In the early hours of yesterday morning we went through the rather unpleasant process of taking down the Code 0 and setting the spinnaker while nursing throbbing seasickness headaches.

With a front expected to move through later on Saturday (or so the forecasts suggested), we wanted to get to Tanna sooner rather than later and needed to keep the boat moving. Unfortunately, the wind had other plans. It faded much earlier than expected and eventually dropped to the point where the big red kite simply refused to stay full.

By late afternoon we admitted defeat, pulled down the spinnaker, fired up the iron sails and since then we’ve been happily converting diesel into apparent wind with the genoa helping out.

Ironically, the latest forecasts now suggest that the front may arrive later and weaker than expected, making our rush to Tanna somewhat unnecessary. On the bright side, the headaches have finally disappeared, which has made life on board infinitely more enjoyable.

Just like 13 years ago, this relatively short passage to Tanna has turned out to be one of the tougher ones. I vividly remember suffering through the worst seasickness of our entire trip back then. We blamed the confused seas—a nasty swell rolling up from New Zealand on top of the local wind waves. Whatever it is, there’s something about the wave frequency here that gets right into my bones. Thankfully, that’s all behind me now.

Tomorrow should see us arriving at one of my favourite places anywhere in the world: Port Resolution on Tanna.

This time we’re not arriving empty-handed either. We answered a request in a cruising WhatsApp group, picked up a guitar in Fiji, and are now delivering it to one of the locals. It’s nice to know that someone is actually looking forward to our arrival!

I’m incredibly curious to see how much this special little place has changed over the last 13 years… if at all.