Blackwattle's Final Circumnavigation Leg

by Nancy Knudsen on 20 Oct 2007 Sail-World's Cruising Editor Nancy Knudsen and her husband Ted Nobbs on their yacht Blackwattle, are in Vanuatu, about to join the Port2Port Rally on the last leg of their five year circumnavigation. While joining other Rally participants in farewell functions, and watching the weather, Nancy reflects on the ending of their journey. A picture story of Efate follows.

Five years. Five years. It's coming to an end, life as we have known it for five years. The images jumble in my head, the people, the colours, the smells, crowding around me as I go to sleep every night. For five years we have roamed from country to country, culture to culture, mostly 'third world' - that pejorative term which implies inferiority.

But now we know, in lots of ways, they are still the more fortunate ones.

Here in the Pacific, when we see these 'poor' people, in their simple huts with million dollar views, surrounded by a drowning of frangipani, hibiscus, tropical crotons and coconut palms, kids wandering freely on grassy clearings, old men sitting watching the sunset over the water, we wonder just what is so superior about a western life style.

As I drift in that half state between waking and sleeping, I hear again back through the years the strange languages, different accents, see the smiles, feel the warmth, see again the small gifts, shyly offered. So many cultures...so much to regret losing - roosters crowing across the hills in the morning, sandy streets, small coloured fish around the boat, the sunrises and sunsets, ours alone across the whole bowl of the sky.

And I see myself again, sailing across forever waters, calm, becalmed, boisterous, rough, the waves sometimes glinting mercilessly as the tormented seas bash blindly at us. Or else the waters are kindly, swaying with the boat, nursing it along like a mother. Commonplace are the flying fish, the phosphorescence, the falling stars, the rainbows. And then the squalls, creeping up at night, bursting at us as we scurry along with shortened sails. From every anchorage, there's always the romance of the view out to the ocean – always another sea is calling to be sailed. We can see it, beckoning through the heads, past the calm of the anchorage, with promises of a new dawning, a different sea, a new culture.

We are in Vanuatu, and about to commence our last leg of our circumnavigation. The desire to see family and friends is luring us, making us impatient to be gone. We'll arrive in Bundaberg in Queensland, having crossed our outbound path, thereby completing our circumnavigation. Of course we won't be home – our journey will not be complete until we have sailed past the white lighthouse on Barrenjoey Headland into Blackwattle's home, Pittwater in Sydney.

But on arrival in Australia we will have swapped our ever changing lifestyle for familiar shores, familiar customs. No more will we have to learn a new way, tread carefully, dress and behave appropriately. No more will we find new customs to observe and follow. There'll be no more lazy fruit and vegetable markets full of odd and wonderful growing things, no more new indigenous artistry to discover, no new tales to listen to, no more strange and new wisdom to hear from old wrinkled lips.

'Eat few eggs. An egg feeds only one person. If you allow the egg to hatch, one day it will feed four people.'

During the daylight hours, walking the streets of Port Vila, loving the tropical warmth, the polyglot confusion of the town, jagged footpaths, or no footpath, dusty edges, throngs of Melanesian inhabitants in their rich colourful clothes, I am already sad, conscious that I am about to lose this naturalness along with the changing way of life.

Here around me the most popular dress is the 'Mary' dress – that bright flowing one-size-fits-all garment the missionaries forced on the scantily clad locals. Now it's the tourists here who are scantily clad.

Piles of cut wood for cooking fires are tied in neat bundles and heaped up for sale by the entrance to the market – that great cavern of a roof which houses a wild confusion of stalls, populated with singing laughing or sleeping marketeers and their freshly picked wares - plantain, bananas, pineapples, papaya, tarot, coconuts and many other nameless green vegetables. The women chat and giggle as they wile away the day. There's no plastic bag that comes with your purchase – if you haven't remembered to bring a bag, you can purchase plastic bags – small, 5 cents, a little larger 10 cents, then 20 and 30 cents, at a special plastic bag stall. The bags cost more than the fruits.

My loss is profound. My eyes are filling as I walk through on this most ordinary of mornings. But not ordinary to me. 'I love you' I think, out of the blue. 'I love your naturalness, your utter lack of self consciousness, your lack of competitiveness. I love your simple smiles, without agenda, your proud kindness when I speak to you. I will miss you and all the others from all the countries we have visited, from whom I have learned so much.'

Beyond the market out there on the water, misty in the distance, are fifty boats or more, all heading out in the next few days to be gone before the cyclone season. We've explored Port Vila and further, circumnavigating the island by truck, and now we're provisioning, ready for our last great sail.

But let the pictures tell the story, not of holiday resorts, but of the real Vanuatu that, as cruising sailors, we have found on this visit.