At about 9 o'clock this morning, we felt a strong vibration through the anchor chain.  We both went up to investigate, thinking perhaps a local was jumping on the chain.  We didn't realize at the time that this was the shock wave from an earthquake, 7.8 on the Richter scale, with an epicenter just 100 miles south of us, and pretty much where we had sailed yesterday on our passage between Vanuatu and Ndendo in the Solomon Islands.  A few minutes later David set off to dinghy a mile across the bay to perform our customs and immigration formalities, leaving me on the yacht for security purposes;
although we had concluded a trade with "Charles" an hour ago, he had looked in all our windows and showed no signs of leaving.  I told him he couldn't come on board when he asked, and then I taught him how to clean the beetle nut stains off his teeth.  In the background I faintly heard a newsflash
from Radio Australia regarding an earthquake between Vanuatu and the Solomons, with more information to follow in 10 minutes regarding the possibility of a tsunami.  Given our position just 100 miles north of the epicenter, and the lessons learned from the tsunami in Samoa last week (where I believe a yachtsman lost his life), I realized I didn't have 10 minutes to wait.  I sent Charles packing and warned him to find high ground, raised the 50 m of anchor chain and headed to the centre of Graciosa Bay where it is 180 m deep.  David by this time had heard the tsunami warning at the police station and returned to the dinghy with the tide already dramatically lower than when he left the beach just 20 minutes earlier.  He got safely back to Courtesan and we circled the yacht in this deep well protected bay (drinking Tanna coffee and eating banana cake) for over an hour till we were happy no tsunami was going to occur, and David could return to shore to continue with our clearance. Incidentally, the Customs and Immigration officials were away in Honiara.  The police photocopied our
paperwork and seemed relaxed about us continuing in our own time to Honiara (not likely) or Gizo to formalize our clearance. 

Thank you to the many people who emailed regarding our safety after the last tsunami. Life is definitely "interesting" out here in the Pacific at present. We hardly dare turn Radio Australia, our early warning system, off.

Regards, Heather & David