The Plans, They Are A-Changin'...

...or, Curses! Foiled again!!

Q: Why are we under way with the instruments covered up?
A: Because they aren't working

As would be expected, things weren't always idyllic; weather prevented us from doing some activities we'd looked forward to, and delays meant we had to skip some planned destinations in Fiji. In addition, we had a major equipment failure: our chartplotter--fundamentally a navigation computer--stopped working. Art can usually fix anything, but the unit is several years old and nothing he tried brought it to life. Though we have two backup systems--a laptop program and a hand-held GPS--that was our primary system and by far the safest. Ironic that it would fail in a remote place in the Lau Group--no internet, no phone--in reef-filled Fiji! Not that sailors didn't navigate successfully long before the advent of this technology, but they didn't generally choose to come to places like this, either; and the unit is also our screen to display radar and depth readings.

I won't bore you with all the contortions we went through to get a replacement, though we do want to publicly thank my sister Cheryl in Kansas and our friends Mary & Dave in New Zealand, each of whom spent a great deal of time trying to work directly with marine and shipping companies when we were unable to do so.

But nothing in Boat World is simple, especially not getting parts into a foreign country. Some cruisers in Vuda Marina had been waiting 2 weeks for a part that should have arrived in 2 days, but that was nothing; others had been waiting 2 months for a part they expected to receive in 2 weeks.

Ironically, as soon as the chartplotter was glowing again, the wind died. We couldn't drive 500 miles to our next destination, so we lost another week waiting for the trade winds to resume. A month in Vanuatu is now pared down to no more than 2 weeks; disappointing, but flexibility is part of the game. Obstacles are part of cruising life, and we all learn to be imaginative about creating new plans. Sailing itineraries are, as the saying goes, "written in sand at low tide".

Cruising is not cruising. Translation: being a vagabond is not the laid-back lifestyle it can appear to be. Discomforts, frustrations and anxieties accumulate--then there are times of such exhilaration that the downsides get swept away. So we're finally off to Vanuatu, where we will hike up a volcano--and hope not to get swept away!