Yesterday was a sad morning. My friends left, and with them, their yachts. I can't help feeling emptiness. I always knew that it's better to leave the port first - you don't feel it as much. So, I started working early this morning. I looked at my charts and started planning my next trip with my fingers - Vanuatu; Coconut Islands. I have huge piles of charts which turned out to be useless, since they are not the ones I need. I ordered them in Hawaii before my departure. But, Hawaii is also an island that everything must be shipped to. My maps arrived from Florida and reached me just a day before my departure. So, I couldn't look at them carefully, of course. Well, that was a mistake. But, I must live with it since I was rushing to leave Hawaii due to the weather. So, now I found out that I didn't get two maps and I have a small problem. Someone might say...well, use electronic maps...But I don't want to rely solely on a computer. It needs electricity to operate so it...

September 07, Port Vila Vanuatu I woke up very early this morning. Not only because i have so much to do but also because mosquitoes woke me up. There are so much of them here when we have no wind. I usually have a remedy for that, which you light up and the smell kills the insects, so they stay away. I wonder what else is the remedy poisoning? If the remedy is finished then you have a morning alarm more effective than any alarm clock. Mornings are beautiful. Everyone is asleep; the water in the bay is still before small boats will ruin it. This is an ideal time for coffee and planning for whole day. Under normal circumstances I would say that it is the time for shower, but at the marina, the showers are open from 8am. It is a self-service. You have to go to get a key; the water is warmed by the sun panels, so in the AM you can't count on having hot water. But, that's ok. What could be better than cold shower, right? So I chose option B and jumped straight into...

I got an urinary system infection...I shaved my legs on this occasion and went to the local hospital. A hospital like any other, with visible defects in the equipment for the disabled and with a long queue for a confirmation of payment form. While standing there I was admiring the woman in the counter, who was writing out forms the whole day long. Then, when you finally had the piece of paper, you needed to stand in another, long queue - does it remind you anything? Because I felt like in old days. A mere two hours later I was in the doctor's surgery. No wonder everything went so slowly! The doctor either suffered from anemia or he was influenced by an "island pace of life", since he was moving and speaking very slowly (and what's more, in English hardly anything). I exercised my French, he did some drawing and came to conclusion that if I didn't live under stress I would never be ill. Then he asked me what I planned to do with my pains. Hmm, I thought, why the hell I shaved my...

10.10.07, Wednesday, Coral Sea, weather the same, 0030 UTC : 13 19 S, 157 56 E Still little wind, but I went little more north to get into a sub tropical current which is helping me towards west ( north west). The passage seems to be slow but very pleasant. The sun is shining. The fish is drying. I enjoy the calmness because on the first leg of my trip in fact I did not have any time to get a rest. The weather on the Pacific was difficult for most part, lots of little repairs needed to be done almost every day, everything was damp and I hardly ever got a good sleep. So now finally I get to listen to music to relax not to get over the tiredness; finally I have the time to think over things which were waiting long time for me to have time to think them through; at last I have time to read some books - some of them were waiting years for me to do it. I think I took a whole library with me by plane from Poland about solo sailors ... because it is a different to read their...

Friday, 1085 Nm to go, 230 Nm from Port Villa wind 10 knots, clouds 50 procent, waves small S 16 12, E 164 37 1200 zulu, course 290. Saying for today: Be brave. Even if you are not. Pretend to be. No one can tell the difference. They say it takes about 20 minutes from seeing a ship on the horizon until you meet if u both are on a collision course. That's what more experienced sailor says so because I'm a good girl I wake up very often during the night to look around. Tonight I passed a big cruising ship, or rather he passed my stern not far away from me. I could see his bright lights from far away already but just in case I spoke to him on radio. I checked if he can read me on his radar - he could. That's good. My radar reflector works. Good mounting Teoni! In the morning I heard something weird. The main sail went off my little plate I have on my mast to slide the sail on. I needed to undo 3 screws and put it back in. Thats no problem unless u drop the screw and those...

Wednesday, 3rd of October, 2007 wind 15 knots, some sun so the batteries are being charged, S 17 16, E 166 10. 11 00 UTC, 125 Nm from Vanuatu The wind is good, maybe 15 knots. Sea is a little rolly as it comes just from my stern. 1200 Nm to go. I caught a fish today. A tuna I believe and only good to make a mess. All the cockpit was red and sticky. Not much meat was left when I finished gutting the fish out as my knife was not sharp neither am I good at doing so. When I was trying to gather water over the side of the boat to wash the place of the murder a big wave threw me on the tiller. I knocked the autopilot out and almost jibed. That's not good. I got few bruises, got wet from some waves, inside of the boat everything was upside down cause of this short change of course and on the end when packing the red, yet warm fish meat into a  Ziploc it was simply too much for me and I vomited. Now that I'm done many things smell like fish and it went under my nails and...

I am ready to go. I'm leaving tomorrow from Vanuatu for my next leg of the trip. The weather is fairly good, I only need to fuel up, fill up my water tank, buy some fresh fruits and I’m good to go. Now only saying good-byes to everyone, writing the last emails, making the last phone calls. Did I repair everything all right? Is everything going to work? Have I forgotten of anything? My mind is spinning and rushing through many things...although I’m anxious to be on the water again, rushing is the easiest way to make mistakes. So I go through my charts again, checking my computer, my GPS, making sure the batteries are charged up, etc. In the meantime capturing some footage for my video movie for a Polish TV station I asked a stranger who was reading a book next to my boat for help. He didn’t press the recording button all session but as we spoke it turned out his friend read about my trip in a newspaper in California. He asked many things and also asked about my parents. I...

Yecch! I’ve just brought five earwigs onto the yacht. F-i-v-e, yecch, yecch, yecch! And one again, yecch! Those who know me very well would easily guess that killing them was accompanied by screams – just as they tried to escape climbing up my hawse-pipe. Of course, according to very good practice, one should hang bananas overboard in salt water for a while or at least to wash them. But feeling completely self-satisfied I hang them in the cockpit. And while I was eating all of sudden I saw these huge, dreadful, surely hairy and dangerous for human existence earwigs. First, and then second… oh, my God. And the worst thing was that the whole bunch of bananas was hanging on my favorite rope so I couldn’t cut it off. I had to grub with my hands over these bananas, to take them off, minutes seemed to be hours. Nasty stuff, I am telling you. I guess I have no interest in eating these bananas anymore.

My neighbor Max, from the yacht “Safina” called me twice to join him for the supper but each time I was not at “Tanasza”, so I missed out. But I managed to taste his raisins in rum and a sample of a newly made yogurt (look at some posts below). Just after finishing work on computer maps, we had some wine and he went on with his amazing sailor’s stories. Max does the same as I do. However there is a small, but significant difference: he’s been doing it for “just” 20 years. Today he told me a goodnight story about one of the islands of the Cook archipelago where only 67 persons live and all of them have one great-grandfather. He also told me about a pilot on Suez Canal who drank up 5 litres coffee together with all the sugar that Max had in stock. And another story about his runaway from the Maldives having one potato as a supply of fresh food to live on…and another about him sailing along a river when he hooked his mast on a high-voltage power wire causing a power...

This is part of my list of things to do on TANASZA before departure from Hawaii (I'm not sure I can recall all of them) - Take everything out of the boat. And there was plenty to take out. To look though the things and to get rid of anything that is not necessary and checking out what more is needed. Once, I found a dinghy's floor. I also found a pump and accessories to an inflatable dinghy but there was no sign of the inflatable dinghy itself. So in order to get rid of unnecessary things I exchanged the pump for a tool and threw away the dinghy's floor. Just few days later I came across a big bag stowed under the deck - it was an inflatable dinghy, of course! So, running I went back to a rubbish container but … it was empty already. Thus, I had to look for a used one, adjust it, and get a pump (I could not afford buying a new one). Anyway, I eventually had my inflatable dinghy complete. - To disassemble the capstan. No comment. Mend mattress casings. Paint inside of...

Another day behind me. I was running a lot today trying to organize things. It took me a lot of time in internet café – connection is so slow you could not believe, it’s almost impossible to open letters from you! I had no idea it can be such a difficult task for a computer to do it! I needed to make some phone – calls but when it’s day time in Vanuatu it’s a night time in Poland. To call my friends from other countries is hard also since I have forgotten to bring my note-book (telephone index) with me… from the public phone booth it is no use to make any phone - calls because it’s more expensive than a satellite connection. By the way – for some reasons Iridium has no coverage over this part of Pacific. It’s functioning on the sea though, I want to thank to Krzysztof Kaminski and Inter-Pro Sailing Team (www.inter-proauto.com) for buying an Iridium and paying bills for emergency calls!...