Rasamanis

Seattle, May 21, 2011

2011-05-21T11:03:00.000-07:00

I’ve been buzzing around the US since March 21, while Tom has been slogging away at the boat in Phuket,Thailand. It’s been a hard, long haul. Meanwhile, he immersed himself in the full Thai cultural experience, as shown from these pictures with his lady friends from his birthday party aboard the freshened Rasa Manis. After a record time abroad of fourteen months and 36 hours of travel, he arrived May 16 in Seattle, very tired.
To recap the last two months in Thailand: At the end of March, heavy rains stopped all work on the boat for 10 days. April was a scramble - the painters and varnishers had to finish while Tom and his helper cleaned and reinstalled every movable part on the boat, which had been stripped pretty much bare in January. On April 30, he moved back aboard. Racing against time because the channel to the sea is only navigable for a few days each month at very high tides, he left Phuket’s Boat Lagoon Marina a week later, enjoyed a few idyllic days on the hook, checked out of Thailand and sailed 120 miles overnight to Rebak Marina in Langkawi, Malaysia. With less onerous regulations, cheaper rates, and a pristine setting, it’s a good place to keep the boat.
For me, it’s been a slow reintroduction from the steamy sunbaked shores of Thailand to temperate climates. I spent three weeks in Bradenton, Florida where, in perfect weather, I helped my mother move from her condo by the beach into her boyfriend’s condo by the bay. We celebrated Amy’s completion of law school, and joined Eve for the Atlanta wedding of a longtime friend of the family.
With dogwoods and azaleas in full bloom, Atlanta was lovely. I’m not sure if the best memory was the breakfasts at The Flying Biscuit Company, the wedding by the gorilla enclosure at the zoo, or the bachelorette party, which ended in a smoky basement bar. One attendant was a twenty something lap dancer who lit her nipples on fire. Another was a sixty something lady in a torn fishnet body suit who was said to crush aluminum beer cans between her breasts.
My US tour continued on to Berkeley, CA to celebrate Eve’s birthday live and in person. We ate more wonderful meals, and wandered up and down the Cal campus where she is studying for her MBA.
And then it was “homeless in Seattle”. My first stop was the box of warm clothes in the storage unit - sweaters, fleece, jeans, boots, jackets, wool socks. Not many because I’m living out of a suitcase, first staying with my friends Anne and Roger and then a month house and dog sitting on Puget Sound, watching the yachts, tugboats, tourboats and barges round the corner into the Ballard Locks. After that, ten more days hosted by friends up in the San Juan Islands. Starting June 1, a short term fully furnished rental apartment.
I feel a bit like a visitor from outer space, seeing this megalopolis with new eyes. The traffic, the consumerism, the smart phone culture, the cold and cloudy weather. Spring has not sprung – it’s in a state of frozen suspension. Quite a change from SE Asia.

Chiang Mai, Thailand, March 8, 2011

2011-03-18T20:24:00.000-07:00

For this seasoned traveler, the two day slow boat trip up the Mekong River from Luang Prabang was one of the travel experiences of a lifetime. I’m not sure, in retrospect, why that was so. Was it the stately pace, just about twice as fast as Rasa Manis, with nonstop entertainment on the riverbanks? The remoteness of the scenic mountains? The water buffalo, goats, and elephants drinking and swimming in the river? The bits of human life that appeared along the banks when the sun wasn’t too hot – fishing, harvesting seaweed, bathing? The excitement of going through rapids? Figuring out how the skippers avoided the rocks and shoals?
Was it carrying my pack up and down very long, steep embankments and over narrow gangplanks with the young European backpackers? Watching the liveaboard crew tend their small children and eat their meals with their hands? Imagining how trade was done by women transporting big bags of stuff – cabbages, dishes, shoes-from one river town to another? The prospect that soon, this part of the Mekong may be dammed by the Chinese? The thrill of doing it by myself?
The riverboat journey ended in Huay Xai, Laos, where the Mekong lies in a delta and separates Laos from Thailand, not far from China and Burma (the Golden Triangle). One could not help but be struck by the differences on the Thai side of the river: electric wires, imposing government office buildings, cars buzzing along highways, fields managed for agribusiness, industry, new seawalls, lavish temples, metal roofs. Culturally, the peoples occupying the two sides of the river are virtually the same – but how differently history and politics have treated them.
I spent five days in northern Thailand before flying back to Phuket. I really wanted to see if there was a real Thailand away from “spoiled” Phuket. I have to say I did not find it, but I had a good time looking at temples and lots to buy, visiting the highest mountain in the country, and taking a Thai cooking class.

Luang Prabang, Laos - February 27, 2011

2011-03-16T00:26:00.001-07:00

Our travels continued north into Laos, another country that fell to Communist rule after the US withdrew from SE Asia in 1975. The hammer and sickle flag still flies, though the economy has gone free market. It doesn’t seem to have helped much. This is perhaps the poorest, least developed country we have visited, but a delight all the same. Thirty years ago, we could not have travelled in this part of the world and are lucky to be experiencing it now, in 2011.
This is SE Asia and we almost never lacked for cable TV coverage of Egypt, Libya, the Christchurch earthquake. Thought we tuned into the news every day, we didn’t learn about the deaths on S/V Quest until we got onto the internet several days after it happened. We were shocked, saddened, and sobered by that terrible tragedy and are stunned by the devastation (this is written a few days after the Japan earthquake and tsunami) and changes taking place in the world.
Laos – like much of SE Asia – is a land of slash and burn subsistence farming. Dust was everywhere. Our first sighting of the big Mekong River was from a Lao Air plane taking us to the sleepy capital, Vientiane, so we could obtain new extended stay visas from the Embassy of Thailand. That two day operation gave us time to ramble the almost charming little city, where a small vestige of the colonial influence still remains in the form of crumbling Tudoresque buildings and baguettes. Also on offer were a night of Lao music and dance, many Buddhist temples, and handspun, hand-dyed, hand-woven, intricately patterned silk.
To see the land of Laos, we bought first class bus tickets to the former royal capital of the country, Luang Prabang. The distance – about 250 miles. We were told it would take 8 hours. That was a significant underestimation. The two lane road – the major highway in the country- was only recently paved. In the mountains, it runs through a handful of villages where people live perched right on the side of the road in thatched huts, trudge up and down the steep hillsides to their gardens, and collect grass to make brooms to sell. Formerly they would have grown opium poppies for cash.
Luang Prabang turned out to be a jewel of a town nestled amongst hills and the Mekong River – filled with old, golden temples, saffron robed monks, nice restaurants and inns, scads of tourists from all over the world. Most of them fly in, the adventurous come or leave by river. Which is how Ellen travelled back to Thailand, while Tom flew back to Phuket to attend to the boat projects.

Siem Reap, Cambodia - February 20, 2011

2011-03-06T01:59:00.000-08:00

We took a break from overseeing boat work in Phuket to do some travelling in SE Asia. First stop, three days to see the temples of Angkor in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The temples and ancient waterworks were very impressive, but between the crowds (2 million visitors a year), the heat, the dust, and the swarms of children begging you to buy a little something, some might prefer the Discovery Channel.

The area has significant charms. The tourist infrastructure - put in place in the last ten or so years after the cessation of civil war/occupation - is phenomenal, with hotels, a lovely new airport, lots of English speakers, an entertainment district, and, for $10 - 15 per day, your own private transport and driver to visit the ruins and whatever else you fancy. The transport is a tuk-tuk, a motorcycle with a covered cart, and as you canter along the flat roads - some tree-lined, others so dusty you have to cover your entire face to survive - it feels downright comfortable as your sweat evaporates in the breeze. At many of the temples there was live local music - similar to Javanese gamelan - being performed by small orchestras of land mine victims.

After what the country has been through, it is gratifying to see that some of Cambodia is reaping the benefits of this historic resource. When the US withdrew from Vietnam, leaving miles and miles of active minefields behind, Pol Pot and the Communist Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and in four years killed off an estimated 1.5 million people. All of the capital was evacuated on one April day in 1975. The city people - doctors, lawyers, merchants, teachers, artists, the Chinese, the sick, the elderly - were forced out into the countryside where the farms were undergoing socialist collectivization. Those who survived have harrowing tales to tell. As Americans who lived through this era, it was very difficult to respond when our guide asked us, "Where was the world when all this happened?"

Now, despite a reputedly corrupt and autocratic regime that is waging a war against Thailand over who will control the revenue of some ancient temples near the border, the Angkor area is humming with good works, international funding and NGOs with wonderful projects ranging from new museums, temple restorations, deactivating land mines, teaching and marketing native crafts for employment, microfinance to generate small business, educating children so they won't have to beg. The world - or some of it - is trying, and it felt good to be spending our tourist dollars here.

Phuket, Thailand - January 22, 2011

2011-01-22T23:46:00.000-08:00

We will be based here in Phuket for several months while the boat is having a make-over. Rasa Manis should be very beautiful after the interior is varnished and the exterior is painted by the squads of Thai workers who are laboring six days a week on her.
In case you were wondering, Phuket is pronounced sort of like “poo-get”. The Thai language has an alphabet that resembles Greek, Sanskit or Russian, so there’s no sounding it out or visual word recognition. Shopping for food is a whole different experience when you can’t read the signs, the labels, or the receipts. Ditto for driving, though they try to make it easy in this tourist center with English language menus and important directions like “exit” and “to airport” duplicated in English.
Phuket’s an island on the southwest coast of Thailand, the biggest of many in a long chain in the Andaman Sea, which is the right armpit of the Indian Ocean as you look north towards India. Phuket’s about 120 miles south of the Myanmar (Burma) border, and about the same distance north of the border of Peninsular Malaysia. It’s about 450 miles up a long skinny peninsula to Bangkok, a 14 hour bus ride according to the guidebook. Fortunately there’s an excellent international airport.
Phuket has a huge tourism industry that has spread like the plague across the archipelago. At 8:00 am every morning, noisy longboats and speedboats start fanning out across the inland waters of Phang-Na Bay with daytrippers to see the striking limestone formations, explore the caves, cavort on the white sand beaches, snorkel and dive. What was wiped out in the 2004 tsunami has not only been rebuilt, but expanded, with the addition of tsunami sirens and evacuation routes.
Tourism is down this year due to the financial crisis in Europe. However, Russians, Chinese and Koreans are picking up the slack and the price of real estate is sky high even by US and Australian standards. There is a large expatriate community – mostly white men who have settled here with their Thai partners. Shopping malls, big box stores, fine Western restaurants, all the comforts of home. It’s hard to figure out where the locals who serve this tourism machine live.
It’s hot and sunny and we are staying in a two bedroom apartment here through the middle of March. Looking for a great place for an escape from the Northern Hemisphere winter, friends?

January 1, 2011 - Phuket, Thailand

2011-01-22T23:39:00.000-08:00

Would you believe the best ever New Year’s? I apologize in advance that I don't have any good pictures!
From serene Nai Harn Bay, where we spent Christmas, we moved a few miles up Phuket’s west coast to Patong, the island’s hub of tourism, for New Year’s Eve. The bay was full of noisy jetskis, loud tour boats, dozens of yachts. Ashore, in one of the tackiest tourist towns we have ever seen, were hordes of sunbathers, tourists, hawkers, masseuses, and shoppers. As night fell the excitement grew. The neon lights came on. Street vendors starting selling pancakes, kebabs, fried noodles, roasted corn.
On the beach you could buy fireworks (the really good ones!)and lanterns. At the base of the lantern was a wood disk that you lit. When the fire was hot, you let go of the lantern and up, up, up, up it flew, just like a hot air balloon. The sky was filled with hundreds of them for hours and hours and hours. All night long, people set off fireworks along the big beach, punctuating the starry backdrop of the lanterns. This was a privatized display – no corporate sponsors, no government regulation. The noise and excitement reached a crescendo at midnight, as we watched from a trio of catamarans rafted together in the harbor. According to some of the Aussies on board, it was better than Sydney Harbor New Year’s.
And that wasn’t even the main entertainment. Earlier, sitting at a bar on Bangla Road, we watched the giddy crowds shoot aerosol cans full of streamers at each other. The crowd included: katooeys (cross dressed former men or men in various stages of transformation to the female sex , distinguishable as such only by their over the top glamour), old farang (white) men pushing baby strollers to meet up with the working mothers of their children, pole dancers, go-go girls, Thai ladies leading their farang boyfriends around by the night or week. Even more eye-popping was the ping pong show, where an almost undressed middle aged woman did, well, very impressive tricks with ping pong balls, darts, and a variety of other things. A sex circus, one might call it.

Phuket, Thailand - December 25, 2010

2011-01-22T23:33:00.000-08:00

We are at anchor in the quiet, protected Nai Harn bay (in the photo) on the west side of Phuket Island, Thailand. There is a very low, long, gentle swell coming in off the Andaman Sea giving the boat the first taste of ocean swell movement in, well, all season. It is the northeast monsoon season here which means that the wind is blowing from the northeast, protecting all the anchorages on the west side of the landmass of SE Asia. The days are sunny and hot now that the monsoon has settled into its pattern. The breeze is often enough to keep us comfortable.

We are anchored among about 50 boats, many of them friends or acquaintances from our travels over the years. We picked this particular bay for Christmas because it was chosen by the group of boats carrying children. And there is nothing better than a bunch of kids around at this time of year. Yes, we miss our family and our own particular children but these surrogates are a great lot of fun too. And what's more I get just what I love to get for Christmas: Christmas Day on the road somewhere!

Yesterday afternoon the parents organized a Secret Santa for all the cruiser kids on the broad, white sand beach at the bottom of the bay. All along this beach there are lounge chairs and umbrellas for shade. There must be hundreds of them lined up in triple rows. Behind the beach there are cafes and restaurants, souvenir shops and many, many massage tables under umbrellas. Yes, I actually have seen massage taking place in some of these establishments.

I had been chosen to be Santa for the festivities and enjoyed playing it up with a Santa hat, a red tee shirt, and a bag stuffed under it to give me more girth. There was much anticipation, excitement, photos, and laughter as I pulled out the presents one at a time for each of the ten or so children sitting in a circle on the sand. There were dolls and Frisbees and transformers and bubble guns and each present was awarded great attention and glee. After all the presents were handed out and my bag was empty all the kids attacked me, thinking that the bag under my shirt had more goodies. They pulled me to the sand and out came the bag. Disappointed, they only found the odds and ends I always bring ashore. The rough and tumble was an unexpected joy for me and plenty reward for my Santa efforts.

As with every Christmas my favorite activity is singing Christmas songs. Every year as I have traveled on the boat I have organized some type of carolling. This year with the help of two boats, Anui and Imagine, both with kids, we dinghied around the anchorage singing our hearts out. There were six adults and five children in two dinghies. We made a lot of noise and had a lot of laughs as we sang song after song to our friends on their boats. Of course we sang "Give us some figgie pudding" at every stop and were treated with wonderful goodies: candy canes, rum balls, mince cookies, and the occasional beer for the guys. The kids got tired just in time because we hardly had returned to the boat and climbed into bed than a rain and lightning squall hit the bay and we all were very happy to be in a warm, dry bed to sleep and dream of sugar plums and all good things.

On this Christmas when we are so far away from our family and friends-- for many of you very nearly on the other side of the world-- we think of each of you in very special ways with love and fondness that transcends the miles and makes our hearts sing glad tidings of joy to you and your kin. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

December 15, 2010 - Langkawi, Malaysia

2011-01-03T03:33:00.000-08:00

After Lake Toba, we flew to Kuala Lumpur to discover Malaysia. Maybe without the boat we would have more success.
“KL”, as it is known around here, sounds exotic but it is a big, modern city with state of the art airports, fast trains, monorails, magnificent shopping malls, great nightlife. Its icon, the shining stainless steel Petronas twin towers, were, for a moment in the not too distant past, the tallest buildings in the world. In addition to women in veils (from hot pink with glitter to black all over except the eyes), we saw a lot of modern Islamic architecture here and in the new capital city, Putrajaya. This takes concepts like the Five Pillars of Islam and translates them into design elements and motifs. In contrast to the decaying marinas along the coast, we were impressed by the architecture and by the road system. Extravagant, yes, but Malaysia seems well on the way to meeting its goal of becoming a first world country by 2010.
We took a road trip into the highlands of Peninsular Malaysia, visiting Bukit Fraser, a hill station established by the British in the relative cool of 6000 feet. After a short walk on a nature path in the jungle, I pulled off my shoe to find a leech on the bottom of my foot. It bled like a river for 90 minutes, then, all was well.
We visited the cities of Malacca and Penang. Both have long histories and quaint Chinatowns and Little Indias. We stayed in musty old buildings that oozed charm and antiques, visited temples, palaces and forts, learned about the trading days, rode in a trishaw. As everywhere, we tried to sample as much of the renowned local cuisine – Chinese, Indian, Malay, Baba-Nyonya (Chinese/Malay), as we could. Maybe we were too adventurous for too long a time, because our digestive systems rebelled. Our attempts to communicate in the Malaysian language (closely related to Indonesian) were frustrating – maybe because most of the people we were trying to talk to spoke Chinese or Nepali. Fortunately, English worked well.
After two weeks on the road, we concluded the west coast of Malaysia just wasn’t all that interesting. We returned to the boat in Langkawi to be fitted for 50 yards of shade and rain awnings by Nasir, one of many migrant Indonesian workers in Malaysia. Mission accomplished, very successfully, we headed to Thailand for the holidays.

1 Dec, 2010 - Lake Toba, Sumatra, Indonesia

2011-01-03T03:29:00.000-08:00

After a taste of Malaysia, we were very pleased to return to Indonesia. We chose Lake Toba in the cool, rainy highlands of Northern Sumatra based on stories and hauntingly beautiful photos our friends Rob and Sue had brought back from their Asia grand tour 25 or so years ago. The local people, the Batak, were fearsome cannibals. The Muslims never made any headway with the Batak, but they are now Christians.
I’m sure the journey is nowhere near as epic as 25 years ago. With connections, it took about 8 hours to fly the 200 miles from Langkawi, Malaysia, to Medan, the largest city in Sumatra. The next morning, a minibus picked us up at our hotel. With seven riders and the cargo area full to bursting, we headed off. The grimy, chaotic metropolis sprawled forever.
We enjoyed 10 minutes of toll roads. The Trans Sumatra Highway dwindled to two lanes but the drivers made it a three laner – pulling out and passing whenever possible. Nothing to do but try to relax and look at the palm oil and rubber tree plantations. Four and half hours later we arrived at beautiful Lake Toba. Touts directed us onto a gaily painted ferry and had us disembark at a resort that had been built by a German woman who had settled in the village of Tuk-tuk on Samosir Island after marrying a local Batak man. Our villa was clean and quiet. It had a soaring roof and a beautiful view of the lake. What a place to take a break from the heat and noise of SE Asia.

November 25 2010 - Langkawi, Malaysia

2010-12-16T19:19:00.000-08:00

We weren’t looking forward to Malaysia, for a lot of reasons. Last year, our good friend was catastrophically injured here when he was run over by a speeding tourist boat – and the authorities did nothing. The political stance is strongly anti-Israel if not officially anti-Semitic – for example, banning an orchestra from entering the country because the program included the work of a Jewish composer.
What we read about the history and culture before we got here was unsettling. There is little or no record from before the 1400s, when a prince from Sumatra founded Malacca and developed a thriving center for traders from China, Arabia, India and the Spice Islands who brought their religions, foods, technologies and intermarried with the local women. The Portuguese took over, then the Dutch, then the English, then the Japanese, who invaded the entire Peninsula in a few days. At the end of the war, the Brits returned until they were worn down by a twelve year civil war. Two big chunks from the island of Borneo were added to the new country and Singapore was subtracted from it in order to maintain a Malay (Muslim South East Asian) majority instead of an ethnically Chinese one.
With that, we set off from Singapore determined to find something to appreciate about Malaysia. The coast was pretty dull – a parade of cargo ships up and down the Straits of Malacca, fishing boats desperate to harvest the increasingly scarce seafood, and oil drilling. Our hopes to tie up the boat and see the sights ashore were dashed when there was no room at the new marina because it was being reconstructed. The next marina was built, but officially closed because nothing worked. Another was open but vacancy was kept at 30% because boats had to be separated to avoid masts colliding. Others were so silted up with sand that sailboats could not get in and out. For this, in the last 10 years, the government spent a reported $35 million US dollars.
When they build it, and it doesn’t work, they let it rot. The amount of crumbling concrete structures in Malaysia is astonishing –hotels, office buildings, water parks, shopping malls, abandoned. One morning anchored off Pangkor Island, we woke to see a big chunk of something floating towards our boat and Do It, the boat nearby. It turned out to be a 15 foot concrete deck section that had washed away from the abandoned marina in the next bay. The skippers got together and towed it ashore, shown above.
We were glad to reach Langkawi, a resort island with picturesque harbors and three fully functioning marinas, in three overnight 150 mile passages spanning five days from Singapore. We checked into Malaysia, moved into cushy Rebak Marina, and cooked ourselves a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat. No turkey, stuffing or pie, but the barbecued chicken and root vegetables, cranberry orange relish, crunchy green beans and bottle of Vasse Felix from Western Australia made a meal to remember.

November 13, 2010 - Singapore

2010-11-13T06:06:00.000-08:00

After 4-1/2 years in the Southern Hemisphere, the boat crossed the Equator with a gleeful cheer from Ellen around 6:00 am, about 75 miles south of Singapore. Tom was asleep, after a long night with a misbehaving autopilot. We pulled into a harbor in Indonesia’s Riau Islands for a crossing party with boats from Australia, the UK and Switzerland.
While we loved Indonesia, we can’t say it’s much of a destination for sailing. We had more wind than we expected and it wasn’t much. The only relief from the beastly, ghastly heat was the movement created by the engine moving the boat, and to a small extent, nightfall. After sailing the entire Pacific Ocean rarely spotting another vessel or debris, it was a shock to get used to continuous ship and small boat traffic, not to mention the plastic garbage.
Singapore! From our luxurious country club life at Raffles Marina on the western edge of the island, to the quiet subway that puts us to sleep, the glitzy architecture, the lush landscaping, the brightly painted housing projects radiating out from the extensive transit lines, the go-go economic bubble, the opportunities to eat and shop til you drop, the heady mix of Indian and Malay culture accenting this predominantly Chinese city - Singapore feels like it’s straight from a textbook on how to be a world class city. While it lacks charm, it’s clean, well-organized and impressive in its Disneyland meets New York/utopia meets the big city way. If this is the Asian economic tiger, it is truly formidable.
Locals complain about the restrictions on freedom – and there are many besides no gum chewing. It feels a bit like George Orwell’s 1984. It’s often subtle. This year Singapore’s first two casinos opened. (One - with the "spaceship" on top - is pictured above.) Singaporeans must pay an entry fee of $100 per person per day just to enter the casino. Show your foreign passport, and you get in for free.
For three weeks, it’s been a good place to catch up on the world, work on the boat, provision, take in the sights, visit old friends, and beat the heat in the air conditioning and the swimming pool. Onto Malaysia.

Mt. Merapi, Java, Indonesia

2010-11-04T20:40:00.000-07:00

Wondering if we were close to any of the recent disaster areas in Indonesia? No to the Sumatra tsunami. Yes to Mt. Merapi, where these pictures were taken. We visited the mountain twice in September, when we were in Solo, Java with Amy. Tom climbed to the summit in 1976.
The mountain is about an hour from Solo – you can see it from the outskirts of town on a clear day. The car trip up the south slope took us by densely cultivated fields of tobacco, peanuts, tomatoes, papayas, chilis, thriving in the volcanic soil. The area was rural but heavily populated, no doubt due to the rich soil, and has been for a very long time. (Prambanan, a site of ancient temples, lies at the base of Merapi).
There was a small village where the paved road up the mountain ended. It was cool and rainy and we enjoyed a cup of the local specialty, ginger coffee. We looked around the devastated area. The size of the river of mud that had scoured the area during the last eruption in 2006 was incomprehensible.
You can’t say they weren’t prepared. There were warning sirens all over the place, dams, and a big concrete underground bunker. Our guide told us Merapi was one of the ten most active volcanoes in the world and the next eruption could come any time.
The evergreen forest above the mudflows was steep and beautiful. There were a pair of orange flip-flops laying by a path into the woods. I wondered what they were doing there. I first noticed their owner, the woman in the photo, when I heard a rustle – the bundle of grass she was carrying down the mountain to feed her livestock. I watched her descend slowly but surefootedly, barefoot. She was pleased to have her picture taken and excited to see herself in the display screen. She chortled with glee when I gave her a bunch of small change as a thank-you.
I wondered then, amazed, what kind of a life has she led, an hour away from big cities? I wonder now, where is she? How is she doing?

14 Oct. 2010 - Belitung, Indonesia

2010-11-04T19:47:00.000-07:00

This island, off southern Sumatra in the South China Sea, turned out to be a most pleasant surprise. Belitung is full of tin mines (BHP Billiton, the mining conglomerate, was named after this island), but seeks to become “the next Bali.” Without even a mention in the 2010 Lonely Planet, and nothing that we would consider a resort hotel, they have a long way to go.
Maybe sometime we will be able to say “we were there when it was nothing.” The fundamentals are there. Beautiful beaches. Clean water (unusual in Indonesia). Friendly people. Two hours by air from Jakarta or Singapore. And local government that is willing to throw a lot of money and energy into the development of tourism.
Our last Rally stop, we were treated to gala meals, bus tours, bike tours, live music and dance morning, noon and night. By this point we had learned that even veiled Muslim ladies love to bump and grind to the local pop music and joined in at every opportunity. We also came to appreciate that one of the critical skills required of an Indonesian official is the ability to sing well. The most honored people get up on the stage and perform karaoke – beautifully – and then invite the honored guests to do the same. Great fun.

7 Oct. 2010 - Kumai, Kalimantan, Borneo, Indonesia

2010-11-04T19:29:00.000-07:00

Above, on the Kumai kelotok with Ken and Christine of S/V Code Zero from Airlie Beach, Australia
Left, Kalimantan orangutan

Borneo!!!! Who would have thought we would motor 60 miles up a big, brown river on the south coast of Borneo to a place where we could observe orangutans in the wild? Tanjung Puting National Park is the site of a reserve established in the 70s by a Leakey protégé. The animals, many of them captives or dislocated by deforestation, flock to feeding stations for handouts of bananas and cassava root. From the huge, intimidating adult males to the tiny babes in arms, they put on quite a show, especially when they crash through the jungle, swinging from tree to tree.
Travelling through the dense jungle from the dusty little river port of Kumai was at least half the fun. We chose an overnight on an open air houseboat. The crew of four provided three hot Chinese meals a day, nonstop information in English, and reminders about the need for protective gear – mosquito repellent, sunscreen, water, and socks and shoes to ward off the leeches.

26 Sept.2010, Lovina Bali

2010-09-26T00:46:00.000-07:00

We are back on the boat on the north coast of Bali anchored off a small resort town called Lovina, along with, at last count, 66 other pleasure boats travelling with the Sail Indonesia Rally. The Rally offers a very helpful hand dealing with the bureaucracy along with a range of locally organized events, tours, performances, meals, and workshops, many of which are free and all of which are voluntary, kind of like a cruise ship. It’s quite a value for the $500 entrance fee, especially in a country that is so difficult to negotiate independently.
It’s a big deal in Indonesia. The President of the country came to welcome the Rally at one of the first ports of call. At another, civil unrest broke out because the Rallyers were going to be fed at a daytime event during Ramadan. The event was cancelled and the police had to escort the Rallyers back to their dinghies.
The Rally isn’t exactly our Indonesia. We flew back to Bali and put Amy on a plane for the US, unlocked the boat (which was very well looked after by Isle Marine Services in Serangan), reprovisioned, and headed off. Crew Richie decided that the slopes of the Alps were beckoning (not hard to imagine after a few weeks in sweltering Indonesia) and flew to Europe to land a ski resort job. Tom’s condition is very good so we feel able to manage the thousand miles to Singapore on our own.
Here is our Indonesia. Rasa Manis sitting at anchor off a village on the East Coast of Bali whose main industry was manually extracting salt from salt water until off the beaten track tourists and expats starting trickling in ten years ago. In the foreground is a small slice of a 100 year celebration for the big Hindu temple for the area, the opening sacrifice to appease the seas. Five thousand people dressed in white paraded offerings onto massive display tables. A sampling, including a live goat with a stone round its neck, were tossed into the ocean.
There was a series of silent prayers, everyone seated on the ground. Someone would hand you flower petals – marigold, rose, hydrangea. You put your hands together with a flower petal just extending from the where the middle fingers met, up to your forehead. Then the petal went into the hair, then you took another petal, repeat. To laughter, the priests came around and sprinkled everyone with holy water.
At dusk we were the only white people who made the 4 km. fast march up the lower reaches of the sacred mountain Gunung Agung to attend the ceremony at the temple. Just so you don’t think this was easy, and in support of our statement above that the Rally offers good value. We happened on this event by pure happenstance. We pulled into shore for a night’s sleep and another boat anchored there offered us a ride ashore to look around. Being Bali-philes we knew from the fresh decorations hung all over town that something was up, and speaking Indonesian, we asked, and asked, and asked. It took a lot of asking to get answers. When we heard it was a 100-year commemoration, we were hooked.
We camped out in an uncomfortable anchorage for three days waiting for the event to start. At the end of the opening ceremony, we found a sponsor –a guy with a restaurant on the beach who wanted to build his business with visiting boats - to lead us and find us scooter rides home in the dark. He had to endure some friendly razzing about bringing white people to the temple and he told us there were plenty of laughs at our expense.
We had carefully prepared and worn our Bali formal dress – sarongs(long wrap skirts), formal shirts, sashes around the waist and a headscarf for Tom. Exotic and respectful, but in which we look rather foolish, and in which it is difficult to stride up a mountain much less sit crosslegged. We sweated buckets and endured physical pain when we were the last to sit down in a throng of people in the middle of the street for more prayers. I don’t think there was a square foot for either of us. Tom ended up on the lap of a young woman and I ended up with a foot under someone’s rump. Lesson learned for next time – sit down fast and claim your spot. We rented a motorbike and wangled an invitation to a roast suckling pig party for the third day of the festival, but high seas, rain, and a nasty virus suddenly appeared, which is when we sadly gave up “our Indonesia” and joined the Rally – which once again, we say, offers some really good value. Looking forward to more.

Sept. 14 2010 - Solo, Java, Indonesia

2010-09-15T19:36:00.000-07:00

We’ve spent almost two weeks in Central Java, based in Solo (Surakarta), the city where Tom lived. Even with previous visits, even with years of third world experience, even with modern technology, we are sort of shell shocked. Solo is the cultural soul of Java, known for its refinement, classical music and batik. A city of a mere half a million people, a sliver of the size of Jakarta (10-15 million) in an extremely diverse country of 225 million.
It’s noisy. The quiet bicycles and becaks (passenger carts mounted on the front of bikes, driven by sinewy drivers) are being replaced with motor bikes and private cars. You drive a motor bike until the family consists of Mom, Dad and two school age children. Then it is time for a new SUV.
It’s dirty. But not as filthy as 20 years ago, when sewage ran in the streets.
It’s hot. Rainy season has begun with mammoth long gully washers.
We are among the biggest tourist attractions around. Indonesians on holiday throng to take our photographs, preferably Amy with their children.
About 70% of the population is Muslim. The call to prayer comes five times a day over the public loudspeaker system. There’s a lot of “come hither” purdah – veils in fashion colors, sometimes with sparkles or other ornaments – fulling covering the hair, ears, neck and shoulders but exposing the full (and often heavily made up) face. Surprisingly, the rest of women’s normal attire is standard Western autumn – dark colors, jeans or leggings, tops with sleeves, flip-flops or sandals being the only concession to the 95 degree heat.
After initially being taken aback, you quickly come to realize that Muslims are “just folks”. There does not appear to be any pressure for others to conform, at least not now. The rest of the population - Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians - claim they are treated with tolerance and respect. That was the official order of the day during the strong-arm regimes of Sukarno and Suharto. Today, one of the scary aspects of the burgeoning democratization of Indonesia is local government initiating new ideas ranging from optional women-only train cars to sharia law.
People seem delighted that we are from America (we were more than a little worried about what would happen if those idiots in Florida went ahead with their Koran burning). Solo is supposedly a hotbed of fundamentalist training camps but the only anti-American thing we have seen or heard was, among many other tasteless trinkets, Uncle Sam hanging in effigy on a keychain.
Our visit has coincided with the end of Ramadhan. While there has been a lull in the performing arts, it’s been quite interesting. For a month, observant Muslims wake in the middle of the night – 2:30 am or so - and eat a big meal before sunrise. They do not eat or drink all day. They at least nominally go to work. After dark, they break the fast and do a lot of socializing late into the night. Like Christmas in the West, Ramadhan is the time for consumption in the form of gift giving, new clothes, and culinary indulgence. Though alcohol can be found in the form of Indonesia’s formerly ubiquitous beer Bintang, it is not listed on menus in this city. It is either barely tolerated, in short supply or rationed – we can’t really tell.
At the end of Ramadhan is Idul Fitri, when everything closes for at least four days. Can you imagine transportation on a holiday on an island of 125 million people with lots of new motor vehicles? We were warned. We planned accordingly – hiring a car and driver to take us to us up into the mountains about 80 miles away. It was virtually a non-stop traffic jam – 16.5 hours – with every vehicle – bus, minibus, private car, scooter- filled to over capacity. Unlike the violently shivering people on motorbikes, at least we were dry in the torrential rains that looked like they would wash down the side of the mountain. We had a very experienced driver who could negotiate the four lanes of traffic on the vertiginous two lane roads. The vistas of that day will last us a lifetime. The trip itself – well, it made a mere sail across the ocean feel pretty tame.

2 Sept. 2010 - Bali, Indonesia

2010-09-06T18:48:00.000-07:00

The passage to Bali from Darwin was easy – no wind for the first half, light wind for the second. There was an unanticipated stop for fuel at a small town en route – without going first to the official port of entry for a 2 – 4 day clearance process. We were, after all, trying to beat Amy to Bali – which we accomplished with 2 days to spare.
Our crew was great. We hope Richie returns to “his castle” on Rasa Manis after hitching rides on fish boats and cargo ships to outer islands. His budget is $10/day. His backpack contains a sleeping hammock, a change of clothes, antimalarials, and a couple of Indonesian phrasebooks.
We are all excited to be in Indonesia. Tom spent the better part of a year studying music in Central Java in 1977 and we travelled here together in 1990. Amy grew up on and studied gamelan. We all have all been boning up on our Bahasa Indonesia. With Amy, we are pretty much retracing our steps – staying in the same places, visiting old friends. It’s fortunate she was a history major and doesn’t seem to mind hearing , “33 (or 20) years ago, it was like this…”
We left the boat at anchor at “Royal Bali Yacht Club” to land travel. The marina – one of three in this 3000 mile long island chain with 225 million people – was a sea of garbage. Not a pretty sight.
Bali is still a place of tremendous beauty both natural and man-made. It’s just that the ricefields and farmers in “coolie” hats are now hidden behind the hotels and huge craft showrooms that line the roads. The temples are nestled in between luxury boutiques. The market for Balinese opens at 5 am, by 9am it disappears and is replaced by tourist stalls.
Tourism has made many Balinese wealthy. Stone masonry buildings – a luxury 20 years ago – are everywhere. The roads are filled with brand new private cars and hordes of motorbikes which have largely replaced the old mode of transportation, the bemo, a rusty, dirty, tiny, crowded, sweltering minivan. In 1990, the average woman spent one-third of her waking hours producing beautiful offerings of rattan, fruit, flowers and rice. She still spends a lot of time at it, but now she can buy the raw materials and premade containers from others.
In 1990, Bali was for the Balinese and tourists. Now 10% of the population is from other islands, drawn here by work opportunities. Where there was no Muslim culture to be seen in 1990 (it was virtually all Balinese Hindu), there is a fair amount of it in 2010 – halal restaurants, mosque loudspeakers, women in veils. There is also a fair amount of resentment about the newcomers – the Bali bombers were Javanese fundamentalists. The movie “Eat Pray Love” has not yet opened in Bali, but everyone is talking about it. “My grandfather is the healer”. “I was on my motorbike wearing a red leather jacket. I hope I didn’t get cut”. Everyone hopes the film will attract more tourism, which plummeted in the wake of the bombings.
We based ourselves in the village of Peliatan, near the arts center of Ubud in Bali, at the same “homestay” we lived in 20 years ago. The big change there was electricity and running water. Our hosts Ketut and Wayan gave us a warm welcome. Ketut, a talented painter, dancer and musician, led us to fabulous cultural events night after night after night. Wayan cooked up beautiful breakfasts that we still remembered after 20 years. We were thrilled to be able to attend a cremation ceremony in a nearby village. The event – which happens once every 5 or 6 years - was a massive celebration involving hundreds of people stuffing a colorful parade of animal floats with offerings which are set on fire with the bodies of the deceased (temporarily buried).

Darwin, Australia - August 13, 2010

2010-08-13T05:19:00.001-07:00

The last thing we expected was six weeks in Darwin, Australia, but here we are. At times it has been agonizing. Tom’s sciatica was very incapacitating and had us wondering whether we would ever set sail again. The electronic equipment that failed us on the way into Darwin still isn’t back to perfect either. However, we are feeling ready to move on and we hope to make our date to meet Amy in Indonesia August 23 – on the boat.
Darwin is hot and sunny in this, the dry season. Every day into the 90’s with low humidity. It’s time for outdoor markets, cafes, cinemas, and concerts which are especially lovely in the evening. We travelled to Kakadu and Katherine National Parks with Eve and saw lots of crocodiles (from the safety of tour boats) and rocks and giant termite mounds. The land was mostly flat, dusty, and covered with low green trees and bush that were turning brown with the season, with an occasional billabong (that’s a swamp).
A motley group of 130,000 people live in this regional capital of the Northern Territory. Darwin is a center of mining and fishing and Aboriginal culture and services. We’ve encountered people from all over the world living and working here (there is an acute labor shortage) – East Timor, India, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Nepal, Indonesia, Liberia, Ghana, Ireland, France, Holland, and many more. Crusty men with unbelievable beards – long, straight, curly, fuzzy, ratsy, twisted, beaded, braided and spaghettied. New agers and artists. Backpackers stopping to earn some money. Darwin is very remote, very expensive, very unique, and feels like it’s on the frontier. The front page of the newspaper features crocodile attacks, deadly auto accidents, and the ravages of alcohol abuse.
Darwin was named when the crew of the Beagle arrived here, long before Charles Darwin became famous. The city has been destroyed several times. Ten weeks after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese bombed Darwin, where an Allied naval flotilla had gathered. There were 62 air raids over the next several months. The city was evacuated, ground forces and the airfleet were dispersed inland, and the war propaganda machine kept news of the devastating attack from the general public. This was the background of the recent movie “Australia”. In 1974, a huge cyclone hit Darwin, flattening old stone buildings and wiping out vast tracts of housing. The place has since been close to completely rebuilt.
And that’s it for Australia, we hope. Looking forward to moving onto the next country. Without the other 107 boats in the Sail Indonesia Rally who left July 24. With new crew - Richie from the UK.

July 3, Darwin, Northern Territories, AU

2010-07-11T16:38:00.000-07:00

We left Brisbane exactly two months ago in a double-reefed fresh breeze and a following tide that flushed us out of Moreton Bay in short order. All breeze left us shortly after and we were reduced to motoring several days through channels and around islands that should have been more interesting than they were. From Brisbane it is a couple hundred miles until one is actually “inside the Reef” though with no wind it didn’t make any difference in sea state. We did have a few days of pleasant sailing in the next week as we approached the Whitsunday group of islands that are the charter boat playground of the Coral Coast. Throughout the entire 1300 nm run to Cape York at the top of Queensland we day sailed, or day motored as required. The runs were generally from 50 to 80 miles. There are many anchorages along the way either behind small capes on the mainland or islands off shore. The Reef protects from ocean swell but leaves the wind waves that many times have miles and miles of fetch creating a short steep chop as much as two meters high and very confused. We came to resent the sea state.
About 400 miles shy of the top the trades steady into a strong and unrelenting onslaught. Sailing is fast, as the trades are SE and we are headed NW. The anchorages become few and poor while the wind blows a constant 20-30kts. The swell finds its way into nearly every anchorage, often at right angles to the prevailing breeze creating less than restful sleep conditions. The Reef comes quite close to the mainland further north so ship traffic is much more concentrated and our options for avoiding shipping lanes much reduced. Though the obstacles along the lanes are well-marked sailing at night is ill-advised. The obstacles are all low or awash making visual navigation quite difficult. We came to rely very heavily on our new chart plotter at the helm which we installed in New Zealand as part of the big refit accomplished there. “Handy” does not come close to describing the convenience and instant information available to the navigator. Our autopilot, also a refit addition steered the boat with strength and heart. However, the boat builder who installed it did not attach it properly resulting in misalignment under heavy power conditions and failure of the pilot to steer the boat. The condition never rendered us completely without steerage except a couple times when moving slowly as we were anchoring. On one of our very few rest days I disassembled the system and was able to fix the installation problem and have had no more trouble since.
The last anchorage before a swift-current pass just shy of Cape York is an estuary called Escape River that provides deep shelter and a very calm night’s sleep before the final push around the tip. However, to make the proper current direction in the pass about 15 miles further up requires leaving the estuary across its shallow bar on an ebb tide against a 25 kt wind with miles of fetch. With just a few feet of water under us we plunged and rolled for an hour before finally reaching deeper water and a turn down wind. As we heard later we faired rather well compared to some of the other boats nearby. We entered Albany Pass a little early for the tide but with nothing but a polled genoa up we made slow and stately way into the channel. Coming the other way was a motor-sailor of perhaps 70 feet or so plunging into the swell that was still running against the tide. We found out later that the owner had notified his crew that they were to deliver the vessel from where she was in Indonesia to Brisbane, maybe 2500 or 3000 miles in three weeks so there they were pounding into the teeth of the reinforced trades.
From Joshua Slocomb on gremlins of various sorts apparently inhabit small boats in big water. I’m becoming a believer. With the Cape York lighthouse on our port beam the chart plotter just turned off. Went blank. Could not be revived. Lost interest in us. Failed to muster. Went AWOL. Still blowing 30 kts with the genoa pulling the boat along at 8+ kts and a misery of choked islands and shallow water ahead about 10 miles we went into navigation backup mode. Our first backup is the computer down at the nav station loaded with electronic charts of the world. That’s good. But we have yet to be able to hook up a GPS to the computer so plotting our position on the computer requires transferring position data from a GPS screen to the computer screen manually. As I was at the helm trying to keep the boat sailing upright, Ellen was below plotting a couple of waypoints to take us into an anchorage among several small islands. Until Cape York we had the comfort of following a wonderful book called “Cruising the Coral Coast” which assumed that the sailor was navigating visually and included lots of photos of what the land looked like when approaching an anchorage. But we had just rounded Cape York and no longer were in the Coral Sea and the book no longer had nice photos of what we should be seeing. Not knowing which island was which and not having a visual understanding of where Ellen had plotted the waypoints we made our way toward the first one. As we drew nearer I came to identify the islands but incorrectly. When we arrived at the waypoint and the next one required a 90 deg. turn to weather and sailing on the “wrong” side of an island I was desperate. The water was filled with obstacles seen and unseen and all of a sudden I didn’t know where we were. I swung the boat around into a hove to position to figure out what to do next. A mile or so away were a couple of sailboats heading down what I had interpreted to be a possible but very narrow and shallow channel toward a more distant anchorage. We hailed them on the radio to discover that they were headed down the very passage we were wanting. We requested that we follow them and they readily agreed. With my heart in my throat I sailed across some unknown water to their line and followed in tandem a couple hours into a safe and populated anchorage with friends and a pleasant village ashore. The gremlin of Cape York tried and just about succeeded in putting us on the bricks but it was not to be.

A couple days at anchor off a village we didn’t even know existed with a very nice grocery, laundry, a French bakery, a bus service, and a café serving good burgers and fries revived our spirits. Revived our chart plotter too. The next day I turned it on and everything worked fine. Go figure. We now had about 800 miles to Darwin across the top of Australia and the Gulf of Carpentaria. The wind was still howling though there was some indication that it might abate a little a few days hence. Eve was meeting us in Darwin on July 4th and we wanted to be there by the 1st to get some chores out of the way so we felt we couldn’t wait too long for weather. We left in the company of a couple other boats, leaving most of the anchored boats to wait one more day before departing on Friday.

The Arafura Sea is a rather confined body of water between Australia and New Guinea, west of Torres Strait. At no point is it more than 200 feet deep. It includes the large Gulf of Carpentaria with its own swirling wind patterns. Add easterly winds at 20-30kt and the result is the worst sustained sea state I have ever encountered. We sailed two fast and very uncomfortable days across the mouth of the Gulf to a remote island anchorage where we rested for a day and licked our wounds. Then it was off again in the same conditions two more days to the entrance of a 110 mile channel into Darwin. In the middle of the second night we were finally now around the corner and enjoying calmer winds and seas, feeling pretty good about ourselves and enjoying the prospect of a long rest just a day or so away. The wind died completely leaving us rolling in the swell and getting nowhere. So we fired up the engine to get to an anchorage we had identified about 20 miles further on. I left Ellen to manage to boat and went down for some needed rest. 10 miles later I was awakened to her shouts and shaking to find the engine alarm wailing and Ellen in a panic. The engine was overheating. After turning it off I opened the engine compartment to find a very hot engine and an alternator/water pump belt destroyed. With the engine so hot there was nothing to be done for it so we were left to the currents and a zephyr of swirling air. 2:00AM. Little or no sleep. Almost two months of relentless travel in often very uncomfortable conditions. And now this. Then I looked at the outboard stationed on the stern rail. We have an operable engine. How can we use it? Get the dinghy in the water, put on the engine, tie the dink to the side of the boat and get moving. At this point the boat had turned sideways to the swell and was rolling just about gunnel to gunnel, making being in the dinghy, much less doing anything there very difficult. As Rasa rolled away from the dink she would pull it just about out of the water trying very hard to pitch me off not unlike a bull rider. But we got it done. Got the outboard revving and made our way about 10 miles into a broad but smooth anchorage getting the hook down about 4:00am. We spent most of the rest of the day asleep.
The final leg into Darwin involves timing the 5 meter tides through two channels with a small gulf in between to arrive in Darwin just at first light to make our way into a crowded anchorage. After the trouble with the electronics at Cape York we didn’t want our backup navigation to be haphazard in the least, especially since we were traversing one very narrow channel with very swift current that is a major shipping channel to Darwin. We worked out a 10 waypoint route that we entered both into the chart plotter and into the GPS. Now, the GPS is connected to the entire electronic navigation system through a central hub instrument that collects and distributes the information necessary for all the systems to function. This distribution hub is the one piece of gear that in the last two years of operation has never failed. The GPS has failed but we have a backup hookup for installing another GPS in the system. Takes about two minutes. But the signal still goes through the hub. Just as we started into the first channel late in the day with the boat speed starting to increase as the current began to push us on our way the hub stopped sending a GPS signal to the chart plotter. The GPS was working fine but would not talk to anything else. But this time we were thoroughly prepared, not only with waypoints in the functioning GPS but also plotted waypoints on the paper charts we have of the area. Thank you, Ellen, for your thorough preparation. We managed the passage with the boat kicking and bucking in the rips, navigation lights appearing on the wrong side of the bow just a couple miles away only to right themselves when the current swept us across the channel as we flew by at over ten knots with the engine only idling enough to maintain steerage. Ellen’s mother should not read this.
We now sit comfortably in Fanny Bay, about a mile off the beach due to the shoaling bottom and enormous tides. After all that, we arrived on schedule – July 1. I have already had a doctor’s visit to address the sciatica problems that have been plaguing me for the past four months. We are hopeful that in the three weeks we are here awaiting departure in the Indonesia Rally I can receive the care required to alleviate the painful and debilitating problem. We very much look forward to Eve’s visit here and Amy’s visit later in the summer in Indonesia. I can’t say that the last two months have been exactly enjoyable but there was some exceptional sailing at times and we have met some caring and companionable cruising friends along the way.

June 7, Cairns, Australia

2010-06-07T01:32:00.001-07:00

It’s been slow going - one month to reach Cairns (“Cans”), 750 miles. We are still in Australia, still on the East Coast, still in the state of Queensland, and still inside the Great Barrier Reef (GBR).
The record of our stops for those of you who care: Double Island Point, Pelican Bay, Woody Island, Bundaberg, Lady Musgrave Island, Pearl Bay, South Percy, Middle Percy, Mackay, Scawfell Is., Lindemann Is., Airlie Beach, Gloucester Is., Upstart Bay, Geoffrey and Maud Bays on Magnetic Is., Townsville, Orpheus Is., Dunk Is., Mission Bay, Cairns. I’m counting - that’s 21 in the month.
The trip has been pleasant enough –beautiful weather, favorable or no wind, calm seas, sleep at night, a well-behaved boat, no crowds. It might sound like heaven to you but it’s kind of dull for us.
What does it look like inside the GBR? From above the water: standard blue ocean, hilly green islands, maybe a bit of white sand beach or some rocks. To the west – an enormous continental land mass that has been unfailingly green – green hills, green mountains, green mangrove swamps, green river valleys.
And what about in the water? Without tour guides or stinger suits, we haven’t been in the water. The poisonous jellyfish are usually gone by the end of April, but not this year. The locals say the cyclones stirred them up. Now we are in saltwater crocodile territory. And of course there are sharks. Need I say more?
What about the towns? This is remote country. Towns are few and far between. They look old and worn except for a few dolled up Victorian era buildings and the impressive port infrastructure that has been built to service North Queensland’s mining and sugar cane industries. Cairns, though, is an exception -it’s an easy going, attractive town with lots of excursions, entertainment and tourists.
After Cairns we will head off to Darwin passing the very remote areas of Cape York, the Gulf of Carpenteria (the accent is on "ter," pronounced like "tear") and Arnhem Land. There aren’t many places to stop – just a few towns in the 1300 mile distance; most of the top end is aboriginal reserve requiring written permits to enter. We plan to make Darwin by July 1.

May 17, 2010 - Mackay, Australia

2010-05-18T00:34:00.000-07:00

What are all these blue butterflies doing out at sea? That’s the exciting question as we cruise up the east coast of Australia.
We left the dock at Scarborough on May 3 after a trouble free recommissioning of Rasa Manis. The first 200 miles in our northward journey was along white sand beaches where the big activity was driving 4WD vehicles on the beach, far enough away that they could be seen but not heard. The next 200 miles have been inside the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef.
Almost all of the Great Barrier Reef is protected by national park and other government designations. The protection – which includes prohibitions such as don’t take any shells from the beach - seems to be working. At Lady Musgrave Island, a guano mining site and resort in past white man incarnations, and today a popular day trip destination, there were sea cucumbers, giant clams and birdlife in great abundance – more so than on some of the islands in the middle of the South Pacific where the species have been harvested to near extinction.
Not that this regulation is without controversy. At Middle Percy Island, the four residents are in an uproar over the government’s attempt to convert the whole of the island to a national park. Ever since a lethal group of Aboriginal Australians were ejected from the island in the mid-1800s, the island has been operated by white men under government leases as a sheep and goat ranch, farm, resort, and commune.
The current leaseholders are struggling to fulfill their contractual obligation to maintain the historical homestead and amenities for passing boaters. Among other things, the government is raising the rent, demanding the eradication of feral goats and bees and the removal of all the garbage that has accumulated since white men first started bringing stuff onto the island – at the tenants’ expense.
Middle Percy has almost mythic status. Seems like it marks the spot where recreational boaters from East Coast cities become maritime adventurers as they head up to the remote north. Since 1948 mariners have been leaving tangible mementos of their stay in a hut ashore. Three years ago the government funded a study which located and catalogued 6500 different pieces of boat memorabilia – wooden plaques, glass bottles, a pair of red lace undies. We added ours – a plaque, not undies - to the collection. The flotsam and jetsam represents just a small percentage of the visitors, most of whom leave in a hurry for a more comfortable anchorage as soon as the wind picks up.
The island folk are struggling to maintain this unique spot against big odds. Yesterday we watched them undertake a major logistical operation. The men had started at 4 am at Marble Island, the home of a small barge that serves a deer ranch where rich Americans and Russians come to shoot for trophy antlers. Twelve hours later they returned to Percy with a small dumptruck on the barge and worked til dark to move the truck up the beach before the tide came in. This morning, early, they left on the barge. Like a barnraising, the Percy Islanders will return the favor with a work party on Marble Island. Then they will come back and figure out a way to move the truck up the track to the homestead, about 2.5 miles away. They will use the truck to restore the old orchards to productivity, in the hopes of raising fruit to sell to yachties, if, of course, the government lets them remain on the island.
And the butterflies? They are blue tiger butterflies that travel out the islands every autumn from the mainland and were noted as remarkable by Captain Cook’s botanist, Joseph Banks. No one here could explain what draws them 50 miles out to sea to flock in huge numbers in the shady spots on the islands in the Great Barrier Reef.

April 11, 2010 -Scarborough, QLD

2010-04-10T17:16:00.000-07:00

We finally made it back to Australia after an eventful time in the US.
Our home of 24 years, painstakingly groomed, carefully priced, professionally staged and artfully photographed, sold very quickly at the asking price. We are happy with the result, but exhausted. Small world – it turns out the buyer is the principal at Lakeside, the alma mater of Tom, Eve,and Amy. Technically homeless, we will rent furnished places when we return to the US and have put our dwindling inventory of possessions into storage.
Our mailing address remains the same: PO Box 31267, Seattle WA 98013 USA. E-mail: rasamanis@gmail.com .
We had some wonderful times with our family, the highlight being a reunion with all the kids in late March in Florida. Tom audited a course on the anthropology of rock & roll at University of Washington (lots more fun than real college). Ellen did a bit of spring training with her old rowing club.
The health front wasn’t that great: Ellen spent a lot of time with her mother, who suffered a nasty leg injury following a fall. Tom had two root canals and then had to have emergency eye surgery for a torn retina that manifested itself in Florida just a few days before our departure date for Australia. We ended up postponing our return to finish his treatment and nurse Ellen’s mother through a surgical procedure.
Here in Scarborough, Queensland, about 20 miles north of Brisbane, it’s sunny and hot and quiet except for the sounds of many, many different birds around dawn and dusk. We are staying in a little villa overlooking Moreton Bay while we get the boat back in order for cruising. We will head up the east coast of Australia along the Great Barrier Reef, then across the remote “Top End” to Darwin. There, in late July, we plan to join the Indonesia Rally – a loosely organized three month nautical tour that will take us from Australia through the islands of Indonesia to Singapore. Though we are not accustomed to sailing in big groups, the rally offers many benefits – cultural festivals, natural wonders, official assistance with Indonesian taxes, bureaucracy and corruption, and security in numbers.

Nov. 5,2009 -Scarborough, Queensland, Australia

2009-11-04T21:57:00.000-08:00

In Brisbane
Nearing Noumea,New Caledonia

We are safely tied up at the dock in Australia. We’d love to be driving in the outback but we are at a marina getting the boat ready for storage. We fly to Maine November 11, then to Seattle on November 18. We can’t wait to see family and friends. Hear about what has happened in your lives. Share our stories. Find out what’s new and learn what has disappeared during the Great Recession. Just imagine having been on a desert island for a year. Best way to reach us is at rasamanis@gmail.com.
Three weeks, three countries. Very fast for us! From Vanuatu we sailed for two days to Noumea, New Caledonia, where we spent four days. “New Cal” is a French Overseas Territory (as close to a colony as you can get in the world today.). For the French it is as far away as you can get from home and still speak French. Nickel mining is the big industry. We spent a good share of our time there undergoing bureaucratic formalities and replacing the food the quarantine officials confiscated. But it was worth the fun we had meeting up with lots of cruising friends at the dock and a nice rest from passage making.
Noumea was the headquarters for the US Command in the South Pacific during WWII and there is a monument to that right across from the downtown McDonald’s. In the Western South Pacific you get a bit of a feel for America’s commitment in the Pacific theater. Vanuatu was the main staging area for the Battles of the Coral Sea and Guadalcanal. One area – where James Michener was stationed and wrote parts of Tales of the South Pacific – housed 100,000 troops, 100 Navy ships, six airfields, 54 cinemas, and an immense Navy yard including the largest drydock in the world at that time.
We looked for tours, museums, photos, books – any signs of this massive effort. Of course, this was Vanuatu so there was wasn’t much for a tourist to see. One airfield is now an airport, the rest are jungle. There are remains of old bridges on the sides of mangrove swamps, concrete roads on an almost empty island, bulkheads along the channel, a few Quonset huts. Underwater there is the wreck of a large US transport ship that was sunk by a friendly mine and a spot where the Americans dumped everything surplus from tanks to cases of Coca-Cola at the end of the war.
The passage to Brisbane was another 5 days. The trip was uneventful with the full range of normal sailing conditions, from no wind to 25 knots on the nose as we made landfall. The most interesting part was the last night - seven hours in the very busy, very shallow shipping channels of Brisbane’s harbor, giving all our new electronics as well as the trusty old VHF radio the workout of the season.
Brisbane weather has been splendid – much more comfortable than the humid midsummer heat we experienced here in January. The marina is about 20 miles from downtown in a very quiet seaside suburb.

Oct. 16, At Sea Off New Caledonia

2009-10-17T13:42:00.000-07:00

Right,Presbyterian church
Below, a dance mask

In Vanuatu, Christianity is the outer layer of belief. Presbyterian, Anglican, Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist are the predominant churches, but there is also a significant evangelical movement as well as cargo cults (arising after World War II, the belief is that AImericans will return bringing vast quantities of material goods to the islands). Though Christianity wasn't introduced to many communities until the late 19th century, it has had a huge impact.

Before missionaries, we are told by the natives, the people were hunter/gatherers, lived in caves and the bush, and were always killing and eating each other. (Messengers wore special costumes to identify that they were not coming for war, but for a peaceful purpose, such as the exchange of brides.) The missionaries, we are told, changed that. They stopped the fighting and got people to live together in villages. They brought the Bible, English and French, reading and writing, clothing, and vegetables.

The missionaries were brave folk. Until 1969, Vanuatu was cannibal country. Missionaries were an easy target because of the bad things whites brought - disease, forcible kidnapping to plantations in Fiji and Australia, and a ban on traditional custom activity. How the missionaries were able to have this enormous impact is hard to fathom. It's been suggested that the churches were an alternate form of status to the traditional, expensive chiefly system.

These days, going to church is a big event. The choral music in the islands is, well, sublime, and there isn't anything else to do on Sunday. For visitors it is a way to get to know people and to pay them respect. Often there's a personal welcome song from the whole congregation, a flower garland, a free lunch, and a handshake from every member of the congregation following the service. At its best (a tiny gathering in a thatched hut where the whole service was song and dance including a rousing hymn called "Givem" while the collection basket was passed), it exemplifies the global fellowship of man. At its worst (an American guest preacher heading to Jerusalem on his sailboat with the message that the Kingdom of God will be established after a war between Israel and Iran "in the very near future"), it's eye-opening.

Side by side with Christianity is a deeper, traditional world of spirits. A man who studied for three years in a Bible college showed us the magic pig stone he uses to wreak havoc on his enemies. ("My mother's brother taught me to summon it so it will uproot their gardens.") We were also shown a shark rock that overturns canoes - by the daughter of an Anglican priest. There is no conflict, they say, between Christianity and custom- they teach the same things.

In some areas, custom has been virtually obliterated by a few generations of Christianity and the people need to go back to missionary journals to learn their traditions. In other areas - particularly Catholic French speaking ones, custom has remained strong. A handful of informed and articulate men told us that they had abandoned Christianity, and had returned to custom worship of nature and traditional gods.

The dances we saw are rooted in the spirit world. Dancers and musicians undergo secret initiation rituals. Sequestered for a month or more in the bush, they learn not only their part in the dance and music, but where to find the materials for their costumes, how to prepare the special fires for making them, and how to dispose of the materials which become imbued with very strong power (strong enough to kill a person who is not authorized to touch them). This information is kept top-secret. It makes it a challenge to get answers to our questions ("Why do they paint their bodies black in this dance? ") and to bring back artifacts (the costumes are supposed to be destroyed after each use so they don't harm the uninitiated .) Though school was dismissed so the children could attend a custom dance festival,we were told that many parents kept their children away for fear of the black magic.
People believe that black magic is the cause of untimely death and serious illness, though they pursue western medical treatment wherever they can. One dancer died from alleged black magic after a performing a highly sacred dance in Australia - considered taboo because the dance is so rooted to the spirits of a place. Black magic, it was speculated, caused the death of a government official who got in the way of some dancers while taking a photograph.

And we have to admit, Ellen had been wrapping a large plaque that had been used in a custom dance when the Vanuatu earthquakes struck last week about 230 miles from where we were. Didn't feel anything but could it have been black magic?
With regret we left Vanuatu October 14, headed for New Caledonia and then Australia.

October 8, 2009 - Safe and Sound

2009-10-08T08:11:00.001-07:00

Right, Villagers return home after tsunami alert

Hi all, Eve again. Three earthquakes hit very close to Vanuatu yesterday and I'm happy to say that, again, my folks are fine. I just hope those tectonic plates in the South Pacific will stop rumbling soon. Here's an email from them yesterday evening:

Dear all,

We are fine following this morning's earthquake at 9 am local time. We were about 230 miles away, on the boat, at anchor in a very protected spot. We did not feel anything though our friends on another boat nearby said they felt a shudder. We did receive a tsunami warning about 30 minutes after the earthquake on the marine radio (possible tsunami following 8.0 EQ) and sprang into high alert. We were able to confirm things with contacts in Port Vila with the sat phone. We observed nothing - no big waves or receding of ocean. Three hours later, we received a notice cancelling the alert for Vanuatu. By then we had dug into our reference books and realized that at this distance any tidal wave would have come and gone a long time ago.

We then took the dinghy to the village about a mile away. All but 6 young men from this 200 person island had evacuated by outrigger canoe a mile across the bay and up a very high hill, having felt the tremors and heard an announcement on the radio that people on low lying islands should move to high ground. So, the emergency warning system does work, I am very happy to report. A bit shocked that this close test came so soon after last week's natural disasters and so close to where we are.
We are on the way to Port Vila now at 16.38 S, 167.48 E. We expect to learn more tomorrow but here you have it first hand.

October 6, 2009 - South Malekula Island, Vanuatu

2009-10-06T12:39:00.000-07:00

To the right, communication by outrigger canoe.
Below right, communication by slit-gong or tam-tam

Following up on Eve's posting, we are safe and sound following the quakes and tsunamis. Still in Vanuatu, we were about 1200 nautical miles west of the Samoa quake, and 3600 nautical miles east of the Sumatra quake. (A nautical mile is 15% longer than a statute mile, so these are substantial distances.) We did not feel, hear or see any impact. We also did not hear any warning on our marine radio which we keep on at all times. We don't really know very much except our own experience and messages from the family: we have had 30 minutes on the internet in seven weeks and seen a current Vanuatu newspaper once or twice in the same period.

A tsunami is generally not felt just offshore. If you have just a few minutes to pull up your anchor and get to open sea, a boat should be fine and not notice much of anything. When you are at anchor, you are usually in close contact with people. A place where a boat can anchor is a valuable harbor for the natives as well, and consequently, it is where people live.

We were able to tune into Armed Forces Radio and hear NPR's All Things Considered - a very rare event for us- and heard a piece speculating about how tsunami warnings might get spread in this part of the world. Which gives us a chance to offer you our thoughts about communication of important messages here.

Within ear or eyeshot, news travels incredibly fast by word of mouth, walking, and canoe. Example: arrive at new village, give some fresh caught fish to a couple of guys who paddle out to your sailboat to say hello (see the photo above). Ten minutes later, as darkness falls, more guys paddle out because they learned there might be some fish aboard.

Onshore, people have a traditional set of emergency signals kind of like a musical Morse Code that they play on hollowed logs to spread word from village to village - someone is sick, someone died, an event is about to begin. (See the other photo showing elaborately carved slit-gongs/tam-tams used for this purpose). The message is relayed from village to village that way. Between islands without phone or radio communication, they set fires to summon help (such as, my wife is expecting a baby soon, please send a boat to come get her).

We were in a community with no telephone, radios, or cell phone service during a medical emergency ashore. At dawn the villagers swarmed out to the yachts in the harbor and begged for help. They knew that boats have radios and they knew that the police in the "big town" with the airport and the clinic monitored the radio, but they had no idea about the channels or the times. They wanted the police to send the motorboat to pick the patient up, about a two hour trip one way. (It's a six hour walk over mountain trails for a healthy adult.)

We had a satellite phone. We found out that there were land lines in the big town but they had been out of order for some weeks. We found a list of Vanuatu emergency numbers and started calling. Five calls later, we found someone in the police headquarters 250 miles away with radio information. We radioed and radioed. We reached the police after they finally got to work in the morning. Yes, they would send the boat. Yes, today. The boat didn't arrive that day. The boat didn't arrive the next day or the morning after. (Despite repeated promises over the radio.)

Wisely, early on the villagers had formed a thirty man convoy to carry the patient to the next village (three hours away for a healthy adult without a load). There was a medical dispensary there where he received some medication that provided some alleviation of the symptoms. We received several updates via the trail grapevine during this period of time, people running and paddling, back and forth, back and forth. It works for them. Needless to say, it is very educational for Westerners who are used to using technology to "get results". Doesn't really work in remote areas around here. Skipping several generations of technology, cell phones seem to be a tremendous boon. Things seem to work a bit more reliably where they are available.

It's a sobering experience when places we have visited are hit by natural disasters or when we contemplate what might have happened if it had been us with a medical emergency or a tsunami in a remote place. We take lots of precautions but ultimately these risks are part of this adventure.

Our thoughts are with the people we met in 2007 in American Samoa (Pago Pago) and in northern Tonga (Nuiatopotabu), which we understand were hard hit. You can reread our blog entries from those places.

Sept 30 - All is well

2009-10-01T09:16:00.001-07:00

Hi loyal Rasamanis followers, Eve here. Just wanted to share with you that I received an email from my mom yesterday saying that my folks and the boat are fine. They were far away from both the Samoan earthquake & resulting tsunami activity and the Indonesian quakes. My mom plans to send an official blog update soon, so hopefully more news of them to come. Thanks for thinking of our family! -Eve

Sept. 21, Maewo Island, Vanuatu

2009-09-21T08:11:00.000-07:00

Left, Buying gas
Below, A garden

We have been delaying a trip to port since the end of August, when we had about a week of fresh provisions -a cabbage, three onions, half a head of garlic - on board. Three weeks later we are still eating well. Between bartering with the locals, the fishing rod, and the cans and dried goods we bought in New Zealand and Fiji, we are surviving quite nicely.

It's easy to get bananas, papayas, grapefruit, and mangoes (which have just come into season) from the canoes that paddle up to the boat or the villagers you meet ashore. We are eating bananas (which come in hands of 20-40 bananas) raw and in large quantities, also fried, sauced, pancaked and smoothied. We devour enormous papaya daily for breakfast. In the absence of lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers our salad is papaya with sesame oil, sesame seeds, and a little of the old cabbage for crunch. Often the fruit is given for free, as if it would be rude to charge for something that took so little effort.

Vegetables are harder to come by. In big towns (very few and far between), you sometimes see a roadside stand with Costco sized bundles of fresh greens wrapped in banana leaves. Because they won't split the bundles you develop creative uses for bok choy (think of celery substitute) and island cabbage (slimy spinach like leaves). Elsewhere, you need to develop relationships and you have to order in advance because the villagers' gardens are a long and steep trip from their homes by the sea, and they only bring home what they need to feed their families that day.
The old standbys - onions, potatoes, carrots, celery - are nowhere to be found in the outer islands. What's available is not familiar . There's the steak bean - a cross between a cucumber and zucchini with a very mild flavor when cooked. The chouchoute - a pale pear shaped summer squash. We pass on taro and manioc. Small, fragile, dirt-crusted eggs, green onions, little shriveled peppers, and yams are sometimes available, too.

Sometimes we pay money for produce, but more commonly it's a barter transaction. We have traded:
Sugar, rice and flour -where the supply boat hadn't come for six months.
Cow ropes - enough to keep a cow under one coconut tree, but not enough to get wrapped around the next tree.
Pens and pencils for school
Used bedsheets, clothes, kitchenware, tools
We have disposed of much that is not essential or that can be purchased when we get back to town. The islanders have so little and no way to get it, while we have so much.

At our last stop, a regional capital (a secondary school, a 20 bed hospital, a bank, a post office, an airstrip, a dirt road with a dozen trucks and motorcycles), there were four "general stores". One had a mini-fridge with cold drinks. With determination, we were able to buy six cans of Coca-Cola, packaged cookies, three liters of long life milk, canned tuna, toilet paper, rice, a dozen mass produced eggs and a few onions. We also bought gasoline direct from a 55 gallon drum. We could not find butter (we are down to our last two tablespoons), bread, or beer for sale even though the supply boat came while we were there.

Ah, beer. We have been saving our last bottle for about 10 days now - maybe for a very special celebration. Each Pacific nation has its own brewery(ies). In Vanuatu, it's called Tusker and it is pretty good. But due to high licensing fees and lack of demand in a non-cash economy where you can grow kava in your garden, beer is virtually unavailable outside of the cities. In Port Vila, a case was $45.00 (US). On Tanna, the only outer island where we found it, hidden like contraband, it was $43.00 (US) for 10 bottles. (They had gone to so much effort to bring it out that we couldn't say no, put it back).

Sept. 8, The Banks Islands, Vanuatu

2009-09-08T08:20:00.000-07:00

Vanuatu continues to astound and amaze us. Four weeks ago we thought we would never experience anything like Tanna again in our lives - but the hits, they just keep on coming. Here is a brief synopsis:

8/11 - 17 - In Port Vila, the capital of the country, population 30,000. Great restaurants and supermarket serve the large expat community. Swam in a gorgeous waterfall, finished the boat chores, got our visas extended, watched the weather turn beautiful and had one good hour online. We have been at least 50 miles away from internet, an electricity grid, paved roads, or grocery stores since leaving Port Vila. (This posting will be radioed to Eve who will post it on the blog.) We picked up Lindsey, a young American biologist as a passenger. Her "research vessel" (our friends on Fifth Season) had been delayed in transit from New Zealand.

8/18 -23 - In the Maskelyne Islands on the southeast coast of Malekula We partnered up with Ocean Star, a catamaran family from Hunter Valley,Australia. Between Lindsey's marine biology, eight year old William's gregariousness, and Tom's anthropology, we had a wonderful time exploring the coral reef and getting to know the locals, who commuted to their gardens on sailing canoes. At the school fundraiser, we sat on handwoven reed mats and ate lap-laps (puddings) with our hands. The headmistress of the school got the ladies giggly with kava. The men got way beyond giggly.

8/24 - 30 - Dodging ash and smoke from the island's active twin volcanoes, we attended the North Ambryn Back to My Roots Festival with about two dozen other yachts and a handful of anthropologists and fine arts experts. This particular community is the place where the most renowned art in Vanuatu - enormous carved slit-gong drums called tam-tams and tree fern statues - are made - in a culture that cultivates magic. (People from other islands will not step foot on Ambryn because they are so frightened of the magic here.) The festival was three days of non-stop dancing , singing and pig killing to mark the real-life promotion of a chief from one grade to the next. The women dancers wore grass skirts, nothing on top. The men wore belts and a penis sheath - a woven mat that is wrapped around the penis on one end and tucked into the belt on the other (so that the penis is held erect). You get used to it.

8/31 - 9/4 - We raced 130 miles north to the Banks Islands for the Vanua Lava Cultural Festival. This area is considered very remote even by Vanuatuans. No cell phones! The airport is a six hour walk or a 15 mile trip in a little motorboat in the open ocean, and the plane only comes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Nonetheless, the four day festival was fantastic and was considered a big success when 14 boats with 28 white people showed up (no one came by air). The costumes, singing, dancing, food, games. handicrafts, commentary, friendship, creativity and facilities would have been exceptional in a first world city of a million people. In a village of 900, where people lived off the land and didn't use money except to pay for school fees, it was absolutely astounding.

We are anchored now at Waterfall Bay, off the west coast of Vanua Lava, waiting for favorable winds to take us south to experience more Vanuatu. We plan to sail to the East Coast of Australia in the next month or two, and then fly home to the US.

Port Resolution, Tanna, Vanuatu, August 10, 2009

2009-08-12T19:52:00.000-07:00

This is an amazing place. Definitely National Geographic quality. Someday we will find an internet connection that can handle photos.

Port Resolution is a beautiful harbour on the east side of Tanna Island in Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides). One side of the harbor has hot springs from Mt Yasur volcano, about 8 miles away. When the wind blows from the north – which is not frequent, but happened twice in our eight days here - the boat gets covered with ash.

There is a village ashore. It is very traditional. People living in huts, dirt underfoot, arranged marriages, fishing from homemade outrigger canoes. There is a big primary school run by the Seventh Day Adventists. Everyone under 45 speaks either English or French fluently, learned in school. The older people speak one of Tanna’s 29 languages and usually Bislama, a pidgin English that is the common tongue in much of Melanesia.

There is no electricity in the village, but flashlights are common and some young people have cell phones. Batteries and charging facilities are scarce and there is an endless stream of requests to trade either for fresh vegetables or fish. There is a pickup truck in the village that takes us where we want to go – slowly and packed like sardines, bump, bump, bump on rutty dirt roads over mountains and streambeds and very funky bridges.

A highlight of Port Resolution is the trip up to the rim of the volcano at night. The volcano rumbles then explodes into fireworks. It was a rather calm night - no "firebombs' landing anywhere near us. Lonely Planet warns readers to get their affairs in order before going up to the volcano because tourists have died up there.

The highlight of our stay was a circumcision ceremony in a remote village. The actual operation took place about a month ago, with a sharpened bamboo stick, on 3 brothers approximately aged 5 – 10. The boys then went into hiding in the bush where they learn about being men from a grandfather who watches them. The two hour ceremony marked their return to their mother and village and qualifies them for the job of chewing kava root so their toothless elders can enjoy it in liquid form (spittle dissolved in water).

The father of the boys went to work in the big city of Port Vila to pay for this affair, on the scale of a bar mitzvah or a wedding back home. The five yachties who attended paid a per person fee which would go a small ways to help defray the costs.

5 pigs, 2 cows and one goat were ritually slaughtered in front of our eyes in the village ceremonial square (nakamal). A huge pile of food, mats and fabric was assembled on top of an underground cooking fire. The boys marched into the village square followed by the men of the village, dressed in colorful skirts, leis, feather headdresses, with faces painted yellow and red. The females were decked out even more elaborately, with a mix of the traditional (tie dyed skirts made from wild hibiscus stems) and the manufactured (tinsel Christmas garlands).

There were dances. Then food (chunks of beef and taro pudding cooked in banana leaves) was served to everyone (turned out the pudding was made with raw pigs blood, no wonder it tasted strange). Leftovers went to the dogs and piglets. Then long speeches by the male elders. Then the women and children left. Then the men sat around waiting for kava to be prepared (women are not supposed to be anywhere around the consumption of kava, it used to be punishable by death, now just steep fines.)

Tom spent the night in the village to experience the kava (reputed to be the strongest in Vanuatu which is reputed to be the strongest in Melanesia),watch the dancing and practice his training as an anthropologist. Here’s his account:

“I spent the afternoon hanging out, talking to people, visiting the village area, and resting up for the big night of singing and dancing. The atmosphere was one of quiet anticipation of the excitement to come. But it started to rain and rain hard just before dark. Things took a despairing turn and by about 8 pm most people had wandered off back to the village to shelter. I shivered under a borrowed blanket in one of the huts in the nakamal until about 10 pm when a man I had talked to showed up and brought me back to his house where his wife set up a bed for me.

I slept a little as the wind blew through the woven mats that make the walls and the rain pounded on the tin roof. A baby would occasionally whimper. There was only the light of flashlights and those were used very sparingly. About 3 am I awoke to singing in the distance. The rain and wind had stopped and I was cozy on a soft bed under the blanket. But then I thought, "What am I here for--to sleep or to witness Kastom dance and see what very few are willing or able to?"

So up I got and my host, Joe, and I trekked back up the hill where the little generator was going to provide a little light and a group of costumed men and women were dancing and singing in the center of the grounds. The dancing and accompanying songs, without instruments--only clapping and foot stomping-- went on until about 730 am. The food was brought, divided and eaten, and there were more speeches by various elders. My guide Stanley tried in vain to obtain a ride for us back to Port Resolution. He, his wife and young daughter needed to get back as well but he said that it would be too slow to go together so Stanley and I set off alone for the four-hour walk up over the hill along the rain-slickened rutted road. But it's these times that are most valuable. I had Stanley's undivided attention and asked him question after question.”

The next days at Port Resolution were jam-packed with interchanges with the villagers. Tom’s foray into village life earned him respect, warmth and entree. We left port with buckets of fresh vegetables, free range eggs, lobster, costume and craft pieces, a standing invitation to return for more special experiences, a kava hangover (Tom), and tears in our eyes (Ellen). In addition we loaded the boat with a bundle of taro to deliver to a village benefactor and a 23 year old villager who was headed to NZ for seasonal work in the apple orchards.

Denerau, Fiji Islands, July 28, 2009

2009-08-12T19:45:00.000-07:00

In April, we seriously questioned coming to Fiji. The military head of the country postponed elections until 2014. The country’s Supreme Court was dismissed after ruling the military coup was unconstitutional. The authority to license lawyers was taken from the bar association and handed to the government so it could put an end to effective representation of political dissidents, according to NZ newspapers.
Fiji has been in an ongoing state of political stress for over 25 years. The underlying issue is race. The first thing we were told in Fiji, from the health inspector who came aboard wearing a mask and gloves to protect against H1N1 virus, was “There are two races in Fiji – Fijians and Indians. He,” pointing to her colleague,“ is Indian. I am Fijian.” The population is split about 50 -50.
Employment seems to follow that pattern. Government offices and businesses, small and large, have both Indians and Fijians working side by side. We asked, it is a government mandate? The response, was no, it is good business. From what we could tell, housing is somewhat segregated (there are Indian villages where they fly red prayer flags). There did not appear to be any intermarriage.
Indo-Fijians started coming here around 1870 to work in the sugar cane fields as indentured servants. Though they are restricted from owning land, the Indo-Fijians are successful farmers, business people and professionals. For years, pro-Fijian governments have made life difficult for Indians, and many have left the country. Currently the government, which controls much of the land in trust for ethnic Fijians, is not renewing ten year leases to Indian farmers.
We asked lots of people their views on the situation. The most passionate response was from a thirty something part Chinese man who worked as a head chef in a fancy resort. “The last coup was the best thing that ever happened in this country. That’s when we could start walking around our neighborhood and feel safe. Before we were victimized by gangs and the police did nothing. Elections are the worst thing in Fiji – they do nothing but stir racial animosity. We are not ready for democracy. My generation doesn’t care about politics, we just want to make our house payments and raise our families.”
We heard a few dissents in Suva. “You can’t say anything for fear of being put in prison,” said one Indian cabdriver. The newspapers are silent except for the occasional press release from the government.
A distinguished Fijian who had served in a previous government and at UN Headquarters said, “It will have to run its course. The people will not be happy when unemployment rises when the rest of the world stops visiting and giving aid due to Fiji’s non-compliance with aid conditions. The truth, I believe, is a country like Fiji is prone to government by coups and countercoups.” A career US Embassy employee indicated that many diplomatic experts shared this theory and noted (as we did) that outside of Suva, no one seemed to care.
Tourism – the number one driver of the economy - dropped 40% in the two months following the clampdown. That was not the intention of the government, which devalued the Fijian dollar 20% to attract visitors. We could not spend more than $2.25 for a metered cab ride to anywhere in the sprawling city of Suva. Four cucumbers or 10 baby eggplants for 50 cents. $15 tops for a nice piece of clothing or pair of shoes. Resort visitors – including a pair of very devout Orthodox Jewish newlyweds from Brooklyn - crowed about their great tour packages.
So, if you don’t mind a long plane trip, we would tell you – after seven weeks there - that Fiji is THE place to come for a vacation in the South Pacific. It’s cheap. It’s very beautiful. There’s plenty of cultural interest. The weather – especially on the west side – is lovely (read, sunny and not beastly hot). No mosquitos, no “Bali belly” (down under for “la turista”), excellent transportation and communication systems, a resort to suit every budget and interest, and the friendliest, most helpful people we’ve encountered.
(PS – It’s been a long time away from the internet, so excuse the late posting.)

Beqa Island, Fiji, July 15, 2009

2009-07-22T02:03:00.000-07:00

Waiting for parts we took a weekend trip to Beqa Island, located about 25 miles southwest of Suva. We were entranced and decided to return with our new alternator installed. The chartplotter still doesn’t work but the boat has managed well without one for almost 5 years, just a longer delay to our entrance into 21st century navigation.
Beqa (spelled “Mbengga” on charts) is 36 square kilometers of mountainous green jungle, beach and mangroves. There are nine villages on the island, which is surrounded by a large lagoon. No roads, off the grid, very quiet. We are told that it is written up as one of the “1000 Places to See Before You Die” and frequently makes the list of top dive sites in the world. It is also home to a clan of firewalkers that is unique to this island. There are a handful of intimate resorts which have been very welcoming – perhaps because business is slow, perhaps because everyone likes an anchored yacht in the foreground of their sunset photo, perhaps for diversion. The clients are mainly American honeymooners and dive groups.
All land and harbors –even surf breaks!- are owned by someone. Here, as in other rural areas of Fiji, one cannot anchor, walk, fish, swim – do anything, really – without permission of the village chief and payment of the “toll”. Here is the routine:
Anchor. Get dinghy in water. Put engine on dinghy. Go ashore. Remember to bring the kava (dried pepper plant that is prepared as a slightly inebriating tea) you bought at the market in town which the sellers dress up in newspaper and ribbon, and remember to bring the cruising permit that is written in Fijian. Remember to remove your sunglasses and hat – wearing them is disrespectful. Remember to be covered from the knees to the shoulders. Remember to bring the camera.
Greet the hordes of children on the beach, climbing into the boat, touching everything, dripping green stuff from their noses, with odd skin lesions and coughs. Ask for the chief. Walk through the village saying “bula” to everyone. Be shown into the chief’s house, into a large room covered with woven straw mats, where an ordinary looking guy with gray hair greets you. Be seated on the mat, cross legged. Make some small talk “Where are you from?” “How long will you stay?”, hand over your gift of kava.
The chief chants a short something over the kava then claps his hands five times (a distinguished, low-pitched clap) then dismisses us with directions: “The children will show you around the village. You are welcome to stay as long as you want . You may take pictures”. Later you learn if you want to climb that mountain you need to pay a guide. And that beach over there belongs to someone else, you can’t go there.
Sometimes the villagers are friendly, inviting you into their homes, and “giving” you stuff – a shell necklace, some papayas, a snack. It’s not so much a gift as the preliminary to asking you for something – a raincoat? Some batteries for her radio? Fishing line? Money towards a new pair of rugby boots?
It’s exhausting and very rewarding. You go back to the boat and bring the stuff you promised and meet more people who want to give you more things, and then you meet their children and grandchildren and some other people, and on it goes.

Suva, Fiji July 1

2009-07-02T16:28:00.000-07:00

Right, scene from Suva market
Below, scenic view of Suva harbor

Fiji – finally!!!
We arrived in the capital city of Suva on June 17 to warm sunshine over beautiful, rugged green mountains. The passage from Minerva was three unexpectedly nice days of sailing (we expected to motor). There was lots of fresh fish to supplement the dwindling larder (we ran out of bread and just about all of the fresh produce). Crew Chris needed to get back to commitments in NZ after the 8 day trip that lasted close to a month. The alternator, a critical part of our electric supply, stopped functioning a few hours before we arrived. We were ready to be in port.
No matter, shut up and wait. It took 26 hours before our passports were officially stamped and we were free to move around. In the meantime, the refrigerator and freezer were turned off and what was left was quickly melting in the heat. Our cruising friends on Asylum and Scholarship arrived to a big barbecue of our defrosting meat.
Suva’s a big town for the South Pacific, a major port, a bustling commercial center, and the hub of higher education, regional governance, and aid for the South Pacific. The East Indian population of Fiji is concentrated here, with restaurants, temples, mosques, sari stores, al-Jazeera TV and Bollywood movies. There are Chinese and Japanese enclaves, white expats, lots of Samoans, Tongans, Solomon Islanders. And then there are the very friendly Fijians. Formerly cannibals, they greet you with “bula”, big smiles and lasting eye contact.
While still a third world backwater, the city is remarkably tidy, quiet and well-organized. Great shopping (better than Auckland) and lots of modern air conditioned office buildings with computers on the desks and vision and mission statements posted on the walls. The public market is wonderful. However, you wouldn’t swim or fish in the harbor. Other than the day we arrived, it rains almost all the time. We are told to watch out for pickpockets and not to be on the streets at night. And a poisonous snake has decided that it likes to hang out in our dinghy motor. Now that is creepy.
Two weeks later, we are still here, still waiting for replacement parts, and no idea of when we will be able to leave. What a life.

June 13, North Minerva Reef

2009-06-13T09:26:00.000-07:00

North Minerva Reef is a coral lagoon that is about 2/3 of the way between northern New Zealand and Fiji. The reef is a 3.5 mile diameter circle. There is one narrow pass in and out. Inside the reef the water is about 40-50 ft deep, surrounded by the Pacific Ocean. There's nothing relating to civilization on the reef except one navigational beacon.
At high tide the reef is awash and we are surrounded by breakers. At low tide, you can take the dingy to walk and wade on the magnificent coral reef and see octopus, starfish, hermit crabs, and splendid live corals at your feet. It's warm but not hot. Chris is keeping us and the three other yachts here provisioned with fresh fish which we have eaten sushied, fried, barbecued, chowdered, pated.
We arrived just after dawn on June 8, after a mostly pleasant passage of 6 days. We were shocked to see a cargo ship anchored inside the reef. On closer examination, it looked more like a pirate lair. We have since learned that the ship is a Tongan-Chinese sea cucumber harvesting operation. The crew - 9 stationed here for 6 months- walks the reef at low tide. In broken English and pantomime, they showed us how to eat raw giant clam (which turns out to be an endangered species).
This was supposed to be a quick rest stop to meet up with our friends on Asylum and Scholarship. However, we are essentially trapped here by north winds that will make continuing the passage to Fiji miserable and have made it virtually impossible to get off the boat the past two days.
You can't escape the life lessons that are helping us get by:
- Patience. Patience. Patience.
- This too will pass.
- Don't put off til tomorrow what you can do today.

Divided by a Common Tongue

2009-06-01T00:11:00.001-07:00

Another essay, still waiting for weather out of New Zealand. We plan to leave tomorrow, June 2, in the morning. But then, we planned to leave Thursday and we planned to leave yesterday....Someday we will have a good internet connection that will allow us to post pictures, but not in this little village at the top of the North Island...

With apologies to a speaker on NZ Public Radio, we agree with the thesis that there are profound cultural differences in the modern English speaking world. The more time goes on, the more our initial impression of NZ (it’s just like home) seems misplaced.
Work. Q-“Why aren’t there any Kiwis on Star Trek?”A – “New Zealanders don’t work in the future either.” “What do sperm and Kiwis have in common?” “Only 1 in 50,000 work.”
In New Zealand, work is a means to an end. That end is lifestyle. You get enough money from work to live your lifestyle (not just own it).
Therefore, work is where you can take off for a month to sail to Fiji with your mates or two months to go visit the kids in England. A construction business where you can sit out a recession. A cafe that you open 8:30 – 4 weekdays so you can fish weekends. Complete unreality in the US. Here, it’s the expectation. The trade-off is that the standard of living is lower, and personal debt is higher.
Naturally, owning your own business is big. Not only do you get to call the shots about work hours but you also rule your own empire. Do you have complaints about the service, price or quality at my business? Get out. I don’t want to see you in here again. Take your business elsewhere. It doesn’t work and you want to return it? We don’t do returns, you need to be more careful when you shop.
Education. There is great pride and respect for the trades and working with your hands. University graduates downplay their education and often end up far from home, in London or Australia. Farming is the top of the economic ladder – not only is it a source of income but the land, when sold off, is a source of substantial wealth. The farmers we have met have been sophisticated business people in family teams, well-heeled, knowledgeable about agrarian science and the world, owners of second homes and beautiful boats.
Sex and the family. People are very matter of fact about sexuality and sexual relationships. It is odd to hear people refer to their husband or wife, partner is the term of choice for all ages and sexes. One assumes that parents of young children are not married. When they do marry and divorce, joint custody is the rule. A common custody arrangement is the family nest, where the parents move in and out of the family home according to the custody schedule.
According to several surveys, Kiwi women are the most promiscuous in the world. We have not experienced that first hand but we can say that women tell the bawdiest of jokes in mixed company and seem comfortable in pioneering and iconoclastic roles. NZ has already had two women prime ministers. One of the top films here this year is about a pair of farmgirl yodelling comedian folksinging lesbian twins who made it big in show business. Contrast that with Australia, where the dominant female icon was, to our eyes, the fashion model.

Rowing on the River

2009-05-31T23:57:00.000-07:00

Right, scullers on the Wairoa River near Tauranga, NZ
Below, Bay of Plenty Coast Rowing Club at regatta

Essay from Ellen while waiting for a weather window out of NZ:

Rowing was the sunshine of my life in Tauranga. I found Bay of Plenty Coast Rowing Club online. The club was a friendly, supportive and growing group of seventeen men and women developing their sculling and occasionally, with some groans, sweep skills.
The thrice weekly drive out to the boathouse was a like a tonic to my soul – out into the country, away from the sprawl, the traffic, the gusty harbour, the endless work on the boat. We rowed up the tidal Wairoa river when the tide was coming in, and down the river when it was running out, past green hilly farms, bush-clearing fires, past herds of cows and sheep, kiwifruit groves, lifestyle estates, twittering birds, lush monstrous deep green ferns, autumn leaves, rainbows, magnificent autumn sunsets and full moon risings, watching out for other boats, logjams, flooding, sharp turns, and duck hunters.
My teammates are a hardy bunch. We went out in big rains, near gale winds, whitecaps, tipped over in floods, went out in radically new line-ups all the time. Fall in, get up and shake yourself off. Freezing cold – it’s shorts and T-shirt weather. Who needs shoes? We walk across vast parking lots of gravel in our bare feet. Warm up before a race? Dash from the finish line to the next boat, get in and go!
I participated in three regattas rowing in 8s, quads, and doubles. I even brought home a gold medal. I learned how to respond to “easy!” (instead of “weigh enough”) and to “right” and “left” instead of “port” and “starboard”. Got comfortable with sculling, learned to steer a boat with my foot, enjoyed rowing with the opposite sex, and possibly even made some progress with my technique.

May 28, Opua NZ

2009-05-27T23:18:00.000-07:00

In case you are wondering, we are still in New Zealand. May’s been a tough month but it could have been much worse. The retrofit is complete – well, sort of – and the improvements are marvellous -but I’m not sure we will ever forget the blood, sweat, tears, time and money it took.
Or the luck we have had. On May 11, our boat was out of the water “on the hard” for last minute painting and polishing. We were preparing to move the boat back into the water that afternoon when blinding lightning struck. We scrambled off the boat – a 64 foot lightning rod - and drove through hail to the nearby Starbucks for cover.
We returned to find several workers had been shocked not 15 feet from our boat. Over 16 inches of hail fell and sat on the ground for 12 hours. The roof of the local shopping mall collapsed. In the marina, electricity had travelled up into the boats in the water and literally fried everything from depth sounders to DVD players. We were extremely fortunate to have been out of the water, our systems were not touched.
The last month was a blur of endless work in cold biting wind, tests, trials, successes, failures, setbacks, and looming doubt about whether and when it would all come together. With our friends on Asylum, we started the tradition of the “Unhappy Hour” where, on particularly bad days, of which there were many, we cried on each others’ shoulders over a stiff rum or two or.... At some point we would feel better and be able to face the next day.
On Saturday, May 23, having just completed our punchlist, we set sail for Fiji with crew Chris Shepard. Chris is a University of Arizona grad who has been living in Wellington where he makes his living playing online poker, hones his skills as a sailor and golfer and recently won the New Zealand Ultimate Frisbee team championship (he is also a national champion in Denmark). He is a fearless technophile – no fear of pressing buttons – a skill we deeply appreciate with our new electronics and our various computers and marine peripherals.
May 23 was a bright sunny day, and the southwest wind built into gale force as the day wore on. Our new sails sped us towards our destination at a magnificent 8 knots, double reefed. However, several pieces of brand new equipment were not working properly and another big storm was brewing, so we re-entered New Zealand at Opua, in the Bay of Islands, 30 hours into the trip.
We quickly set to work resolving the problems. We hunkered down for the storm that dumped 4 inches of rain in about 12 hours on Tuesday, installed a new part and did a sea trial Wednesday, and were chomping at the bit to take off Thursday, which the forecasters had been promising was going to be a good time to take off. Not to be. Late Wednesday night we got the message that a huge storm was in the offing for the weekend, delay departure plans until next Tuesday. Who knows when we will leave NZ?

Tauranga NZ, April 26

2009-04-26T16:26:00.000-07:00

OK, blog fans, we’ve heard you. We are still in New Zealand. Still in Tauranga. Still tied up at the dock.
We have been working on the boat almost nonstop since we returned from Australia on February 16. A month later, Tom wrote his sister, “It’s been frustrating, discouraging, depressing, annoying, bitter, laughable, cryable. We hug each other and say surely we will be out of here come May. But it’s raining again.” At that point all we had to show for 30 days of work was the installation of two new reading lights.
Since that time there has been a lot of forward progress. We see the light at the end of the tunnel and should be ready to leave New Zealand in mid-May, weather permitting. What will happen if the weather doesn’t come before we are officially kicked out on May 30 when the temporary import entry for the boat expires, we don’t know, and don’t think about too much. There are so many other things to think about. Will we go to Fiji which just experienced its umpteenth coup since 1994? How do we operate all our new systems? Will we remember anything at all about sailing after 18 months in the marina? What’s our long term plan?
Not exactly paradise. We have been working as hard as we ever worked in the States with familiar patterns of stress. We have given up all reading except for electronics manuals, cruising guides and charts.
We do get a bit of entertainment. Ellen joined the local rowing club. Our cruising friends are supportive and an endless source of advice, comfort, food, and drink.
We’ve gone on two excursions. The first was The Great Walk over the Tongariro Crossing. When we arrived, hundreds of people from all over the world had been waiting four days in cold mountain rains for the trail to open for this once in a lifetime opportunity. The winds on top at 6000 feet were fierce driving knock-downs, reminding us of books we’d read about climbing the Himalayas. It rained nonstop. We couldn’t see a thing. (Well, the photo above of the sulphurous lake near the summit was decent.) Disappointing.
We also went to the NZ World Cup Qualifier horse cross-country event where we saw a top level thoroughbred die in front of our eyes from overstress (not nutritional supplements). Creepy. Better stick to the to-do list.

Perth, Australia, February 15

2009-02-25T00:44:00.000-08:00

We spent 10 days in the southwestern corner of the state of Western Australia (WA). Perth, the state’s capital, has been called “the most remote city in the world”. It’s four hours, by air, to any other city in Australia or Asia. Perth didn’t seem remote. The city was full of new buildings, luxury goods, expensive cars, microbreweries and supermodel wannabees.
Our friends Steve and Jillian showed us a wonderful time. Steve emigrated to Oz 20 years ago from Seattle, and Jill came from England around the same time. They took us to see an Australian Rules football game – Jill works for the league so we sat in the commissioner’s box. They introduced us to great music and the best local libations. They arranged for an afternoon of sailing out of Royal Perth Yacht Club, proud home of Australia II, winner of the 1983 America’s Cup. Took us bike riding on the glorious Rottnest Island. And we’ve gotten to know three out of four of Steve’s wonderful daughters.
Three hours south of the Perth was Margaret River - nirvana for people who love the fine things in life. Home to 140 premium wineries, the area’s Indian Ocean beaches draw an international surfer set. Talk about beautiful people. The area is quiet and bucolic. There’s no traffic. The stars at night are something to behold. One wanders around in a haze of fine wine with galleries and food to match.
Most of Australia’s mineral wealth is found in WA and this sector has been the major driver of the country’s economy in recent years. There’s gold, nickel, iron, uranium, copper, diamonds, salt, oil and gas and more. China has been the dominant buyer as well as a major investor.
We were not out of fire danger in WA. We went for a hike in a national park just minutes from our hotel in Margaret River. We smelled smoke. We drove down the road to catch a view of a huge plume of smoke rising out of the hills. At the hotel, an evacuation was in process. We packed our bags and wondered what was next. Six hours later, the fire was under control and we got back to the hotel but the firefighters spent 48 hours mopping up. The park was lit up with flames again the next night – perhaps, it was speculated, by arsonists seeking the thrill of the Victorian bushfires.

Victoria, Australia, February 7

2009-02-14T00:01:00.000-08:00

The state of Victoria, as everyone by now knows, is the site of the horrific Australian wildfires that exploded on February 7. We were never in the impacted areas and we left Victoria February 6, the day before the disaster struck. We visited dry plains dotted with gum trees, steep forested hills and mountains, traces of waterfalls and rivers, dramatic limestone cliffs. We saw lots of kangaroos and koalas in the wild, along with a lone emu. In contrast to the green east coast, Victoria, in the southeast, was brown and dry. Now in the twelfth year of a drought, there have been bans on watering for years. We tried to go to a car wash. It had been closed for three years. We took a detour to see the lake built for the rowing events of the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, a beautiful area according to our Lonely Planet. All dried up. There were signs everywhere, “Extreme Fire Danger”. There was evidence – physical and anecdotal - of massive forest fires in the recent past. The news had daily coverage of bushfires raging already in the area. Down at the coast, along the Great Southern Ocean, we were told, by the friendliest people so far in Australia, this kind of heat is not normal. It had brought a plague of annoying but harmless flies that sought you out wherever it was hot and sunny as if to say, you don’t belong here. The tourist sites were hard to appreciate because everyone around was doing their best to wave off the flies. Hiking was not particularly pleasant either. Bushfires, we have been learning, are essential to the ecology of Australia. The indigenous people engaged in controlled burning to allow germination of seeds for their food supplies. The white people didn’t fare so well. One of the most evocative pieces of art we have seen was a frightening Victorian bushfire at night, painted in 1898. We can honestly say the place was in high alert. After the week of extreme heat during the tennis tournament in Melbourne (3 days in a row over 108), the temperatures moderated a bit, staying just below 100. Days in advance, the weather forecast for February 7 was, “record heat and high winds…with the risk of catastrophic fires as in Black Friday (1939) or Ash Wednesday (1993)”, each of which left dozens dead. The policy is “leave early or stay to defend”. People were prepared – but not for this one, with flames as high as 200 feet roaring down the hills not 30 miles from downtown Melbourne, a city of 3.5 million people.

Melbourne, January 31

2009-01-30T17:26:00.000-08:00

Here we are in Melbourne at the end of the Australian Open. It’s truly a stroke of luck for us because we aren’t big tennis fans, at least not until now. We are here now because our Seattle friends Alan and Margaret had been planning a pilgrimage to this Grand Slam tournament to coincide with our time down under. They had to cancel, leaving us with a hotel room just down the river from the Machu Picchu of this sport – the Rod Laver Arena and the Melbourne Park tennis complex.
There are huge TV screens set up in public places downtown – plazas, malls – and hundreds of people sit as a community watching the play in silence, cheering or clapping at appropriate moments. It’s also been 110 degrees Fahrenheit three days in a row (think, summertime in Las Vegas except the city is not set up for this kind of weather, with train tracks buckling and massive power outages). The longest and hottest heat wave to hit Melbourne in 100 years, they say. It’s beastly hot. Great weather for staying indoors and watching “the tennis” on “the telly”.
But yesterday we braved the heat and experienced the tournament live and in person. Our first major tennis tournament watching Venus and Serena Williams winning the women’s doubles – with the roof closed. Later, with the roof open, the 5 hour, 14 minute semi-final between Rafael Nadal and Fernando Verdasca, the battle of the Spaniards, an absolutely riveting match, with Verdasco matching Nadal point for point, set after set...

Airlie Beach, Queensland, January 26

2009-01-29T01:02:00.000-08:00

First Dive

Tom and Stacey

In two weeks, we travelled north, about 600 miles by campervan and about the same distance by air and boat. The land has grown greener and greener. We have seen nothing remotely resembling outback. We have moved from temperate weather to the tropics here in North Queensland/Great Barrier Reef.
Camping was a great way to see the country. We could move at our own pace. We stayed at trailer parks and national park campgrounds and met a lot of Australians along the way. One lady told us about four wheel driving in the outback (personal record, 5.5 days seeing no one else). They have a single sideband radio network (like yachties) and air intake towers that allow the engine to work in flood waters. She lent us a book of Aussie poetry. Did you know “Waltzing Matilda” was originally a socio-political epic about a starving poacher who killed himself when he was apprehended by the police?
The landscape was great. The small towns attractive. We had reunions with boat friends who have sailed on to Australia. We saw Neil Young in concert. Many Aussies stayed up all night to watch the Obama inauguration.
Brisbane was a monument to big brash civic vision. Transportation system? Ferries of all speeds and sizes run up and down a completely revitalized river. Hot? Cool off in the fantastic water gardens right downtown underneath bowers of bougainvillea. Museums, take your pick of world class architecture. A massive airport. Two enormous new bridges and 20 mile freeway segments under construction.
Airlie Beach is about 1200 miles north of Sydney and 800 miles south of Cape York (the northernmost point on the East Coast of Australia). It’s gorgeous if you can ignore the pesky bugs and the stultifying muggy heat characteristic of summer, the rainy season. Reminiscent of Bali and Hawaii, it rains very hard but has cleared up every day.
This is a small resort town that is the hub of Australia’s #1 boat cruising area, the Whitsunday Islands, 74 forested mountainous islands on the inside of the Great Barrier Reef. Our friend Steve Ingram’s daughter works on a boat based here. She generously offered us her home and car while she was off at work.
Stacey’s place is made out of corrugated tin and sits in the middle of sugar cane fields by a creek under green mountains. The fields are filled with wallabies (little kangaroos). There’s water from a tank that collects rainwater from the roof, electricity, refrigeration, and hot and cold plumbing. No air conditioning, just 2 ceiling fans and big frames that slide open to the outside. No screens, but a mosquito net canopy around the bed. The area is nicknamed “Snake Valley Yacht Club” by the locals but we saw no evidence of the namesake in the five days we were here, nor of the tarantula that supposedly lives in the yard. It’s really quiet when the rain stops, the frogs pipe down, and the geckos go to sleep.
We took an excursion boat to the Great Barrier Reef. It was 55 miles out and back again. Now that we have seen one of the seven wonders of the world and tried scuba diving for the first time, we can say that we have seen more impressive reef breaks and undersea life snorkeling off Rasa Manis.

Queensland, January 22

2009-01-29T00:51:00.000-08:00

Lots of wildlife in twelve days of camping in the hinterlands and beaches of the East Coast. The first live kangaroo sighting – a pair – came after six days roaming the woodlands. After that we’ve seen our fair share of hopping marsupials in the bush. We still personally can’t tell a kangaroo from a wallaby, a wallaroo, or a pandelemon.
There are big prehistoric looking lizards – goannas – and geckos all over the place. Snakes, including a huge dead python. Colorful noisy birds and laughing kookaburras. Cicadas so loud the sound pierces your eardrums. Frogs so loud you have to yell over them. Dingoes howling at night. We are grateful to have metal between us and the creatures of the night.
In captivity we have seen cute koalas, hefty wombats, massive sharks, and after much determination, a duck billed platypus. We lost most of our very amateur wildlife photography trying to use an underwater case that malfunctioned when we took it snorkeling. Ooops.
Fortunately we have not yet encountered the fearsome poisonous jellyfish. Now, the southern summer, is stinger season. These stingers are sometimes fatal. We met a fortyish man near Brisbane. When we told him we were headed north, he said, “Watch out for the jellyfish”, and showed us the permanent scars he’d received at age 4 when he was on holiday with his parents. Tourists, they had no idea of the risk they were taking swinging him by the arms along the water on a hot and humid summer day. He spent two days in hospital close to death.
Now, there are big signboards by the beaches identifying the various jellyfish, some of which are barely visible. There are bottles of vinegar attached to the signboards which counter the effects of stings from one or two of the numerous species. “If you are stung, flush with one to two liters of vinegar for 30 minutes. Get emergency help immediately…..Symptoms include nausea, dizziness, loss of consciousness and a looming sense of dread…”. The government constructs lovely swimming pools by the beaches and one wears a full body stinger suit engaging in water sports.
Then there are the sharks. Last year, the state of Queensland netted over 800 sharks off popular swimming beaches. 20% of them were Jaws-sized monsters. One is advised not to go near the water at dawn and dusk, especially not while walking a dog (favored shark bait). Who would have thought swimming could be this hazardous to your health?

January 13, 2009, Sydney Region, Australia

2009-01-13T14:05:00.000-08:00

“We’re not hobbits. It’s nice to get out of the shire.”

Australia’s awesome. Maybe it’s just the contrast with gnarly New Zealand, but everything seems vibrant, big, brash, ambitious. Sydney’s a beautiful city with a lovely harbor, excellent beaches, an extensive, coordinated public transportation system with bus, trains, light rail, ferries, and monorail and millions of young people (every exchange student in the world?).

We missed New Year’s Eve but we got opening night of the Sydney Festival. Not only were there fireworks, but the downtown streets and parks were transformed into a free performing arts festival with an estimated quarter of a million people in the streets, listening to live music and learning “The Sydney”, a specially commissioned dance via huge video screens.

After five days in Sydney we picked up a campervan (small motor home) and headed out to the Blue Mountains, big eucalyptus forests covering long ridges, vast limestone caves and deep, deep canyons. We’ve reached the Hunter Valley, a big wine region. There are 90 wineries here. Impressive estates, they must be competing for architecture and landscape design prizes along with Wine Spectator ratings.

December 21, 2008 - Tauranga, NZ

2008-12-21T00:18:00.000-08:00

You’ve got your chestnuts roasting on the open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose. We’ve got Santa Claus running around on the beach, fresh strawberry shortcake, and the pohukatawha trees in full bloom. Seasons greetings from New Zealand.

We just returned from almost six months in the US. We resumed some aspects of our former life (rowing for Ellen, another set of projects on the house for Tom), finally sold our industrial property, and explored some new ventures (dreaming about the next home, trout fishing in Montana, volunteering with the winning campaigns and a microlending organization).

You can travel around the world, but there is nothing, nothing like being with your own family. Starting with charming grandson Quinn (on video below with his Grandpa and Mimi at age 10 months). Kim and Ruben are enjoying parenthood, their jobs and Portland, ME. Eve is in San Francisco, on a temporary assignment with her firm. She loves the city and maybe she will figure out a way to stay. Amy is in Seattle, and just completed her first quarter at University of Washington Law School. Our mothers are both doing well and so is the fourteen year old dog that used to be ours, Chip.

We are back in full swing working on the boat and looking forward to a six-week air journey to Australia after the holidays. Then we will return to NZ and finish up the boat work in anticipation of sailing off to Fiji and Vanuatu in May. Cheers!

December 12, 2008- Tauranga, NZ

2008-12-11T15:40:00.000-08:00

Tauranga Harbor View
View of Mt Manganui from Beach

Back in New Zealand, yet again. The little city of Tauranga feels more and more like home. The weather is sublime, it’s nice to reunite with friends and acquaintances, we know our way around, the car is working, and fresh strawberries are the fruit of the month.

The boat is fine, but there is still a lot of work to do. We worry about completing it in time to catch the good weather window in May. Yes, five months seems like enough time to get anything done. Any why would you worry when you are leading the dream life in the South Pacific?

You do when the tradesman you worked with last year and who is number one on your critical path says (after you have put in the obligatory 15 minutes of small talk, live and in person, because starting a project on the phone is not getting into action here): “Oi keen coom boi and look at it sometoime in Janry efter Oi feenish thees big jawb een look at eet.” “We’ll be in Oz (local for Australia) for 6 weeks in January and February”. “Weel, Oi moy be down thee road boi then.” “Do you mean you are retiring?” “Ah, yees, thees is getting too much fer me, got ter leave it to thees yung uns.”

We will get there but it won’t be easy. And hey, the really good news is that New Zealand is a bargain now. A U.S. dollar purchases 35% more than it did in March, when we started the boat refit. Dinner out, nothing fancy, costs $16 rather than $25 and there are a lot of very good wines to be purchased for under $5/bottle. Here we are, on the “good side” of the global economic crisis – there are deals to be had, the planes are empty, it really is a good time to come on over.

The Kiwis are not preoccupied by the gloomy news. They tell lots of jokes: “How do you tell who’s an optimist in the financial industry?” “It’s the one who irons five shirts on Sunday night.” The tradespeople claim to be busy, but it looks to us like they just know how to drag out jobs that pay by the hour. The only thing the New Zealanders complain about is the price of cheese, and they have been doing that since we first arrived a year ago. Go figure.

Seattle, July 8, 2008

2008-07-08T11:11:00.000-07:00

The No. 1 Frequently Asked Question: Is something wrong with the boat? The short answer is no – we are making enhancements. .
– The 62 foot mast was removed March 18 and reinstalled June 24 with a big crane. The big change was removing from the mast a frustrating furling mechanism and installing a slick new Strong Track system and an electric winch for hoisting the main sail. After the mast was painted we added a new signature – two bright flourescent stripes high on the mast, our own Nike swoosh which will distinguish our mast from all the other white sticks in a crowded anchorage.
– New main and genoa sails (shipped from Port Townsend Sails) will be installed and tested when we return in December.
– The boat arrived in New Zealand (sailing the old-fashioned way) with non-functioning radar, auto-pilot, wind and speed instruments and an ailing windlass (the power unit that moves the anchor and 200 feet of chain). Most of the replacements are now installed.
– We finally got new batteries. We selected AGM batteries to eliminate maintenance. In doing so we may have asked for other problems though. Time will tell. It took professional help to modify the existing electrical system to accommodate these new beauties.
- The anchor chain locker has been redesigned and rebuilt to eliminate leaking and make it easier to pull up anchor with a crew of two. Sounds easy, huh? This work had to be done while the boat was out of the water and took a skilled craftsperson four weeks full time.
– Eight more inches of width to the master berth. It’s small but it’s huge. We grabbed the extra width by cutting out part of a locker, just a bit of furniture. But wait! All the furniture on our boat is designed to be part of the hull structure. This meant not removing all of what we wanted to and having a carpenter make a wood cover for an ugly piece of fiberglass, as well as adding storage in another area to make up for the lost part of the locker. The finished product looks very much like the woodwork of the rest of the boat and when the varnish is applied should look like it was part of the original build.
– All new interior upholstery. Phillip the barefoot upholsterer worked on his own schedule. No matter. We couldn’t have taken delivery until the end of June because the boat was a mess and 15 feet up in the air. Phillip will recover the ceiling with ultrasuede when we return and Wendy the canvas lady will make new canvas covers for the outside of the boat then too.
– New stainless steel arch fabrication over the transom to house the new wind generator, the solar panels, the aft anchoring system, and more.
– Repair leaks. Lots of little leaks. Each type of leak requires a different fix. Each fix requires multiple steps. Each step takes a day.
– In all we have had four or five shipments from the US ranging in size from envelopes to hundreds of pounds on pallets in ocean containers, personally cleared through NZ Customs for our “yacht in transit”. It’s been “Keystone Cops” more than once but in every instance importing has turned out to be substantially less expensive than purchasing the same items in NZ, even with the cost of freight, currency exchange, customs fees, mileage, long distance calls, and mental anguish.
The boat was “splashed” back in the water June 24. With Tom doing a substantial share of the labor and an 8% decline in the Kiwi dollar since we began the work, the project is on budget - if not on time.

Tauranga NZ, June 2

2008-06-02T01:00:00.001-07:00

Work on the boat continues. It has been out of the water, in the boatyard, for almost three weeks and is crawling with tradespeople. It is two steps forward, one back, pretty much seven days a week. Like a major kitchen remodel...when will it ever be done? Regardless, Ellen returns to the US June 5, Tom on June 29. We will be in the US until December 1 when we will return with fresh visas to --- more boat work!

The weather continues to be beautiful and from the point of view of physical surroundings, Tauranga is lovely but...dull. The most exciting thing around is the food.

May is kiwifruit harvest season. We see trucks and trainloads of it heading out to sea every day. Ellen spent an afternoon visiting a kiwi orchard and packing house during harvest and helped with the picking - hard work in an idyllic setting.

Autumn is spoonfruit season. You eat spoonfruit by slicing it in half and dipping into it with a sharp little spoon like a grapefruit spoon, eat the heart, toss the skin. Kiwi is one spoonfruit. Others are the feijoa (fu-joe-ah), a small green fruit that tastes like bubblegum; the passionfruit - a hard black wrinkly shell filled with sublime seeds and pulp that taste vaguely like pineapple; tamarillo - a bright red sour plum like fruit that might be a cross between a tomato and a tomatillo.

Citrus - bags of the sweetest mandarins and satsumas you can imagine. Piles of persimmons (really nice, like apple) and magnificent pears - varieties that look vaguely familiar but aren't - Beurre Bosc, Taylor's Gold, Nashi.

Avocados on the side of the road, 10 for about $2.50. We swim in avocadoes.
Fresh macadamia nuts....my oh my. Texture like fresh coconut. Very hard to open - takes a hammer and a lot of whacks.

There are your typical vegetables only with different names: capsicums (bell peppers), silverbeet (chard), kumara (sweet potatoes) along with the pumpkin that appears to be a number one favorite right up there with lettuce, tomatoes and carrots.

Sourcing. Organic is at least as common as in the US. There are supermarkets, produce stores, farmers markets, roadside stands and trucks. In addition to your neighbor, your work colleague, your dentist...scrambling to get rid of their home grown produce. Living on "lifestyle" acreage with your own little orchard is the local dream domicile, complete with gas guzzling pickup truck/SUV and kids attending school and doing sports in town...with gas at over $6 per gallon.

In general, the cost of food is higher than the US. Actually, the cost of everything -including housing- is higher than the US. Salaries are quite a bit lower. We don't really understand how people make it but if our experience is any indication they don't have a lot of appliances or furniture, they don't have heating in their homes, and they don't go out for dinner (restaurants are crummy, expensive, empty, and many of them are closed in the evenings).

Tauranga NZ, April 29

2008-04-28T19:05:00.000-07:00

This chapter of our adventure is not about sailing or traveling, it’s about settling into life in another country. Keeping house in Kiwiland, doing business down under, finding community and a sense of meaning in a new place.
Just over a month ago we moved off the boat to a flat by the beach in Mt. Maunganui, a resort area just minutes from the marina. Our landlords are Aucklanders who come down to enjoy their beach “bach” (vacation home) upstairs on very occasional weekends. For those of you who have visited NZ, or received Kiwi baby gifts from us, you will relate to the fact that the landlord has an apparel business with the “All Blacks” license for childrens wear. An American comparison might be made to Disney branding. Our neighbors on the beach side are Judy and Joe. They have been very friendly, giving us local information and produce from their daughter’s farm, loaning us furniture, and introducing Ellen to the church ladies.
The beach is beautiful. Almost always empty. One day after a big storm we counted about 60 surfers; during another run on a perfectly calm national holiday there were about 70 small craft fishing in the bay. Occasionally there is a sea kayaker, a glider, a remote control fisherman, a tightrope walker, or surf lifesavers out practicing…but mostly just a handful of folks, always with a greeting. We have come to the conclusion that this is Southern California without the people or the pollution. The weather is usually beautiful, there are palms and citrus trees around.
The house is a big improvement over living at the marina, especially with the arrival of autumn, which has been characterized by occasional bouts of torrential rain, wind and waves. It is a delight not to have to walk a quarter mile to the bathroom or live amongst “The Birds” (huge throngs of gulls that bear some resemblance to the creatures in the Hitchcock movie). We still get to visit the boat daily for work (it goes on and on, every day, most all day, it is a daily grind with frustrations, decisions, surprises, like most anyone else’s) and see our marina friends.
Speaking of marina friends, one of our favorites, Noelene, the lady who worked the marina café weekdays and dispensed advice on everything, disappeared. One morning she was crying about breaking up with her no-good husband. The next week she stopped showing up to work. Turned out she had embezzled $80,000 from another employer, was convicted and sentenced to jail. We now get to enjoy more of the owner, Cheryl, a petite, flirtatious blonde who wears pink and high heels, and has a Papillon puppy as her constant companion. Cheryl is unable to speak but is a hilarious practical joker. Tom seems to be a favorite object of her jokes. He orders a thick shake (as opposed to a regular one), she ties a knot in the straw and asks is it thick enough for you? He asks what’s in your King Burger and she serves him up six inches with everything including the kitchen sink on it. (So far, Kiwi women make American women seem like shrinking violets. They are intrepid and brave in the physical sense, and seem comfortable being bold, even kind of outrageous. They are not fashionistas and make do with what they have got.)
We know our way around town, are pretty accustomed to driving on the wrong side of the road, have our favorite grocery and video rental stores. In the dark fall nights we are watching lots of movies, eating at home, enjoying the last company of cruisers who are taking off for the tropics this season, and ballroom dancing. We got a good laugh when the instructor told us we turned the wrong way (just like we drive the wrong way too).

Tauranga NZ, March 31

2008-04-11T01:52:00.000-07:00

March was a big month for us. Hard to digest all that happened and didn’t.

We completed our New Zealand road trip, logging well over 3000 miles in 20 days. After Dunedin we visited Invercargill (home of the world’s southernmost Starbucks and the World’s Fastest Indian), Doubtful Sound (very beautiful), and looped back up the west side of the South Island through Queenstown, Fox Glacier, Nelson, Abel Tasman and back over to the North Island. It was a bit of a forced march. The car did well (only one flat tire in a very convenient place) but Tom and Ellen didn’t. Tom never did recover from his flu. Ellen never got her travel high and got grouchier by day. The windy roads, dull towns, sheep, backpacker hotels, just didn’t do it for her and we didn’t allow enough time to do more of what we wanted to do – hike, kayak, be outdoors, smell the roses, meet the people, taste the wine.

We got back to Tauranga on March 11 just in time to welcome Eve and three friends on a whirlwind two week trip of Australia and New Zealand. We introduced them to sailboat life and driving on the wrong side of the road, watched them take surf lessons, and visited important sights like Kiwifruit World and the Sheep Dome. We enjoyed their energy, enthusiasm and lots of long conversations. It was wonderful to have visitors from home.

On the one hand, it felt good to be back in Tauranga. On the other we were overwhelmed by the mountain of work ahead on the boat, anxious about getting it done in time to leave for the tropics in June, missing family, friends and life back home, and bummed by life in the marina. In the words of Tom’s nephew Alec Brecher, “Nothing good never happens in port”.

There are so many big projects on the boat right now. The list is both more extensive and complicated than the apartment Tom remodeled last year. We ordered a lot of items from the US. None have arrived yet. Other projects we are farming out to local tradespeople –upholsterers, riggers, boatbuilders, electricians, stainless steel. They like to talk and get to know you. They like their weekends, evenings, and vacations. They do not like to overcommit. “Oh, I have one project that will take me til the end of the month. Then I will start looking for more work.” Are you getting the picture?

The picture is, there is virtually no way that the boat can leave New Zealand by June. We are now sketching out Plan B which is vastly different from Plan A because sailors leave New Zealand April - June. The rest of the year one faces winter storms or tropical cyclones. Thus the boat’s departure from NZ will likely be Spring 2009. We will do as much as we can on the boat, return to the States this summer for three months, maybe more. We’d rather be heading off to exotic islands this summer but are excited about being home for a substantial block of time.

Dunedin NZ, March 1

2008-02-29T16:21:00.000-08:00

We left Tauranga Feb. 20 and are now in Dunedin, in the southern end of the South Island of New Zealand. The roads are slow and windy; even the main highways have "oh my God" moments when a big truck rounds a turn. Until today, the weather has been spectacular for viewing mountains, hills, azure seas and lakes, wildlife, vineyards, and sheep, sheep, sheep.
The big struggle has been finding places to stay during high season in the cities. This is an "improv" trip, we are making it up as we go. The first day we spent an hour on the phone and an hour at the tourist bureau only to find there were no rooms at all in Wellington due to the opening of the biannual Arts Festival. We detoured to Napier, a sweet seaside town that is the center of the Hawkes Bay wine industry, ran to the tourist bureau, and got the second to the last room in town at a bed and breakfast on the water (sweet!). It turned out that day was the big cricket match in Napier, between the NZ and England national teams. In Christchurch we got a room for one night but there were no rooms the next night because the big cricket game (same teams) was coming to Christchurch. Yesterday we arrived in Dunedin after having no success finding a place on the phone. Once again, the tourist bureau found us the last room in town. It's not what we consider a room in town - it was about 40 minutes down the coast along the scenic route they recommended. Turns out today is the big rugby march between NZ and Australia, here, in Dunedin.
For the past week we have been travelling in tandem with our friends Jim and Katie, other American yachties. In the countryside, we have been "tenting" and "tramping", as they say in New Zealand. Glorious. By the sea we have seen blue and yellow eyed penguin, fur seals, and hopefully this afternoon, albatross. We are becoming conversational in local jargon ("dodgy", "lovely", "the cricket")and must be losing some of our Americanisms because people have assumed we are Canadian or Australian(??). (It's either that or they can't believe Americans would be traveling overseas these days). Our car is performing very well especially for the $2300 US we paid for it; we cross our fingers it continues to chug along until we leave NZ.

February 18 - Tauranga, New Zealand

2008-02-17T15:01:00.000-08:00

Back in New Zealand, it is mid-summer. Corn, apricots, peaches and blueberries are in season and it is a big month for outdoor festivals. The weather is mostly "fine" (meaning sunny and in the 70's during the day) but highly variable (meaning it can cloud up and rain or blow at any time). We have taken turns being sick with a cold-flu type thing so aren't enjoying the beautiful weather quite as much as we would have liked.
We are living aboard Rasa Manis in a big marina and just bought a 1992 Asian market Toyota wagon for errands and travel while we are here. We hope it will survive our use (knock on wood) and resell for something close to what we paid when we are ready to leave the country. We hope to take off any day now for a tour of the South Island, but between illness and getting orders for new parts and sails finalized, it may take a while to get going.
The Kiwi are so friendly. Yesterday a couple we met on a day trip in December just "popped by" the boat to say hi. We had a serious discussion about the US election. They were very well-informed, which is no surprise - the newspaper and TV coverage of the Clinton-Obama drama is extensive. We often have to work hard to understand people(they seem to understand us just fine!) and get vocabulary assistance from Karen, our neighbor on the dock, a single mother of two girls who has been single-handedly building out her own sailboat for eight years.
Hope the next entry is from someplace else - it's lovely here but the hills and the waters beyond are beckoning.

Seattle, January 27, 2008

2008-01-27T11:13:00.001-08:00

What’s it like to be back home for two months? It’s like traveling…there are a lot of adjustments to make. Our new mother-in-law apartment in the bottom floor of our house is working out nicely, especially after we completed some of the finishing touches that we didn’t get to in June. There are some consequences to radical downsizing. For example, life in the suburbs with one car. Looking for something and not finding it, or finally remembering that you got rid of it. The high prices and rampant consumerism are a shock. Relearning how to multitask is interesting. The weather in Seattle in January is awful. On the other hand, we are enjoying seeing family and friends, keeping up with the presidential race, abundant plumbing and hot water, a break from 24/7 life together and small doses of American culture. “Home is where we are” is our mantra; life is very portable right now.
The biggest thrill has been meeting, holding, and cooing at our grandson, Quinn. He turned on the smiles and along with Kim and Ruben made a week in Maine fly by. It snowed a lot but we didn’t need to go anywhere until we flew off to Bradenton, Florida to visit Ellen’s mother and dog Chip. The dog was excited to see us but it was clear that he has a new life, a new mistress and loves the Florida sunshine (as did we). At 94, Tom’s mother made the move to assisted living this year and we are helping his niece Coleen with care giving as much as we can while we are here in person.
Eve and Amy are both in Seattle. Amy has moved to an apartment just a few blocks from Eve. Eve is still working for a commercial real estate company where she is getting a lot of great work experience and opportunity. Amy has cobbled together two internships and a part-time café job while she decides when to start law school at University of Washington.
In summary, being back in the US is great. But we look forward to returning to New Zealand on February 5 after we complete a flurry of shopping for the boat and a mound of other business. We expect to stay in New Zealand until May or June, doing work on the boat and travelling around the county by car and then head back to the tropics with Rasa Manis. Next trip back home is tentatively set for August.

Tauranga, New Zealand, December 3

2007-12-02T21:22:00.001-08:00

While the boat was in Opua, Amy explored Auckland for a few days and Tom and Ellen took a trip south to Whangerei to visit friends. We also took the boat out to the historic old whaling port of Russell, which was known as “the hellhole of the Pacific” in the 1830s, and visited the monument and treasures at Waitaingi, the site of the initial treaty between the British and the Maori.
Though we have been travelling for months, there really hasn’t been much in the way of tourist attractions to see, so we are gobbling up the history, culture, museums, restaurants, bars and cafes of the First World. New Zealand’s offerings are numerous but so far, underwhelming. We have to keep reminding ourselves the total population of the country is only 4,000,000. We are interested in the flora and fauna here. The native species are quite different from anything we have seen before. The birds are fearless and rule the land and sea –which is understandable given that there were no land mammals in New Zealand until humans arrived less than a thousand years ago.
On November 20, we headed south along the coast for the 200 mile trip to Tauranga, our home for the next several months. We had mostly sunny days and nonstop vistas of rocky coasts, rocky islands, green forests, blue sea and sightings of gannets, penguins, dolphins, whales. Daytripping, we anchored in beautiful harbors, some uninhabited, some with dwellings. We spent Thanksgiving at Great Barrier Island, hiking (known here as tramping), swimming (in cold water), and eating a fairly traditional dinner. There was a knock on the boat…it was the sheep farmer from across the harbor, out to introduce himself. Turns out he sheared sheep in North America as a young man and left behind a son, now 20 or so, in Vancouver, Washington. He offered us his car ----which was about 5 miles away, and you could only get to the car by boat----to tour around the parts of the island you could see by road.
One thing you can say about the Kiwis is they won’t let you be a stranger. The other is their sensitivity to temperature is different from ours. We will be shivering in our synthetic layers and they will be swimming in the sea or wearing shorts, singlets (tank tops) and jandals (flip flops).
Arriving in Tauranga, a city of about 100,000, was dramatic. There is a mountain at the entrance to the harbor. Right below the mountain is white sandy beach with one of the country’s top surfing spots. Just behind the beach is the lovely suburb of Mt. Manganui, kind of like La Jolla, CA. Around the mountain is the port – New Zealand’s largest export port, they say, shipping lumber, kiwi, avocadoes and other agricultural goods in BIG ships from all over the world. Next to the port is the marina. Just beyond the marina is the bridge to the city, with a downtown full of shops and an entertainment district.
We have spent the week orienting ourselves and making contacts with the tradespeople who will be doing work on the boat. We’ve done more sightseeing. On Dec. 5, we will all fly home to Seattle. We will head off to see grandson Quinn in Maine and visit my mother in Florida, and then be back in Seattle Christmas through February 5. Looking forward to seeing family and friends!

November 14 Opua NZ

2007-11-16T15:28:00.000-08:00

We left Tonga as planned on Saturday morning, November 3 at 9:30 am motoring off in flat calm seas and no wind with a flotilla of other sailboats. Tom was not happy with the forecast – little wind for the foreseeable future and a predicted 100 hours of motoring. In the end the forecast was right on. We had almost no wind, calm seas, mostly sunny days and all in all a very pleasant passage. As Amy (who has been known to get seasick) put it, “I expected it to be a character building experience that I survived. But I actually found myself smiling and enjoying it.”

The photo shows dawn as we were approaching landfall in New Zealand. Beautiful.

We completed the passage in 190 hours (just under 8 days). We had the engine running for 92 of those hours and 1 – 1.5 knots of adverse current for 6 of those days, which is not what you want. Especially when your autopilot isn’t functioning and you have to hand steer every one of those engine hours. (Most long distance cruise boats – us included - are on some form of autopilot 24/7, your set your sails and your course and the boat does the rest.) Even with three of us to share the load, it was more challenging, slower, and tiring than usual, but the upside was we got a lot of practice at the helm.
The highlights of those eight days: catching and eating a tuna on the first evening out and being “buzzed” by a C-140 from the New Zealand Air Patrol about 250 miles from land. At first it was frightening to see a low flying plane just miss your mast in the middle of the ocean. Just after that the plane made radio contact with us and it became apparent they had all the itinerary information we had filed before leaving Tonga. It was reassuring to know New Zealand was out there looking for and expecting us. We felt the weather change from tropical to temperate and the days grow substantially longer as we moved south. How refreshing to enjoy the warmth of the sun (instead of avoiding it!). How different to be putting on layers of clothes and blankets (instead of pulling them off as fast as possible!).
We’re happy to be here. There is a lot of boatie celebrating going on in the little town of Opua. It is great to be on land, tied up to a dock, with most of the comforts of home within walking distance. The Bay of Islands is a picturesque and charming area of small seaside villages, striking vistas, green hills, small islands dotting the sound, lots of sailboats. Things are well-organized and predictable. The Kiwis are very hospitable. There are stores filled with things to buy, tap water is drinkable, and the climate is like home – mostly cloudy, rainy, windy and cool.
Here a few statistics. In the past five months we:
· Travelled 3500 miles (at just under an average speed of 7.5 miles per hour)
· Visited five countries, set foot on 26 islands
· Spent 22 out of 154 nights at sea on passages
· Spent one night tied up at a dock, no nights on land
· Maximum winds while underway: 30 knots
· Maximum seas: 18 foot swells
· Got sick once (Ellen)
· Got sunburnt twice (Tom)
· Took three hot showers (Ellen 3, Tom 0)
We will head south about 200 miles to the city of Tauranga in a few days. In Tauranga we will put the boat in a marina, make arrangements for various repairs and alterations, and leave for a visit to the States.

Nuku'alofa, Tonga, Nov.1

2007-10-31T16:43:00.002-07:00

After a jaunt out to some remote, wild and deserted islands for a shakedown trip we are back in the capital preparing to get ready to head to New Zealand. We still are planning to leave on Sat., November 3, but who really knows? The journey - a little over 1000 miles - should take 7 - 10 days, longer if we need to stop due to weather at Minerva Reef, some little dots of land on the globe. We are fueled and provisioned and pretty well organized to take off and looking forward to getting to our destination - Opoa, North Island, New Zealand.
Our big news is the arrival of our grandson, son of Tom's daughter Kim and her husband Ruben. Quinn Andry Layman was born October 22 in Portland, Maine and weighed in at 9 pounds. Sounds like everyone is doing fine considering sleep deprivation and all that. We can't wait to get there and see and hold him and hug the new parents!!!!!!

Nuku'alofa, Tonga,

2007-10-31T16:43:00.001-07:00

Nuku'alofa,

2007-10-31T16:43:00.000-07:00

October 26, Nuku'alofa, Tonga

2007-10-25T15:19:00.000-07:00

There are 176 islands in Tonga, 36 are inhabited, 12 have cars, 7 have electricity. We experienced all of these variations on our trip from the far north reaches of this country. The capital, Nuku’alofa, has people, motor vehicles, electricity, and quite a bit more – a royal palace, government buildings, three consulates, a modern seaport and airport, and a smattering of tourist facilities. However, with a population of 26,000 (out of a total of 100,000), this is a small, quiet town. It is great to have Amy with us to experience this backwater capital…we have a lot of laughs about it.
The weather has been in the mid-70s, cloudy, with no rain. It is pleasant to stroll the long seawall to promenade “downtown”, about half an hour away from the small boat harbor. One sees vibrantly decorated cemeteries, a large proportion of people dressed in traditional attire (black with a woven mat tied around the waist), and small stores with rows of cans neatly piled behind the counter. People are very friendly. The guy who runs the internet café also has a bingo operation; the man who makes jewelry drives a cab; the lady who sells crafts caters parties.
While “desert island”- hopping south, we saw pigs grazing on a beach (they forage for seafood with their snouts in the sand) and a man showed us how to eat a great delicacy – the raw entrails of a sea slug, straight from the sea. Didn’t try it.
Tonga is still a feudal society, even in the capital. The king is at the top, along with his family. There is a class of nobles. Then the commoners. There seems to be a church in every square block in this part of the city. (These blocks are of small one story dwellings with big yards). The churches are filled with young people including trendy young men wearing western branded T-shirts - with traditional black skirts and mats around the waist. It is really something to behold.
Business operates at the discretion of the royal family and royal influence has tended to favor China and Chinese investors in recent years. Last November, Tongans rioted in the streets, destroying many small businesses. The unrest was initially aimed at the Chinese (who, throughout the Pacific, run a big percentage of the small businesses) but spread out of control. Downtown is now pockmarked with empty blocks, where just the concrete pad remains. We have seen a couple of political banners but that is the only sign of discontent now.
The long term weather is that the next good window for the trip to New Zealand will start around November 3. Weather permitting, we hope to get back out to some Tongan “desert islands” with Amy before that time.

Vava'u, Tonga, October 14

2007-10-14T17:45:00.000-07:00

We have been in the Vava’u Island group of Tonga for almost three weeks. Of 17 days here, it has rained 12. I am not talking about a tropical downpour that clears in an hour, nor am I talking about drizzle and mist. Real rain, day after day, in what is supposed to be a tropical paradise with calm “inland” waters, numerous green islets, whales to watch, coral reefs to explore, and a small tourist town with a handful of bars, restaurants, and cafes owned and run by palangis for palangis.

There is quite an expatriate population here, maybe a few hundred people. In the weather we have been having, they seem quite insane – scurrying about trying to buy up islands to build resorts, building tourist oriented businesses. Most don’t seem to last long. We hear, however, that there is a feeding frenzy for these businesses when the owners decide to sell – more expats buy them sight unseen, bidding the prices up against each other. Even if the weather was great, the obstacles to success are huge: remoteness from centers of population, undependable airlines and ship supply, a government that is ranked 175^th on a scale of 180 for corruption, political instability.

The palangi relationship with the islanders seems almost colonial, which is strange because Tonga remained a kingdom during the colonial period and Vava’u was historically independent. The islanders live their own lives, frequent their own businesses and don’t engage with the outsider’s world. One day I asked three different islanders for directions to a palangi business that turned out to be a block away. Two of the three did not know the business. The third gave me bad directions.

Wandering around, behind the main street and on outlying islands, things look as hardscrabble as Nuiatoputabu. The paved roads become dirt roads, then paths. Stout homes with metal roofs are built along the paths. There are village centers with small shops and churches, everywhere. You can walk along a path in the evening and hear magnificent choral singing – an evening service or a rehearsal. Bartering works, sometimes much better than cash.

There are many boats here in high socializing mode, getting ready for the final passage of the season to New Zealand. This consists mainly of “waiting for weather”, developing passage strategies, studying weather reports, and waiting for direction from the weather consultant we have retained. Forecasting this season has been terrible, and with an estimated seven days at sea it is hard to forecast the weather in any event, but we are taking a lot of precautions to make it a good trip to New Zealand. Preparation also consists of consuming a lot of the food you have stored on the boat. New Zealand is a bio-secure country and forbids the import of meat, poultry, dairy products, produce, nuts, seeds, anything that is not processed in a factory, and anything that can sprout. Pets must have pre-arrival physicals, spend three months on the boat in quarantine, and be visited weekly by a government inspector at your expense. Some friends with two cats on board estimate it will cost $2000 to bring them into NZ for the season, and they will repeat the exercise if they bring the cats to Australia.

Our daughter Amy is arriving on October 20 to join us for around six weeks. We plan to leave Vava’u October 15 and head for the capital, Nuku’alofa, taking a few days to stop at islands along the way. We will be ready to leave for New Zealand before the end of the month but since we have no control over the weather, we have no idea of what date we will actually leave. We hope to take advantage of visiting Tonga’s southern islands while we wait.

Nuiatobutabu, Tonga, September 24

2007-10-04T21:09:00.000-07:00

The morning of September 20, Tonga time, we learned by email that Ellen’s father had passed away the night before. He had been in decline for many years. While we were prepared for this eventuality and had made arrangements last spring with Ellen’s mother and the nursing center where he lived, the timing was sudden and the shock was hard. We were anchored off a remote island but were able to reach the family by satellite phone generously loaned by a fellow cruising boat. Our cruising companions sat shiva (Jewish custom) with us for a couple of nights; it felt very supportive.

Here is a brief obituary of Arthur Jay Schreier from Ellen (who is an obituary junkie). Born in 1928 in New York, NY, he was the only child of Dr. Herbert and Chari Griffel Schreier, who met went they immigrated on the same ship from Eastern Europe to the US after WWI. Arthur was a late walker and talker and very spoiled by his parents and doting grandmother. He turned into a fine student who went off to college at 16 and finished in three years, moving on to medical school and a specialty in psychiatry. He married my mother Judith Rosenblum in 1953. They had grown up in the same apartment building in Greenwich Village and had maintained a secret romance (at least to their parents) during college years. My dad served in the Navy during the Korean War, practiced at the Institute of Living in Hartford, CT, City Hospital in Queens, NY, and the Veterans Administration Hospital in Montrose, NY. He retired in 1983 and spent winters with my mother in Portugal, Mexico, and Florida and summers in Savoy, Massachusetts where he enjoyed wood sculpting and writing poetry. Around 1995 he became a full time Florida resident and has lived in assisted living facilities since 1999.

Dad suffered from bipolar disorder throughout his adult life and in his later years became increasingly disabled by that condition and dementia. He was predeceased by a son, Edward, in 1961, and a daughter, Diane, in 1979. He leaves Judy, his daughter Ellen, and two granddaughters, Eve and Amy. I loved my dad and I will miss him a lot. In his last years he was very sweet, and that is what I now remember.

So there we were, in Nuiatobutabu, one of the northernmost islands in the Kingdom of Tonga. About 1000 people live there in a fairly traditional, hardscrabble existence. People are wiry. The pigs are so active it is hard to distinguish them from dogs. There are a few solar panels for electricity and a few motor vehicles that run between the three villages on the island (“first village”, “middle village” and “the capitol” which is distinguished by a bank from the era of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and the government office, with broken floorboards and rugrats of many species - kids, dogs, insects - roaming around). People are very religious (Catholic, Methodist, Mormon) and everyone covers up onshore. (Tonga has a $25 fine for a man who goes shirtless; don’t know what the fine is for women.)

The economy on the island is still largely based on barter. Cigarettes are like gold if there is anything you want from the natives – handicrafts, fruit, fish, lobster. We arrived the week before the monthly supply ship was to arrive and were deluged with requests for cigarettes-from the customs officials who searched our boat to verify whether we had any to whoever could lay their hands on a boat to come out and make the request. And you could not walk 25 steps on the island without a child coming up and asking “Where’s my lolly (candy)?”

There was lots of entertainment. The agriculture inspector, all 350 pounds of him, sported a baseball cap with a big marijuana leaf embroidered on the crown when he came to clear our boat. (And just in case one didn’t recognize the insignia, the word “marijuana” was embroidered on the back). He and his colleagues (Customs, Immigration, Port Captain) demolished a big tin of Almond Roca candy we brought out to keep them from the beer.

Niko and Sia, the hosts to the yachties, invited us all to a pig roast at their home. We got to ride around and collect two of the piglets, live, stuffed in a gunnysack. They paid for the pigs with cigarettes – five packs per pig. At the dinner we drank Niko’s homemade beer (fermented canned peaches) and mango punch, and ate baked papaya and breadfruit, taro leaves in coconut cream, and raw fish in coconut milk. Niko used to be in the recreational drug business (not exactly illegal in Tonga at least until recently). Now he has the cigarette concession, direct access to the yachties and a seasonal job in New Zealand.

We went to the disco – a basketball court walled with palm fronds stuck vertically in the dirt around the floor – playing unidentifiable pop music. It was a fundraiser for the youth, admission $1. Not many people dancing but the action was in the corner, a whole bunch of men drinking kava, the local intoxicant. It is made from pepper plant roots that are squeezed in water. The concoction looks and tastes like dirty dish water and is served from half coconut shells, passed around a circle. Not hygienic, not very tasty, but it did numb our tongues a little and everyone in the circle had goofy grins.

The weather, the snorkeling, and the views here were beautiful. We left on September 24 for a twenty four hour sail to Neiafu, in the Vava’u group of Tonga.

American Samoa, Sept. 16

2007-10-04T21:03:00.000-07:00

American Samoa was fascinating. Whether it was sharing the English language, affinity with palangi (white people) or just friendliness, we had a blast of stimulating conversations and experiences.

We met “Teapot” (short for Tipoti) around 6 pm one evening waiting for a bus. He told us we would have better luck on the main road at that hour and followed us down the sidewalk trying to make conversation. His English was not very good, he was a little too friendly and we were suspicious.

Teapot told us he was 51. He said he had been born and raised on the island and taught carpentry and electrical at the Voc-Tech. His wife was a swing shift supervisor at the cannery and their teenage kids lived in her village at the east end of the island. Unlike other Samoans we spoke to in Pago Pago, Teapot had not been to the US nor did he mention any relatives who lived there.

Teapot flagged down an SUV – a taxi- and ushered us in. The driver was an acquaintance. Teapot pulled out a brown paper bag with a beer in it. The driver did the same. Teapot had him stop at a store. He bought more cold beer, some sodas, and a bagful of snacks, and thrust them on us. He would not accept “no” or payment. At our stop, the driver let us all out. Teapot paid him in cash and beer but our offer of payment was refused.

Teapot told us he had never been on a yacht. It was dark and windy and he was tipsy but we took the chance and invited him onboard, the least we could do for the generosity he showed us. He told us all kinds of tales and tried to answer our questions. Every narrative quickly became nonresponsive to the subject and was transformed into an affirmation of Teapot’s belief in God.

We offered Teapot supper – spaghetti. He had never eaten spaghetti before. We showed him how to eat it. He had a few bites and then asked to take it home to show people. In contrast, Teapot was very familiar with Western music – Ray Charles and 80’s bands like Abba being a few of his favorites.

Teapot kept drinking his beers and then asked what we had on board to drink. We poured him some rum. He grabbed the bottle and filled up his glass. Every five minutes he pointed to the contact information he was leaving us – 3 different phone numbers, his cell, his place in town, his place in the village – and told us to call. He was upset we didn’t have a phone number where he could reach us. When he finally left the boat he was really drunk and tried to get Tom to take his cell phone so we could call him. Tom refused, saying what if his family called trying to reach Teapot?

The evening with Teapot was interesting because we got to experience Pacific “bubuti” up close and personal…someone generously offers you something…you do something in return…things start flowing your way without the exchange of money…at some point your stuff becomes his stuff, you become part of the family and so does your stuff…very different from our Western sensibilities. We chose not to pursue this one any farther.

I toured the Chicken of the Sea cannery – and am still eating canned tuna! We had dinner the same night with its general manager, a South African specializing in food processing workouts around the globe. We also had a drink with a tuna boat owner from San Diego (the fleet has moved to the South Pacific but is basically dependent on US government mandates to buy American product), and talked to a Samoan who is importing the competition from Thailand with great difficulty. This glimpse into the tuna industry was a fascinating study in management of natural resources and globalization.

Briefly, the US seems to be maintaining the local industry with support and subsidies but the product is still noncompetitive with Southeast Asian competition. The product is labor intensive with real people doing the skinning and boning of the fish by hand under US OSHA and FDA regulations. The labor pool comes from Western Samoa and Tonga to work for the entry wage of $3.86 per hour and to give birth to scads of children who are entitled to US citizenship. The American Samoans move to the US (often after surviving a stint in the US Armed Forces) to work for good money and settle in LA, Seattle, Salt Lake City (the top US destination in the South Pacific due to the success of the Mormon movement here). The canneries threaten to close imminently and throw 10% of the population directly out of work. More US government support arrives and delays the inevitable.

We also spent time with a former pipe layer from New Zealand who went native 17 years ago. He now sports a traditional full body tattoo, is a servant to a chief, lives with the chief’s daughter, and with her runs an iconoclastic bar on a gorgeous deserted beach. He taught us about local agriculture, food, tattoos, construction. Together they fed us and about 20 others a traditional umu feast, complete with little girls dancing and singing. He also gave us an introduction to the man who runs NOAA’s weather station which enjoys the first and second best views on the island and “the cleanest air in the world” (upwind from the tuna canneries). He is deep in the technical chain of climate study (he feels the recent research is showing that the present climate change is within the context of previous historical variation and that human activity has some effect but is not the major determinant). He told us white people receive royal treatment in Samoa but knew from his Filipina wife’s experience that other races are not treated with respect.

All in all, an amazing twelve days even though it was stormy at least half the time. We had a minor mishap when Silkie’s (another yacht’s) mooring buoy lost its footing in the middle of a windy night. Talk about things that go bump in the night – the other boat crashed into ours. Fortunately there were just a few surface scuffs and everyone was fine in the morning. We wrote a limerick to commemorate the event:
The night of September 14
Miss Silkie she came a courtin’
She kissed Rasamanis,
Whose crew cried out “Please cease!
We’re naked and we need our clothing.”
Apologies to those who are offended. The other cruisers found it pretty funny,

We left Pago Pago Sunday, September 16, crossed the international date line, and skipped September 17 entirely.

Pago Pago American Samoa, Sept. 12

2007-09-12T16:19:00.000-07:00

We left Suwarrow on September 1 headed for Pago Pago, American Samoa – an unexpected destination- to look for new batteries, a doctor, prescription refills, and, according to legend, Wal-mart, Costco, a stinky, polluted anchorage, and rude natives. Less than 450 miles away, should be an easy three days with favorable winds forecast, and not really out of the way to Tonga.

Day One of the passage was as advertised. Day Two, definitely harder. Day Three the winds died, the rain came, and the autopilot stopped working. What rain it was – soaking, pouring – like the Northwest on many Labor Days, only about 20 degrees warmer. Stuck on the wheel, it was time for the Gore-Tex, the fleece, hot liquids, and hard two hour watches through the night. The winds and seas kicked in overnight and when we finally saw the magnificent island out of the fog, huge breakers were spraying 100 feet of water up onto the cliffs. The pass was fine and we made it in safely into the magnificently situated but filthy harbor of Pago Pago.

The water is the color of orange pekoe tea, littered with plastic everywhere. Starkist and Chicken of the Sea both have big tuna canneries here right on the water that create an incredible stench when the conditions are wrong. There is a container port and big ships coming in and out. Other than that, the harbor – which is the capital of the territory - is a string of little villages with not much in them except a handful of small businesses and government offices. It’s easy to get anywhere on the colorful little buses or by walking. And it rains a lot.

We have been here almost a week. Other than the awful conditions in the anchorage, we have found American Samoa to be a delight. From our first contact the people have been friendly, gone out of their way to be helpful, and extended invitations. There is a smile on everyone’s face and interest in who we are and sharing Samoa with us. There is a warehouse store by the airport, but it isn’t a Costco or a Wal-Mart. It is easy to get things done here (English is everyone’s second language) and it is easy to go places by walking or on the colorful little buses. They use the US dollar and the US Postal Service, there are English language newspapers and NPR radio news. Prices are reasonable. Palangi (white people) are here as government workers, to do business, or to live the tropical life but there is virtually no tourism.

We accomplished many of our errands including fixing the autopilot and visits to the LBJ Tropical Medical Center, which is the only place to get treatment or medicines. Locals pay $100 to have a baby, $150 for C-Sections. Non-residents pay $600 and $1500 respectively, courtesy of Uncle Sam. Such a deal, no wonder the birth rate is high. We were honored guests at a church on Sunday where we got to hear four choirs sing, have visited the museum, hung out at the Yacht Club, eaten some good meals off the boat. There is a lot still on the fun to-do list – touring the island, seeing mountains and rainforest in the National Park right above the harbor, the marine sanctuary, going to a traditional Samoan feast, and a tour of the tuna cannery.

Suwarrow - August 26 - Sept. 1

2007-09-12T16:10:00.000-07:00

We finally said goodbye to Bora Bora, the French language, and fine cheese and wine – with no regrets - at 0730 on August 21, after waiting several days for some wind. The passage to Suwarrow in the Cook Islands was about 700 miles. We anticipated five days and we were right on the money, arriving in the anchorage at 0900 on August 26. That’s five days, five nights, 24/7, under way, with the exception of 2 hours hove to waiting for morning light before we attempted to enter the pass into Suwarrow lagoon.

A passage that length is a lot like driving across the US nonstop. Monotonous, arduous and at times uncomfortable, expecially when doing the things you stop for on the auto trip (eating, going to the bathroom, refueling). Ticking off the hours and the mileage and doing endless rounds of algebra in your head: if the boat continues at 6 knots per hour how long will it take us to reach our destination? What if we make 6.5 knots? What if it’s only 5 knots? Will we beat the boat that is a few miles ahead of us? Behind us?

The positives of this passage were nice weather, fair winds on the beam or from behind, and ongoing radio communications with other boats making the same passage . The negative was confused seas, which made Tom and me a bit queasy at times, made sleep an athletic activity, and led a few of the women on other boats to compare the passage to childbirth (awful but you forget about it as soon as you arrive at your destination).

And talk about a destination: Suwarrow was summer camp for cruisers, the favorite landing of many who have been cruising the seven seas for years. Cook Islands’ only national park, it is an atoll with a lagoon that is about 11 miles wide. Years ago it was inhabited by a Kiwi named Tom Neale who wrote a popular book about his experience on this lonely place in the middle of the ocean called An Island to Oneself. There is a main island where now Ranger John, his wife Veronica, and their four sons Jeremiah, Jonathan, Augustino and Giovanni live for about six months of the year. They maintain a jetty and a picnic area, lead guided tours of the atoll’s highlights, and show visitors the best snorkeling, fishing techniques and environmental practices (including how to cope with the lively sharks in the lagoon that love fish offal but have not attacked any people).

With 10 - 20 boats in the anchorage, every night was party night on the beach featuring a potluck dish and communal catch of the day (John’s rule: if you caught fish, you shared) – marlin, mahi mahi, grouper, and more. John welcomed the newcomers, said goodbye to those leaving, said grace, shared his experiences, and made us part of the family. We shared his deep emotion when an Australian family who had come to the island two years ago returned to the island – a first for John . Sailor-musicians from the US, Norway, Austria and Germany joined together for afternoon rehearsals and evening performances and jamming. We were avid participants in the music scene with Tom on vocals and harmonica and both of us on our portable collection of percussion instruments.

Bora Bora, August 17

2007-08-17T16:48:00.000-07:00

We have arrived at Bora Bora, the last of the French Polynesian islands on our itinerary. Along with dozens of other boats waiting to make the jump west, we are more or less ready to go but it feels pretty good just to hang out and enjoy this last bit of French paradise. We have filed a mound of paperwork to leave the country and will also have to visit the gendarmerie for final processing. We are told you are supposed to state you are leaving same day or they will make you come back the next day. The practice seems to be check out and stay until they chase you out.
You can observe a lot of anchorage etiquette here. If the dinghy is by the boat, it means someone is home, but you never enter without permission. You knock on the hull or call out. You can also call on the radio, which is the party line. You call by boat name, not personal name, and if there is a response you move to another frequency for a “private” conversation. If not, you give up. No voice mail. (Although your neighbor may tell you when you arrive home that you were being hailed on the radio). You don’t anchor right next to another boat. Good form, if you are close, is to seek approval of the boat who was there first. Bad form is to do nothing. A boat that does nothing earns the scorn of its neighbor, who may try to get the message across by putting out its fenders or parading naked while the offending boat entertains or eats lunch. Conversation consists of what is your current boat problem, how you are going about solving it, and suggestions from the other parties about how they would do so or war stories of what they have done in the past. Since there is a new problem on a boat almost every day, it is an extraordinarily fruitful topic of conversation. Much better than the weather,politics, or sports.
Last night we saw a collection of World War II photos of this island. There was Eleanor Roosevelt greeting the troops, construction of a massive airfield, huge warships in the harbor, armaments in the steep hills, and a big dunk tank for the troops to play in. Bora Bora was an R & R stop for American officers. They say it was here they met the likes of Bloody Mary, were beckoned by Bali Hai, and washed those men right out of their hair.
We spent four nights at Tahaa, the smallest of the major Society Islands. People fish, cultivate vanilla, coconuts and fruit, and work for the one big resort on a nearby motu (reef island) which ferries in tourists by helicopter to see the coral gardens. It took a long time and a lot of walking to get halfway around Tahaa on its extensive paved roadways because there were virtually no passenger vehicles to give us a lift. When we told them where we were going – maybe eight miles away – drivers were apologetic because no one travels that far. Don’t hold your breath for the next entry, it will be a while before we have access to the internet again. We love to hear from you. Write us at ateealex@aol.com or italex@aol.com or respond in the form box.

Raiatea, August 7

2007-08-07T10:55:00.000-07:00

We are back where we started, on June 13, at Raiatea Carenage. This time we are in the water, trying to do errands (it isn’t easy even when you are familiar with the place!)and visiting folks who are now “old friends”.
We spent the last week on the island of Huahine and the southern part of Raiatea. Things get slower and less populated the farther one travels from Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia. Each island has its own unique feel, its own special beauty, and a distinctive site or two. Huahine was desolate and wild like the Inside Passage north of Vancouver island. A French guy called it “savage”. We went to find a renowned snorkel site in the lagoon. It was deserted. No dive boats, no sightseeing boats, no dinghys…no one anywhere in sight…which leads one to wonder, is this a spot where they feed the sea creatures to bring them out? If so, when was the last time they were fed???? Are we supper? Time to move on to the gorgeous deserted island over there. There was no one there either.
The days seems to be getting a little longer, sunset is now a few minutes after 5:30 pm and sunrise is a bit after 6:30 am. Nights are fabulously starry. We are finally acclimatized to the weather and Ellen will miss speaking French when we leave this country for English speaking lands in a week or so, after we get to the fabled isle of Bora Bora.
Our first planned destination will be the Cook Islands, and more specifically a national park on Suwarrow (Suvarov )Island, then onto the very northernmost islands in Tonga, the Nuias. The passages will be of several days duration each and we don’t expect to see towns or services for several week so errand time is now.

July 29, Moorea

2007-07-30T00:28:00.000-07:00

This is what you would call paradise. We are back on Moorea at a beautiful anchorage with a sandy beach, palm trees, great snorkeling, a quiet paved road and mountains rising up right behind it. We arrived Tuesday afternoon and celebrated our first move west (the right direction) and the resumption of life with refrigeration (which we haven’t had since leaving Seattle). Hooray!
We spent a day touring the island with our friends Beth and Dave, here on their honeymoon. We took them out for a day sail on the ocean. Yesterday we frolicked with a fleet of tame stingrays. When you feed them they come running, push their snouts against your body, and insistently ask for more. We then had an idyllic leisurely lunch at a restaurant on a little island on the reef. And we have been enjoying all of this with delightful fellow cruisers, mostly from the west coast of the US.
We are happy to be out of metropolitan Papeete. The anchorage there was definitely urban – big marine thoroughfares, people coming and going in their dinghies to shop, go to school (families lived there and ferried the kids into school every morning) and do business, boats packed cheek by jowl. Not a lot of friendliness.
As for six weeks without refrigeration in 90 degrees heat day in day out, we were saving energy to nurse along the house battery bank, which is down two batteries of a size we can’t replace here. We will be fine being careful, running the engine and the wind generator more than usual to recharge. In any event we survived without ice, ice cream, cold beer or pop. We learned to appreciate canned goods of every kind. Every canned French pate you can imagine, we tried..goose liver, pork liver, duck, mushroom, canned mackerel, sardines, spam. We polished off cans of green beans and peas that had been sitting around on the boat gathering dust since 2004. We tried the exotic sounding cassoulet (which turned out to be franks and beans). In town we managed by shopping every day (at times charming but mostly very inconvenient) buying the smallest portions available and eating everything until it was gone. (We got really tired of black olives which only came in a big can.) It was kind of like a big science experiment. What cheese survives the best? Reggiano parmesan, hands down. How long can an open jar of pickles go without refrigeration? (Don’t know yet and we will toss it before we find out). We plan to return to the Leeward side of the Society Islands this week for some island hopping. Then off to Tonga via the Cook Islands in mid-August.

July 19, Papeete

2007-07-19T18:57:00.000-07:00

Still in Papeete, still working on a myriad of minor boat repairs and improvements. The wind is gone so we are not missing much out on the sea. The Heiva festival is almost over. We have seen dance shows with casts of close to 200 hip swaying women, tattooed men of war, costume changes, orchestras and singers depicting creation myths, pop bands singing American covers (Rollin on the River and Blue Suede Shoes being particular crowd favorites), quilting, basketry and elaborate shell jewelry contests, stone lifters, javelin throwers, fruit carrying races, and military pomp and circumstance for Bastille Day.
July is a big month around here. This is –supposedly, I hope I am not here long enough to find out – the coolest month of the year here. A good time for the athletes who have sweated it out all year to show their stuff. My personal favorite has been the outrigger canoe races.
Canoe, va’a in Tahitian, is really big here. When I first arrived I was thrilled at all the small boats but I did not imagine in my wildest dreams how many there were. (I suppose that living at anchor out in the lagoon it is only natural that this would be what was all around me. Better than cars and vehicle noise!) Boats are stored everywhere along the shore and across the street from the beach. Inside, outside, lots of them. Cars are sold with “racks va’a” (canoe racks) just like ski racks in the US. There are singles, triples, sixes, twelves (2 sixes rigged together), and for special occasions, sixteens. Novices learn in 12-kid barges with life vests. In the morning, at lunchtime, near sundown, the boats move onto the water for a spin. Some look to be recreational, some competitive, some single sex, some mixed boats. (This is in the big city, apparently in the old days canoes were tabu for women). The bow oarsman steers and directs the other oarsmen with what sounds like singing or chanting.
The races ranged in distance from 6 km to the big marathon around Moorea of 84 km (roughly 50 miles). The winners of the senior women’s marathon (I didn’t get the distance) completed in one hour and 46 minutes and that team, an elite group that competes internationally, was way ahead of the other 18 boats. The Moorea race is men only, and there were about 50 boats competing. This year the seas were calm and the winners, Shell Va’a (sponsored by Shell Oil), broke a record by completing the course in just under 6 hours. Small boats lined the passage between Moorea and Tahiti to watch the finish. Having sailed the ten miles between islands on a windy day with high seas really gives one an appreciation for the courage and tenacity of these athletes and their Polynesian ancestors who colonized the South Pacific in these small craft.
Tomorrow night we see the winners of the song and dance contests. Should be memorable.

July 12, Papeete

2007-07-12T15:03:00.000-07:00

July 12, Papeete
We left Raiatea on June 28. This was a swift change of plans to take advantage of favorable winds at the end of a storm system that had dumped huge quantities of rain the previous several days. Turns out the system had about another week to run its course with relatively strong winds, rain, and at times, endless rainbows. Our short easy overnight passage to the island of Tahiti turned out to be demanding and uncomfortable and we cut it short at Moorea when we realized the anchorage at Tahiti would be untenable in these conditions. That meant we had the picture postcard bays of Moorea virtually to ourselves for 5 days. (The sailors were hunkered down elsewhere and the honeymooners were honeymooning.) We were able to take a great hike into the mountains and go snorkeling out by the reef during a couple of weather windows. Moorea is lovely.
Thinking the weather system was over we pulled anchor for the 10 mile trip to Papeete. Outside the reef was something else again, pretty much the same conditions we bailed on the previous week (heading into 30 knots of wind, for the sailors out there). Not insane but not pleasant. This is not the South Pacific sailing of my dreams but it should improve dramatically once we start heading in the right direction, which is west, more or less.
We have been in Papeete for a week now, anchored along with 100 other international boats and a very full marina. There are a lot of facilities right here, including, allegedly, wireless internet service (at $5 per hour), an internet café which is where you go when you get totally frustrated with the wireless (a relative bargain at $10 per hour because it is reliable), a huge megastore down the street, a McDonalds (just over $20 for the advertised special, a full meal deal for 2 ).
We are keeping very occupied working on the boat, shopping for the boat, shopping for dinner, engaging with the internet. What would take 45 minutes at home ( a quick trip to Home Depot for example) takes more like 4.5 hours here. Which supplier will have what we need? Where is it? How to get there? How to communicate in French what specific piece of hardware you need? Not here? Where do I get it? Woops, I forgot to take that measurement. Back on the bus, back to the marina, back to the dinghy, back to the boat. Back to the supplier. Woops, closed for lunch…For the most part one weathers it in good humor because that is what a life in port is for voyagers like us. It is also an educational way to engage in the culture, master the metric system, and jumpstart my rusty French.

June 25, Raiatea

2007-06-25T18:55:00.000-07:00

We haven't moved very far but at least we are at anchor in this beautiful spot watching the waves break over the reef, the palms and pine forested mountains on shore, the outrigger canoes training hard for the equivalent of the French Polynesia Nationals, and the fruit man motor up in his colorful launch selling bananas, coconuts, papaya, pamplemousse, and limes while he plays his ukelele.

It is a very beautiful place to be cleaning, repairing, testing, revamping, replacing, and studying boat system after system. We have not uncovered any major problems - yet - and by hammering away, day after day, week after week, we will get away from here someday soon. Not that we are in a rush - this is tomorrow land. Fortunately we have on hand what we need. Between the distance, the shipping strikes and the prices, replacement parts can be hard to come by.

There is also no shortage of consultants nearby - the fellows in the boatyard and the skippers from the other boats in the harbor..all working away on similar projects. People are very friendly and helpful. Their English is always better than my French but I keep trying.
About 11,000 people live on this island. There is a lot of activity during the week, but the weekends are tranquil, with virtually no traffic on the roads. There is not much in the way of public transportation here. So, to get to town you hitchhike. Go to the side of the road and wave and someone will stop...even if you are hauling a gas tank.

June 18, Raiatea, Society Islands, FP

2007-06-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

Raiatea is a beautiful quiet island inside a lagoon with fresh baguettes and lots of expat French people - as well as lots of American sailboat cruisers, maybe 25 US boats in this anchorage. They are here for the same reason we are - the boatyard. This is the boat hospital for a huge stretch of the Pacific, the first facility of its kind in over 3000 miles from the West Coast. Dismasts, broken engines, giant squid attacks, they come here where new problems arise, like engine accidents, batteries losing their juice, rats eating the sails, the list goes on and on. We feel very fortunate so far though we still have a fair amount of checking to do. The boat is clean and as of today, in the water after nine months on the hard.
We will continue to put the boat in order and hope to be able to sail away from this nautical rehab center sooner rather than later.

June 9, 2007 Seattle

2007-06-09T14:09:00.000-07:00

We leave Seattle for Raiatea, French Polynesia on June 12. The past six months have been a blur of activity to prepare for life aboard our boat, Rasa Manis (Indonesian for "that sweet feeling"). We have downsized to a small apartment on the bottom floor of our house, rented the rest of it, and will be disconnecting all phones and forwarding mail to a post office box for the indefinite future. We are tired, exhilarated, and ready to go!
Our plans - which will no doubt change - are to spend about six weeks in the vicinity of Tahiti, see the Cooks, Tonga and Fiji and get to New Zealand in early December. You can keep posted on our travels by visiting this site and can communicate with us:

Ellen - ateealex@aol.com
Tom - italex@aol.com
blog - www.rasamanis.blogspot.com
Mail - PO Box 31267, Seattle, WA 98103

Stay in touch!!! Ellen and Tom

August 1.Raiatea

2006-08-03T21:56:00.000-07:00

The night of July 30/31st we made a short but difficult passage from Moorea. It started out as expected with 20+ kts from the East. We flew along under genoa alone and were expecting to get to Bora-Bora the following noon. In the evening squalls came, the wind blew from all over, sometimes calm, sometimes blustery. The auto pilot went south so we hand steered. I had put Bob, the windvane, to bed and there was no way he could have steered in that variable stuff anyway. I decided to heave to and hang until morning because we couldn't make reasonable way under power or under sail. In the morning it was calm, very calm, and we motored for a few hours into a bay on Raiatea where we remain for a second night. The anchorage is pleasant with habitation on only one side. At night the other remains totally dark. Lots of bird song too, unusual.Today we went ashore and walked a half mile to a large archeological site. It is referred to as an "international marae," or religious gathering site. The others I have seen on other islands have been more local in reach. This one seems to have brought together chiefs and priests from all over the Society Islands, the Tuamotus, Australs, and Cooks. There were extensive museum-type explanations on placards in the shade of a grove of trees. The pictures and explanations helped me understand some of what I have seen at other locations around the islands. The stone structures here are large and well-maintained. They are sited on a level area beside the lagoon which surrounds this island. A level area of that size is rare here and the backdrop of the blue lagoon and surf on the reef beyond is quite beautiful. I learned that the societies on these islands were at their zenith about the time of first Western contact. That means that Bligh, Wallis and Cook saw these structures in full use and as elegant as they ever were. In these islands it is so rare that I can read in English explanations of what I am seeing. I have also just finished rereading Typee. I found it all very stimulating and has made me excited to read more when I return to Seattle.

July 20, Papeete, Tahiti

2006-07-30T21:09:00.000-07:00

Last night I took my crew out to dinner. We walked down the empty street, blocked off for the fruit carriers' race. When we found the center of activity we found that the race was over and the participants were being congratulated and pictures taken. These guys are big, burly fellows in loin cloths, all sweaty, with leis around their necks. Young women were standing close for the photos. As we walked on we saw a temporary venue set up similar to temporary music venues we see at home. People were streaming in so we investigated. Some people had tickets and some didn't. Those of us without were seated together near the large stage though on the sides. It was the night of Polynesian traditional athletics which gave context to the fruit carriers' race. On stage were four stations, each with a large pile of coconuts. in another part of the stage there were large, smooth stones of various sizes. These items turned out not to be stage props but rather the objects of competition. The coconuts were used in the copra speed game, the stones for weight lifting.The copra competition involved teams of three, one chopper and two diggers. the chopper swung a short axe, splitting coconuts in half then pitching them back to the diggers who, with a special tool dug the coconut meat out of the shell. Of course with every swing of the axe coconut milk would fly everywhere. The diggers flung the empty shells into a messy pile. It looked like mayhem to me. After all the coconuts were split and dug the contestants collected the meat and filled a burlap bag. the first to be declared finished by the judges won the contest. There were women's and men's divisions. the women completed 50 coconuts, the men 100. The stands were full of cheering as the teams neared the finish. The winners did a little victory dance. And to think that two months ago I didn't even know what copra was! And if you too don't know, copra is dried coconut meat that is pressed to extract the oil. Copra production is a cottage industry among the South Sea Islands.
Interspersed between the competitions was dancing with music accompaniment. Young men and women danced. There was some singing as well as drum accompaniment. The women looked alluring and the men looked fierce. first off in the stone lifting competition was the women's division. They were to hoist a 50 kg stone from the ground to rest on their shoulder. The lift was timed and the fastest lift won the competition. Each had two tries. All but one woman wore some type of one piece dress sort of thing. The remaining one wore a two piece outfit in bright red. Each woman in turn stepped up on the dais, squatted behind the stone while working to find the right hugging hold on the smooth surface. Then when all was just right she attempted to lift it to her shoulder in one smooth motion. It often didn't quite work out and the attempt was wither slow or failed. The skinniest woman seemed to have the best technique and a matter-of-fact style that caught the attention and appreciation of the audience. But not as much attention or appreciation as when the woman in the two-piece red number made her first lift. As she rolled the stone across her chest she suffered a wardrobe malfunction exposing her breasts to about two thousand cheering, laughing fans. But bless her, she finished the lift to her shoulder before throwing down the stone and grabbing her halter. For a guy who hasn't seen his wife for three months she was definitely best of show.The men's competition followed with several weight classes. In each class the stone weighed more than the competitor. The flyweight men lifted 80 kg. The big dogs lifted 150 kg. For those of you metrically disinclined, that's 330 lbs.
My crew, Mark and Shelly, left the boat today. I was sad to see them off. We have had a lot of fun together for the last month. they are headed to New Zealand by plane. My sister, Ann, is flying in tonight and will be aboard for almost a month.

July 14, Fakarava, Tuamotos

2006-07-17T21:01:00.000-07:00

It's a full day today in the lagoon of Fakarava in the Tuamoto island group northeast of Tahiti. This morning 15 cruisers including five boys from two boats went aboard a trimiran, Elesium, to a reef near the entrance to this lagoon to snorkle. The reef was spectacular. The water is very clear, the coral vivid in its many colors and shapes, the fish in many shapes sizes and colors including several sharks about four feet long.
We returned and went ashore to see the spear throwing contest among several men from the atoll. They were dressed in sarongs and head dresses of various sorts, some wore hats of woven palm frond, others were wreaths of some type of greenery. Each contestant has a half dozen spears which are limber sticks about six feet long with a sharpened rebar attached to form a point. They stand about fifty feet from the base of a twenty-five foot pole on top of which was a coconut. Each one throws his spears underhanded in an attempt to pierce the coconut. To make it even more interesting the coconut is marked off in horizontal bands of increasing value towards the top of the nut. Of approximately 15 throwers, therefore about 80 spears there are between 4 and 8 spears stuck in the coconut after each round. The pole is lowered and a tally made by a judge and announced on a loudspeaker. There was much teasing and laughing by the participants and the announcer. There was a good crowd assembled to watch the contest with definite favorites among the throwers. One of the best throwers appeared to be the oldest. He stuck spears twice in a row once! go ahead a try this one in your backyard just to see how hard it is. Just make sure the children and dogs are kept away from the wrong side of the coconut.
After soft serve ice cream and a couple games of Foosball we came back to the boat for a rest and dinner. Tonight is the music and dance that I am especially looking forward to. Tomorrow there is more with the added excitement of a genuine cruise ship visiting the lagoon. The streets will be filled with sunburns for half a day and the boat will be rocked by all the shuttles going by.
The breeze has been very light for the past several days. It's lucky that we haven't had far to go. the trades are supposed to return tomorrow or the next day to help us on our way to Tahiti.

June 30, Nuku HIva, Marquesas

2006-07-02T14:42:00.000-07:00

We are back in the anchorage off the main town on Nuku Hiva after a night in Daniel's Bay, about 5 miles west. It's not many miles but a world apart.

On June 28 two other cruising boats and we rented a 4WD truck and made an excursion around about half of the island. We climbed out of town up a precipitously steep hillside to a ridge with a magnificent view of the bay and the sea beyond. This bay was the site of Herman Melville's escape off a whaler in 1842 when he was 23 years old. he took off across the same ridge to another valley where he spent a glorious month with a tattooed sweet young thing and wrote about his adventures in Typee, his spelling of Taiohae, the bay where we are anchored.

On our land excursion we saw several valleys and bays. In antiquity each valley was a separate chiefdom more or less at constant warfare with their neighbors. If attackers tried to march over a ridge into another valley, they were met by flying stones from slings. If the attack was by sea the weapons of choice were long clubs, some with a large tooth tied at the tip, spears that were shaped to break off after piercing the opponent. Once the fighting was over and there were captives, those unlucky ones had their necks broken with a specially shaped Y-shaped device. After that they were eaten. These Marquisians were and probably still can be pretty fierce.

On June 29th we sailed to Taioa Bay to hike up the valley to a 2000 foot waterfall, the third highest in the world. Cruisers call this bay "Daniel's Bay" after a gentleman who for 60 years welcomed visitors to this compact valley of just a few souls. We found out from one of the residents that Daniel had just passed away last week. Although our informant spoke only a few words of English, it was clear by his expression that the village experienced a great loss.

The hike to the waterfall took us past many raised stone platforms, daises, and walls in the forest, evidence of a very active previous population. the path often used an ancient road about 8 feet wide and very straight. It was raised from the surrounding ground by stone walls on each side and filled in the middle. Besides being straight, the path held a very steady grade, as if heavy objects might have been transported over it. The waterfall seen from afar was most impressive in its height. Arriving at the base, we could see only the bottom thirty feet or so because the rest was hidden in a fold of the mountainside. It was a fascinating four hour hike.

Back in the village we met a man who brought us into his house which consisted of a roof, a raised platform for a bed, and some benches and tables where he stored his tree cutting tools. there were no walls and the floor was dirt. He gave us papayas and we gave him a pair of swim shorts. Many of the houses in the village were of the similar construction making privacy practically unheard of. Each house was surrounded by a garden of fruit trees and flowers. Most were very well tended. Leaves were raked, grass was cut, bushes were trimmed. One man told us life was vary tranquil there. From what we saw that was an understatement.

We are now back in Taiohae Bay where tomorrow morning at 5:00 am there is a fruit and veggie market. We will stock up for our passage to Tahiti by way of the Tuamoto atolls. after the market at 9:00 am is France versus Brazil in a World Cup match. That should draw a crowd.

June 25, Taiohae, Nuku Hiva, Marquesas

2006-06-29T20:04:00.000-07:00

From Tahuata I sailed to the next island to the northwest, Ua Pou, and anchored in Hakahau Bay in front of the main settlement on the island, a town of about 1000. The setting borders on the fantastic. Above the palm trees that line the shore, above the steep forested hills, are several bare rock obelisks rising hundreds of feet above the surrounding slopes. These formations are volcanic plugs, very hard basalt that plugged the volcano hole. Over eons, the mountain eroded away from around these plugs leaving them to project over the landscape in majestic silence, often catching a passing tradewind cloud and for several minutes wearing it like a cloak before releasing it to catch another.
As I rested at anchor for a couple days I contemplated my course to Tahiti. The safe course, especially for a single-hander would be to sail around the Tuamoto island group, not risking the narrow entrances through the reefs in this low lying island group made up of many atolls. This was sad to contemplate, since the group offers scenery and experiences in great contrast to the rugged, lush islands of the Marquesas.
Just as I was resigning myself to missing the Tuamotos, a couple that had crewed on another boat asked to crew with me. things weren't working out for them or their skipper on the boat they came in on from the Galapagos and they needed a change. After interviewing them closely I took them on, which will enable me to pass through the Tuamotos, stopping at a few of the atolls.
Friday the 23rd was the last day of school for the village children and the start of celebrations leading up to Bastille Day on July 14. That night we attended a music and dance exhibition at the community hall that also was a banquet for folks from all over the island. We stood outside taking it all in: the relaxed excitement, the foolery, the foods, the flower garlands worn by the women. Babies were tended on mattresses in the back of pickup trucks parked nearby. A barbecue was set up on the beach for those of us who were not seated inside. Our meal was a bed of French fries with some meat and a sauce on top. Very greasy and one eats with one's fingers. Fortunately, an outdoor faucet was available for washing up.
After provisioning by the crew and some boat work by me we set sail on the 24th the short distance to the island of Nuku Hiva, directly north, and the main town of Taiohae. This town is the largest of the island group with a population of about 2000. Many cruising boats lie at anchor here, including a three masted, very new but salty-looking vessel that must be at least 300 feet purportedly belonging to the founder of Netscape. By day the white hull blazes in the sun and the stainless flashes in blinding brilliance. By night the masts are floodlit at both sets of spreaders with FAA approved red anchor lights at the heads.
We no sooner anchored before being called on the radio with an invitation to a birthday party at a local hotel. About 30 cruisers were shuttled around the bay to a tropically elegant dining room with patio and pool overlooking the bay. The food was a buffet of local dishes prepared and presented meticulously by a chef who appeared to be a mix of French and Polynesian. To mention just a few of the dishes: a white fish, perhaps wahoo, lightly smoked with a very fine red roe topping, sushi tuna sliced very thin with wasabe and soy on a bed of cabbage, typical salad greens (a luxury here), shrimp in a salad, piglet smoked lightly and cooked so even pieces of fat were tender, not greasy, and tasty beyond words, rice steamed in coconut milk, goat in a coconut sauce, manioc which provided a special sweetness that integrated nicely with the other tastes, taro presented in several ways, and very thinly sliced breadfruit fried like potato or banana chips. There were others and of course desserts but I can't go on without getting hungry all over again.
Before and during dinner we were entertained by three men playing two guitars and the Marquesian version of a ukulele which has eight strings and a solid piece of wood as a body. they all sang in sonorous, sweet harmony. After dinner eight or ten women danced several dances. In the first, each dancer held a candle in a dish in each hand, somewhat like candle dancing I saw in Indonesia. Other dances included the very fast hip swiveling that characterizes Marquesian dance movement from that of other Polynesian traditions. One young girl, maybe fifteen, in Ua Pou moved her hips side to side four times a second. Don't try this at home.The most exquisite dancer in this group was clearly the dance instructor and leader of the others. Her grace and tranquility gave her movements an ethereal quality in which her expressive hand and arm gestures could be understood as a story or as an expression of the traditional ideals of this island culture. As she danced her eyes seemed to see beyond this space, beyond this time: not quite trancelike but in that vein. The other dancers smiled and went through the motions but were hardly dancers.
It will be difficult to leave the Marquesas. Each island has had its particular fascination and joy. The people are more than generous and friendly, making us a bit ashamed of our reticence, born of a culture of reserve, strong individualism, and with an overlay of puritanical strictures.

June 16, Tahuatu, Marquesas

2006-06-17T21:15:00.000-07:00

The strong winds that have prevailed were predicted to subside. With this information I weighed anchor on 14 June bound for Tahuatu, an island about 45 miles northwest of Hiva Oa. I was happy to be sailing again. By 1300 hrs. I pulled into the lee of Tahuatu and the real fun began. In the lee there are a few minutes of gentle breeze followed by very strong gusts lasting a minute or two. I severely shortened sail just in time to avoid the worst of it, though at one point I was on deck adjusting the running back stay when a gust hit. The auto pilot could not hold the boat from turning up which laid her over into a broach. I thought we might go over like we did so often in the race boat but Rasa just spilled her wind and came back on her feet. Yes, I was harnessed and tethered.
The only habitation in this cove is a little shack above the surf line among the coconut palms. There were two or three people out, each waving in greeting. One was burning coconut husks and the others were attending. The gusts hardly enter this cove and my night's sleep was exceptionally restful. After two rather crowded anchorages I find myself alone here. The ridge of the island rises abruptly several hundred feet above the shore. There are some rock cliffs shining through the vegetation and when it rains the water spouts over them. The trees are a dense mass or variegated greens and textures. All the rock is black, young, volcanic.
It rained heavily overnight and all day, 15 June. It rains in bursts of several minutes. During a dry moment I put the dink in the water, thinking that I would go over to the next cove where there is a landing and stretch my legs. But it kept on raining until later afternoon. The dink had four inches of water in it!
On the 16th I finally rowed to the landing. The village is small and exceptionally beautiful. There are ancient stone ruins in the center of things: quite extensive low walls of lava rock facings filled with coral pieces, and stone paved terraces. Beside it was a small Christian cemetery and a small stone church, quite handsome.
I stopped and talked to some young men who spoke some English. They asked what I wanted in the village. I told them I was looking for fruit. They laughed and told me to pick the papaya along the road. One man is a carver. I asked to see his work. We walked to his house along a raised, narrow roadway buttressed with lava rock just above the beach. He hauled out his machete, a stout knife about 20 inches long and pulled down a bunch of bananas, far more than I could ever eat, and whacked them off. Then he showed me his lemon tree and we picked some lemons. Then he offered me some coconuts. I was all set.
He showed me some of his work which demonstrated a strong sense of design and considerable skill in carving traditional designs in shell, boar tusk, bone, marlin backbone, mother of pearl. How I wanted to buy some of his work! But until I reach Nuku Hiva I don't have the cash. I had some trade goods in my backpack and left him with a bar of soap. He hardly needed it. It was clear that he was making a good living. The prices of his work ranged from $140 to $6000. His house is big and nicely painted. It turns out that a boat load of tourists from all over the world, about a hundred at a time, stop in this village once a month. They are fed and entertained then walk around and visit his workshop. He also sells in Papeete twice a year. He does pretty well. He's 25 years old.

June 11, Fatu Hiva, Marquesas

2006-06-17T20:53:00.000-07:00

After a slow start this morning my back – which went out a few days ago - is feeling much better. I am stretching a lot and the boat beside me brought me to shore today for a hike. I was with two German boats. They spoke English well and some spoke French well. All are very pleasant people. We hiked to a 200 foot waterfall along a trail that was reminiscent of wet Western Washington. The path was rocky and mossy with limbs hanging across. We hiked along a stream that babbled among boulders. The waterfall was similar to the one on Isla Coco, cascading down a volcanic rock face into a small pool. After four days at anchor at this new island, it was great to get off the boat.

The people in this little hamlet are used to visitors. Some wharf rat kids greet the dinks. Other youths play soccer wherever they can, in the lane, on a soccer field across the stream. Money is of little use here. Trading is the language spoken. They want perfume, rum, cigarettes. I don't have two of those and won't trade the third. But I heard from another boat that soap, colored pencils, and Chap Stick were tradeable too. They have fruit to trade: bananas, coconuts, papaya, breadfruit, and pomplemousse, a large grapefruit. The kids want candy.

The wind that has been gusting down the valley has eased somewhat, though the boat continues to swing wildly, dancing a jig at anchor. None of the boats have had trouble with holding so that gives peace of mind. There is only one boat upwind of me. Last night was particularly windy, so windy that I tied off the wind generator because it was pinning the ammeter and applying the brake. I have managed to locate some radio nets and listened in today. The wind is strong all over French Polynesia, though it is supposed to be decreasing. I think I will just wait for it to settle down before heading somewhere. I do want to be in Papeete for about a week before Bastille Day. I understand it is a hoot.

My days have been spent doing a deep cleaning of various parts of the boat. I take everything out of lockers, rediscover what I have, and sponge out with vinegar to kill the mildew that is starting to creep around.

June 8, Atuona, Hiva Oa, Marquesas

2006-06-17T20:37:00.000-07:00

Atuona is one of three places in the Marquesas where boats entering French Polynesia can check into the country. I chose Atuona, the furthest windward of the three, so most of my sailing will be down wind. When we arrived May 30, about 10 boats occupied the anchorage, most with their yellow "Q" (quarantine) flags flying, signifying that they had yet to complete the formalities of entering the country.

I soon learned why there were so many. I rowed the dinghy ashore with boat papers to present to the gendarmerie, a couple kilometers from the anchorage. I started walking down the road and when a vehicle passed I turned and waved. Sure enough, they stopped and took me to town! Turns out that everybody who does have a vehicle, mostly small pickups, gives rides. It's cheap and easy, maybe the only thing that is cheap in French Polynesia. The gendarme required a bond to be posted at a bank in the amount of a first class plane ticket to the United States before I could check in. So to the bank I went. They didn't accept the types of credit card I had.

All women wear a flower behind an ear. Most men are heavily tattooed. They pay no particular attention to foreigners though they are certainly courteous and helpful. Getting back to the boat without completing formalities did not put a damper on our celebration of arrival. An American from the boat next to us dropped by and joined the party.

On the 31st I started to get culture shock. I looked around and everything was different. I wasn't happy about it. We talked of boat chores to do but had little motivation.

On the 1st of June I tried to check in again with a different strategy, using an agent to circumvent the bond requirement. For a fee the agent would essentially guarantee that I would get out of the country before my three months were up and in a medical emergency would fly away instead of using the local health care facilities. But it all takes time so we had to stay in Atuona instead of heading for a more exotic anchorage on the other side of the island. We did manage to get some boat chores done, including an ascent to the top of the mast, always at the top of my "fun things to do" list.

On the 2nd of June we started to meet other cruisers in the anchorage. This helped my feelings of culture shock immensely. A couple of guys came over with some fish called wahu that they had caught the day before arriving. They gave us a couple steaks which we BBQ'ed that evening. Meaty and delicious! And we finally managed to check into the country.

The next day I saw Alec off to the air strip on the island. We walked with his bags through the rain (it rains a lot) to the cross road where he thumbed a ride to the air strip, twenty minutes away. Feeling a little lonely and lost I walked back to the landing where a cruiser was talking to a local. I stopped and found out the cruiser is from Quebec so speaks both French and English. The local spoke French so we had a translator. Turned out the local guy is a musician and told us about a get together with food, music and dance. He wasn't clear about the time.

I went back to the boat and collected a pile of laundry to do by hand at the facility at the landing. It is no more than a water faucet and a tile bench but it's free and clean. I must confess I have never attempted laundry by hand before. There was nothing comic about it; I got all wet and the clothes got clean, I guess. A note on being wet. My first day here I was very particular about not getting wet. I stayed in when it rained. I stood under a tree if I was caught out. I used a towel to dry off after bathing. It didn't take but a few days to get over all of that. At this point I don't really notice how wet I am. I'm always wet to one degree or another. It's warm and that makes all the difference.

I finished hanging out the laundry, festooning the boat with a month's worth. It was mid-afternoon and I thought maybe the festival I had heard about was starting. I got a ride into town and started looking around for some action. A teenage boy found me. He wanted to try out his English so we sat on a stone wall for an hour talking about this and that. He had a very expressive face, putting his features in patterns that one would not see in the US. Some of his expressions reminded me distinctly of carved facial features on poles or jewelry I have seen here in the Marquesas. Not so surprising, I suppose, though it was striking to me. I asked him about the festival and he told me it was called a "quelmes."

Armed with that information I wandered around town, stopping and hanging out with whoever happened to extend a greeting. Finally after dark I found the location. It turned out to be a benefit fund raiser for the building of a church in town. It was all strictly local talent. The dance was hula in a Marquisian style, fast hip shaking, less studied movements than one might see in Hawaii. There was one dance by young men. The five of them were total hunks and danced a very aggressive, warrior style. They were accompanied by a couple of drummers. The women and girls danced to recorded music.

That's Atuona, a town of 1500. Seems as though everybody knows everybody, or are related to everyone in sight. Not much happens as far as production. It appears as though the French government supports the people. The bank is packed on Tuesdays with people cashing checks. Everything is very expensive, about twice or three times US prices. The baguettes are baked fresh daily. The vegetation is lush, very lush. A rainbow appeared one morning that was so bright the second bow was as bright as any rainbow I've seen in Seattle. At the landing are a passel of outrigger canoes. These are sleek fiberglass numbers that look like brightly colored racing shells. They are rowed by the town's males, from 8 years old and up. It's serious exercise and I imagine they feel a sense of tradition in the activity.

May 31, Hiva Oa, Marquesas

2006-06-04T13:21:00.000-07:00

We dropped the hook yesterday morning at 0830 local time. Passage from Galapagos was 18 days, 2 hours. Or something like that. I slept for 15 hours, maybe more. I'm still a zombie. Checking in has become a drawn out affair. With some luck we can get it completed on Friday. Alec flies out Saturday so I sure hope we can get it done on Friday. Unbelievably expensive here. I bought a six of beer and a small roll of cookies and dropped almost twenty bucks. Lunch for the two of us today was over fifty.

May 28 At Sea

2006-05-28T22:16:00.000-07:00

200 miles to go - it's almost over. Last night was intense. Lightning and thunder so close it shook the boat. Downpours that made the phosphorescence in the water glow like a halo around the boat. We sat in the cockpit in shorts and foulweather jackets with the hoods up getting soaked in the cool, fresh water. We wondered if the next one would strike the boat. And the wind. Placid one moment, fierce the next.
With dawn came some sanity. The rain subsided and the lightning abated. We had survived. We had not talked of it while it raged, only talk of essentials: what heading, how to use the engine, what the sails looked like. Reduced to the essentials - that is what this passage has become. We ate and slept and talked of nothing much. I think we realized what we gave of ourselves to the storm. The sea seems not to give up its prizes without a contest. The Marquesas are our prize and it had all been too easy. We have now earned our destination. We will drop the hook in little over 24 hours and it will be over. A great run. We pushed the boat and we pushed ourselves. A little proud? Yeah. Cocky? Not after last night.

May 24, 2006 At Sea

2006-05-28T22:14:00.000-07:00

We are making excellent time. Even on mediocre days we pull off 170 miles. The wind came up today and we have been flying under reefed sails. Could be a big 24 hours if my nerve holds out and I don't reef too much. We try to keep the boat moving as close to 8 knots as we can without going over 8.3 which is supposed to be hull speed. In reality the boat can and does exceed hull speed for short periods of time, a few seconds. I have seen over ten knots on the log.
I think we are experiencing about 20 knots of breeze with gusts maybe 5 knots higher. Not a lot of wind but more than we have been experiencing. It becomes challenging to cook supper and sleep well, but brings our destination closer and closer. We have talked of trying for a 200 mile day which would mean sailing at very nearly hull speed for 24 hours straight. I don't know about Alec but I'm realizing I'm getting a little too tired for that kind of fun.
It was hard for me to cook meals today. I couldn't seem to stay focused and it's hot below because the hatches and ports are closed to keep out the occasional splashes from the waves. When there is so much movement that things are flying off the galley counter in the rolls, I find myself getting a little annoyed. That means I'm tired. It looks like six more days to go to reach Hiva Oa in the Marquesas, 900 miles away.

May 19, at sea

2006-05-20T10:07:00.000-07:00

We are almost 8 days out of the Galapagos and 12 sailing days out of Salinas. We are over half way from Salinas to Hiva Oa in the Marquesas. Since leaving the Galapagos we have been averaging 180 miles a day in winds from 8 to 20 knots and seas from 4 to 10 feet. For the most part we have accomplished that on a beam reach, a fast point of sail. We are very happy with our progress. We are going 30 miles further in a day than I had hoped when planning the passage.

Tradewind sailing is such a joy after the relatively windless waters of Mexico. The wind blows constantly here, the seas are not too high, the skies are clear with puffy cumulus clouds around to make things scenic. The sunsets are, well, tropical. The temperature is moderate. I wear shorts and no shirt during the day and put on a shirt and a sweatshirt at night.

The Milky Way is spectacular in the Southern Hemisphere with the Southern Cross stuck in the middle of the river of stars. The slightest change in what the boat sounds like brings me to complete attention. I think that sounds often are the first signs of mechanical malfunction so I use them as indicators of possible problems.

The sounds of the water are forever changing, forever the same. There is the gurgle of water at the transom, interspersed with the rushing of water past the rudder as it turns the boat in reaction to a wave. There is the roar of the bow wave when we are going fast. When going slower it becomes more of a slushing sound. There is the sound, ever variable, of the ocean waves as they crest and break into whitecaps. It is a symphony that I have time to enjoy instead of rushing past.

The sea life has been sparse. After leaving the Galapagos we have seen some dolphins who come to the boat and swim in the bow wave. There is a small bird that flits along the waves. It seems to use so much energy that I can't imagine it finding enough food to sustain it. There are a couple other larger birds as well. This afternoon I saw one perched on a two liter plastic soda bottle floating in the water.

This evening two or three small whales, pilot whales perhaps, came to inspect the boat. They circled several times rushing past the boat. That put me on edge because there are reports of pilot whales in this area attacking boats and actually sinking them. And there are flying fish. Lots and lots of flying fish. Schools light out, surprised by the boat. They fly fifty or a hundred yards at times. They land on deck, in the cockpit. We find little squid on deck in the morning too, their big eyes staring and their ink leaving a temporary stain.

Mostly, life is happy one day to the next. We are sleeping well, eating like kings, indulging in the occasional mate or beer, reading, conversing and pinching ourselves to make sure we realize how extraordinary is this adventure. Goodbye to the western hemisphere.

To The Galapagos, May 6 -13

2006-05-16T20:27:00.000-07:00

May 6 2006: After several frantic days preparing, my nephew Alec and I are ready to say goodbye to the western hemisphere. He flew into Guayaquil the evening of May 3rd. I met him there since I had to buy fenders for the boat in that city. No, not chrome ones, inflatable plastic tubes that protect the sides of the boat from dock sides. I bought what we needed and took the three hour bus ride to Salinas where the boat was ready to put in the water. George Stewart and his crew did a fine job of preparing the boat while Ellen and I were traveling inland. Unfortunately for future voyagers coming this way, George and his wife are headed to Panama to set up a boat yard and marina on the Caribbean end of the canal.
The first day out we remain under power making water and charging batteries, getting the feel of open water once more. The second and third days of our passage to the Galapagos Islands we sail smartly in moderate breeze and comfortable seas. The fourth day we motor sail through the afternoon and night to time our arrival in the Islands while it is daylight.
On May 10 we arrive in Puerto Ayura on the Galapagos Island of Santa Cruz, dropping the hook in the early afternoon among other cruising boats and many tour boats of different sizes and shapes. Some are quite posh while others are a bit more pedestrian. Some are sailboats, another has a helicopter on top. One big power boat I recognize from La Paz, Mexico, another from San Diego.
The town of Pto. Ayura is the center of tourist activity in the Galapagos. The town boasts 15,000 residents, with 40,000 living on all the islands. While we are there a supply ship is unloading supplies for the island. It is anchored about a mile from shore and the cargo is transferred to lighters, small barges and boats that can navigate the shallow water at the landing. Many men are employed moving the grain sacks, cement sacks, bottled water, all the stuff they don't grow or raise on the island.
Because Alec has a limited amount of time we can only spend a couple of days in the Islands. One day is taken up getting acquainted with our surroundings, buying fuel, provisions, restaurant meals of fish, shrimp in coconut sauce, ceviche to die for and a few drinks. Fortunately we don't have to violate the three D's rule ("Dink, Dark, and Drunk. You can have two of the D's but not all three") because there are water taxis running people out to boats for fifty cents a ride. We avoided having to worry about the "Dink" because we didn't have the dinghy in the water.
One afternoon we hired a guide to drive us up into the hills inside the National Park to see some of the flora, fauna and geological sites. Our first stop was to see a couple of sink holes about 400 feet deep and half a mile across. The ground drops I guess because there is nothing under it due to the way volcanic activity has left the subterranean geography. We forgot to stipulate an English speaking guide, you see, so some of the explanations went over our heads.
We did stipulate that we wanted to hike, however, so our guide drove the pickup along the road in front of us while we and a couple who joined the outing walked along looking at trees, birds, ferns. We then entered a land tortoise preserve where we walked along a trail on the lookout for these monsters. Throughout the underbrush were obvious trails made by the turtles, a type of game trail I haven't encountered before. These trails were wide and low. We saw several turtles on our walk. They weigh a couple hundred pounds, are about two to three feet across and move slowly and deliberately through the fields eating grass, fruit that has fallen from trees, and various seeds, as evidenced by their scat which we examined with the help of our guide.
As I walk along it occurs to me that the Galapagos Islands are a temple to science and reason. People come here because Darwin figured out something important here and they want to pay homage to the idea, to explore its meaning, to stand in awe. It is in the Galapagos where science and religion meld into one expression of wonder at the mysteries that surround us.
The couple who came along with us were great additions to our outing. The man is an Ecuadorian pediatrician married to a German woman. He grew up in Loja, Ecuador and they live in Germany. Our conversations were in Spanish. He was very helpful in conversation, speaking clearly and helping with my sentence structure. It turned out that the guide is an Evangelist and not too happy with the Catholic Church's attitude toward contraception. The doctor was in total agreement. Both said that one of the most intractable problems in Ecuador was 12 and 13 year-old girls having babies by multiple fathers who do not support them.
I noticed that there was a bearded moss growing on trees and bushes in many places. I noted that it looked just like rain forest Spanish moss that grows in forests in Washington. Our guide pointed out that it seldom rains in the Galapagos and this moss filters its water from the air which is humid. He went on to say that the moss filters contaminants from the air as well and the lack of pollution in the islands affords the population with excellent health.
May 12: We weigh anchor at first light and motor out of the harbor to head west. West to the nearest landfall, 3000 miles distant: the Marquesas of French Polynesia. By nightfall we see the last of the archipelago and see nothing but blue ocean ahead. I will miss speaking Spanish. It has always been a challenge but one full of happy memories of kind and happy people who have time for a little conversation with someone who has time for them.
May 13, today: The sea water here is a deep teal color. Dolphins meet the boat and swim at the bow for half an hour, sometimes turning sideways to look up at me, checking me out. I hear their high-pitched squeals. Conversations? Are they wondering why I don't talk back? We think we have finally found the trade winds. All afternoon we have sailed under spinnaker in steady moderate breeze making good speed. We are smiling broadly and are very calm and satisfied.

29 April 2006 Buenos Aires

2006-04-29T07:33:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday, Tom! Today is our last day in Buenos Aires and our last day together for a long time. Ellen flies back to Seattle, Tom to Guayaquil and the boat, and Amy stays in this grand city until July. Tom plans to keep up the blog so stay tuned for more.
Buenos Aires is huge.
We have been staying in an apartment three blocks from Amy, walking, eating great food, staying out very late every night like the portenos, and enjoying beautiful fall weather. The leaves in the tree lined boulevards are turning gold and the goods for sale are dark colors, sweaters and wool. The city is very European, and it reminds me of the Manhattan of my grandparents which I remember well growing up. Lots of noise and unbelievable amounts of entertainment and stimulation.
It has been great to have Amy as a guide to her experiences including learning facilities that are more like strike headquarters than anything else, dulce de leche, yerba mate and Frenet and Coke. (local drinks). We keep trying parillada (the famed Argentinian beef) hoping that it will be the greatest thing ever but it´s not - usually the grilled vegetables Amy orders are better. We have also met up with some family friends who live in BA and it has been very interesting to meet and talk to them.
After many Spanish speaking countries we can only conclude that the language is significantly different in each country. Some Mexican vocabulary is taboo in South America and some is just not understood. The accent here is very distinctive, lots of sh sounds where there are ll and y sounds in other countries. So we leave with months of Spanish under our belts feeling more confused than when we started out. Amy says it just takes time. Oh well.
Last week we were in Bolivia which I loved. Partly, the sun came out and stayed. Lake Titicaca at close to 14000 feet was spectacular. And La Paz located in a steep ravine about 15oo feet below the Altiplano, was beautiful. White capped mountains you can almost touch. Clear skies. A capital city where about the half the population is in indigenous dress featuring women wearing bowler hats. The taller the hat, the richer the lady. If the hat is tilted, it means she is single. We had a lot of help understanding all this from a young man named Paul who works in the French Embassy. Tom met him last year while sailing in Mexico.
So I close out, headed home. Thanks for staying tuned.

Leaving Ecuador, Now in Peru, April 14

2006-04-14T16:16:00.000-07:00

We left Ecuador a week ago, traveling the Pan American highway by bus through the Andes. Our first stop after Cuenca was a city called Loja, where I had my first brewed cup of coffee in a week. Though Ecuador is a major coffee exporter, coffee is hot water served with a bowl of Nescafe and a spoon in this country. Dinner at a business class hotel (very different from our business class) was $2.50. The Pan American Highway, the Interstate 5 of South America, was at best two paved lanes with a concrete curb, a divider line, and fog lines. That was at best. In many places it was dirt, no curb (just mountainside) and the bus made its way through a plowed lane through eight foot mudslides (a lot, it had been raining). On the way to the border, we had to get off the bus and get checked by the military, twice. Just us foreigners. This in a country where one reads in the newspaper about ordinary business people getting assassinated daily, along with their armed security guards, which are everywhere. Toms daypack was stolen by a pack of kids who boarded our bus and then jumped out the window - nothing valuable to anyone but him, eyeglasses, prescriptions, a book.
In short, life in Ecuador seems pretty chaotic. Contrast to Peru which seems a world away. A first class bus on a major highway whisked us overnight to Lima from Piura, a city in the northern desert where we watched last minute election campaigning including live music, dancing girls and taxi parades. Lima was splendid - I had been expecting another Mexico City but it was charming, both in the old centro and in the LaJolla like suburb of Miraflores where we stayed and met up with three of my rowing buddies, their husbands and friends. The election was an inspiring experience, people really seem to care and feel their vote makes a difference, that the electorate holds the key to security and prosperity or chaos like Ecuador.
We are now in Cuzco where we visited Macchu Picchu and a lot of other stunning ruins and are in countryside that is remiscent of the Washington cascades. The city itself - and our hotel - are founded on Incan ruins. It lovely except that everywhere you turn a vendor is trying to sell you something from a finger puppet to a tour to a chance to pay to take their photograph in full native costume with either a baby human or baby animal in arms.
Topping it off, Holy Week is much celebrated in this town, starting with the arrival of Jesus in the main cathedral on Monday night. Last night the citizenry rushed around town visiting every church for Holy Thursday. Today, Good Friday, things are all closed up, everyone is home with their family eating twelve different dishes, for the twelve apostles.
The Peruvians are very friendly, there is native music everywhere you turn and the food is, well, fascinating. While pizza and pasta are the tourist staples here, we have had roast guinea pig, grilled alpaca, goat, and lots of trout and quinoa soup. Some of it has been delicious, some is definitely an acquired taste. Tomorrow we take a train to Lake Titicaca.

April 4, Cuenca, Ecuador

2006-04-04T09:39:00.000-07:00

Up in the sierra of Ecuador at about 7500 feet in the cities, and quite a bit higher getting between cities by rail and bus. The weather is generally cool and cloudy, mid 50s - mid 60s, but there is occasional sunshine. A lot like Seattle. A lot different from the coast. The Andes are quite spectacular, with deep valleys and steep mountainsides that are cultivated in corn, wheat, and vegetables and grazed by livestock until you get to the treeline. There are snow covered volcanoes, rushing rivers, and indigenous people who wear vibrantly colored wool ponchos and shawls and fedora hats. The colors and styles vary according to community, it seems. The cities seem well built and prosperous. In Riobamba we were fortunate to arrive on the eve of the municipal independence celebration and saw four very colorful parades and numerous street festivals.

March 26, Salinas, Ecuador

2006-03-26T14:23:00.000-08:00

We have been here for getting close to a week. After several days of doing the paperwork shuffle to be cleared to be in Ecuador, we have been working hard on boat cleaning, maintenance, and chores and shopping and other support work for it. Jack left Thursday for Mexico and then plans to take his boat back to the States. The boat is now up on the hard where we will have some work done while we are traveling. The boat and we are in this beautiful place, a yacht club on a peninsula jutting into the harbor. There are just a few other yachties here - a Finnish couple, a guy from the US and another from Japan. A British couple just left. We are off the beaten track for sure. There are all the amenities of a country club, pools, tennis courts, gym, along with a 360 degree view including magnificent sunsets, and a restaurant that serves up awesome ceviche (raw marinated fish). There is a modern shopping mall with a supermarket and a cineplex and an airconditioned internet just half a mile away which makes life very easy. Outside this bubble is Ecuador. No one speaks English. Things are very inexpensive. The infrastructure - even in this resort industrial area - gets pretty basic. We are planning to take off tomorrow or Tuesday for inland travels to central and southern Ecuador, and then thru Peru to Macchu Picchu and Lake Titicaca. We will probably then fly to Buenos Aires.

23 Days at Sea

2006-03-26T13:12:00.000-08:00

Here is a brief recap of 23 days at sea, 2000 miles travelled (if you are a sailor you will note that this is poor progress, even with four days at anchor at the beautiful Isla del Coco, Costa Rica):
Day 1 (2-26)- The jellyfish bloom and the whales are jumping as we left Zihua harbor. A gorgeous day to be sailing with favorable winds and 6 plus knots per hour. We switch to Greenwich mean time and celebrate my birthday five hours early. Tom gives Jack and me watch assignments: 4 hour shifts during the day, 2-3 hour shifts at night, rotating every 3 days. Each cooks dinner every 3 days. Land disappears after 8 hours.
Day 2 - No wind. Hot. In the middle of the night a Mexican Navy boat approaches, radios, and boards us. They are courteous and leave after taking a bunch of information. We guess they are looking for drug runners.
Day 3 - No wind. Hot. To save fuel we are motoring just 6 hours a day and ghost along the rest of the time. The Navy returns once again at midnight, but this time they dont board. Nature sightings: booby birds, sea turtles and plastic garbage. Night watches are my favorite time - no blazing sun, quiet, stars, phosporescence.
Day 4 - Hot, dead calm.
Day 5 - Hot, no wind. Lots and lots and lots of dolphins.
Day 6 - Wind arrives. Hooray.
Day 7 - Wind builds and we are needing to beat into it. This means the boat is heeled and the ports need to be closed so water doesnt get in the cabin. Specifically, it is hot and stifling inside the cabin. Jack gets seasick. We barely manage to have canned soup for supper in covered mugs and it still gets all over us. Nerves are frayed.
Day 8 - The wind eases a bit. We have a burst of energy once we can move about and use it to clean and eat well.
Day 9 - I wake to the sound of water coming into the open ports . The winds built big time, and once again we were trying to head into it, and bumping and grinding miserably into the waves. Even so, we were losing ground to our destination. I cant do a thing down below. Tom makes pancakes under heroic conditions.
Day 10 - We ease off the wind a bit to give ourselves and the boat a break. The winds build again. We have our third big spill in the cabin - this time it is Wesson oil. Yuk. And the head is broken and the salon cushions are wet. We have been blown 200 miles off course to Cocos and we think we will pass on it. The weather has changed, no more of the clear blue Mexican Riviera. It is muggy and cloudy, and we are now in the ICTZ - International Convergence Zone - which is characterized by little wind (also known as the doldrums, a band just north of the equator), and squalls. None of us have experienced a squall before. I am thinking of thunder and lighting and hope I dont see it.
Day 11 - There is light wind. The highlight was our first squall. Buckets and buckets of rain in 30 minutes - enought that we take showers in it. No thunder or lightning,
Day 12 - Tom recalculates our fuel situation and feels we need more to get to Ecuador. We do a lot of research and hashing it over and decide to head to the Cocos where there is a ranger station and a fishing fleet and dive boats - which the winds have been pushing us towards since yesterday afternoon.
Day 13 - Onto the Cocos with the engine. At 7 pm a huge electrical storm begins and it does not abate at all for four hours. Fortunately it is high up in the sky, but it moves from the east to the west to right on top of us and is still going at 3 am when I take watch. We heave to, about 12 miles from Cocos, to await the dawn.
Day 14 - We approach Cocos, arriving at 8 am to a glorious gorgeous little harbor nestled between high green cliffs and waterfalls. The air is fragrant. There are big fish, sharks actually, swimming around us. The ranger and his sidekick, a Scottish young woman who is teaching the officials English, board, stamp our passports for Costa Rica and do the other formalities including the exchange of a substantial amount of money to just anchor there. It rains and we rest on the boat all day.
Day 15 - We hike all over the island. The volunteers at the second ranger station feed us lunch. It is incredibly hot and muggy but beautiful. Really beautiful. We take our first shower - cold - at the ranger station. But since you have to swim to get to the dinghy to get to the boat, it just doesnt do it.
Day 16 - The rangers cant sell us fuel but they give us a crown of bananas and some undefinable fruit to take with us. Tom goes to the other harbor to arrange for fuel from the dive boat there and ends up attending to a fisherman who has dislocated his jaw. 500 miles and 36 hours from medical attention, Tom{s emergency medical training is very helpful, saving the fish boat and the crew from a trip back to land. They give us a bunch of fuel for free.
Day 17 - Snorkeling is incredible, especially for Tom who is comfortable doing it. I give it a try, it is amazing just to look down.
Day 18 - Off to Ecuador, 594 miles away. We are motorsailing and making good time.
Day 19 - More motorsailing and more ripe bananas than you can imagine. A big squall comes up, we almost lose the wind vane in it - but dont.
Day 20. There is 2.2 knot current going against us, trying to send us north and west instead of south and east. With the engine going, we are making 3.3 knots, about half of what we should be doing. There is good wind but when we just sail we barely make 1 knot. We have left the ICTZ - the sky is clear and it feels a little cooler.
Day 21 - The current thankfully abates but there is wind in our face so we are heeled over. But making adequate progress.
Day 22 - We cross the equator at 9:30 am. Tom dresses up as Neptune rising from the sea (pretty good job) and squirts Jack and me with beer and cuts off some of our hair. These are old maritime traditions, he tells us. It is the first time for all of us, in a boat, that is.
Day 23 - We run into fishing long lines about 60 miles off the Ecuador coast, as expected, with a panga shooing us off in the dark. We maintain double watches until it seems like there arent any more. By afternoon we see land and the beginnings of Bahia Santa Elena. As the sun sets we enter the harbor. It is very big, with modern white apartment buildings on one end, fishing fleets at anchor, and oil tankers anchored off the oil refinery. We have to anchor for the night and wait for customs, immigration, etc. clearance in the morning. We made it.
And to answer your burning question: yes, I enjoyed it.

March 16, A Change of Plans (Still at Sea)

2006-03-16T11:50:00.000-08:00

Three emails from Mom in the last several days:

3/10: Yesterday the wind shifted and sent us heading towards the Cocos, of all things.We are about 45 miles away and should arrive Sat. morning - that's tomorrow. It will be very nice to have a rest and walk around. It is still a long ways to Ecuador and it is pretty clear the wind will not be in our favor so rest andmore fuel are high on the agenda. That will be Day 13.

3/13: We safely arrived Isla de Cocos on Saturday morning around 8 and are anchored in a beautiful harbor surrounded by the greenest jungle canopy you can imagine, waterfalls (especially when it rains) and sweet smells. Also there is a scubadive boat with about 10 - 15 paying passengers and a boat from an activistorganization that monitors commercial fishermen. On shore so far I have counted17 people - some park rangers, some volunteers from Costa Rica and Spain, andyesterday four intrepid young women from Poland who are sailing two sailboatsaround the world in a two year race against each other, sponsored by thesailboat maker. The people are very very nice (particularly this energeticyoung Scottish woman who is working for the UN teaching English to the rangers)and it is nice to have some different company. On saturday we rested on theboat, on sunday we took the dingy to shore and hiked everywhere we could. Overa ridge down to the other bay and then up the river to a beautiful waterfal.Needless to say it is hot as hot can be with 100 percent humidity. When it rainsit pours. Constant exercise in opening and closing the boats ports. Unclear ifwe will leave tomorrow or Wednesday.

3/15: We left Cocos this morning and are heading to Ecuador under power - which means we wont be dilly dallying around. Should take 5 - 7 days, we are about 540 miles away now. All in all I am enjoying the trip and it was surprising how little I needed to get off the boat and be on land. Tom and I went snorkeling, well, I tried snorkeling. He saw three different kinds of sharks. I saw them from the boat.

March 10, At Sea, Part I

2006-03-10T12:30:00.000-08:00

We last left boat and crew in Mexico making final preparations for a long sea voyage to Ecuador. In the 2-ish weeks hence, they've been on the water, away from the niceties of functioning plumbing, internet email, and regular sleeping habits. The following is a message sent yesterday via radio-email technology (I have no idea how it works, but it keeps me in touch with the fam, so that's good) from my mom with an update on their lives at sea. Enjoy. -Eve

Arduous is the right word. I am doing pretty well with it - but then I dont have the responsibility Tom does. It is very intense being the skipper on passage. Not easy being a passenger either but my spirits are holding up well. The low point was last night when the toilet broke and it was pee and poop in the bucket and toss it overboard and in the dark and it is not easy to get it right every time! But I had a very good laugh and the toilet is now operational again.
I enjoy camping. The wind moved us along but it was coming from the Cocos so we gave up beating a long hard miserable bump and grind and are headed straight for Ecuador instead of stopping for a three day rest on the islands. We had expected no wind so we could just motor in the right direction, not to be.
We are told to expect no wind from here to Ecuador but who knows. No
one is particularly disappointed, it would have been nice to rest for a few days
but we are all excited about getting to our final destination. We expect it will
be about a three week total passage with this change in plans and we are well
into the second half of it.We are at N 05.41, 91.05 W.
We are now in the Intercontinental tropical climate zone, muggy, lots of clouds, and rainbursts - very different from the Mexican Riviera. PS, if anything here seems bloggable (of course including the bucket scene), put it out there, Love.

Feb. 25 Zihuatanejo

2006-02-25T11:08:00.000-08:00

We are planning to set sail for Ecuador tomorrow. All systems are go including the four hour and three taxi ride paperwork chacha to get the boat and the crew cleared out of Mexico. We will land in Ecuador in a month, maybe sooner, with a stop planned about halfway at the Cocos Islands. We anticipate light winds and marginally unfavorable current, that seems to be just the way it is , slow going. If you need to get in touch here is the email on the boat : wdb9009@sailmail.com , or get a hold of Eve or my mother. Best to all.

February 22, Zihuatanejo

2006-02-22T15:03:00.000-08:00

We arrived back in comfortable and calm Z-town on Saturday. Kurt and Abby did a wonderful job of boat sitting, and we enjoyed spending their last day or so in Mexico together.
Our last days in real Mexico (that is, away from the coast) were very interesting. We successfully left Amy at the Mexico City airport and the city and drove north. Our sinuses started clearing immediately and we enjoyed an afternoon at the grand pyramids of Teotihuacan. We kept going north into Hidalgo state where we made a pilgrimage to Grutas Tolantango, a canyon at the bottom of a 3000 foot range where a river springs out of limestone caves at about 100 degrees, in full technicolor turquoise. Tom had visited 10 years ago with his sister, before electricity and somewhat more paved road, and the addition of about 40 hotel rooms. We also drank pulque (maguey cactus magic beer) from a roadside farm. Pretty amazing. We tried to do back roads back to the coast but between lack of signage and maps, exhaustion, and massive industry and traffic, we gave up and took the toll superhighway.
Back in Zihuatanejo, we are preparing to start our sea voyage to Ecuador on 2-25, working through numerous contingencies and boat issues and crew issues, it´is relatively hard work (what a thing) , not much lollygagging, especially for Tom. There is not much I do with respect to engines or electricity or diving other than hand over the tools upon request. With luck I get them right. And then sometimes I dont.
There are about 35 cruising boats in the harbor now. Most are from the Northwest , Seattle, Gig Harbor, Port Orchard, Anacortes, with a few Californians and Canadians sprinkled in. On the street here Tom met someone who turned out to be the hairdresser of someone I know in Seattle (but we couldnt figure out whose) and the boat next to us belongs a man whose father was a bridge building competitor of our company´s in the 60s and 70s. Small world.
This community keeps forming and reforming as boats arrive and leave. Every morning at 0830 everyone gets on their radio (ham-type) and participates in ¨the net¨ which is run by a moderator with an agenda including self introductions, weather, and upcoming local happenings, along with fielding questions and answers such as ¨where can I buy Delo oil", ¨can anyone cat sit for me while I go to the States for 10 days¨, etc. There is an entire section called ¨Treasures of the Bilge¨where you can trade stuff you dont need (dinghy wheels, air conditioners, pots and pans) for ¨coconuts¨ (no money exchange allowed by Mexico. There is also ¨Mail Call¨where you can send packages to the states via someone who is flying there that day. (Mex. mail service isnt very good still). The community here is also anchored by Rick´s Bar, where they serve outstanding margaritas and food and have a variety of other services including showers, laundry, book excahnge, lecture and meeting hall, propane tank filling, and answering every kind of question a boat owner could have about where to find what service locally. It is definitely like the bar in Cheers. Everybody knows your boat name.

February 13, Mexico City

2006-02-13T15:52:00.000-08:00

Mexico City is as huge and intimidating as one would imagine of a city of 18 million, or 20 million, or 23 million, people, dont have any idea which is the most accurate count. Coming into the city in a car was quite an ordeal, fortunately Tom did a great job and would have done even better had he completely ignored my suggestions from reading the map. Probably the most dramatic thing was our arrival. descending from the very high hills from the west looking down into this scifi animated cartoon of a suburban city - this just a distant suburb with 20 story buildings - that tried to be up above the smog. No way. This place is really polluted, you can feel it in your eyes and nose and throat all the time and every auto has a day of the week where it is not allowed to drive (depending on the last numeral of the license plate). It is surprisingly cool, and last night it rained so we woke up to blue skies and white clouds, since turned to yellow gray.
There have been some moments of fun and charm and certainly leading edge design in this big city and we are fortunately in a hotel in a quiet neighborhood. Looking forward to getting away, though.

February 9, La Piedad

2006-02-13T15:43:00.000-08:00

La Ciudad is the city where Amy spent the summer supervising projects and volunteers for Amigos de las Americas. In a place I would venture to say is the size of Wenatchee, Washington, where there are no gringos except for two or three who teach at the university, she brought us to the deluxe Holiday Inn with swimming pool and wireless Internet on the outskirts of town where it is a regional conference center. The economy here is agricultural, both subsistence and agribusiness - corn, livestock, tomatoes, flowers, etc. The land looks like fertile lakebed surrounded by , at this time of year, dry hills. There were John Deere dealerships and dozens of small lubricant stores where Tom searched in vain for Delo brand for the boat engine (hard to find in Mexico.)
When asked where you come from here (as opposed to tourist centers) you say Washington because almost everyone has either spent time in our state or has a friend or relative there , Wenatchee, Sunnyside, etc. Great conversation material. All this in Spanish, of course, in which Amy is the star, Tom and I get along. In this town I saw license plates from 17 US states, MN, ILL, GA, AL, being some of them, as well as WA,OR, CA. These were not tourist plates, but rather on big fancy rigs that folks who work in the US bring back for their visits home. Amy had many stories about how people go back and forth, legally and illegally. It is really a fascinating thing, what we dont see or choose to see that is going on every day at home.
The highlight of our stay here was visits to six families in three different villages that Amy worked with over the summer. Most of them had housed volunteers, others supported their projects. There were a couple of men and boys who were around, but most were in the US or in school or at work or playing outside. The women and little kids though were full of hugs and smiles and handshakes and loved having their photos taken and meeting los papas de Amy.
The homes and communities we visited were incredibly varied, ranging from a home that was little more than a hovel (with a TV) stacked with corn harvested from the family field filled with loving grandmas and kids that filed in from all over the village while we ate homemade tortillas from the stockpile to a beautiful air conditioned new house with elegant furniture and professional photos on the walls (but no TV and only one child) We met Amparo, the village activist who took the volunteers under her wings and has made their work blossom since they left, telling us of the multivillage litter pickup campaign that has grown since this summer. We saw the landscaping the volunteers had planted by a village church and the benches installed by the soccer field. We just loved Mama Ofelia, Amys special friend, who lived in the house she born in, remembered growing up on one tortilla a day, and was celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary this year.
Seeing Amy in these relationships in the quiet campo and chattering in Spanish all day long was an amazing opportunity, filling Tom and me with great pride for our daughter and the Amigos program. A major highlight.

February 7, Uruapan, Michoacan, Mexico

2006-02-07T15:48:00.000-08:00

We are now up in the mountains of Michoacan State in the small city of Uruapan which is known for good coffee (no, no Starbucks in sight), avocados, and its national park full of springs, waterfalls and manmade water features on a hillside just above town. This morning we had the delightful good luck to be here on market day. Half a mile of stalls fulls of clothes, household goods, CDs, fruit, fish (trout), marimba players, spices, good luck charms, hardware, you name it. The indigenous women wear traditional dress, straight out of National Geographic. Colorful pleated skirts on top of embroidered skirts, woven black rebozos to carry their children or their purchases or their sales, or in one case that we dont understand, a doll, braided hair amplified with yarn braids. Both Tom and Amy, with much recent Mexico time under their belts, were shocked to see traditional dress, for the most part women wear the latest global urban styles. The men wear Western gear in this part of the country - cowboy hats, Western boots, bola ties, and they tend to drive big trucks. Very agricultural.
It is very interesting to be here with Amy who knows a great deal about this state and whose Spanish is really good. She will ask anybody a question and get an answer that I can sort of piece together, very sort of. She and Tom and are totally into street food and I am following their lead til I get sick. My lunch was grazing from street vendors. Young coconut with salt and chile, a tamale, and a churro. Also a bite of the local gazpachos which is fruit salad.
It is pleasure to be in cool spring weather away from the hot beach where on a boat without air conditioning the only relief is predawn or after dark and even then it is hot and humid. We got in a couple of day sails which provided relief. Will enjoy this while we can.

February 3, Zihuatenejo

2006-02-03T16:36:00.000-08:00

Sailfest is on, the harbor is full of beautiful boats and yachties wearing the official yellow ¨Regatta en Paraiso¨t-shirt. There are parties and races and fundraisers and community service events. Yesterday our friend Kurt from Seattle arrived by plane and joined us in a sailboat race along with a bunch of other people. No medals but a good time on a beautiful day with some actual wind. Sounds like the Superbowl will be a big event here but nothing like what I imagine is going on at home.

Zihuatenejo, January 30

2006-01-30T15:08:00.000-08:00

It is hot and bright and there is just a bare sea breeze. We spent last night at Marina Ixtapa (the first tie up at a dock for the boat in a month and probably the last tie up at a dock for a long time) and sailed in very light wind with our new red and yellow Code Zero sail into Zihuatenejo harbor. We are anchored under some very elegant mansions that sit on craggy cliffs, with magnificent garlands of bougainvillia billowing over rock walls. It´s quite a dinghy ride into town where a man runs a business pulling dinghies out of the water onto the beach and guards them. He was assisted by some kids (some in clothes, some not) who wanted tips too. Lots of sailboats in town for Sailfest which starts on the 1st. It is great to be with Tom and Amy, and learn all the new boat tricks they have developed.

Ellen's Journey

2006-01-19T22:35:00.000-08:00

On 1/29/06 I will fly to Zihuatenejo, Mexico, to join my partner Tom and our daughter Amy on our boat, S/V Rasa Manis ("That Sweet Feeling" in Indonesian). The rough itinerary:
1/29 - 2/25 - Boat in Zihuatenejo. We will experience SailFest, host friends from Seattle, and travel to Michoacan to visit Amy's friends and acquaintances from her summer as a supervisor with Amigos de las Americas. Amy will leave Mexico on 2/14 for a semester at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina.
2/25 - 3/25 - Enroute by sea to Salinas, Ecuador, about 1700 miles SSE. We hope to visit the rarely seen Cocos Islands, an offshore territory of Costa Rica, full of unique wildlife. We will be joined by Tom's boat buddies Jack and Lauren. We will be on our own and out of communication except for radio messages to immediate family.
3/25 - 4/29 - Leave Rasa Manis at Puerta Lucia Marina in Salinas and travel by land in South America. Ultimate destination: Buenos Aires. On the way: Ecuador, Peru, Macchu Picchu, Lake Titicaca, Chile, Argentina??????????
5/1 - I return to Seattle. Tom returns to Salinas and joins crew for passage to Marquesas, South Pacific, New Zealand.