2007-09-07 Life and Schooling in Fiji

Fiji is loaded with coconut trees and coconut has become a staple of our
diet. Coconut oil has gotten an undeservedly bad reputation for being bad
for your health. I’ve done a lot of research, and not only is it not bad
for you it is actually very good! So I try to eat coconut every day. When
the nuts are green they are filled with coconut water and are delicious to
drink. The water can be used as an oral hydration solution, can be given to
breastfeeding babies and can even be used as an IV solution. When the nuts
get older they develop the harder white coconut on the inside. This can be
eaten right out of the nut or made into coconut milk or coconut oil. This
is also what you see in the packages in the store as shredded coconut. It
is just flaked and dried.
We have been in a very rural part of Fiji. Thawaro is near the tip of the
northernmost island of the Fiji group, and is pretty much off the beaten
track. The only way to get there is by boat. There are no phones and no
roads. There are a few other villages in the area and all the villages have
a boat that they use to go down to the nearest town (40 miles away) to get
supplies. They all fish and sell the fish to buy staples like flour, sugar,
tea, rice, etc. They grow root crops like taro, yams and cassava. They
also have banana, papaya and lemon trees. They tend their coconut farms and
they also grow some beans and a few onions. There are chickens running
around so they have eggs. The women cook over open fires and make the most
wonderful food you can imagine. I don’t know how they do it, but they make
bread like it comes out of a bakery. They eat a lot of fish and use coconut
milk in most everything they cook.
They live in either thatched huts or a combination of concrete, wood and
corrugated galvanized steel (tin roof). The cooking shed is usually
separate from the living quarters and there are communal toilet blocks in
the village. Some of the houses have flower gardens and the village is neat
and well cared-for. They cut the grass with a weed-whacker – someone spends
the day going around the whole village. There is little furniture in the
homes – maybe a cupboard to hold supplies. But no chairs or tables. They
weave mats and everyone sits on the floor on the mat, cross-legged. Our
village had over 100 people living there. There were maybe 2 or 3 families
represented and they conduct village life as a group, with a chief. The men
usually go out to work in the farms or fish during the day. The women with
little children are always around to watch the kids. You’ve heard the
expression "it takes a village to raise a child"? Well, the raising of
children is truly a communal event. As there are few dangers (no roads or
cars) the children have the run of the place and there is always an adult to
look after them.
The children love ball games; that was usually what I would see them doing
when I was in the village. In kindy they loved playdough, and the girls
would roll it out and pretend to make the foods their mothers did. The
boys seemed to prefer the blocks and the one little wooden car we had to
roll around. They loved to color and I was teaching them how to write
some letters and numbers. They were also drawing circles, squares and
triangles. I brought some balloons and that was a big hit! I usually had
between 12-15 kids, aged 3-5. Fijian is spoken at home and English is not
learned until grade school, so the children and I couldn’t understand each
other. Lepsy was the other teacher and she acted as the interpreter. I was
teaching the children some words in English, but when it came to story time
Lepsy would tell the stories. The children had about a half dozen songs
they knew and loved to sing them after play time right before the story.
They were happy, healthy children and a joy to be around.
Proper schooling starts at age 6 with first grade, but I heard that
kindergarten will become mandatory at some point. Our kindy was pretty
informal, and had been intermittent before I got there. We had sessions 3
times a week for 2 hours each session. The children really loved it and
would become very excited when they saw me walk into the village on kindy
days. Thawaro hosted the boarding school for the surrounding villages. The
families bring the children by boat to school on Sunday afternoons and pick
them up the following Friday afternoon to take them home for the weekend.
It is far to long a journey to do every day. The families take turns to
prepare the food for the boarders. The children are responsible for washing
their own clothes and keeping their beds neat and tidy. Some of the little
ones have separation issues at first, but they are lovingly looked after and
sometimes the mom will come and stay with them until they are ready to be on
their own. But the children generally agree that they love being boarders
and like the responsibility of caring for themselves and the freedom to be
independent. They stay at this school until they are 15, and then they go
to Labasa (40 miles away) for more high school. The children wear uniforms
to school and are very well-behaved and polite. I was in the habit of
leaving my dinghy by the boarding school and walking the 40 minutes to the
village and the children all knew my name and would speak to me every day.
Schooling is in English, so by the time the children are older their
English is very good. They seemed to have strict standards and exams.
There have been more cruisers coming through this area and they will usually
donate supplies to the school. We had a few boats donate stickers, paper,
colored pens, playdough, blocks, etc. when I was there. I plan to pick up a
few more things here in Savusavu and send them back to the kindy.
The worst effect of the hurricane last February was the destruction of all
the crops. For over 6 months the villagers had no fresh fruits or
vegetables until the new crops came in. They had to buy supplies from
Labasa, but as the average wage is $8 A DAY that was a real hardship.
(Things are cheaper here, but not THAT cheap.) By the time we left
everything was back in bloom and things were looking up.
Religion plays a large part of village life. The church (Methodist) is the
focal point of the village and Sundays are devoted to church. The children
are not allowed to play on that day. Dress is always modest: the women all
wear lavalavas, and their knees and shoulders are usually covered. No
shorts or tank tops for women. On Sundays the men all wear long-sleeved
shirts with ties. They also wear sulus, which are skirts with a trouser
waist. Once a month Thawaro either hosts or visits their sister village and
a big feast is shared during the day. The services are in Fijian, so the
Sunday we attended we couldn’t understand what was being said, but they
welcomed us in English and we were invited to lunch after the service. The
church itself is small and basic. The Fijians love to sing and the singing
is beautiful. There is no organ or piano. One person just starts singing
and the rest join in. Wonderful! Karen

2007-09-07 Fools or children

I’ve heard the saying that the Lord looks after fools and children. It’s
your guess, which we are, but surely something bigger than ourselves had a
hand in getting us from Also Island to SavuSavu. We’re here and well,
recuperating from 30 very hard hours, and as fond of the town now as we were
a couple months ago.
I had written that we were getting ready to head out of Also Island and
Thawaro, and needed some time in SavuSavu to receive parts and prepare the
boat for the trip north to the Marshall Islands. A week ago we had things
wrapped up, and said our goodbyes to friends there, telling them that
dependent on weather conditions we could leave any day from Saturday on.
The weather, particularly the wind strength and direction hereabouts is
determined by the position and strength of the high pressure systems that
move east across the temperate latitudes, originating from Australia and
passing across the International Dateline to dissipate near Tahiti. When a
big strong high is just south of Fiji the wind is quite strong and gusty
from the southeast. That would make it pretty challenging to sail to
SavuSavu, east around the Udu Peninsula, and then south through the
Scatterbreak Islands and reefs, to the Rambi Channel. There you turn a bit
west of south to pass through the SomoSomo Straight, and run west along the
south coast of Vanua Levu to reach Savu Savu. That first 40 miles to Rambi
presents three challenges in such winds. First, the east and south legs are
going to be very high on the wind, and require attention to sail trim and
steering to make good time in the right direction. Then, strong, gusty
winds require that you reduce sail area enough to keep the strains on the
rigging under control, but still have enough power to drive through the
choppy sea and climb over the big swell that builds up with a thousand miles
of fetch. And third, those swells are coming in from open ocean, to deflect
and reflect from the many reefs and islets along the way. That turns a big
but regular and smooth sea into a gigantic model of what you see when you
look into a washing machine. There’s little pattern to the size, shape, or
direction of the waves. Just violent, almost random eruptions from the
surface among the pattern of the swell.
Most sailors time their departure from Nukusa Pass early in the morning,
and in 10 hours they are at the north end of Rambi Island where they can
anchor at Albert Cove for the night, then carry on at daylight. They
generally have a 50 horsepower inboard motor to help keep the schedule, and
an electric windlass to pick up the anchor chain after they stop at Albert,
in 60 feet of water. We have a 10 horsepower outboard motor, and no
functional windlass, so that was out for us. We planned to go around
without a stop, so we had to sail at night someplace. Originally we tried
to plan for a night with a big moon, but that didn’t work out. We were
trying to wait for the high to move east, and let the wind ease up to under
15 knots. This high stalled, and after waiting a few days, there was no
sign it was going to move. A low trough settled in over us, and it rained
buckets in squalls carrying winds of 40 knot gusts. On Wednesday our
patience ran out. We needed to get to a place with internet access, to do
some banking. We needed to get the boat ready for the trip north. And
psychologically, we got a trapped feeling. We decided to go, despite
forecasts of rain squalls, and gusts to 30 knots from the SE. It was
foolhardy, and I recognized that at the time. But a sort of fatalism
combined with refusal to be subject to waiting for a break in the weather.
It took over 2 hours to get the anchors out of the bottom of Beqana
Harbor. The violence of the gusts over the last month had dug them in deep,
and the chain and rope were covered with so much slime and mud I had to
scrub them as I hauled them up, so I could hold onto them. It was near
noon, and only a couple hours past low tide when we started motoring slowly
toward the pass. The lagoon there is littered with shoals and reefs, so it
took 2 more hours to work our way out to the open sea. While we were at
Also Island I had finally gotten our GPS position receiver to interact with
the computer, so we had moved into the electronic navigation era, joining
most of the yachting world. We were getting a handle on what it could do
for us to have a little mark on the chart on the screen, representing the
boat position, and listing our direction and speed. It was the C-map
program that pushed me over the line to believe we could go to Rambi in the
dark. It really is soothing to know where you really are. The
intermittent torrential rain squalls that all but blinded us every five
minutes posed a challenge, but we couldn’t be deterred by those when we
planned to spend 9 hours in the dark.
The Udu runs a bit north of east, so it breaks the big trade wind swell,
affording us a pretty smooth sea for the first 15 miles of the trip. With
the wind fluctuating between 15 and 25 knots, we set a double reefed
mainsail, and the staysail, a small and easily managed sail arrangement. It
moved us to windward at about 4 knots, with a drift north of about 10
degrees, so we had to short tack back south a couple of times to stay in the
protected water of the peninsula. That made it just about dark as we neared
the lighthouse at the end, . By then, the swell wrapping around the reef
was making the motion of the boat pretty lively, which means Karen was
starting to get seasick. For her that just goes with the activity of
sailing. I still don’t know why she will do this. But I could see that we
weren’t going to be able to tack in 90 degrees in these sea conditions, so
we had to carry on another 5 miles beyond the reef end to be sure we were
clear, and have a chance of making it to the entrance to the Rambi Channel
without hitting Texas Reef. Karen suggested that we’d do better
motorsailing, letting the outboard help keep us moving with good steerage
way, while not putting up enough sail area that the mast would be
overstressed. It was a good call. We fired up the outboard, and it ran
without pause for the next 8 hours, with me refueling the remote tank using
a siphon hose . You can’t pour liquids with the boat leaping up and down 10
feet every 15 seconds.
Even before we made the turn south I was uneasy with the limited control
we had. It was blowing too hard to allow a normal tack. The boat didn’t
have enough forward momentum to carry its motion through the wind, so we had
to " wear ship" like the old square riggers, turning off downwind to jibe
the sails, then continuing through about 250 degrees of a circle.
Theoretically you can go 270 degrees, so your new course is 90 degrees off
the old one. The real world truth is that not many cruising boats can tack
90 degrees in a 10 foot sea with 25 knots of wind. We couldn’t do it even
with the motor helping. We made 110 degrees, and could hold about 3.5 knots
average. The gusts to 25 or 30 knots wind would push us up over 5 knots
boat speed, and I couldn’t allow Sequester to go any faster in that sea.
The bashing was already shaking things loose from their storage areas, and
seas breaking over the cabin reminded me that we still hadn’t made hatch
storm covers. I had to put the mainsail away completely and augment the
staysail with a little bit of the roller furling jib to control speed. The
inside was becoming a wet shambles, like it was during the storm on the way
from NZ. Moving around was pretty difficult for me. For Karen it wasn’t a
problem. She couldn’t move from the cockpit seat at all. Her seasickness
had triggered a migraine headache. She huddled on the cushion next to the
autopilot mount, soaked by the spray and rain, but rousing herself to handle
the tiller each time we had to change directions. I took stock. If the
motor quit, a bit of water in the fuel, or the water pump impellor deciding
that 6 years was enough for instance, we would have no prayer of going
upwind, and would have to head back toward the big pass near Labasa, 60
miles back. If the poor old rusty autopilot failed, there was no way we’d
be able to hold this course all night with me a poor helmsman anyway, and
Karen debilitated. We had followed the modern sailors tradition of naming
the autopilot for a special friend, as the hard working uncomplaining crew
member. Ours is Min, named for one of our first and best friends in NZ, and
like our Auckland Min, she held on against all odds and got us through it.
If the laptop or the primary GPS failed, navigation was going to become a
lot more of a crapshoot, with little room for error. And hitting a reef out
there was sure to reduce survival chances well below 50%. The other thing
that gave me too much to think about that night was the rig, especially the
staysail. It’s seen 16 years of intermittently strenuous duty, and though
it passed inspection before we left, one still has to wonder when the wind
howls and the boat crashes through the big seas.
So, sitting in the soaking spray and rain, surrounded with the din of
the bellowing motor at my feet, the crash of the boat, the shriek of the
wind, cocooned in a dim pocket of light from the computer screen in the
cabin, I held two thoughts or feelings all night. I cursed myself for a
moron to take such a chance, depending for our lives on all this rather
ordinary and well worn equipment. And I was astounded every few minutes to
find it all still working. I checked position, tried to think of reasonable
"plan B" scenarios if one of those things did fail, I hastily restowed
things that fell out of the cupboards and shelves, and I wrapped Karen in a
fleece blanket, and held her to try to keep her warm. I tried to get her to
put on a fleece jersey under her raincoat, but she was too sick to make the
effort. I just had to keep us moving until we made the pass entrance, and
could crack off the wind direction a bit. From there on I figured we had a
fair chance of making it. On a misery scale of 1 to 10 we were sitting
pretty high in the decimals above 9.
A couple of times Karen could curl up and would drift off to sleep, once
for over an hour. We both knew I had to stay able to think clearly and work
to get us out of this, so twice she sent me to try to sleep while she kept
watch. To be where she could reach me I put a cushion for my head at the
companionway and slept fitfully on the floor for 15 or 20 minutes, but those
snatches of sleep did wonders for my ability to carry on. As 5:00 AM
approached, the sky became a little less dark, and we were only an hour or
so from the channel entrance. Even that 15 degree turn off the wind looked
like the gates of heaven, and I started to believe we were going to make it.
By 7:00, I turned on the SSB radio to check in with the Rag of the Air, to
let them know we had survived the night. The motor was getting a well
earned rest, and with the reefs to windward breaking the worst of the swell
we could let her sail up to 6 knots. It was pretty rowdy sailing, but such
an improvement on the night I could rouse a little humor on the radio,
suggesting that this had not been my all time best idea. Brian warned us
that in Somo Somo Straight the wind would drop out completely, so be ready
with the motor. I thanked him, signed off, and went to check the oil and
fill the fuel tank. Karen had me make her some licorice tea and ate a bit
of candy and a pill. Things were looking up.
As the big island of Taviuni broke the sea completely, but allowed the
wind to sweep in, we added sail and picked the pace up to over 7 knots,
seeing a chance to make Savu Savu before dark. I was pretty impressed with
the C-map, but I’d still rather enter a reef pass in the daylight. True to
Brian’s prediction the wind failed as we entered the 3 mile long pass, but
the motor ran fine, and the current was going our way. The surprise was
that after we cleared the pass, the wind didn’t fill back in for 15 miles.
The mountains of Taviuni left a shadow that long. We couldn’t keep the pace
needed with just the motor, and I started to despair of making it before
dark. Karen took advantage of the flat sea and went below for the first
time in 24 hours to sleep for 2 hours. She woke up as the wind was starting
to fill in, and within a few minutes I had the full mainsail and full jib
set, and we were broad reaching at over 7 knots. I went for a half hours
sleep, and when I came back out Karen was hand steering. By playing the big
swell that had now filled in behind us, she could get the boat surfing on
alternate waves, so about a third of the time we were doing 9 or 10 knots.
I fine tuned the navigation to keep the distance as short as possible, and
we could see we were going to make it in. Before we made the turn for the
pass I tucked one reef back in the main. It was still blowing pretty hard,
and we needed good control. The full main was a bit much for going upwind
around coral heads.
At 5:00 in the evening we had the lighthouse behind us and I raised Curly
on the radio to reserve a mooring. As the sun set, we were climbing into
the dinghy to row ashore for a good feed of fish and salad that someone else
had cooked. But we didn’t linger about after we ate. And the lights didn’t
stay on long when we got back to Sequester. When it started raining hard at
2:00 AM I got up to catch water in every container we own. By then I’d had
6 hours of sleep, and cleaning up the salt was going to require a lot of
fresh water. Our needs were provided for. T

2007-08-31 Another Village

As always, things have not proceeded exactly as expected since the last update was sent. I guess that uncertainty is what keeps it interesting. I wrote about several things I wanted to buy from the USA. Well, I couldn't seem to get any response from West Marine International Sales. They simply don't answer either my emails, nor the messages our friend Doug left from his Florida business. They must be thriving, and can't bother, I suppose. But in New Zealand, friends Phil and Pete have
been stirring things up, and it's looking promising for us to have not only the backup electronics, but possibly even the new windlass before we leave Fiji. When Captain Cook explored this part of the world a couple hundred years ago, he sailed a ship with enough crew, and enough materials to rebuild the ships systems at least twice during the 3 year voyage. Our support crew stays at home, working their jobs, but reading the mail, ready to find and ship what we need. Once again it's clarified
that short handed cruising is not really an independent, solitary activity.
Karen has now wrapped up her kindergarten teaching, coming home Thursday with an armload of little gifts, and a dress stained with the hugs and cuddles of a dozen grubby, runny nosed little villagers. It appears that one of them may well have also given her the mild stomach virus that's been running through the village, but that should run its course in a couple of days. Meanwhile, we're readying Sequester for the short but probably lively passage to Savusavu. The first 5 hours or so will be
straight upwind, to the end of the Udu Peninsula, and with the trade winds blowing as they are it promises to shake loose anything not well secured.
On Monday I didn't get much done in the shop at Also Island, but we got to visit Langi village, where the clinic is located. Jim got a call from Duavata School asking for boat transport for a student to the clinic. One of the projects in the shop right now is the construction of a 23 foot boat for the school, but for now they depend on the Also 5, Jim's 19 foot runabout, for student transport. To pick up the patient, a faculty member, and a guide we had to go to the North landing near the
village, where the water is deepest, because it was low tide and a boat couldn't access the other jetties. The guide came to help us get into Langi, where we would have to wade over 100 meters of knee to ankle deep mud to get ashore at low water. Since Karen and I wanted to see Langi anyway, and we had a guide, Jim could stay at the island and tend to business.
The approach to Langi at low water was straightforward; drive in until the boat stalls. Put the anchor over the side, then start carefully slogging ashore. At that point the water is about a foot deep over nearly a foot of soft black mud. Thousands of sharp shelled mollusks live in the mud, but there's no kind of shoe that will stay on in that stuff, so it's bare feet, carefully placed to minimize cuts. I was thinking how fortunate it was that the patient was fully mobile. We could never have
carried a badly injured person of any size into the village . It would have had to wait 4 hours for the water to be high enough for the boat. As it was, the patient turned out to be the 16 year old daughter of a prominent village family, going to confirm that she, like so many other adolescents, had let her emotions rule one night and was now pregnant.
A few minutes of fairly strenuous wading got us to the shoreline. There we took advantage of rainwater in a beached boat to clean ourselves up a bit, then proceeded up the little road. Langi,like Thawaro, is a collection of wood and galvanized sheet metal houses set randomly around a sizable common green. With no glass windows or closing doors on many of the buildings, privacy is provided by leaving considerable space between them. As we walked up the green toward the clinic, a half dozen
people stepped out to greet us from different houses. They recognized us from their visits to Also Island for fuel and supplies from the store. I recognized Sammy, who I'd rescued with a couple of spark plugs for his outboard motor last month, and he invited us to come back for tea after we'd seen the clinic. As we approached the clinic we met the nurse, took a two minute tour of the facilty, then left the patient there and went back to Sammy's.
Karen was soon holding the newest of the family there, a two month old girl, and we were talking about all the activity around a temporary shelter going up in front of the house. We knew that quite a few Thawaro villagers had just gone to Labasa for a 2 week Methodist conference, but saw no such activity in Langi. It turns out that Langi is a Catholic village, and was to host a conference in the coming week, with people from as far as Suva coming to visit, and with the prospect of a church being
built at Langi to provide for the Udu Catholic population. It was the logical place, since at least most of the time, if it hadn't rained heavily, a 4 wheel drive could get to Langi . It's the end of the road system in Vanua Levu.
Conversation ranged from the guitar I was fixing for Sammy to his fishing business, and then to other visitors they've had through the years. They showed us photos of a group who came for several years to be dropped off with their kayaks at the end of the Udu, then paddled back downwind to Labasa, staying overnight at Nukasau, Langi, and Tilangitha on the way. It had been an annual high point for the village until the promoter died in a helicopter crash about 10 years ago. As we finished up
the pictures and the tea, the patient and attendants came in, done with the clinic visit. The tide hadn't had enough time to change much, so we retraced the long muddy slog to the Also 5, went back across the bay to drop off the party, then headed for Also Island in time for lunch with the crew.
The rest of the week has been filled with work on the new school boat, more progress on a big ice box for the Lady K fishing boat, tool repairsfor Jim, racking up my own tools, and visiting with the flow of people who come through the Island to shop. The coconut telegraph has spread the word that we're moving on soon, and many people ask when we're going, and do we plan to come back. They all wish us well, and we do plan to return. The back blocks of Fiji are a bed of roses; among the thorny
stems are many flowers of friendship. We surely hope to pass this way again.

2007-08-19 Changing with the tides

Part of the secret to success in life seems to be knowing when to bend rather than break, when to roll with the punches, when discretion is the better part of valor. Having re-evaluated the possibilities of building a supply boat here and now in Fiji, we've decided to defer that plan and go see Micronesia while we still can.
I know a lot more now about what features are really needed in the supply boat, and what difference it will make if it goes into service. I also know much more about the obstacles to doing anything that might rock the economic boat for those who have virtual monopoly businesses here in Fiji. I've decide that I was insufficiently prepared to get the envisioned boat built in the year allotted. It's just so hard to do anything here when everyone with economic or political power wants to keep
the place frozen in time. And it's relatively easy for them to do that, because the local population isn't exactly on fire for change to occur. Thawaro is a dry village, so there's no big problem with booze, and that was part of the attraction it has had for us. But they've substituted "grog", or kava. Growing yangona, which is ground up and mixed with water to make kava is a steady business here. They sell a good bit of it, but they also drink a good bit of it, sitting around the village center
for hours each night getting mummified on the stuff. That's one reason it's so hard to find a captain for a boat who won't let it turn to garbage. It also explains why they haven't staged a popular revolution. They're almost all hung over almost all the time. The leadership of the present "interim Government" seems to recognize the problem, and is trying to address it. But until they make some progress, the local businessmen will use the small govt officials to interfere with any competitive
actions.
After having worked on a half dozen outboard motors, and 3 of the local plywood trawler type supply boats, I see how quickly machinery deteriorates here from abuse and lack of maintenance. A boat that would do business here has to be nearly bulletproof, and very easily repaired, or it won't live long enough to return the capital investment. There are things about the Fijian people that endear them to us, but we can only do so much for them, and there's more world out there for us to go
and see. Having decided this, I'm not really all that upset about the failure of the first plan. I always knew it wasn't a sure thing, and it's not yet out of the question for the future. So we move on.
There are things I want to straighten out on Sequester before we go to sea again. We don't much trust the now rusty Simrad autopilot, so we're working on getting a new Autohelm unit sent out from the States. I'm reconfiguring the navigation station, making the weather fax machine easier to reach, so we'll program it more, and get more accurate weather updates. I have several friends and businesses looking for a good backup laptop computer, to be sure we keep on having onboard email, and navigation
programs to help us stay off the reefs. My electronics knowledge and skills are steadily expanding. I found out that the little Etrex GPS we have as an emergency backup unit will run a computer navigation program as well as the primary unit, if I get the right cable for it, so I'm chasing a cable and training myself to program it. I'm not satisfied with the anchoring windlass I installed in NZ, but the shipping time for that and the required 200 feet of chain puts it out of the realm of possibility
before our visa runs out. We could try having it sent to Samoa, and stop there on the way north, but that's probably not going to happen either. Most likely I'll just live with what we have until we reach Majuro, in the Marshalls, and by then we'll have figured out whether it's feasible to have one shipped there. This world exploration by sailboat is neither easy nor cheap, but it still looks like our most satisfying course for now.
For the immediate future, Jim and I are working out what projects I can address for him in the next 3 weeks that will do the most good for Also Island. Karen's still developing the kindergarten program in the village, in hopes that if she gets it well enough established it will outlive our stay. We're rapidly using up the ink cartridges in our printer, giving pictures to all of our village friends. They love to have photos of the family. We're giving our evenings over to reading cruising guides,
travel books, and the charts of Samoa, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands, listing what visas we need to have in advance, planning where we can anchor securely for exploratory stops, and as all sailors do, studying the prevailing winds for the run from here to Latitude 5 degrees North. Not that reality will hold much similarity to the predictions. But we do what we can to plan ahead, and then deal with reality as it comes. That's life. Life is good. Ted

2007-08-14 Long walks, and broken guitars

The last time I wrote from Also Island I explained a bit about some of the cultural aspects of Fiji that have affected the economy. I continue to learn about that, but the last week has been full of activity with other cruising sailors as well as local Fijians, so I'll tell you a bit about those things.

I mentioned in the last 2 messages that Red Sky had turned up, with American sailors Steve and Carol on board. Then New Zealanders Laurie and Anna came in on a nice old wood planked 46-foot Salthouse designed boat, Loran-C. Most surprising was the late night arrival of Sea Eagle 2, a steel sloop from Whangarai NZ, with Ross and Pauline and their boy Hunter. That was the first time I realized how powerful the new electronic navigation systems really are. They ended up late arriving at the pass off Thawaro, but having been through it before, they had a reliable track on their Maxsea navigation chart, so decided it was better to get in and anchor rather than sit off the reef in gusty, strong winds. At 11:00 at night they tracked right thru the coral and put the hook down 100 meters from us.

We all got to know each other a bit as we worked together at a near frantic pace to put up the new antenna for Jim, so he wouldn't miss doing the Rag of the Air radio net for the South Pacific cruising sailors. That went quite well. Then the next morning, Marama ni Wasaliwa (Mother of the Ocean), the supply boat for Cikobia, came in with a propeller shaft problem.

Jim had spent most of a year off and on doing a refit on her, stopping when the funding would suddenly dry up, and even going so far once as to take her out of the shop and put her on a mooring. Once everyone was convinced that he wasn't going to finish it on credit, just to get it out of the shop, they came up with enough cash to get it running again. But about $50,000 was allocated by the Ministry of Transportation for the refit and by the time money got to Also Island, there was only half that available. Another job for the corruption probe committee. So, the shaft and rudder were left patched up rather than properly redesigned and refitted. Now that has come home to roost. And, despite Jim's strong warning that the new engine MUST come in for an oil and filter change at 200 hours running time, this is the first time she's been back, with about 230 hours on the hour meter. Looks as if they'll once again run it until it won't go before any service is done. Nonetheless, all of us have had a hand in getting her beached, blocked up, drive train parts pulled out and assessed, and repairs started both inside and out of the hull. Jim made a flying trip to Labasa for bearings and machine work, while we and the Fijian staff at the Island kept an eye on things here. He left Sunday afternoon, to return late Monday.

Laurie and Anna had a schedule to keep, and had done a list of nice things for all of us here, so they headed out Monday morning. But not before he had helped me get my GPS receiver to interface with my computer, to let us see at a glance where the boat is relative to the charted waters. That is going to make life among the coral reefs a LOT easier for us.

Karen and I have been promising ourselves for weeks that we'd get over to Qarnivai for a look around, and meet the people there. I met the chief from there a couple weeks ago when he visited the Island, and he invited us to come over. His name is John, pronounced "Shonie". They soften the "J" to an "sh", and add the obligatory end syllable for Fijians (spoon is pronounced as spoonie). John is almost 70 years old now, but is of the opinion that what's wrong with Fiji right now is mostly Fijian customs and the Methodist Church. He thinks it's time the villagers stopped drinking so much kava, started planning ahead a bit, and quit giving so much of their meager income to the church. There are churches in every village, church conferences several times a year, and ever expanding modern offices in the cities, while not all Fijians have houses, over half don't have running water in their houses, very few have a toilet in the house (villages have one or more communal toilets), and half the Udu Peninsula has no access to telephone, no reliable road system, and one clinic that is as much as 2 hours travel from many villages. Steve and Carol were in need of exercise and an outlook too, so on Monday morning with things ticking over slowly at Also Island, we decided to go to Qarnivai, and walk down the track to see if we could find John's place.

It's still blowing pretty hard here, so the dinghy ride across the bay was challenging and damp, but we were promptly met by a nice couple who welcomed us and showed us around. Turns out the whole village is one extended family, and our hostess, Miriama is John's younger sister. Her husband, Louis invited us to follow him down the track toward the "main road", visit a few people, see the farm. We accepted his offer, and spent several hours walking the track to where it meets the logging spur road, near where the bus comes by twice daily. John's brother William and his family live there at the junction. He says the traffic on the road amounts to about one 4-wheel drive a week going to Langie, where the clinic is. That is, when the road isn't washed out somewhere. We had opted to travel Fijian style, barefoot, so decided not to walk up the road to the bus stop, as there is some fairly harsh gravel in the clay of the road surface. Had a relaxing rest and talk with William's family on their well kept lawn, under the mango trees, before heading back. About halfway back, we made a detour, thru the bush to John's farm, and spent a delightful hour sitting with 3 generations of his family, drinking coconuts, talking politics and religion. He offered us the use of his punt (flat bottomed boat) to take the river back to the village if we were tired, but we opted to hike back out along the shortcut thru the woods, crossing two pretty creeks, back to the track into the village.

A half dozen of the villagers and their children came to Miriama's house to sit on the porch with us and talk about Fiji, New Zealand, and the USA. We had sandwiches and mixed nuts with us, which we shared with them, and Karen took over holding the only new baby in the village, a pretty, happy little girl a few weeks old. After an hour of visiting, with the tide high, they helped us get our dinghies launched and we headed back across the bay with spray flying and boats leaping up and down. As we neared our anchorage, we saw Jim's runabout round the point a mile out, throwing a cloud of white as it bashed thru the waves. As we got to Sequester we heard him on the radio, asking for someone to bring him a little more fuel. Pauline got the gas can and dinghy from Sea Eagle and was away, halfway out to him, when his motor stopped. Bucking the wind coming back, he'd burned 20% more fuel than usual.
I went in to the Island to see how the parts search had gone, and found a surprise there for me. When I first arrived, I'd found a broken guitar there, left by Ma'am Khatta's son to see if it could be repaired. It had been there nearly a year. In a week of intermittent little jobs on it, I had it ready to go, and he came by and picked it up. The word has now spread. The wrecks of two guitars had been dropped off at the Island on Monday, to see if I could rebuild the bodies. They're pretty rough, but with some glue, fiberglass and a bit of wood, I think we can squeeze a couple more years from them. No lack of projects here. Ted

2007-08-09 Radios and Emails

I've gotten some surprised commentary about the size of a couple of my emails lately, and thought I should offer some explanation. It's a bit technical, but bear with me. As we explained before, the time on the radio frequency is the limiting factor for each subscriber's use. The Winlink and Sailmail operators are continuously trying to increase speed, to allow more information exchange in that limited time. I spent about $800 just before we left NZ to upgrade our radio modem to the newly developed Pactor 3 code from Pactor 2. In good radio conditions, that will increase maximum transmit speed from about 400 bytes per minute to about 1400. But if radio wave propagation is poor, due to low sunspot activity, or if background noise is high, due to solar flares or human RF activity, the maximum won't be reached. The developers of the system came up with a clever protocol where a segment of information is sent, then the recieving end sends it back. If it comes back right the transmission continues where it left off. If it has errors or holes in it, the bad parts are re transmitted until the return is correct. So, if conditions are bad, data may have to be exchanged up to 5 times to get it right. That slows even Pactor 3 down to under 150 bytes per minute. Learning to get the most out of the system involves learning when the propagation is best and the noise the least on each of the 10 frequencies the Sailmail station at Firefly, Australia moniters. Two things have been improving our use. I've been learning which frequencies work best when, and radio propagation in general has improved in the last week. I was expecting to have to break the longest of those emails into two or three segments, as I did with the reef story. I was astonished to see the transmit speed rising to over 1200 bytes per minute when I sent a short batch of business emails, so as soon as that was finished I posted the big message, and re connected. I love it when it works like that, but we can't count on it. We do get to be dependent on it though.

This morning just at the end of the Rag of the Air radio net, with the wind blowing a low-end gale, Jim heard a big clunk and the radio went dead. His antenna wire had come down from the tree that held it. That meant he couldn't order materials, couldn't contact Kyoko, who has gone to Labasa for the week, couldn't send or recieve information about the licenses and visas we need. But coincidence is a strange thing. Yesterday afternoon a NZ yacht arrived unannounced, and it turns out lorrie is a very competent radio technician and was keen to give us a hand. I went out to the Also 2 on its mooring, and took off the broken HF radio whip antenna that has languished there since the last cyclone 5 months ago. I spliced the break, and Steve (Red Sky) and I devised a mounting for it on a tree up on the hill. Sea Eagle 2 had arrived late last night with Ross and Pauline and their boy Hunter. They and Lorrie set about rewiring the automatic antenna tuner to work in the new system, and we all had a hand in devising and installing a grounding system. Just before dark, the last wire was connected, the system tested, and Sailmail contacted and messages sent. If it was going to break, it could have done it at a MUCH worse time. I've said before, there's a LOT of talent out here sailing around. It's fun to have a team come together like that, from nowhere, and solve a problem. Good, too that everyone's competent boat handlers. The gale force gusts are still blasting off the hills, but no anchors are dragging, everything is sitting nicely here at Also Island. Ted

2007-08-08 Fiji economy 101

The message I sent a few days ago, called "Jim's Suva Adventure” had a bit of commentary on the political situation and the coup here in Fiji. That was intended to give you all some background regarding the sad state of the Fijian economy. The Qarase govt was living on aid and loans, and diverting most of the funding to the accounts of a few influential individuals. The economy here was failing, whether or not there was a coup. One of the last straws that triggered Bainimarama to take over was the introduction of proposed legislation known as the Qoli-qoli bill. qoli-qoli is the foreshore and the nearshore waters, traditionally controlled by each village as their own fishing grounds. The new bill would have awarded to indigenous Fijians total control of these areas, including ability to charge tolls for boat traffic thru their qoli-qoli. Turns out, there is strong speculation that there are large oil and gas deposits in southern Fiji waters, and coincidentally, the bill would have allowed the tribal chiefs to charge unregulated transport and landing fees to any exploration or drilling and recovery operations passing near their villages. Free cash for the chiefs, and almost surely nothing for the average citizen. ABSOLUTELY nothing for any Indian-Fijian. In Bainimarama's opinion, that sort of racist favoritism and repressive private taxation is not good for business. And actually without the Indo-Fijians, there would be virtually NO business in Fiji. Following is an excerpt from a letter to my niece Kerri, who was inquiring about marketable art works from the indigenous populace. It explains at least partially the economic base of the native Fijians." We've asked around and looked around at the Udu peninsula crafts, and the only artistic expression we really see is in the area of weaving. They make a lot of things from woven palm, pandanus, and bamboo. There's a little "self expression" and some interest in aesthetics there, but really they don't seem to make the leap from pleasantly appealing utility to display art. The whole culture is based on making and using things that have pretty low durability and short life span. That's part of our problem in trying to build a boat based transport business; these are culturally subsistence farmers and hunter-gatherers. They don't expect to use anything for long, so don't take care of anything, just use it till it fails and throw it away. That's a big part of the culture clash between indigenous Fijian and Indian Fijian; the Indians are technology oriented, profit motivated, and industrious. They buy and maintain modern equipment and gadgets. The Fijian kids want the gadgets (cell phones, stereos, cars, outboard motors) but don't have any idea how to pay for them or keep them going." An example is the traditional shelter. They have lived in a woven walled, thatch roofed "bure" for thousands of years here. There was no point in building durable, as a cyclone was going to take away anything they could build, and in a couple days a new dwelling could be put up. Now about 3/4 of them have switched to more "modern" building materials, but the construction isn't much more advanced than that of a traditional bure, and the bure looks a LOT better.

That's a snapshot of part of the economic problem here. I'll be addressing it more I'm sure.

Life here on the boats is kind of interesting. Steve and Carol got to be radio friends while we were in NZ and they were in Tonga. We met in SavuSavu, and Steve was one of the guys relaying my radio traffic and offering moral support while we were up on the reef on the way around the island. They arrived here at Also Island yesterday, and plan to stay a while to socialize and lend a hand with a few things. Brought a great big fresh mahi-mahi with them, my favorite fish of all. We ate really well tonight. This afternoon, unannounced, another yacht, a couple from NZ, came in. Lorrie and Anna seem to be excellent folks, and expect to be around a few days, so we should have good company here at Also Island for a while. The weather has just gone through a couple days of pretty calm wind, but tonight it's gone quite boisterous, with reinforced trade winds from the southeast. Bit of a chop on the anchorage, but plenty of power for the wind generator. Full batteries. Life is good. Ted

2007-08-04 Off to Labasa

Apparently the shape of the island east of our anchorage has the effect of modifying the winds from that direction. When the trade winds are strong, as now, we experience a rhythmic gusting, with a time period of about a minute between cycles. We get about a minute of breeze at around 5 to 10 knots with a slightly shifting direction, followed by an explosive blast at 30 plus knots lasting 45 seconds to a minute. The gust dies out, and the cycle repeats. It's a little unsettling, but in the gusts the wind generator gives the batteries a big pulse of charging current. So I can use the computer as much as I want to right now. A good opportunity to write about the trip Jim and I took to Labasa.

Jim got back from Suva Friday evening, and by Monday announced that we should go to Labasa on Tuesday to start the process of application for my work permit. We would take the Also 5, a 19-foot runabout with a 40 horsepower outboard motor. A one-way trip takes about 2 and a half hours, and $50 worth of fuel.

But there was a hitch. Also Island is entirely dependent on the 28-foot plywood trawler, the Lady K, making a trip to Labasa each Thursday. She carries a cargo of the fish the villagers have caught during the week, and any passengers who want to go to town badly enough to pay the $8 fare and listen to the engine all day. She takes 6 to 8 hours for the run arriving mid afternoon at Fiji fisheries dock. Fish are sold, and ice is bought and loaded for the next weeks' fishing. Rizwan, the Also Island agent in Labasa delivers the goods order for the Also Island store, and 55 gallon drums (375 pounds each) of fuel for outboard motors, kerosene lamps, and pressurized white gas type stoves are rolled out a plank from the dock, then manhandled into the deck house. Friday morning passengers embark, and she returns. Last week the transom platform broke under the weight of two men and a drum of fuel. Also there's been a marginal overheating problem since a repair was made to the keel cooler, and it needs attention. That has to be done before we leave, so the boat can fish for a day, then go on Thursday morning.

We ran her up on the beach on Sunday, and started the keel cooler repair. That turned into new holes in the hull, running copper tubing, making and gluing patches on the bottom, and modifying hose end fittings. It was complicated by the boat lying on one side at a 25-degree angle, and the bilge being well lubricated with old, black diesel crankcase oil mixed with a few gallons of seawater. It required great caution and leg strength not to fall down in the bilge, and took an hour of cleaning for me to see where to drill, and how to glue patches. In the process we found the battery cable had broken off and the captain had just jury-rigged it, never telling Jim there was a repair needed. That was true to his performance for the last months, and was the last straw. Jim changed captains. By Monday that was enough under control to have Pita, the newly appointed captain of the boat, finish connecting hoses, clamp and secure things, and do an oil change on the diesel. Jim and I started cutting away the old transom platform and making parts for the new one. By Monday night we had parts made, the sides of the boat prepped, and a plan for repairing the damage to the sides as we glued on the new supports. No trip to Labasa for us Tuesday, but we had to go Wednesday as a ride had been promised to Ma'am Khatta, the school principle's wife. She goes to town monthly to see her daughter's family.
Tuesday we started assembling the new platform, while Pita repacked the leaky old shaft gland, reassembled the interior, and repacked the cooler of fish we'd had to empty and move to do the cooling line. Working around the tide it took until 4:00 PM to finish the platform and ready the boat for trials. We took a break from construction, and just sold fuel to customers and had a bite to eat while we waited for the tide at 6:00 to float her. At dusk we got her afloat, fired up, and headed across the bay to test the cooling and adjust the shaft gland. Jim got the packing adjusted after taking a few gallons of water into the bilge, and the cooling seemed to be fine. But the shifter had been allowed to fall apart, again with no mention by the old captain. We went back to the beach, and started pulling the controls apart in the dark, using flashlights. By 7:00 we were starting manufacture of a new shift lever, pivot mount, and cable clamps. Two hours of searching out materials, designing, cutting, grinding, and assembling had the shifter better than new. We were trashed. My back ached, and my right knee was swollen and tender. I couldn't imagine leaving for Labasa in 10 hours. But we did. We fueled up at dawn, swung by the village, and Ma'am Khatta, 50 years old and 200 plus pounds, waded out to the boat and clambered over the side to settle down on the floor for the ride. We made one false start, returned after a 5-minute start to get a forgotten paper, then settled in with the outboard howling at full throttle for the trip down. The tide was very high allowing us to take shortcuts over some reef areas. We were winding up the Labasa river dodging logs by 9:00, and just after 10:00 were helping Ma'am Khatta climb into another boat alongside so we could drag it to the half sunk floating dock. Rizwan met us there with the pickup truck, Jim joined him in the cab and I climbed into the canopied bed behind the cab, and we started the day's errands.

We saw the accountant, the doctor, the hospital (blood tests and x-rays), the police, the notary, the Internet parlor, and the machinist who does fabrications and repairs for Jim. The discussion with Rizwan was almost entirely about how to obtain materials and have them delivered within our lifetime, without costing triple in transport what was paid for them. It seems that frequently the customs agent will "lose" a package for a while in the warehouse. The record time for this is a bit over 2 months, with the agent being called twice a week to look for it. When it was discovered in the warehouse, it was shown that Also was spelled “Aslo”, so they could not have been expected to find the owner (despite phone numbers, addresses, and return addresses and phone numbers). Each day, it seems, it had been in the way, and had to be moved with a forklift. Each move with the lift was charged at $15, so for 10 weeks the charge was $750, plus standard storage of $3 per day. This was the maximum example, but NOT out of character. I looked in the stores, and talked about materials for boat building. Fiji Forest Industries now exports ALL of its grade one marine and exterior plywood. We can buy seconds when they are available, but there is no reliable supply. I was feeling the desperation rising. I had estimated 5 months to build a 40-foot catamaran. Clearly, I couldn't even get the wood in that time. I pretty much hurt all over from two days of climbing in and out of and wading around the Lady K. The police were a bit uncertain about the work permit, but I definitely needed a certified birth certificate sent from Massachusetts. Desperation slid toward depression. All afternoon it rained torrentially, and the water blew thru the truck canopy, soaking me, as Rizwan skittered over the potholes from business to business. By evening I was dropping hints to Jim that I couldn't see how we could get anything done in a year. I slept from about 10:00 PM until 4:00 AM, then lay awake trying to visualize how I could even get the hull shape I wanted on the boat, even if I could get materials and permits. My brain wouldn't work right. At breakfast I told Jim I'd go thru the motions of the work permit, and submit the $650 application fee, but I doubted if I'd stay beyond the 6-month temporary permit. I felt hopeless. He just did what he's done here for almost 6 years now. Plod on and see if it can be salvaged. I spent 2 hours on the Internet, forgot to check two of the sites I had wanted to see, and failed to get two others to open. The emails I wrote were not cheerful.

By noon we were running cargo between shops and the dock, loading and fueling the Also 5 and talking to Pita who had just arrived with the lady K. His trip had been good. I couldn't imagine how, in that worn out old trap of a boat, but it was apparently the best it's been for a year. They only had to bail it twice, and add cooling water once. Good grief!! They'd head back in the morning. We got Ma'am Khatta in the boat, at 1:30 and headed down the river on a low tide, dodging floating logs and all manner of other vessels running along the channel. With the extra weight of cargo, the boat was down about 20% in speed. But it wasn't raining any more. I took out a small-scale chart to track the trip and try to memorize the shoals.

At some point I started mentally designing again. Maybe we could downsize the cat and still have a viable boat. Every decrease in size improved the chances of completion. As we dodged mudflats, sandbars, and then reefs, I could see that what was needed here was a water jet drive, with a bulletproof Kevlar shoe on the bottom of the cat. With the absolute minimum draft of that arrangement, and the ability to bounce off rock bottom without significant damage, the boat could make a far better average speed, and could run at night with reasonable safety. I started to talk (yell) with Jim over the noise of the outboard about what would work best. I tracked progress, noting dangers to navigation. He could see I was swinging back toward interest in the project.

At Silivakatini, about 10 miles from Thawaro (by the way, in Fijian, C and TH are interchangeable) Jim called in to report our position. We couldn't hear the Island radio yet, but were fairly confident they could hear us. 5 minutes later, Jim mentioned that he couldn't find the inshore reef marker, it must have come down, and that made him nervous. 2 minutes after that the water flashed from gray/green to yellow/green, and with a great crash the motor kicked up on the transom, howling at full throttle with the prop spinning in the air, and the boat skidded to a stop. Jim slammed the throttle shut and hit the kill switch. A quick inspection showed that the foot and prop seemed to have survived largely intact. I poled the boat back to deep water from the 2-foot deep sandbar; we reassessed our position and direction, restarted, and headed on. The boat was a little slower, and had a vibration. I diagnosed it as prop damage, and sure enough, a closer inspection showed a wrinkled leading edge on one blade. But it was good enough to limp on home with.

Karen was bubbling over with news from her days at the kindergarten, in love with the children, in need of a couple of projects from me to secure their materials storage and improve her dinghy anchoring on her morning commute. I may not get the cat done, but we're obviously going to stay a while. There's plenty to do. And if the Bainimarama interim govt gets things cleaned up a bit at Customs, maybe we can import what we need. Maybe we will get a boat built.

2007-07-29 Teacher

Just a little note to let you know how my life is shaping up here. It seems I am now the kindergarten teacher! I knew that one of our cruiser friends, Linda on Irish Melody, had started a kindergarten while she was here. She had taught kindergarten for years, and her goal was to get it established and pass it on to the locals. Well, since I'm looking for any excuse to be around little kids, I offered to help with it. In two days it is obvious to me that there remains very little structure to the class, and even less learning. The children all speak Fijian, but when they attend primary school it will be in English. So I'm teaching them the alphabet, numbers, and colors. Lepsy, the young teacher, is acting as my interpreter. She seems more than happy for me to take charge, so I've written an emergency email to Linda for some advice. We also need supplies, as the cyclone destroyed many of their materials. So in the next couple weeks Ted and I will make the trip to Labasa and I'll look for appropriate supplies. We will be having the kindergarten on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings. The locals are SO grateful for anything we do, so it is very rewarding. I've taken to leaving the dinghy by the primary and secondary schools and walking for 30 minutes through the bush and over a couple rivers to the village. It is a nice walk and I get some exercise. Today I was talking to one of the secondary teachers and she will send her young one with me, as well as another little one. So I will have some charges to keep me company. We have about 15 students in the class, ranging from 3-5 years. It's great fun!

Love, Karen

2007-08-03 Jim's Suva adventure

Fiji politics and other trivia
Jim got back from Suva late Friday afternoon, and it felt like it wasn't a minute too soon. Also Island is a pretty busy place, and with us unfamiliar, and Kyoko still recovering from a mild stroke last month, we had our hands full. The core of vilagers who are regular workers at the Island have become absolutely indispensable, and kept us alive for the week. We sat up for a while into the night hearing what Jim had found in Suva.
Part of the urgency for the trip was to report to the Government Corruption Investgative Committee about what had happened with the govt contract for a new supply boat for Cikobia Island, which had been signed, dragged on for over 2 years, and then languished for lack of funds Although $70,000 had been sent to the ministry of Transportation for it, nobody could find it!! The Cikobia community finally raised enough money for Jim to do a total rebuild on their old boat. That sort of thing is exactly why Commodore Varanaeke (Frank in English) Bainimarama, after a year of clear warnings to the Qarase govt, finally went through with the military coup that now runs Fiji. The US, New Zealand, and Australia have all been very critical of the coup, and have instituted sanctions, but the GCIC continues to uncover mountains of evidence of graft, bribery and theft among all levels of the last government. Jim was not a supporter of Qarase after the first couple of years trying to do business under his government, and less so after, against all polls and odds, he won a second term. (Sound familiar, anyone???) So Jim was a bit tickled after a round of visits to several govt ministers, to report that the committee is closing in on Qarase himself now, looking at his business dealings and personal fortune. Truth is, although the coup was apparently justified and probably necessary, things like that are never an unmixed blessing. Good intent notwithstanding, Jim says the Committee is a bit of a vigilante group, prepared to believe the worst and act accordingly. Frank's army power base isn't well trained or well suited for police and governing work, and there are indisputable cases of abuse of power and brutality as the coup govt suppresses dissent. Frank is an excellent soldier, and I believe has the good of the country at heart. But he's not a good politician at all, and there's not a subtle bone in his body. The sooner he can get thru the investigations and indictments, and then hold elections, the better. But if he doesn't keep on until that's achieved, it will all have been for naught. And, coincidentally, if he fails, someone will either imprison or kill him for his trouble. He has incentive to make it work.
On another front, Jim's favorite cabinet minister was evidently clean, and has retained his post, so Jim went to see Posele about permits, contracts, and advice on my work permit. Posele at first said we were far enough out of town to just do what we want to, but Jim said we want to play it by the book, so Posele sent him to the Deputy Commissioner for Immigration. He took along a resume letter he'd had me write about my qualifications and our aims. The upshot was that the Dept. Comm called in the regional manager, and explained that I was to get a permit. The manager asked the standard question; "Why can't a Fijian do the job?" but hadn't quite finished asking when his boss said, with considerable force, that no Fijian had my qualifications for the position, and I was going to get a permit or he was going to "kick some butt". Jim has NEVER heard a Fijian present that aggressively before. They avoid confrontation at all costs. So, immediately on his return, he scheduled for me to go to Labasa with him to get my medical exam and initiate the NZ Police Report for my visa. That trip is the next story.

2007-07-24 Also Island Sunset

The sun is low in the sky when I drag the canoe down the beach to go home to Sequester. The Also Island beach faces Southwest, away from the prevailing easterly trade winds,so there's rarely a wave of any size breaking there. I push off gently, slipping quickly into the bottom of the boat over the low side to avoid tipping it over. I lift the double paddle from its chocks and start the rhythmic stroke, dipping close to the rails to move the craft forward rather than swing it from side to side. I skirt the strange, overhung sandstone shoreline to stay out of the light headwind, then angle out across the bay toward our trimaran. Five minutes, and I'm hoisting myself onto the wing deck, pulling the canoe up behind me to store it out of the water for the night. To the South and East the horizon is dominated by the craggy, tree covered hills of Vanua Levu. Low, whispy-edged grey cloud scuds off the hills, drifting over us, threatening to shower us, but releasing little in the way of rain. To the North, with the breeze this light and quiet, I can hear the ocean swell breaking on the outer reef a mile or more away, a soft but powerful rumble that always leaves me a little uneasy, even this far on the safe side of it. The horizon there is cluttered with layers and puffs of slate grey cloud. But as I turn West, looking over the tiny village of Qarnivai and the low hills of the peninsula there, the slate grey is suffused with the rays of the setting sun. There are specks of the grey sprinkled through the layers and puffs of brilliant neon copper/gold. Where the cloud is torn to leave the sky clear, the color is not normal sky blue, but a glowing turquoise. The water under
Sequester is aquamarine, the breeze is warm on my skin. This is part of the reason I wanted so badly to come back to the tropics. Warmth, gentleness, stunning beauty in the water, on the hillsides, in the sky. I've seen breathtaking beauty in the mountains and coastlines of two continents and hundreds of islands. But it was often cold and harsh. Breathtaking beauty with comfort.....hard to beat.
Ted
PS....In Fijian, Q is pronounced as a hard G in English.

2007-07-22 Rainy Sunday

We got the big water tank wrestled down to the new pad, and set it up yesterday. It was cloudy and blustery all day, but the rain didn't materialize until late this morning, about the time we were getting Jim into his runabout to go to Labasa. He was to fly to Suva this afternoon, to see a couple of cabinet ministers about a boat contract, the coconut oil pressing operation he's trying to get going, and my work permit. Between that and a day doing business in Labasa on the way back, he'll be away 3 days or so. I'll be running the morning radio net, and trying to keep things moving in the Island boat shop, as well as trying to improve infrastructure. But I have to be careful not to do things that might be interpreted as working for Also Island Ltd. before we get a work permit from the govt in Suva. Today was relatively quiet, and allowed some time for introspection. I had to wonder a bit if we were taking on more than we can do, living out here and trying to fix enough of the problems at Also Island so that Jim can smooth out the operation enough to survive. There is clearly too much for just him and Kyoko to handle, and priorities have become impossible to set as there are more imperative tasks than there is time to do them. In any case, we've started the process of getting the work visa, and if the govt will let us, we'll give it the old college try. We had enough rain in the collection tank this afternoon for Charlie and me to hook up the tank system and try it out. Had to do a little modification, but it seems to be working. We'll take that as a good omen. And positive results encourage us, so we're ready to attack the coming week.
One of the issues that has emerged in the last week is the food shortage in the village. About 4 months ago a freak cyclone ripped right through the Udu area, taking out most of the papaya, banana, taro and cassava, and knocking the blooms off the lemon and mango trees. In another 2 or 3 months there should be some crops starting to ripen again, but the supplies are getting pretty thin now, and Isai, the chief, says he doesn't really know what to do about it now. I'm going to have to do some research into what it would cost to bring in a boatload of fresh fruit and vegetables from Labasa every couple weeks for the next 2 or 3 months. Won't do to let some people get sick from malnutrition. Prevention is cheaper than sending them to Labasa to recover, to say nothing of being more humane. But we sure need the supply boat I came here to build. Just need to get the permission, find the funds, and then hang on long enough to get it in the water. Well, if it was easy, there'd be no satisfaction in it, I guess. We intend to prevail, so unless we find out the whole direction was wrong, there should be plenty of satisfaction in 6 months or so. May life be as full for all of you as it is for us. Ted

2007-07-19

We've got our own problems at least at bay for now, so are able to take a look around at how the systems work here at Also Island. It's a blend of primitive with modern, low and high tech. The approach is to decide what constitutes quality of life, how much "progress" is needed, and then apply the most effective solution to achieve the goal. The buildings are European style, Fijian construction. That means timber framed, generally plywood sided, and roofed with galvanized corrugated iron sheets. The ground is generally steep and rocky, and the local builders aren't that particular about setting up level and plumb. They mostly cut to fit, bend trusses to get the sheeting to fit, and don't get fussed about small cracks as long as it doesn't rain in too much. There are three electrical systems. Jim isn't much of a fan of hand tools, and power tools need a good bit of AC electricity, so all during the work day, the audible background is dominated by the steady pounding of a single cylinder Lister diesel turning a 230 volt generator, supplying the European/NZ/Australian standard power system to the house, shop and office. But being American. Jim and Kyoko brought a lot of US standard 115 volt equipment, so there's also a second AC wiring system with outlets to accomodate US, Canadian and Japanese products. That system runs from the generator via a stepdown transformer. After hours, of course, when socializing, eating, doing office work or watching a DVD the generator would be unbearably intrusive. (It's bad enough while working in the shop!) So there are two battery banks which charge from the generator during the day, then run a set of 12 volt lights, the laptop computer, and fans during the evening and night. For appliances that need either 115 or 230 volt AC power at this time, there are an assortment of inverters to turn battery power back into AC. The refrigerator will run on 230 volts, but would put too much of a load on the battery/inverter system through the night, so it runs on propane gas.
The water system is fed from rain collection off the sizable roof area of the complex. It is guttered to a 500 gallon tank behind the kitchen building, and when that is filling up a pump is turned on to transfer part of it to a 2000 gallon tank up on the hill. That supplies plenty of pressure for the sinks, shower and toilet. However, the 2nd day we were here, the big tank mysteriously turned out to be empty. Jim and I have devoted several hours now to testing the whole system for leaks, but none are to be found. In the meantime, since it isn't raining, we're supplying the compound from the river at the village, a half mile from the Island. Daily a couple of us load some 25 jugs of assorted size and shape into one of the small boats, take some hose in 3 sizes with which to jury rig a feed from the continuously running PVC pipe that brings water to Thawaro, and wind our way up the channel to the jetty. It has to be done within 3 hours of high tide, or we can't get the boat to the jetty, and filling and loading takes about 40 minutes, so part of every day is preempted with the need for fresh water for washing, cooking and drinking. It's a good thing Don sent the 5HP outboard with me as a gift to the Island, as that's now the only small motor left running other than Karen's dinghy motor. The water run would be quite a hassel with paddles and poles to move the boat.
We've decided the big tank is too high on the hill anyway, so while it's empty, Pita nd Solomani are moving it down to a new pad. Should be done tomorrow. After that, pray for rain!

Ted

2007-07-16

With the help of a couple of enthusiastic Fijian teenagers, today we jacked Sequester up as soon as the tide fell below the beach she was on. We dug a trench under her, to allow access to the very bottom, and cleaned her up and painted with anti-fouling paint, then set her down on a pile of sand at the stern and a small log forward. An hour after dark, the tide was high, and with a couple of short dives at the bow I dug the small log out from under her, the sand pile washed away, and we floated her off. So, now we're back at anchor, with the bottom a bit scarred but completely functional and protected, ready for a year or more with no more interludes out of the ocean. A long, hard day, but a much better end to the reef encounter than I had once feared. We'll sleep well tonight, and spend tomorrow trying to clean all the beach sand out of the interior. Success feels good. Ted

2007-07-14

We are pleased to report that Sequester is aground again, but this time intentionally. High water was just about dawn this morning, and having selected the best spot and angle, we motored to the beach, spun her around, and pulled her up to the front of the Also Island boat shed facing out to sea. The profile of her bottom has quite a long, gradual sweep up going aft from the center of the boat, so she sits nearly level up the slope of the beach with the stern inshore. With a couple of sawhorses to stabilize the floats, and a good bit of the weight of cargo moved aft, she sat nicely while the tide dropped this morning. By noon I had a grinder wired up, and was cleaning up the scars, rinsing them with fresh water a couple of times and blotting them dry with a towel, then warming them up with a little butane torch to dry out the plywood. By 1:00 PM I had it all looking pretty good, and started soaking the damage with epoxy, then laying up two layers of fiberglass over any places where the coral had penetrated to the plywood. Had it all sealed up, and it was quite tacky, totally waterproof, before the tide reached the area again at about 3:00.
We had a bit of a water crisis at Also Island this morning when we found that the rain storage tank system had sprung a leak, and drained all but about 20 gallons of the water. So as soon as I had the hull sealed up, the tide had risen enough to allow us to get dinghies to the village wharf. (At low water the whole approach to Thawaro is a mud flat.) So I got out all our water jugs, and we took a couple more and some pails from Also Island, and Jhalay (Charlie) and Kalisi and I went to the village to get 200 liters of water , which we filtered and put into the tank that feeds the kitchen. I took a spare pump I had and rigged up a battery and foot switch so they have pressure water to the sink there. It looks like it will be a week or so getting the big tank moved, repaired and re-plumbed, so I'll refine the temporary system some tomorrow, and we'll bring in some more water unless it rains tonight and fills the tank for us.
It looks as if Jim will have to go to Labasa, then on to Suva within a few days, to get several business matters taken care of. One of those things is application for a work permit for me, so I can start helping him run Also Island, and set up to build the new supply boat. Without the work visa, I can't do anything for him, or we risk immediate expulsion from Fiji. Our visitor visa precludes any sort of work for anyone else, and the govt has plenty of people keeping them informed of what goes on, even in the small villages. We plan to go to church tomorrow morning, and get a chance to see Isei, the chief again. He was quite friendly and gracious at the funeral Thursday, but much too busy to do more than exchange pleasantries, and we want to develop our own relationship with him and the village, independent of Jim and Kyoko. Going to church is a major factor in the social custom in a Fijian village, so that's the place to start showing our respect for them.
Time to get this away, and rest up for another big day tomorrow. As a day of rest, I fear it will hardly qualify. Ted

2007-07-12

Today was a very special one. We had the privilege of witnessing a village funeral. Relatives and friends have been arriving all week, and the other day we saw a sevusevu ceremony between the villagers. Sevusevu is an important custom which requires the giving of kava root and the acceptance of it by the chief. In accepting the kava the chief assumes your care while you are in the village. When the other villagers arrived they had woven mats, taro roots and a pig trussed up and hung (alive) from a pole. They set all these down in front of the chief and presented the kava. There was a little ceremony and then they all scattered throughout the village to stay with different friends and relatives. There were a number of these ceremonies as members from many villages attended.
Today we went ashore a little ways from the village, as the tide would not allow the dinghies to get close. We had to walk on a path through the woods and over a stream to get to the village. It started pouring rain, but it was much too hot to wear rain gear, so we all got pretty wet and muddy by the time we arrived. We also found it much easier to navigate the slippery mud with bare feet, so we went "island". The villagers took good care of us, giving us dry clothes to wear. The funeral was about to get underway and there was much keening by the women as the casket was walked to the church. The church (Methodist) is quite small, so only close family could squeeze inside, and the rest of us waited outside. There were many more out than in. We wandered around and observed the cooking preparations. The men had gone out last night fishing and came back with quite a few fish and a few turtles. Turtles are a protected species, but they are allowed to catch a few for an important occasion such as this. They also slaughtered the pigs and a cow and the men were cutting up the meat and cooking over an open fire in huge pots, and also racks for some of the meat. The women had been preparing the taro for the last couple days (similar to potato), and there were also some greens and fresh cucumbers. A lot of the food is prepared with coconut milk and oil. A very delicious feast. Long table cloths were laid on the floor in the community hall and we sat on the floor and ate with fingers. As white folks we had to eat first. As soon as you were done you needed to leave so the next lot could come in and get fed. They probably had a couple hundred people to feed.
More on the funeral: after the church service some young men carried the casket to the gravesite. This was a little ways from the village; down one steep hill, over a bit, and up another steep hill. They had cut out steps in the side of the hill, but it had been raining all morning and it was all mud. We had a difficult time negotiating the path without sliding down the hill. How those young men managed it with a casket I'll never know. All the villagers watched while the casket was covered with dirt, then they placed woven blankets on top and covered it with tapa cloth (bark that is pounded flat and decorated with patterns) and flowers. There were a lot of Fijians taking pictures, so we knew it was okay to take some ourselves.
Once back in the village some of the women were singing and dancing, with much laughter and obvious jokes. Most of the conversation was in Fijian, so we didn't understand much that was said. Many of the adults speak some English, but often not very well, so conversation can be difficult. Schooling is in English, but the little ones only speak Fijian. I found a baby to cuddle, so was happy for awhile!
Ted and Jim made the trek back to get the dinghies and bring them to the village, as the tide was now in. We arrived home tired but happy. Karen
PS.....We feasted on fish and veggies, not the meat. Even if we weren't inclined to vegetarianism, watching the preparation of the pigs, turtles and cow would put most palangis (white people) off. Sanitation is pretty low on the priority list. I guess the fire takes care of it, but we're culturally a bit squeamish. Ted

2007-07-11

Things at Thawaro have been quite unsettled since just before we arrived. When we visited 4 years ago, one of the most helpful of the locals was Apesai, a Fijian man whose age I would estimate at late sixties. He has some farm land, and grows a large crop of cassava, as well as some sugar cane, and he loaned Jim the boat that we were brought up from Labasa in. He also worked on the village boat and the new shop deck some with me, and was good company and a translator for us. We've been counting on seeing Apesai again on this visit. His wife's sister died last week in Suva, and she went down for the funeral. Immediately after the funeral, Apesai's wife had a heart attack and died there in Suva. He has been down there since we arrived, and the whole village has been busy preparing to bury a popular and prominent member. They have brought her home to Thawaro, and we will all be at her funeral tomorrow. As a result, we were here a couple of days before we could arrange to do sevusevu with Isei, the village chief. That is generally not good manners, to be in his territory for more than a day without doing the presentation of kava, so I'm hoping he wasn't offended, and will try to arrange for another meeting and sevusevu soon. In spite of the mess, another village elder and friend, Leoni, is arranging for a group of the village men to come to Also Island on Friday at high tide, and they will literally lift and push Sequester up on the beach, where we can jack her up to repair and repaint the bottom. Meanwhile we continue to do jobs on the boat, try to help Jim and Kyoko keep Also Island moving along, and learn our way around. If we succeed in drying Sequester out on Friday, next week will be a long, hard one, but we'll feel a lot better with the bottom all sealed and painted again. We'll let you know how it goes. Ted

2007-07-09

We've only been here 48 hours but it looks like we'll stay for at least a year. I'm astonished at what Jim and Kyoko have done here on Also Island. They've built themselves a house (one large room) with a separate kitchen, bath and guest quarters with 3 bedrooms. They have a lovely decked area with roof that serves as the dining/living area. It's all built on the side of the hill with some steep concrete ramps between the separate areas. The boat shop is easily 4 times the size it was when we were here last and is connected to all the rest. They have moved the village store from the mainland out here to the island, and it is part of the compound. So, the villagers all come out here by boat on a regular basis to go to the store and also to work in the boat yard. They hire a few women to cook, clean, garden and run the store. The grounds are beautiful and they've planted banana, papaya, and lemons, but the cyclone earlier this year ruined their crops, so it will be awhile till that's back on track. Ted is busy off-loading tools from Sequester and has already started work on a few carpentry projects. I've agreed to help Kyoko with the book-keeping in the store and to eventually train some of the local women to do it themselves. Most of my time will be spent on projects on Sequester; first on the list is to sew all the sail covers. There is a nice breeze out here on the boat and it is very comfortable; reminds us of winter in the Virgin Islands. We don't have phones or internet out here. We will have to rely on Sailmail for our communication. The nearest town is Labasa, 40 miles away by boat. The village boat goes about once a week for supplies, but we will mostly be able to put in an order for what we need. We'll be looking at getting Sequester out of the water in the next few days to repair some damage from the reef.

Karen

2007-07-06

This morning, after studying and laying out another alternative until midnight last night, we opted to go outside the Great Ocean Reef at Sau Sau Pass, and head for Nandamu Pass. A light southeast breeze was forecast, so we knew it would mean motorsailing into it if we were to make it, but decided this was as good a chance as we'd get if we wanted to avoid the complex, nerve wracking passage along inside the reef. If we were running too slow, and out of time, we could stop two thirds of the way there at Tilangitha Pass. There was an uncomfortable swell running when we cleared the reef, but the wind was of a strength and direction that was better than no wind, and we made pretty good time, at the expense of 6 gallons of fuel and a day listening to the motor at half throttle. Jim met us at the entrance to Nandamu with Don another sailor who had come in yesterday. Don came aboard and piloted us thru the reef pass, which has not a marker anywhere on it, and thru Mbekana Harbor to the anchorage at Also Island. Hook down in 20 feet of clear water, set in a mud bottom. No significant swell, and trade winds ventilating the boat. Feels pretty good. Karen says this can't be Fiji....the anchorage is too safe and comfortable. We'll sleep well tonight.

Ted

2007-07-05

Today alternated between reasonably pleasant motorsailing on long, straight courses, and frantic activity trying to find a safe anchorage and get anchors set. Life has its ups and downs. Last night after I sent the email out, I did an anchor check, and found that the boat was slowly dragging out of the bay when we were hit with "williwaw" gusts coming down the slopes of the surrounding mountains. The holding wasn't that great, with a thin layer of soft mud over a hardpan bottom. It was about 11:00 PM when I decided we had to reset, and got Karen up to drive while I picked up the hooks. We went up until the depth sounder showed us we were starting up on the shoal at the head of the bay, then set the two anchors at an angle of about 120 degrees, making the boat less likely to swing around twisting the anchor. That more than double the holding power. By then it was about midnight. Karen stayed up until 3, doing anchor watch and refining the sailing instructions and charts. She tells me we used the waypoint functions of the GPS in 2001, and she just refreshed her memory on it. I don't recall anything but plotting on paper (age related memory loss?), but this is working a lot better passing among the reefs.

By morning there was so little wind we couldn't sail better than 2 knots, so we started the motor and let it run slow, but within an hour I had picked it up to about 1/3 throttle, holding 4 knots, getting an occasional boost from a gust of wind in the sails. We had a couple of tense moments when we had to orient ourselves to accommodate missing markers, and I had to disassemble, dry, and reassemble the autopilot twice more. Water kept evaporating out from under the drive motor, condensing on the top case, and dripping on the circuit board. Karen suggested that I use some of the little silica gel packets I hoard from pill bottles, which was a good call. I baked a few, then tucked them in around the motor and circuit inside the case. It worked well the rest of the day. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

As we passed the entrance to Labasa we saw our friends boat, Stelite, anchored near the shore, about 2 miles off our track. Then we got a VHF radio call from Fay. She and Peter had seen us coming, so we got to talk for a few minutes, though that required that we slow the motor to an idle so we could hear the radio. Having the motor in the cockpit has a down side with the noise level, even though it's a pretty quiet outboard.

Once past Labasa we had a long run beam reaching in about 5 knots of wind, and were so tired of listening to the motor we shut it off and sailed for about 3 hours. We figured even at 2.5 knots we'd get to the selected anchoring spot before 5:00. Eventually we slowed below 2 knots, and after a while I started the motor again, but I'd let it go til the last minute. Hence the panic, when we reached the bay just after 5, and found in 3 tries that the whole bottom seems to be limestone and coral, with no holding we could trust the boat to. Then it was throttle up, and Karen drove while I plotted to get us around a huge fringing reef and into the next bay for another try. At 5:40 we tried to stop in the outer bay, but it was the same hard bottom. We had about 20 more minutes of light, and then it was going to get VERY sketchy, driving around in the dark with reefs on all sides. Far up the bay we found a hump of 15 feet depth with 25 feet on the inner side. It's unlikely that the anchors will drag up a slope like that, so we put 2 down and she held on the first set. By the time we had sails tied up we seriously needed the anchor light, as I could hear one of the local boats coming down the shoreline. I got a flashlite on deck in time to hear them call greetings as they whistled past on the outside and headed out to sea running totally dark. These guys must have outstanding night vision.

During the midday, while the running was easy, and the autopilot would steer, we sat on the cabin top or forward nets and watched the dramatic, jagged line of the mountains pass, looking at the mottled colors of brown, dry grass on the sunny SW slopes, the dark green of trees where it was too steep to harvest them for timber, and the light green of new growth on the cooler, more shaded NE slopes. Most of the easily accessed trees have been cut for boards, plywood, and now chips for making paper pulp. There are patches of trees planted in rows as a timber crop for 20 years in the future. That was a surprise, as few tropical islanders think even 2 weeks ahead, let alone 20 years. Houses were scattered along the way, usually in groups of a half dozen in tiny villages, almost always right down at the water, behind the first row of trees and palms that border the beaches. Small boats were pulled up on the beach or moored in the shallows, usually behind a bit of reef to give protection from waves. Children and adults alike waved and signaled as we sailed past.

Now it's 10 at night, and calm. The sea breeze that kicked up at dusk has died down to a whisper, and the sounds are the chuckle of little wavelets on the hull, the faint chirp of insects from the island, and the odd bird calling. It's almost cloudless, so the sky is studded with stars and planets, and no moon in sight.

I've about finished my "homework", getting ready for a complex zigzag thru the reefs to Tilangatha Pass tomorrow. That's 22 miles from here, and will take most of the daylight. We hear the anchoring is good there, but we'd rather have time for a "plan B" from here on. Then, Sunday morning if the weather is acceptable we hop out to the ocean, around the last piece of the Great Ocean Reef, and enter the Nukundamu Pass to reach Thawaro. My Cmap program is corrupted, and won't let me print the screen on large scale charts. I can't even open them directly, but can open a small scale, and then alternately move and magnify to get what I need to see. I devised a method for getting paper copies tonight, though. Got the screen I wanted, then took a picture of the screen with the old digital camera. Oddly enough, when I plug the camera in to the USB port, the laptop tells me there are no files in the camera. But our printer has a card reader, so I put the card in the printer, and print the pictures of the charts. Do you see a pattern here? In order to get the result from one piece of high tech nav gear, I had to use two others to work around a glitch in the first one. There's a reason I don't really trust all this stuff. I have at least a limited ability to help the electro-mechanical autopilot limp home. Fixing software is out of my league....so far. It seems that if you want to keep sailing now, you have to be able to do EVERYTHING. We aren't ready to quit yet, Monday notwithstanding, so I guess the schooling continues!
By the way, I mentioned last week that Louis and the crew on S/V Elysium had to abandon her and be rescued. The report wasn't quite right, as is often the case on first reports along the coconut telegraph. They had reported trouble to us on the Rag of the Air when the prop shaft, which they'd had re-trued in Suva came loose and backed out of the shaft log until it hit the rudder, allowing the engine room to flood. The coupling bolts hadn't been safety wired by the mechanic, and Louis failed to inspect it. Small error, but BAD. Louis went in the water and pushed the shaft back into the log, they locked it in with couple of clamps, and went to the nearest island, Fortuna, in the Vanuatu group, to anchor and improve the repair. Anchorage there is not very good, and while there they were caught in the dark by the frontal system I mentioned, with a couple hours of winds to 50 knots. Terrible luck. With no motor, and little searoom, they were driven up on the reef where the boat broke up. They spent a couple hours in the water, but worked their way up on the shallow part of the reef after the wind dropped and went ashore to be cared for by the local villagers. Cuts, bruises, and emotional trauma, but they all survived. The locals were out the next day, carrying salvaged gear off the reef to the beach for Louis. He said that 2 hours after daybreak, six of them came walking down the reef barefoot carrying the diesel engine. Now THAT is TOUGH. Some of the nearby yachts are trying to arrange to have the salvaged gear brought to Port Vila, where it can be sold to give Louis a little something to restart his life with.
So that's the news from the Pacific Paradise. It ain't all roses, but it beats watching TV.
]
Ted

2007-07-05

We were too traumatized, and too focused on navigation on Tuesday to look at the scenery much, but after a night in Mbua Bay we started to settle down and look around. We've gotten much better at pre-planning routing and using the electronic navigation devices we have on hand.. Karen figured out how to place waypoints into the GPS, and use the "go to" function to get a course and distance. Without doing that before we get under way, there's just no time to adequately find directions between reefs. I can't imagine trying to do this without at least 2 people on board. One of us is always in the cockpit, and one is almost always either scanning with binoculars for markers (which may or may not be where they're shown on the charts), or plotting our exact position on the paper chart. Even with two of us, it's a lot easier with the autopilot, so we weren't pleased yesterday when it went crazy and started steering erratically. This morning I decided to have a look inside and found it had water in it, which was splashing up on the drive belt and shorting out the signal circuit. It hadn't gotten to the motor yet, so I cleaned it all up with cotton swabs and tissues and reassembled it, and it seems OK. But it didn't do it any good, and it's SUPPOSED to be waterproof. At least it should get us to Also Island.

This part of the island group is quite sparsely settled, so we just see an occasional smoke plume from a little village, and maybe five or six small fishing boats a day. We were flagged down by an 18 foot skiff with 10 people aboard this morning, to see if they could buy a gallon of gas for their outboard motor, as they were getting down to fumes on their way to another island to work a farm plot. They only had a couple dollars with them, so I just gave them 2 gallons of premix, which made them very happy indeed. We had an excellent day, able to sail 90% of the time as we came across the top of Vanua Levu. We would lose the wind at times in the shadow of high mountains, but just a short run of the motor would get us back to sailing. We got further than we'd expected, and picked out a nice bay to anchor at about 4:00 PM. As soon as we got the hook down, a skiff came alongside to invite us over to their village, nearby. They had been fishing and saw us on their way home. We thanked them for the invitation but begged off saying it was pretty late in the day. They understood, visited a few minutes, then gave us a nice big fish for dinner and headed home themselves. I thought later I wish I'd offered them some fuel too. It's probably a hassel to get out here in the weeds, and they rely on their outboard motorboats for all transport, as well as fishing.
The wind has come up to a pretty stiff breeze tonight, for the first time since we arrived in Fiji. Sort of hope it comes down a bit by morning, but for now it's charging the batteries nicely with the wind generator spinning away. We're well fed, getting some rest, and planning for the days run tomorrow, in a fabulously green, lush bay in the middle of nowhere. Saw the "green flash" at sunset, and the sky is brilliant with stars. It's a nice place to be....Ted

2007-07-03

Yesterday was a very bad day, with a better ending. We came much closer to losing Sequester than probably ever before, and still don't know whether there's significant damage below the water line. but at least no leaks. We misread a channel marker and sailed her onto a reef, going straight downwind, about 2 hours after high tide at about 9:15 in the morning. We haven't been around channel markers for 7 years now, and let the skills deteriorate. I doubt if we're through paying the price for that lack of vigilance.

It was quite calm, so there was no breaking wave showing on the surface, or maybe we'd have been warned in time. The up side of the calm is that she wasn't pounded up and down on the coral as much as I feared she would be. The pounding is what usually breaks the hull. Even the small waves coming over the reef as the tide dropped away, and then rose again, made her roll and bump with a fearsome niose, and just before she floated again I could see the starbord aft hull panel flexing as she crunched against the coral head that had propped us upright all day. As bad as that was, that coral holding us almost straight up was a blessing, as we could work around the boat more easily through the day, getting ready to float her when the water came back in. Having once screwed up so completely, we both worked pretty efficiently to save her, and that along with the benevolence of fate has left us still in possession of the boat and all our belongings in her. When it looked rather doubtful, I kept working on reducing weight on board, while I had Karen put together a more extensive "ditch bag". That's the waterproof bag carrying what you expect to need to survive if you have to abandon the boat. Normally all we have packed is passports and ownership documents, but this brought to the fore the need for medications, all the cash, and such things that don't take much space or weight, but are important. We had wetsuits out to survive exposure if we managed to swamp the dinghy, as we were over 2 miles from shore. I wore mine most of the day to protect from coral cuts, as I was in and out of the water working.

When we first went on, I had gone down to the galley to get Karen some breakfast, and she was in the cockpit with the autopilot steering. That close to a reef, I doubt we'll do that again. But then, we thought we were passing on the correct side of the marker. Everyone says the marking system here in Fiji is a bit "off", so maybe it's not entirely our fault. But mostly. When I heard the centerboard start to drag on the coral, I knew we were in trouble. but it took Karen a few more seconds to identify the sound. (She's just told me that because I had the generator running to charge batteries, she never heard the board touch down on the coral.) By the time I was on deck, we had stopped against a ridge of coral about fifty feet from the edge of the reef. At the edge the depth dropped very quickly, forming a ragged vertical shelf with a difference of about 6 feet.

Within less than 10 minutes I had an anchor out,which I walked and swam over the edge and set in the coral. We tried to use the windlass to back her to the edge, then tried to turn her. But the water had already dropped too much, and she was firmly wedged. We knew right then that we were more in the hands of luck than skill or effort, but had to do everything well even if luck was to let us escape.

This was serious enough that we were willing to pay as much as thousands of dollars for assistance if it would improve our chances. There's a sizable village surrounded by a half dozen big antennas about 6 miles south of the reef, visible from the boat. We did an emergency call with the VHF radio. No response. We were baffled, still containing panic. I got on the SSB radio, and started going through the International Distress frequencies, calling. I got a response from Radio Taupo in NZ, but my signal was just too weak for them to read, after several tries on diffeent frequencies we decided we were on our own.


Due East about 2 miles there was a large wharf, with a small road winding down to it from a building up on a hill. Karen set off an orange smoke flare. No response. we decided one of us had to go for help. so we launched the dinghy, got the outboard on it, and I grabbed a bottle of juice and the handheld VHF radio so I could contact Karen from shore. I had to row out past the reef edge to keep from damaging the motor prop, then took off for the wharf. It seemed a long ride. Just as I was closing in on it, a truck came bouncing down it, with two Fijians in the cab. They saw me as I was tying the dinghy to a ladder, 20 feet below the dock surface, and asked if I was the one who made the orange smoke. They'd seen it, but had no idea what it meant. I explained the problem, and they loaded me into the truck and took me up to the project office on the hill, to see Tony. I tried to call Karen, but the batteries in the handheld radio were flat. Evidently it had turned itself on when a button was hit in my knapsack. She was on her own til I could get back.

Tony is from NZ, and had been in Fiji to oversee the building of the new wharf, where chipped wood was to be shipped from the inland forests to international buyers. It was the last day he was to be there, the last day there would be a phone there. He said radio was useless here in the "back blocks of Fiji". We couldn't raise any authorities nearby, so I had him call Eco DIvers in SavuSavu. The girl there took my message and soon Curly called back. Curly knows his way around in Fiji. He started looking for a boat to assist us, and we set up a radio schedule for the SSB on a frequency we expected would work. With that under way, Tony took me back down to the wharf, and I set out in the dinghy for Sequester, a tiny speck on the horizon. Then a light misting rain set in, and I lost sight of her, but I figured when I got closer either the rain would blow over or I'd see her through it. I set a course using the wharf and hill as references, and headed on out. In a few minutes the little squall passed, and I could see the boat again. When I got there, Karen was calmly putting things in order, clearing the deck for action. She says she never once considered that we might actually not get back off the reef. I had a lot less confidence about that.

We had let the rudder kick up to avoid damage when we went on, and now I tied it up out of harm's way but rigged the retrieving line so it could be back in functional position in seconds after we hit the deep water. We needed to get as much weight off the boat as possible, to let her float in less water. We set aside some jugs amounting to 12 liters of water, then Karen poured the rest over the side. I put the canoe down on the reef behind Sequester and started pulling the heaviest things out of the float hull storage areas, loading them into the canoe. A few things I considered just leaving on the reef, if it would improve our odds, but decided I'd leave that option until the last minute. I didn't really want to leave trash on the reef. Even in the crisis, I felt bad that I was breaking off some of the beautiful, slow growing coral heads. But there is a lot of it there. Several acres on that one reef.

After about an hour, I tuned up the SSB radio to a four megahertz frequency that Curly had told me he'd have monitored. Pretty quickly I had a decent copy on Dave, from the S/V La Vie, anchored just outside of SavuSavu. Steve on Red Sky and Curly on Stella Rosa were still in the creek right in front of the town, and the radio black hole was working as usual. They were unreadable. Dave said he was recovering from a strained back, and couldn't do much anyway, so he'd monitor the radio all day. Steve would also be there, with Dave relaying, and Curly would be back and forth working the phone to get a rescue crew together. They got us tide and weather info. High water at 8:16 (very dark by then) and the tide about 8 inches less than when we went on. Bad news. The good news; wind and swell light and abating. A boat was located in the village 6 miles south, but it was dried out on the beach until about 6:00 PM when the tide got back up to it, about the time we hoped to float. They would come out as soon as possible, and if we hadn't gotten clear, would try to give us a tow off. If we got clear, they would get us to a safe anchorage. This was their yard, and they could navigate it in the dark with complete confidence. Now I was at least pretty confident we wouldn't end up in the water all night. Dave and Steve made suggestions, asked questions, provided some company in the breaks between our projects. The moral support made things easier. I stacked on deck, but out of the way, things that could go in the big dinghy if required, but kept the dinghy empty except for a long tow line, which I would row out to the rescue boat if we needed to. I walked around the boat looking over the hulls. No visible damage , and we knew the bottom was the strongest part of her, so that was almost surely OK at this point. By about 3:00 PM the water started to come back in around the main hull, and by 4:30 she was rocking gently, grinding in the coral rubble with each little wave that passed around her. All day small misty rain showers had passed over, bringing a little wind increase, and wetting the deck, keeping that sorry nonskid surface slick. The wind and the slick deck we didn't need, but at least it kept us tolerably cool. Almost everything had two sides all day, but the balance held in our favor.


By 5:20 she was moving quite a bit, so I told Dave we'd be on deck for a while trying to turn her bow out using the anchor and the windlass. The windlass is a new addition, so I didn't know how well it would work. It wasn't perfect, but without it we might not have gotten off. The line would at times lose friction on the winch head and being nylon, which we had stretched like a huge rubber band, it would snap back a foot or so. At one point, just as we had retrieved the shackled joint between two sections, it did that and the shackle hammered my hand. The fingers hurt pretty badly, but still worked, so we carried on, with me tailing the line, and Karen working the switch and making off the tail between pulls. Slowly the boat started to turn a bit as each wave lifted her. When she jammed. I went below ad gave Dave a short update. As I talked, I watched the bilge panel flexing as we rolled against the coral. I headed back up and we started pulling again. I decided to have a look under the boat, and judge whether we could put the motor prop back down, and while under the wing deck, I gave her a hard push just as a wave surged. She lifted up and swung away from me. In seconds I was back on the windlass, and in a few minutes she was directly head to wind, pointed straight at the anchor. Any progress now would be directly toward the edge. We had to be patient, to be sure we didn't pull the anchor out trying too hard before there was enough water. I gave Dave one more update while we killed 10 minutes, then we loaded up the line, put the motor down, and got the rudder ready to deploy.

The stretch in the line gave her a pull, and on one wave she came clear and the crunching stopped. Karen fired up the motor and started driving, while I retrieved the anchor line as fast as it would come in. One last yank as the chain snagged a bit of coral, and suddenly the anchor was flying up toward the bow roller. I cleated it and ran for the stern, yanked loose the slipped knot holding the rudder up, jumped out on the transom and stepped on the rudder back while Karen pulled the retrieving line, simultaneously steering. We were away! And it was still nearly 10 minutes before complete dark. I looked back at the canoe, being dragged thru the chop at 4 knots with 600 pounds of gear in it. It was taking water over the bow. I had a little trouble convincing Karen to slow enough for me to pull it alongside and lean over to drag each piece of gear out onto the deck. Once it was empty, Karen let the boat drift for a minute while she helped me drag the canoe on deck and dump out the water, then we headed for the shoreline. In a couple more minutes we were just using the lights from Tony's office as a guide, running in the dark. I turned on the navigation lights and kept watch for the rescue boat. In a few more minutes, they were shouting from behind us, and we slowed more to let them come alongside. Typical of Fijians, there was one steering, and five sitting on the cabin top with the boat rolling from rail to rail, running entirely dark, not a light on board. They were apologetic that they hadn't been able to get their boat off the beach earlier, but genuinely pleased that we were off OK. They showed us a good place to anchor, visited for a few minutes, asking questions and looking over the "yacht". I suggested that we pay for their fuel, and $20 each for coming out to help. They said that was too much, but we insisted that we wanted to be sure they were happy to do it again if it was ever needed. They seemed pretty happy when they all trooped back onto their big skiff and motored off into the darkness with best wishes all around. We were pretty happy too, even with all the sore muscles and the now purple finger on my right hand. We got away with it. We're navigating VERY carefully now, moving slowly, both rechecking the plot. We're a bit short of confidence, but, so far, so good.

Later addition: Inspection shows only 2 small places where the fiberglass was scuffed thru to the plywood panel. Damage is almost entirely lost paint.