"Bifo yu go long solwater"

We have cleared out with Customs, Port Control and Immigration this morning - a bureaucratic process involving three offices (one of them twice) and an hour and a half of our time. We managed to keep patient and smiley faces on for all of it, apart from when we had to hand over 15,500vt (about £106) for harbour dues; the cost is based on the total amount of time spent in Vanuatu and we are not sure what we were paying for really. In most countries this cost covers the maintenance of the navigational buoys and lights and the emergency rescue services but Vanuatu doesn't seem to run to such luxuries!

Dianne outside the Customs office at the main wharf. The whole place is a building site as there is a big, Chinese-funded, extension to the port being built. It'll mean more cruise ships arriving here 

 While we were watching the Port Control chap make up our bill, we saw a safety poster, written in Bislama, so we thought we'd better double check our preparations against it, befo we go long solwater.

• Jekem weta fokas - the weather forecast looks pretty good for our trip, 15-20 knots SE wind, maybe a little more tomorrow
• Mek sua se enjin blong yu i wok gud - yes the engine works good
• Mek sua se ol sefti ekwipmen i stap long bot - all the safety equipment is in the boat

So, we're good to go, Just pleased we don't need the services of the harbour pilot:

Australia here we come! Very sad to be leaving Vanuatu, though.We were keen to use up all our vatu change so went into the LCM supermarket and picked up a few items. At the checkout we discovered that we'd mis-calculated and were short by 10 vatu (about 7 pence) and would have to return a tin of pate. The spirit of the locals was summed up when a man in the queue behind us, handed us the 10 vatu. 

We'll try to update the blog and our YIT report yit.nz/yacht/maunieofardwall each day.