Infinity VI

South from Majuro Part 1: At Peace

edited out for now...    :(



South from Majuro Part 2: At Peace

It's always nice to have one stormy night at sea, as long, of course, as you, personally, have no responsibility. Sailing south from Mili Atoll, our last stop in the Marshalls, we had one. We had a tiny jib up and both the main and mizzen had one reef in as usual and so the captain said that we'd be fine, come what may. Well. Famous last words those.

The storm started just as dusk fell to darkness and it fooled us all because it began with a few familiar fast and furious squalls that sped through under low dark clouds bringing strong winds and beating rain and then disappearing again as suddenly as they'd come. For each of these we held our course if we could, or, alternatively, bore away till the stronger winds had passed, but we didn't consider reducing sail. And so, when one of these squalls turned out, instead, to be an actual storm, no one, not the person on the helm nor the captain himself recognized it as such right off. By the time it became obvious that the weather wasn't going to just pass us by it was WAY beyond when we should have started reefing and so reducing sail was done in nasty conditions; deep darkness, heavy rain, very strong gusty winds, huge swells and hence heavy rolling, the boat racing along at her hull speed of 14 knots juddering as she tried to go even faster, and many great splashes of salt water regularily dousing everyone and everything... The captain was yelling orders but no one could hear a word he said over the sound of the wind and water to say nothing of the loose flapping sails or whipping ropes... and the hand signals we are all supposed to know and use, frankly, work better during the day when it's not dark and stormy and everyone is either holding on for dear life or desperately trying to contain huge amounts of heavy wet slippery flapping sails with escape-artist ropes. Sage was on the wheel alternatively trying to keep course and trying to keep the boat faced into the wind as sails were lowered as Clem and the rest of us put a second reef in the mizzen, and then in the main, and then took the mizzen down completely, and, finally, put yet another reef in the main. Reefing on a boat like this requires a lot of work far foreward on the deck, losening halyards (easyish in daylight in calm waters), setting the reefing lines (easyish in daylight in calm waters), collecting up and tying down the extra bottom bit of sail (fiendishly difficult even in daylight and calm waters), and then retightening everything. The whole process took about three hours, which seemed an eternity, especially since the drowned out communication lead to more than one fuckup along the way. And, by the end, both the mizzen and foresail had huge new rips in their cloth which distressed the captain more than anything else. Everyone was exhausted at that point and we'd lost track of who ought to have been on shift so I offered to take the wheel for a couple of hours. It was marvellous. I wish I could better explain. The sky was black and the water blacker yet. With only two very little sails left up the boat was still flying at 10 knots, riding up and over incredibly tall waves that appeared out of nowhere and then racing down their backsides only to charge upwards again as the next wave swept by. With the whole world sound asleep the boat and I were alone in the universe and the music played by the wind and waves was a song that Mother Nature was singing just for us and I was utterly at peace, with myself, with everything.

And then (how does this happen?) 24 hours later the wind had dropped and we'd let out all the sails again, swapped the tiny jib for a huge genoa, and then pulled them all down yet again and turned on the engine to motor across calm flat waters. Unbelievable.

And 24 hours after that the wind was a light delightful 15 steady knots and we were once again sailing beautifully.

Everyday is an adventure.

Infinity V

A week in Majuro.

We are in Majuro for a week, anchored, while some crew fly out and others fly in and the captain works on his new website, does minor repairs on the boat, and reprovisions consumables like food and engine oil.

Majuro is an atoll of 64 motus (islands) with a total area of less than 4 sq miles, a maximum elevation of 3 m, and a single road running round it connecting the more than 20 000 who live and work here. There are a shocking number of cars on the road at all times of day and night and half of them are taxis. (A taxi ride, in a shared cab, is 75 cents.) The population includes many teenagers from the outer islands who board here throughout high school. In the bay about 20 yatchs are anchored and twice that number of huge industrial fishing vessels. Global warming may swamp the entire country soon but likely not before the oceans have been fished out. The town has a super little free museum that takes 30 minutes to visit and one lovely handicrafts store where amazing woven products are being made on site (and sold for almost nothing) and then there are only 6 days and 23 hours of time left to fill. Majuro's only other attraction is that it is considered part of the US so shipping, of boat bits for example, is much cheaper than other parts of the Pacific. The city is hot and run down, it's dismal, dirty, and depressing. Even the 'luxury' resort is sad; no beach, pool closed, and peeling paint. It is NOT on my list of possible retirement destinations.

On board I cook, clean, continue to teach the kids an hour a day each, read, and relax, and then I go into town to internet (yes, it is a verb now) until the slowness of the connection drives me bonkers and so I wander the island checking out the many small stores that all sell a very limited (and identical) set of items. I am, as always, more and more thrilled to have a Canadian passport in my back pocket. Next I sit in the bar by the dingy dock and nurse a beer with the other crew who have gathered while we wait, sometimes hours, for stragglers to arrive. Back on the boat I help with maintenance chores that need an extra set of hands, or, more than once, babysit for hours on end so that Sage, Clem's very young girlfriend, can go shopping or have time to internet herself without her two kids tagging along. (One new crew has shown up and paid in advance (like I did) (which seemed normal to me) so there is $1000 for food. Sage spends it all - who knows when there may be money again - but not before taking the list round to each and every grocery store looking for specials. She even finds canned tomatoes cheaper at one place after having already bought them elsewhere and so returns the first lot (a huge effort, it seems to me, to save a few dollars, and I feel rich and spoiled and privileged as I can't imagine doing the same myself)).

We will check out of the country before Easter and sail south. I will be happy to be back at sea.

My girls, who spend 95% of their time naked, dress up for a trip to town.

Sebastian puts 3 coats of wood oil on each of the shrouds while I have the much less glamorous (and less sticky) job of winching him up and down and up and down and...

Infinity IV

Sea Gypsies
AKA A simple life part 2

The first leg of this voyage has had some fantastic experiences but also huge frustrations. I've often said that sailors come at both ends of the financial spectrum, a bimodal distribution if you will, those who have made their fortune - and so are sailing - and those may never do so - and so are sailing.

The last two men I crewed for were 70 year old self-made millionaires who always docked their state of the art boats at the best marinas in town. I actively decided not to go with another such man this year, despite a fantastic offer to do so, and, for reasons that weren't even clear to me, chose to join Infinity instead, a rag tag boat of misfits that one has to pay to crew on. I didn't realize how far across the pendulum path I would be swinging.

Infinity's best sails are as patched as secondary roads in Ontario and both the mizzen and the main are always flown with one reef in due to huge rips at the bottom too large to be fixed even with the onboard sail sewing machine. Many standard systems are non-existant (auto helm, AIS, sat phone, ...) or permanently broken (radar, washing machine, ...) or exist in the free version only (charts) and weather updates are gained as they were 100 years ago by detouring to visit other boats and asking if they know what's ahead. Needless to say, we anchor out.

The captain's bank account is literally empty. He relies on departing crew's per diem payments to buy food for the next leg, which, as he's both terribly unorganized and a super nice guy, often don't actually materialize. I think to myself that maybe he ought to get people to pay in advance, but, being broke himself, and of a hippy ilk, if anyone claims not to have money he believes them and doesn't charge them anything anyways, which everyone knows, and makes others less likely to actually pony up what they owe. And so it goes. Food for the next leg will be basic; rice and beans, pasta, and bread without even peanut butter because there's no money for that. (I can't help thinking of Drew's boat last summer with the freezer full of salmon and lamb, the nets hanging low loaded with fruit, the fridge stuffed with organic tomatoes and lettuce, and the floor lockers overflowing with Costco's best nuts.) Here ramen noodles are a luxury food, scurvy a real possibility. (My only peeve with the food is that the family eats better than the crew. I was asked to bring certain supplies from Hawaii, which I did, but they were not, it turned out, for general consumption.)

There are jobs to be done and everyone does them, more or less, to the best of their ability. There's a sort of, but very loosey goosey, honour system set up where by you can work off part (but not all) of what you'd otherwise owe by doing extra work over and above cooking and cleaning and ongoing maintenence and standing watch (this extra work includes mainly major repairs and upgrades done when in port, but also, fortunately for me, being teacher in residence for the 4 and 5 year old). So, somewhat ironically, but also totally logically, the paying crew tend to put many more hours into the extra work projects than the crew who are getting a free ride. Clem wants to provide the opportunity to sail with him to everyone, regardless of their financial status, but, due to his good nature and poor bookkeeping skills, he regularily ends up getting taken advantage of. I guess crew have a bimodal financial distribution too.

That said, the future is looking bright for him. A 10 episode Norwegian children's TV Series, Message in a Bottle Season 2, and a short film, Sea Gypsies, were filmed on board last year. Both are being well received and the sequel to Sea Gypsies will be filmed in 2018. These bring in not only money but also notoriety, which, in the long run, might prove more valuable.

My heroes have always been those brave enough to choose to commit to an alternate lifestyle, to take a leap of faith and step onto a path from which there may be no turning back - I would have liked to have lived my own life in such a way but lacked the courage to do so - and Clem is definately one of those people.

So... I did one month on board, could have chosen to leave, but chose to stay.

We will see. I think it's going to be amazing.

Infinity IIIb

A few pics from Taroa...

Rhian came to shore hoping to find a friend to play with but the kids were all in school so she joined the KG class for the day.

Remnants from Japanese occupation during WW2.

These wahoo seemed big - until Eddy got a couple of 60 kg tuna at the next spot. He was fishing to pass the time while sitting in the dingy as divers were below and had only a hand line, not even a reel, but landed the tuna single handed none the less.

Clem kiteboards against a beautiful background.

Infinity III

Marshall Islands - The outer atolls

(A somewhat long and rambling post in which I repeatedly say I did this and I saw that and it was wonderful.)

(Unfortunately bandwidth here makes uploading photos impossibly slow.)

At 6 pm, we lifted the anchor, raised 1, 2, 3 pieces of cloth, and sailed away across the lagoon leaving behind the city of Majuro, the other yatchs, the fishing boats, and the military vessel that had been our companions for the past few days. The water in the atoll's lagoon was relatively calm but the wind was brisk so as the sun set and the full moon rose we flew towards the pass and then out between the red and green boys, out past the last coconut covered motu, out into the Pacific Ocean proper... and the wind picked up and the boat heeled over and we were charging north. So, with the deck tilted steeply and lifting and falling with each wave, we, the newest crew, sat outside holding tightly onto something, anything, and concentrated on not being sick as the captain gave us his safety talk, and Rhian, age 5, who was born, literally, on the boat and who has lived here her entire life, came out spread her arms wide, raised her chin, and threw herself repeatedly into the air, jumping, full of exuberance, landing laughing sure footed on the lilting jilting deck only to fling herself, yet again, up into the wind, a child of the sea.


1. Bikar Atoll - Diving the wall

Bikar Atoll is uninhabited. It's a ring of coral reef which is above water at low tide and has waves crashing over it at high tide. It has a few patches of land, motus with pristine white sand beaches and coconut palms, and a narrow pass into a very shallow and unbelievably turquoise lagoon in the center.

We sailed north, two glorious days, to get there (shifts of 4 hours on 14 hours off - oh the luxury of being on a bigger boat) with perfect wind and weather, and, and finding the pass impassable, let Infinity drift just offshore while we dove the outer wall of the reef - which falls 1000's of feet straight down - amongst uncountable colourful tropical reef fish, huge groupers, brilliant blue clams, eagle rays, schools and schools of sea fish, enormous turtles, and dozens of black tipped sharks. I'd never seen anything like it at all. Ever. Wow! It was amazing. Just amazing.


2. Utirik Atoll - A tour around town

Utirik Atoll is similar to Bikar except that it has a population of about 400 and a passable pass. We sailed into the lagoon and anchored near the village then dropped the dingy and went to ask permission to stay a while. There are four supply ships that come to this atoll each year and about as many yatchs that visit so our arrival was an event. A crowd of 40 children gathered to greet us on the beach as we landed and tagged along all the way to the town hall. The mayor said we could stay as long as we liked and assigned one of the English-speaking school-teachers to act as guide. Dallas gave three of us a walking tour of the town answering all of our questions and giving us samples of local fruit as we went (many people stopped to ask to trade, one offered a dozen lobster in return for 18 feet of 3/8 inch line to be used as a sheet for a sailing outrigger canoe) and then took us back to his house where we sat and talked some more while drinking fermented coconut sap. Many cruisers must have had similar experiences on hundreds of different islands but for me, for me it was another first, another indescribably amazing day.

We stayed at Utirik several days, each doing as we pleased; reading and relaxing, visiting the town, taking long beach walks, swimming, snorkeling, SCUBA diving, fishing, kayaking, kite boarding... and then gathering to eat lunch together and regroup for the second half of the day. Heaven on Earth.


3. Taka Atoll

Another uninhibited bit of paradise; more amazing diving and other such adventures. 

Asides: 
1. My camera is broken (hence the lack of photos).
2. I plan to buy - and learn to use - a gopro next fall so that my next blog series will be in the form of video clips.
3. The kids on this boat are hellions who each have multiple screaming fits daily.
4. Unlike their parents I refuse to respond to their tantrums so they behave perfectly for me.
5. They are learning to read and count at a prodigous rate.
6. The stove here is a big old diesel pig, incredibly slow to heat up, so it takes hours, literally, to prepare meals.
7. Fortunately with 9 adults on board we each only have to make one meal every three days (and a few of the crew love cooking and do more than their fair share).
8. A vegan diet (plus lots of fresh fish) is growing on me. 
9. You'd think I'd be losing weight, but no.
10. The boat has two hammocks and there is enough free time during the day to read for an hour or two which is wonderful.

Our last day on Taka we did a beach clean up collecting several huge (4 cubic metre) bags of garbage - mostly glass and plastic bottles and plastic shoes - which we lashed to the foredeck to take to Majuro for disposal. It was only a token, of course, as we did only part of one motu, and each motu has garbage lining the shore, and many atolls have many dozens of motus, and there are tens of thousands of atolls... but it felt good nonetheless.


4. Maloelap Atoll

We anchored in several different spots here.

At the first spot you could walk at low tide on the flat (dead) reef rock 500 metres out right to the edge and stand there in awe. 100 metres further out it was 1000 metres deep and within that 100 metres the waves, finding themselves suddenly restricted, rose abruptly to great heights and then crashed spectacularly. Maybe with a gopro and a drone I could have captured the essence of it all; the deep blue and translucent turquoise and foamy white of the water, the thunderous roar of the frustrated waves, the rythmn of their progression, the warm salt spray, the sheer power of the ocean and the realization of how incomprehensibly tiny we each are relative to it. Or maybe not. Regardless, I stood there, captivated, mesmerized, and enthralled until the tide started to come in and the water rose to ankle deep and schools of almost iridescent parrot fish, exactly the same turquoise as the curve of the breaking waves, swam out of the ocean deep and played about on top of the flats. It was, at risk of sounding repetitive, amazing.

The next spot we stopped at was the village of Taroa, a Japanese base during WW2. The bay was littered with shipwrecks and the remnants of what had once been a huge pier and in amongst the current modest huts a massive overgrown crumbling three-story cement and rebar ruin rose like a twisted Angor Wat parody. Enormous bunkers and fuel tanks, currently used to store coconuts, were strewn about and there was a airplane graveyard where dozens of fighter jets had been left behind. (Yup, another amazing day!)

At the third spot Eddie caught two 60 lb tunas while waiting in the dingy for divers and we had fantastic sushimi for supper that night and fried or baked fish for days afterwards. 

Aside:
We currently have 11 people on board: the captain, his girlfriend, their two kids, me, an older Australian couple who are here just for the month for the diving, and 4 male crew, all of different nationalities, two of whom have been here for months but are about to leave and two of whom will stay on several months longer...

Aside:
... which bodes the question: Why am I here? Why is this what I am choosing to do with my time? If solid relationships are the most important thing in life - which everyone who watches Ted talks has to agree with - then what the heck am I doing here, in the Marshall Islands, sailing about with a bunch of people I'll never see again?

Aside:
It is wonderful being part of a small community; sailing, working, eating and playing together. It is wonderful always having someone to talk to and always having the option of being alone. It is wonderful swimming, snorkeling, kayaking, walking, and diving the atolls, experiencing daily things that few people will ever be fortunate enough to do even once in their life.

Aside: 
But ...


5. Aur Atoll

Yup. More amazing diving and other such adventures.

And then we were heading back to Majuro. Already? Was that possible?