He drove up to a high point near Point Vila where he got a small patch of cellphone reception to call his family.
"That's the first time we've heard from him since last Friday," Jules said.
The roads were badly damaged and Simon thought if it were New Zealand, they would be closed, he told Jules.
His boat was okay, "much to his surprise", Jules said.
EARLIER: Anxiety is building over the fate of Vanuatu charter boat operator Simon Hamer, whose Tauranga-based family has not heard from him since Cyclone Pam hit.
"Let's hope he's okay," wife Corrine Hamer told the Bay of Plenty Times yesterday.
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At least eight people are confirmed dead in Vanuatu after the massive cyclone tore through the tiny South Pacific archipelago, and the death toll is likely to rise once communications are restored with outlying islands.
Mrs Hamer last spoke to her husband on Thursday when the cyclone was tracking towards Vanuatu and he had just brought his boat up onto the beach at Port Havannah, about half an hour's drive from Port Vila.
Mrs Hamer was holding on to the hope that he survived because he weathered the storm in a concrete house in a village near where their catamaran South Sea Vagabond was dragged ashore.
"I am feeling anxious, wondering what is going to happen next."
Her phone has rung non-stop from friends and family wondering if he has contacted her.
Mrs Hamer said she was a bit surprised to have not heard any news yet.
"If he was okay he would be trying to contact us."
However, the cyclone had clearly made it difficult to get around the island and she said it did not take much to lose communications from Vanuatu, even in the best of times. With all the cellphone towers out of action and Digicel Vanuatu down, she assumed that Mr Hamer was unable to send emails.
Mrs Hamer was hoping her husband might have been able to reach New Zealand's High Commission in Port Vila but there was no news appearing on the commission's website.
Looking at the images coming out of Vanuatu, she was not sure South Sea Vagabond would have survived, even though bringing it up on to the beach had given it the best chance.
Mrs Hamer said most boats headed for the shelter of Port Vila but it looked like they were washed up and destroyed by the force of the cyclone.
She was amazed to see a newspaper in Vanuatu had downplayed Cyclone Pam, publishing a front page story on Thursday that it was a tropical low that posed no threat.
"Even on the radio, they were saying 'if you pray, it will go away'."
Mrs Hamer said Simon responded to the news media by showing people the weather page on the internet in an effort to convince them that a huge cyclone was on its way.
The last time she was with Simon was only three weeks ago. She spent two months in Vanuatu recuperating from a knee replacement operation.
Meanwhile, Tauranga's Powersmart team stranded on the low-lying Pacific atoll of Vaitupu are "all fine" after the island was hit last week by the tail of Cyclone Pam, before it unleashed its full fury on Vanuatu. Pam caused widespread damage to the 5.6sq km atoll, the largest in the island nation of Tuvalu, where Powersmart have just finished installing a solar-powered electricity system to replace diesel generators.
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