LTY UPDATE: Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Port Resolution, Tanna island, Vanuatu
LTY time: 16:15 (Vanuatu time = UTC +11)
Location: Port Resolution, Tanna island, Vanuatu
Position: 19 31.483 S, 169 29.800 E (you can cut & past this into Google Earth to see on map)
Wind: 5-10 knots SE (inside the bay)
Seas/Swell: 1ft @ 6 seconds SE (coming from)
Air temp: 77 F 25C
Sea temp: 84.2 F 29 C
Barometer: 1021mm
FALLING SKIES?
Just ash really, but certainly lots of it the past 24 hours. Yesterday afternoon I heard Mount Yasur give off a big explosion and that along with a wind change has had a steady rain of ash falling on the decks and everything outside. The trouble with having these nice shiny white new decks is that you see every speck of dirt! I’ve swabbed the decks down with seawater twice today but will just leave it till after I leave here to get the rest of it off. It’s interesting in that you can’t see the ash and it has been overcast and rainy since yesterday afternoon but each time you go out on deck there is a larger accumulation of the very black dust from the fallout. Nothing to be alarmed about and it washes off reasonably easy with a stiff brush and small price to pay for the experience of being here and being able to stand on the edge of that volcanic cone and watch Mother Earth do her thing.
One of THE most wonderful things about this lifestyle overall is the direct connection I am afforded with these forces of nature. It borders on being spiritual at times. Standing on the edge of that cone, feeling the ground thrum with the eruptions and then reverberate with the thud of each lava “bomb” hitting the ground around you, smelling the fumes and watching the magical firework display as the lava spewed every upward before falling back to earth was yet another of these visceral experiences for me that creates such a direct connection with this planet and the cosmos overall. I’ve become more and more enraptured and intrigued by physics and cosmology over the past few years and these kinds of experiences only serve to reinforce the very real and direct physical connections I’m learning we have with the cosmos we are a part of.
As I wrote last year, one of the most amazing things I’ve learned is how the very molecules and atoms which make up our body were created by the intense heat and energy in the explosion of high mass supernova stars and so in that sense we are quite literally all made of stardust! Therefore as astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson nicely put it “We are connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That is kinda cool! That makes me smile and feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.” Having the kinds of experiences I seem to regularly have out here sailing the world makes me feel SO much a part of this grand universe, however small. So I will gladly clean my decks of volcanic ash in preparation for heading out for the next leg of this grand adventure.
As you may have guessed I did not sail north today. Woke up at first light as usual to find that it was drizzly and grey and why would I chose to sail in that when I can enjoy a day to rest and relax before a sunny day dawns for more adventure and action? Of course there is also a very pragmatic reason for being a sunshine sailor and that is that I depend largely upon visual navigation in these coral invested waters. As wonderful as all my digital technology of Radar, chart plotters and satellite photos is, there is still no substitute for what I can see with my own two eyes as I come into the next new anchorage and therefore I’m quite practically dependent upon having the light of the sun high overhead to light my way foreword. So it has been a wonderful day spent doing a few boat jobs and a lot of reading and we’ll see what the weather brings tomorrow and head north to Erromango when the sun is back.
I’ll be back to post an update when that happens and let you know a bit more about the next great anchorage I’m fortunate enough to experience.
Wayne
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