I was expecting the boat to be mouldy inside so it was fabulous that it wasn’t. What I wasn’t expecting was to have an ant infestation. I shouldn’t have been surprised though, parked up against the trees and with all of that rain, those ants wanted somewhere dry. And do you know what, you can’t buy ant baits, ant poison or even borax to make your own ant poison over here. So we have been spraying and we set off an insect bomb. That still hasn’t got all of them so we are hunting them down one by one until there are none left. We are hoping they hadn’t moved their Queen in and they were only sending out worker ants.

The monsoon is definitely establishing itself and we get rain most days, and in between it is incredibly humid. I reprovisioned, we have put the sails back up (hard work), we have been reissued our inter-island cruising permit for Vanuatu and we have got our fancy pants Vessel Entry Clearance certificate issued by The Division of Immigration & Passport Services so we can enter Federated States of Micronesia. I now just want to be on our way so we can be north of the cyclone zone sooner than later.