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