Infinity cont...

Six days at Sea.

We sailed from Tuvalu to Tonga. It took six days, or maybe more, days tend to slide into one another at sea. The weather forecast had said almost no wind to start with building to almost too much by the end. Well. Yes. So much for that theory. (Everyone was grumpy that we were leaving Tuvalu early and that we were not even going to attempt to stop at Wallis and Fortuna along the way, except the captain, of course, who'd made the plans, because he was stressed about something else, and he was, well, stressed. The mood overall was not particularly positive. And I forgot to take my preventative sea sickness meds and was dreadfully sick for the first few days.) Back to the weather... We'd assumed we'd be motoring for a few days to start with but as we pulled out of Funafuti into the ocean the wind and waves were high and rising so we raised the sails at once and killed the engine, which was great, for about 30 minutes, until, BBLLIZZZSRT, the main sail - with one reef in already due to a huge rip - ripped again, a huge tear, from side to side. Yikes. We scurried to put another reef in it (so the new rip was rolled up along the boom at the bottom out of sight) but it wasn't a procedure we'd practised and it involved a lot of yelling of instructions amidst noisy flapping sailcloth and dangerous flailing ropes. Not much fun in other words. And it sort of set the tone for the trip. Each night there were vicious squalls coming through, sudden strong winds accompanied by beating rain. The captain, worried about more damage, was being cautious  - with respect to the sails, not our beauty sleep - and so each night some of us would be up once, or twice, or even more than that, lowering the jib as a squall rushed in, and then, an hour or so later, raising it again. It takes at least 3 people to put the jib up or take it down, and 4 is better, plus one on the helm, and at night it was dark because the moon wasn't up and it was often raining and always there was salt spray dousing us as we worked on the foredeck. Yeah. Joyful. And it was all for nought anyway as the jib developed a huge rip despite all this and had to be swapped out for the much smaller storm jib and then there was yet another massive rip in the main sail leading to three permanent reefs in that which left us with so little cloth up that most of the rest of the way we motorsailed. (I think its time for new sails.) We had more squalls, we had weather so calm the sails were flogging, we had days of almost unbearable sunshine and days of endless beating rain... but overall it was OK, and, as most of us napped a lot during the days, it seemed a very quiet and uneventful - though endless - leg.

Oh, and we did see whales once, always good!

Infinity cont...

Missed Opportunities

1. Tuvalu

Tuvalu, 4th smallest country in the world, was our first missed opportunity. We didn't stay long enough to get a really good feel for it, we didn't visit any islands or atolls other than Funafuti, where the capital is located, and we didn't even visit that properly. (Clem, who had scheduled arrival in Tonga for June 6 is suddenly in a rush to make it there by May 26 (for reasons unrelated to our trip) and this has him stressed and the rest of us discouraged.)

Tuvalu is at first glance similar to other pacific nations we've seen though it's joined the modern world very successfully making 10s of millions by selling it's .tv web addresses, it's extra phone numbers, and even Tuvalu passports. It has put at least part of this money into infastructure.

In the capital, Fongafale, the airstrip, built by the US during WW2 and covering almost all of the fertile land on the island, is a social hub. People go there in the evenings to play soccer, hang out, and eat huge platefulls of rice, curried chicken, and cerviche and whole families arrive at dusk and spread their sleeping mats right on the runway to spend the night taking advantage of the breeze.

In town, houses look (to me) like houses, by which I mean they have brick or plywood walls and standard roofs, but the interiors are still very traditional, by which I mean that the only furnature many contain are woven mats and pillows. Front yards are small, often dominated by large ornate burial plots, and there is no sign of garbage whatsoever. The pigs all live in a veritable city of stys on the far side of the airstrip.

Tuvalu, like Pitcarian Island, is known for its stamps. The post office has every stamp ever made laid out under glass topped tables, all still available for sale at face value.

A large section of Funafuti is a protected conservation area; uninhabited, restricted access, and no fishing. Guidebooks claim it is spectacular even for this part of the world so we pay $5/each to have a guide accompany us there on a day trip. We do a couple dives and visit one of the islets but, really, compared to what we've seen other places it's nothing to write home about. 'It was a must but also a bust', sums up our collective opinion. Though we did see manta rays up close. We've seen sting rays and eagle rays before but not mantas, and, according to Clem, the difference between a sting ray and a manta is like the difference between a donkey and a unicorn. So that was special.

The most interesting thing I did in Tuvalu was read Where the Hell is Tuvalu by Philip Ells, and then start up an e-mail correspondence with the author, now head of a law school in England, who wrote back prompt and comprehensive answers to my questions and added a list of suggested activities, which, unfortunately, we didn't have time for. So, yes, very much a missed opportunity.


2. Wallis and Fortuna

We were supposed to stop at Wallis and Fortuna. But we didn't.  Another missed opportunity for sure. Did I mention that the captain is stressed and the rest of us discouraged.

3. Niua Fo'ou

We sail right past, as in just beside, Niua Fo'ou without stopping. Its hills, the first we've seen in months, and interior crater lake, beckon but I am powerless to do anything. We sail by. (Sob.)


Hopefully Vava'u, Tonga, which we will now have 2 weeks to visit, will NOT also be a missed opportunity.

Infinity VIII

Kiribati Tidbits


1. First night dive.

I did my first night dive ever at Onotoa. There were just four of us, two of whom had never done a night dive before. I snagged the fantastic Sebastian as my buddy, perfect because he knows me, knows I'm a hesitant diver (but a great swimmer), knows I'm a velcro buddy (depends on him but also will be right there if he needs me), puts up with me cheerfully, and both sees and points out everything to me. It was a perfectly calm night and we just dove under the boat which was only 16 metres deep but even so it was really spooky to start. We went down down down the anchor chain to the bottom, which seemed far further and far darker than I'd expected and it was spooky, very spooky. Scary even. Dark, and silent, and alien, and so very very far from anywhere. When Sebastian flashed "OK?" I responded "Iffy..." which I was, so he motioned "Breathe, relax, chill...". He shone his light directly on both my dive computer and my air gage to demonstrate that they glowed in the dark and then just waited patiently for a minute. "OK!" I told him and we set off along the chain lying on the ocean floor towards the anchor spotting a couple of lion fish and a super weird crab along the way. By then I was good and managed to put most of my energies for the rest of the dive into looking for more cool stuff - though I still checked my computer and my air gage as regularly as if I were OCD. The 45 minutes flew by and, as always, I was disappointed when it was time to go back up. When we surfaced again Nico said something that got us all laughing and Sebastian was thrilled to have found a fish hook he'd lost earlier that day and we were all just happy to have gone.

I stressed about choosing this boat for this spring. There were several free options and this one is 20€/day. But, my goodness, some days I really feel I'm getting my money's worth!


2. Old lady.

Most atolls we visit we are first invited into a house - a raised platform with a thatched roof but no walls - sat upon incrately woven mats and given a young coconut each to drink, a process that takes at least half an hour, before any discussion starts. One day while these initial proceedings were going on there was an old lady hovering, and, as soon as it was polite to do so, she motioned for me to follow her. (I guess she saw in me a fellow old woman.) She took me next door to show me her house. It was a work of art; wooden frame held together by twine made from coconut husks, floor, about two feet off the ground, of slats from the middles of palm fronds secured with the same twine, and a precisely thatched roof the interior of which had all their belongings, from extra clothes to toothbrushes, tucked into it. (As always, no walls, which someone else on another island pointed out was great security as no one else could ever sneak unseen into your house and take anything!)  I cannot over-emphasize how the house was built totally from coconut palm pieces, its solidity, the beauty and regularity of the twine-work holding it all together and the skill and time this represented. The furnature consisted of a set of woven mats for sitting or sleeping on, a few pillows, and a low end-table with a kettle on it. We had no language in common the old lady and I but I pointed and murmured appreciatively and took out my phone and asked if I could take a photo of her beside the house to which the response was, 'Yes!! And, also, please come across the road and take a picture of me beside this grave too.' Back at her house her English-speaking daughter showed up and translated a bit of conversation for us. (It's a lovely house! - Yes. Do you live here too? - Yes. How many people live here? - Yes. Do your children live here? - Yes. Or do your children have their own houses? - Yes. How long does it take to build a house like this?' I asked. Finally a question they could understand. They calculated a bit and the answer came back: 1968. Nor precisely what I'd asked perhaps but a fascinating fact nonetheless.) I went back to murmuring appreciation and was shown the fire pit and the beach too. I'm not sure if in the end the old lady was more honoured to have shown me her property or if I was more honoured to have been shown it and I only wish I'd been able to have had a deeper more meaningful interaction with her.

3. My German Men

There are two 40-something German men amoung the current crew, a lawyer and a film-maker, both well educated, well travelled and interesting. Dirk pointed out octapi while buddying with me at Onatoa and Marc did the same at Tanama. While discussing who was going to dive with who at Arorae, and Dirk and I teamed up again, I told him that my expectation was that when I dove with either of my German men they'd find me an octapus. Underwater it was a lovely aquarium, fish and more fish, interesting canyons, and great visibility. Halfway through the dive I tapped Dirk, who'd been peering in to every single crevace, on the shoulder and flung my arms wide to try and indicate my joy. Unfortunately I didn't know the official SCUBA hand sign for 'this is an amazing dive and I'm so happy to be here and I was only joking about you finding me an octapus'. Nonetheless he kept on looking. He pointed out a huge lobster with antennae as long as my arms, an anemone guarded by two brilliantly striped parents and filled with tiny baby anemone fish, a puffer fish, a piper fish, and, chilling under one overhang, the largest pair of parrot fish I'd ever seen in my life. And then, just about as our time was almost up and we were starting to think about swimming out into the blue, doing our safety stop and surfacing, what did he shine his flashlight on but an octapus, a lovely lively large leopard-coloured octapus looking at us as if to say, 'You found me. Really? I thought I'd win this game of hide and seek!'. It made my day, and Dirk's too. We surfaced and burst out laughing, grinning at each other, and talking non-stop of all the underwater wonders we'd seen. It was another good day.


4. Eddy

Eddy, another crew member, and I are SO different from each other it's hard to imagine.

He's from the Solomon Islands in Melanisia. I'd known, theoretically, that Melanisia is so named because the people there are dark skinned (as in melanin, dark pigment of the skin) but I've never been there and I certainly didn't understand. (I'm so ignorant I thought all people with actually black skin tones were of African origin - of course I realize we're ALL of African origin - but, like, within the last millennium. Apparently not.) Eddy's 40, has been sailing for 18 years, is married to a Spanish woman, and has a 13 year old daughter.

He also has a skill set that barely intersects mine at all. He knows where to find fish, can tie a hook to a line one handed in the dark, can gut and clean and fillet in the blink of an eye, and makes AMAZING fish head soups and lobster stews. He can lash anything down with a scrappy bit of rope so it's secure in the worst storm. He can fix an outboard motor with a stick.

On the other hand when he and I were looking at the GPS chart and Clem, who was lying down across the room, asked Eddy when we'd get to the next anchorage at our current speed (it was midnight, we were going 6.9 knots, and had 78 left to go) I eventually replied, 'just after 11 in the morning', because I thought Clem wanted the information and that maybe Eddy'd not heard the question, only to have him, Clem, tell me, quite sharply, that he'd wanted Eddy to try and figure it out. Eddy asked how I knew and I started by saying that I knew 7 times 11 was 77 but then it quickly got all confused not only because of the rounding but also because the fact that 11 hours travel time would get us there at 11 am only worked since it was exactly 12 o'clock which is effectively 0 o'clock... and then I started over and tried to explain how to figure it out again only this time assuming one doesn't know 7 times 11 is 77 (or even that 7 times 10 is 70) which is harder to do than you might think.

I doubt Eddy could tell to me how to fix a pump such that I'd be able to do it - but I'm sure he could show me and I'd know forever.

I wondered if, when he sails, he just gets there when he does.

On shore he usually goes off on massive benders and isn't seen for days (not me). I read a lot (not him). He's very sociable and understands people (not me). I pay taxes (not him). He's good at languages (not me).

But we have a lot in common too. We love to see the world, to be on boats, to take life a day at a time. Both of us get stressed when Clem starts yelling (too often) and neither of us suffer fools gladly. We're both OK without daily internet connectivity. We're each happy to just be.

And, also, most importantly, we both like - and have huge respect - for the other.

I'd thought we were black and white but see that actually we're black and red!

5. Shopping

Coconuts can be used for money. A girl goes to the shop to buy something and returns with her purchases. There isn't room in the shop so the collected "money" sits outside in piles. There is no crime so none is ever taken.

A small but typical house.

Infinity VII

Tarawa and beyond!



Tarawa, Kiribati

Anyone who is really interested can research Kiribati on Wikipedia. I, personally, had never even heard of the country even though it's the biggest country in the world (if you include ocean area in your calculations).

The capital city reminded me of Cuba - the 3rd world country I'm most familiar with - full of poverty, pigs, and palm trees. Small ramskackle dwellings of brick, sometimes, but also chipboard, or corrugated metal, oil cans flattened out, tarps, chicken wire, or even palm thatch, with dirt yards, garbage everywhere, kids in tatty shorts playing happily with old tires or sticks, clean laundry hanging out to dry, chickens running about...

On the other hand there were significant differences from Cuba too; for one, as it's on an atoll not an island almost no produce grows, for another, there are none of the beautiful old buildings, remnants of a once affluent culture, and, also, there are NO tourists. We were the only sailboat in the harbour (amongst many WW2 wrecks and a very eclectic assortment of old or even completely rusted out fishing boats, ferries, and barges) and the only white people on shore (teenagers ask to take selfies with us we're such an oddity). But everyone is super friendly, small kids and old folk wave enthusiastically as we pass by and anyone with an excuse, such as a cashier, strikes up a conversation.

The stores, which look like they come from a 50's movie set, sell the oddest assortment of goods from around the world, though nothing, unfortunately, that's on our list. Carrots are 16.75/kg. There will be no fresh fruit or veg for the next leg.

One day we take the bus to the end of the road (1 1/2 hours, $1.60) and then a wee outrigger ferry across to the next motu (500 m, 50 cents) and then walk a path for another hour and a half. We are, literally and metaphorically, on the other side of Tarawa. Here there are no vehicles, no shops, no overcrowding... houses, made completely of natural materials, are sprinkled sparsely along the jungle path and one gets the impression that their diet is almost exclusively fish and coconut. It was a long hot walk, and we never did find the snorkeling spot we had been told about, but it was oh so interesting that we could only be glad we'd gone.

South of Tarawa

1. Equator crossing

There was NO wind so we motored from Maiana atoll all the way to Nonouti, a short leg which included crossing the equator. It is a tradition to have one's head shaved prior to the crossing but only 2 of the 12 of us choose to do so. However we all joined in the main saloon for communal humming and throat singing before supper and then had a special feast (lots of fresh caught sushimi, rice, fried fish, hot canned veg salad, peach crumble and ice cream) which we shared, sitting on the floor together, in total silence, the only exception being toasts that anyone could make at anytime and which everyone repeated. There was an artistic interlude between the main course and dessert, in this case a fantastic bit of improv theater, and after dinner everyone gave a speach (anything other than a lecture or an anecdote). Following these festivities we shared whatever alcohol we happened to have left and sat and chatted until 10 pm when we turned the engine off, threw a rope out behind, and jumped naked into the dark water, hooting and hollering, to be pulled by the drifting boat across from the northern hemisphere into the southern one. So much fun.

2. Nonouti Atoll

There are 4 new people who joined Infinity in Tarawa; 2 men and 2 women, each in a different decade of their lives, and each from a different continent (an Argentinian, an Australian, an American, and an Austrian) but they all have in common that they are keen divers. So the first thing we did at Nonouti was go for a dive.

The next morning we went to land. We were received very warmly by the locals we met and invited to stay for a feast and dancing demonstration that evening only to have the police show up and declare our paperwork (which Clem had spent 3 whole long hot tedious days procuring in Tarawa) insufficient. So we left, disappointed at missing out on what would have been a super cultural event, and went and did another awesome dive instead.

Reefs are dying off in many parts of the world, huge swaths of the Great Barrier Reef have recently become bleached, but not here at Nonouti. Here the reef is healthy. In a 45 minute dive in crystal clear water we saw uncountable kinds and colours of coral, tens of thousands of fish (including a pair of clown triggerfish), giant clams, and so much more... I had Sebastian, my pseudo-son, as my diving buddy. I love him. He's 22 and has a very healthy inner child that notices, points out, and actively enjoys everything. At one point we 'flew' arms spread wide through an endless school of tiny iridescent blue fish and when a 20 foot shark was circling curious and I clung to him he flashed me the "OK?" symbol and then laughed when I responded "OK!" but didn't immediately let go.

I stressed and worried about joining this boat. But I love it. Also, I hadn't realized how much SCUBA diving was part of its agenda. I likely would have said, three months ago, that I wasn't fussed by diving, that I would always be just as happy to snorkel. But ever since Clem practically threw me in the water at Bikar six weeks ago I've become hooked. Part of it all, both being on the boat and diving, is the whole community thing, being in a team, working and playing together, dependant on and responsible for one another. Yup, I love it.

And then, since the police had denied us permission to land again, the local villagers came to us instead. They showed up in small motorboats laden with large bowls and plates of local delacasies (fresh papaya, deep-fried breadfruit, taro, stuffed crabs, sweet coconut bread, grilled worms...), huge bags full of coconuts, and fresh flower leis for all the women. They brought endless smiles, endless questions, and, after eating altogether, everyone danced into the wee hours of the morning. Unbelievable.

Onotoa

As we wend our way south the days and weeks start to slide into one another. Each day is a plethora of activities. The first day at Onotoa I kayak and snorkel in the morning and go ashore in the afternoon to be part of the official team meeting the local authorities asking for permission to anchor (which includes a 20 minute motorcycle ride from the village we were close to to the main town).

It is all good. As well as the family there are 8 of us on board, always someone to do something with, yet the boat is big enough that we can each also find a quiet spot when we like - we each have our own cabin and the deck is big enough to have lots of nooks and crannies as well as the hammocks.

The second day a group of 40 dolphins came to see the tender as we head out to dive so we jump in the water and snorkel with them (Wow!) and then we go on to do a drift dive along a wall with countless millions of little fish and octapi, eels, and lion fish hiding in all the little cracks (again Wow!).

EACH atoll is amazing.