S/V Qayaq

Dispatch 68 Qayaq is Sold

2011-05-21T02:51:00.000-07:00

We report with deeply mixed feelings that Qayaq has been sold. We held off on mentioning anything until we were sure, but, as of now, Neil, an Auckland resident, is living aboard her. In a great episode of luck and serendipity, Qayaq’s next owner presented himself to us. Everyone hopes their boat will be sold to someone who appreciates her the way we did, and, we feel happy that Neil will be a wonderful new owner.

Here’s how it all happened. While we were in Auckland finishing up our last bits and pieces with the broker and the boat, we had a small misadventure while flushing the watermaker in that the sink drain, corroded from years of salt water exposure, broke. How apt that the last time on Qayaq should turn into a boat project, but what do you expect?

The old drain had to be removed with our friends' hacksaw (no more tools on the boat after packing!), then Betsy was dispatched to find a replacement. As she got into a friend's van on the way to the store, a man approached and asked if she had just stepped off that double-ender on the dock. When she said yes, he basically offered cash on the spot for the boat. Well, she sent him down to Richard who talked to him for a bit, and, when Betsy returned, we decided it was worth meeting with Neil the next day.

He came out to where we were staying with friends, and, over coffee, he showed us his photo album from one of his prior boats, a Westsail 32, which he had rebuilt from the hull up with his wife. It showed great skill and love for boats which we really appreciated. Now he wants to have a boat like Qayaq to live aboard, fix up and hopefully sail off with his young son. He is a boat engine mechanic and works aboard large yachts, so we know he will take tender care of our boat. His thoughtfulness at bringing the photo album was touching and he said all the right things to let us know he really understands our dilemma--boats do not do well to sit un-used as we would have to do and he knew how emotional the turnover was. So, several steps later (only 3 weeks really), he is now the owner and we are boat-less, homeless and kicking around Oz (Australia) before heading back to the US and work.

They say the best 2 days in a boat owners life are the day you buy it and the day you sell it. Well, I don't think we will agree that selling Qayaq has been a good day. We can only say, it was the right decision for the boat and we are really happy she will have a good next adventure and be taken care of. For us, one door just closed, and we know there are millions opening up if only we dare to walk through them.

From Oz, somewhere over the rainbow, cheers to you all.

Dispatch 67 New Zealand A to Zed

2011-05-21T02:47:00.000-07:00

We are wrapping up our time in NZ with a strong measure of sadness and nostalgia. We drove from Oamaru to Auckland, 1700 km, catching a few of the highlights we had missed on the way down, but, it was a fast trip and we didn’t get to savor much. We did enjoy a couple days in Wellington, a beautiful and energetic city, did some wine tasting in Martinborough, saw the quaint art deco town of Napier where a 1931 earthquake (7.9 magnitude) wiped out the city’s buildings so they self-consciously rebuilt in the style of the era. It gave us hope for Christchurch.

Our week in Auckland was spent, again, dealing with boat issues. We were hosted by Jeff and Deirdre, friends we first met cruising in Alaska who have made their life and business in Auckland, and Richard and Suzanne, new friends we met cruising in Samoa who are from Auckland. Both did their best to feed and shelter us while we dealt with our grief at saying goodbye to both Qayaq and NZ at the same time. We were off balance to say the least.

So here, in reflection, are some of our favourite things about NZ.

A for the Albatross who rode the air currents next to the ferry on our way back north between the two islands.

B is for all the British-isms we have learned to love/hate, but that add colour to our favourites list (as well as heaps of extra, unnecessary letters like the “o” in “oesophagus”, the many “u’s” in harbour, flavour, favour, colour, etc.)

C is for all the cows that make up the fantastic meat and dairy industry of NZ. It is unnecessary to ask if your beef has been “grass fed” in NZ because there is no other kind of beef and you see them all grazing by the road every day. The taste is amazing and something we will sorely miss.

D is for the farmed deer which make for such a bizarre roadside site (also see “V”).

E is for the wonderful euphemisms we have adopted from our Kiwi friends. Like, when someone is no longer sound in their thinking, they are said to have, “Lost the plot.” And when they are old and not in such good health, my mentor would refer to them as, “Well past their “use by” date.” Difficult issues are “diabolical.” Being busy is “flat out”, hiking is “tramping”, cookies are “biscuits” and evening meal, dinner, is “tea” (not to be confused with morning tea which is second breakfast in hobbit-speak or afternoon tea which is yet another excuse not to do any work for ½ hour.)

F is for Fantails, wee little birds that fan out their tails when resting on branches that we enjoyed watching flit about in our many travels in the bush.

G is for Godwandia, the original mega landmass from which NZ separated millions of years ago (“ best thing we ever did mate”) leaving it without dangerous animals and Australia with all of those. Also Gas which was $2.18 a liter when we left which is about $8.25 a gallon in US dollars.

H is for a healthcare system in which “EVERYONE” is covered for hospital and emergencies and payments, if any, are usually within the reach of most for other care.

I is for the expression “it is too,” which in NZ is not an argument (is too/is not), but an expression of agreement, as in, “it’s really cold today,” and the response, “it is too.”

J is for jandals, their word for sandals (flip-flops) which is the universal footwear of NZ, that is next to being barefoot.

K is for kilometer and relearning distances and the time it takes to travel between them on two lane roads with one way bridges and occasional sheep crossings—it all works because, there just aren’t that many people in NZ.

L is for the darling lambs we enjoyed last Sept/Oct who are now, sadly, being transported in huge trucks to the freezing works and their final resting place. We console ourselves by knowing that those ewes we see grazing away are, even now, pregnant with next season’s lambs!

M is for metric which the whole world uses except the US. Of course, some of the oldies I met in Oamaru still measure their weight in “stones” which, for those of you who don’t know, is around 14 pounds.

N is for the word NO pronounced “NOOOEE” by most NZ’ers , especially endearing when used by the ankle biters (which means kids, see E for “euphemisms” above. )

O is for, of course, OAMARU, our wee town of little blue penguins and limestone edifices.

P is for PENGUINS and all the varieties we have enjoyed.

Q is for Queenstown where people continue to jump from sound foundations and great heights to confront their fears. And, of course, for Qayaq, who remains in NZ and is now Kiwi owned.

R is for religion, which NZ has little of. The 2010 survey shows that fewer people in NZ claim any religious affiliation than in any other country. Good on ‘em! And let’s not forget what R really stands for which is of course for RUGBY which is, come to think of it, the official religion of NZ!

S is for the sheep that out-number the people 10 to one in NZ.

T is for “tracks”, their word for trails and “tramping”, their word for hiking. It really is a different language! And Tipping which doesn’t exist in NZ because they pay their staff a reasonable salary and let’s not forget Taxes which are high but included in the price so what you see on the pricetag is the price you pay. What a wonderful experience that is.

U is for the US which everyone seems to want to emulate for some unknown reason. Our biggest exports seem related to the spread of obesity: KFC, McDonalds and Burger King.

V is for venison made from the farmed deer. It is delicious!

W is for weather which is, truly, a law unto itself in NZ. One day in Oamaru, it was 38 degrees by 2 in the afternoon (that’s around 100 degrees F) and people were wilting. Literally in 5 minutes, the wind switched to a southwesterly and, in the space of time it took for our friends to consume their ice cream cones, it became cold enough to have to go inside—it dropped to around 22 (72 degrees F). This is normal for NZ. One never counts on the morning’s weather to continue all day, leading to the saying that the weather is “4 seasons in a day!”

X-rated? NZ suffers from none of the puritan modesty of the US. The advertisements and television programs are solidly sexual without apology (although the tele does give a parental warning before airing something that might be “offensive”). Where brothels, “escorts”, and sex ads are a part of daily life which includes having their own labour unions.

Y is for “yonks” a NZ’er term as in “I haven’t seen them in yonks” for those of us more literal types I haven’t seen them in a long time, years , ages well yonks.

Zed which is the way English speaking people pronounce the letter “Z” the world ‘round except in the US. And that illustrates what is so wonderful about travel in general. The US may think it has everything right, but, there is always so much to learn and enjoy from other countries, people and cultures.

Dispatch 66 The Wild West

2011-04-03T00:30:00.000-07:00

5-13 March, 2011
Our last frontier on the South Island was the west coast. Like the US west, this is still a wild area and some of the settlements are, thanks to mining interests and the brief gold rush here, much like the US west. In fact, they have a shanty town preserved from the mining days. We admit, we weren’t very interested in that part of the history as it is so similar to the US.

But we were very interested in the beautiful terrain. Our route to the west coast took us purposely a little out of ourway to drive a road we had not yet been on that follows the “rail trail”, a disused railroad path, now a bike path, well used by bicyclists. It goes through central Otago, an area with a climate that is good for growing Pinot grapes and is thus full of wineries. Again, we were struck that the area is virtually treeless. Geologically in its past, apparently, it was a giant inland lake, but now it is undulating plains and hills with various low mountainranges leading up to the beginning of the Southern Alps. We stopped at a small railway museum to get the flavor of the area’s past, tried to go to a winery whose wine I had enjoyed (called Three Miners) only to findit closed, and finally pulled into Wanaka for a couplenights. Wanaka had been our base when I did my little ski adventure in the winter.

We love Wanaka. It is a stunning place, full of

young people, with an atmosphere of excited

physical activity. The morning after

we arrived we headed down the lake road past triathletes, some finishing their swim and others already on the bike leg. The day was gorgeous and clear after a heavy rain the night before left the first dusting of snow for the

season (we are headinginto fall here) on

the mountains ringing thelake. The snowwas melted by afternoon but made for a beautiful scene that morning. Half the road was unsealed, but pretty smooth gravel so we toodled along the valley

floor next to the lake and then its source river happily.

Then we came upon a pull off and a sign warning of “Ford!”

—not a car

advertisement—this was a warning that the road goes through a river without the benefit of a bridge. There was also a sign warning the next 9 km was rough road with multiple fords. Well, as we’ve mentioned before, we have

this flash car, an Audi A4, which might accelerate like the dickens but doesn’t have much road clearance, so we pulled off to

think things through. Alo

ng came an SUV

and we stopped them to ask if they knew the road conditions and the driver encouraged us that the fords

were probably OK as there really hadn’t been much run off and, if we were careful, “And your

wife gets out to find the shallow spots for you,” (?!) we should be fine.

Sure enough, they went racing off, then another Audi came racing along and splashed across the river without stalling, so off we went. We crossed 9 fords, the first of which was almost the worst and all went fine. When we arrived at our planned trailhead, we saw 30 or so cars and

vehicles who had also all braved the road, and ours was surely not the smallest or lowest car.

Our trail took us to the foot of the Rob Roy glacier. It was a stunning walk through meadows

with cows and sheep, over a suspension bridge and then up a very beautiful river gorge.

The track was very well maintained except for a couple areas of slide. At the top, we were

rewarded with a panorama of the glacier while we sat on rocks and ate lunch in the company of Keas (the parrot-like

birds that each windscreen rubber) who

were actually rather well behaved and posed for

heaps of tourist pictures. Because far from being a wilderness experience, this rugged little 10 km hike attracted quite a crowd. We ate that night at our now favorite restaurant in Wanaka, the Spice Room, with Indian food that is

truly gorgeous

(that is the adjective most often used for good food in NZ, not merely referring to its looks, but mostly to its flavor.)

The next day we drove a drop dead gorgeous road along several lakes out to the west coast and up alongside the coast and the coastal rain forest all the way to the Fox glacier. The weather on the west coast, just like our Olympic peninsula in Washington state, has such a high rainfall (around 300 inches), that it is a temperate rainforest. The weather was sunny so we enjoyed the lush greenery in sunshine.

Of the hundreds of glaciers in the Southern Alps, two of them are large enough to carry on down to near sea level: Fox and Franz Josef glaciers.

They are similar and are only a 30 minute drive from one another. We stayed at the little village at the base of Franz Josef while we enjoyed adventures at both spots. We walked up the river valley that is spawned from the foot of each glacier to get as close as the trails would allow us.

From there, we actually watched calved icebergsfloat downstream and tried to take in the size and grandeur of these rivers of ice.

We had not planned it this way, but, once we had seen these glaciers, we spontaneously decided that getting onto the glacier by helicopter would be worth the trip.

a 6 seater helicopter for a 15 minute ride up and around the Franz Josef glacier. We were deposited at the base of the “black hole”, a huge upthrusted rock face that the glacier had melted around so that it was bare of ice, about
So one morning, we went to the helicopter company, got suited up in glacier pants and rain jacket, their waterproof boots and heavy socks, and boarded midway up the glacier. There our guides helped us put on crampons and gave us ice axes and off we went to explore some of the ice formations on the glacier. The glacier is always active so we saw and/or heard rock and icefalls often while we were up there.

Our guides took us through ice caves, over to a huge

waterfall from the melting ice and through a little ice tunnel.

Our little group consisted of 2 other couples who might have had 5 or 6 cameras between the 4 of them, so much time was spent in various camera poses and less time than I would have liked was spent in actual hiking. But it was a stupendous experience from the helicopter ride to the glacier walk and I was thrilled we did it.Did I mention it was a gorgeous sunny day?

The area also offered beautiful little rainforest walks which reminded us of the cloud forest in Costa Rica, so heavy was the growth of mosses and other air plants on the trees. One night we went out after dark to have our first encounter with glow worms, little phosphorescent worms (actually fly larvae) that hang on the dirt under uprooted trees and on cave walls. They look like stars in the sky when you come across a whole wall of them—fascinating.

Despite our gorgeous weather, we managed to get to the “Reflection

Lake” just late enough in the morning to miss the panorama of mountains reflected in the lake as the mountains accumulated a cloud curtain each day by late morning. But, when we went off kayaking at the Okarito lagoon nearby, we were early enough to see the Alps

before they became enshrouded

—a stunning panorama and backdrop to the

paddle through the wetland lagoon where we also enjoyed white herons, various shorebirds and our favorite little songbirds, the bell birds.

As we signed up for our kayak, we noticed on their picnic table a very large container of in

sect repellant. In fact, when talking to the people at work about our west coast trip, the most common advice was, “bring insect repellant.” The sand flies, those pests we mentioned early on in our NZ travels, are at their worst on the west coast. But it was late enough in the year for us to mainly do our adventures with long pants and long shirts. Still, we took advantage of the offered repellant to help our bare feet stay protected and it seemed to work well. Our only really bad encounter was when we pulled off at a scenic overlook where we intended to have our lunch at the picnic table and lasted, at most, 3 minutes before we retreated to the car to eat away from the swarms.

For a break from our outdoor adventures, we stopped in Hokitika, a town best known for its jade carving artistry. Pounamu, or nephrite jade, or greenstone, is a valued stone, and sacred to the Maoris. It is found in the rivers of the west coast and on the beaches and is carved into some beautiful sculptures as well as abundant jewelery. We, naturally, found a couple pieces to our liking while we enjoyed the little town.

Our last stop on the west coast was Punakaiki where there is a very unusual limestone formation right on the coast that makes the rocks look like stacks of pancakes, so it is also referred to as “Pancake Rocks.” The information signs at this well visited tourist attraction made it clear, with their long obtuse explanations, that nobody really knows how this rock formation occurred, but it was certainly interesting.

Meanwhile, we spent the night at a treehouse-like hotel room in the rainforest and enjoyed the sound of kiwis after dark. It was a wonderful, peaceful place, our first night without a television, and, wouldn’t you know it, the night of the huge Japanese earthquake. So, when we went to check out, we learned all about the earthquake and the tsunami. We seem to have a knack for belated awareness of large world disasters as it was a full day after 9/11 before we learned of that disaster, oblivious as we were on our sailboat heading home from Alaska. No matter.

The rest of our trip home took us through Arthur’s pass,

the highest pass in NZ and a beautiful place in the mountains, and down onto the Canterbury plains through lovely farmland. We took some short hikes in the Peel Forest to see some of the largest trees in NZ, smaller by far than the North Island Kauris, but impressive nonetheless. The most impressive thing was the guy, Peel, who had the foresight in the late 1800’s when the area was being rapidly de-forested for house timber, to buy land and preserve it from logging so these majestic trees could survive. Well done!

Once home in Oamaru, our attention is now focussed on our upcoming departure and return to the US by way of Australia. There is much to do to close up our lives here, not the least of which includes the sale of our car and boat.

Dispatch 65 Qayaq for Sale

2011-03-14T00:22:00.000-07:00

14 March 2011
We have put Qayaq up for sale here in Auckland, New Zealand. After a wrenching and difficult decision-making process, we have decided to sell her. So, if you have ever dreamed of cruising, here is your chance to take a boat that is ready to go and sail her back up to the Pacific Islands, or just cruise New Zealand in comfort. Please contact Richard@qayaq.net for more information.

Dispatch 64 Big Christchurch Earthquake

2011-03-13T00:07:00.000-08:00

22 February 2011
I was sitting in the hospital nurse station when my head nurse suddenly cried, “Shivers, that’s an earthquake!” (She objects to any swearing so “sugar” and “shivers” are as bad as her language gets.) The ground rolled for about a minute, several of the nurses complained they were feeling motion sick. Yours truly didn’t—hah, maybe I did get my sea legs after all. I said, “God, I wonder if that’s Christchurch again,” and flipped the computer to the internet to get the latest news. The TV was on in the nursing home section of the hospital and we all migrated there as the news started to pour in. Yes, it was Christchurch again, but this time, the damage was extensive.

Last earthquake happened on Saturday morning at 4:36 AM and our beds shook here that time too. There was damage in Christchurch but nobody was killed. The earthquake was deeper and 30 km from the city. This time the earthquake was shallow and only 10 km from the city and they think the volcanic rock near where it started reflected even more wave power into the city. This time it happened during lunch hour on a weekday. The city was full of people working and visiting—out on the streets, in the historic sites, in their offices.

As the story unfolded, the news reporters walked the newly shaken streets just filming the destruction, the piles of rubble, the buildings fallen over, the people fleeing in shock, sometimes streaming blood. As always, the very first coverage couldn’t begin to convey the scope of the disaster, but that became clearer as the hours went on. It was hard to watch the coverage and not want to go up and help. I volunteered to go, but the authorities did not call for more doctors—as it turned out, there were hundreds of doctors in town for medical conferences and they had a whole Australian field hospital flown in.

This is a small country and the people I work with in Oamaru have many family and friend connections to Christchurch which is only 3 hours drive away. Everyone has been touched by this quake in a very personal way. Many have gone to retrieve their elderly parents, or nieces/nephews who will attend school here while their parents see if they can salvage their lives there. Our nurses describe going up to ChCh with their gumboots so that they can wade through the liquefaction into their family’s homes to help them.

So, instead, we are here picking up the pieces of people’s lives. Refugees from Christchurch, those who can’t stand it anymore, are streaming south. They’ve had over a thousand aftershocks since the first earthquake in September, and, now, this big one, a new earthquake with the promise of another year of aftershocks. People are shaken, literally. We are only 3 hours drive from there. Our motels are full and people are housing others in their homes. Our stores are empty of bread which is being sent up to Christchurch, and, as it turns out, was packaged there, so there isn’t any quickly available to replenish our supplies. We’ve almost run out of petrol with the streams of people coming through and supplies being diverted to ChCh.

One night this week 50 nursing home patients from ChCh were bussed down our way as their home was condemned. They are being divvied up to various homes on the way down, 4 of them landed in our hospital at 4 in the morning when the bus driver suddenly exceeded his daily hours and couldn't go all the way to Dunedin where they were meant to go. I came in to the hospital in the morning and went in to visit them. They were put in one of our hospital rooms all together (a room with usually 3 beds and another one was brought in.) They were from 80-92 years old, lying in bed with their luggage around them (all their live’s belongings no doubt), like an elder slumber party. They were very sweet, sad, accepting of their lot--it was poignant in the extreme. Later that day when we managed to organize another bus to take them the rest of the way to their new home, they trundled out with their luggage moving to somewhere with no family or friends.

Another Oamaru resident is a woman with Cystic Fibrosis who goes to ChCh hospital every 3 months for antibiotics and just became known to us last November when she came down to finish the course at our hospital. She happened to be in hospital this week and, with the other patients, was evacuated from ChCh hospital. She grabbed her portable oxygen and her cell phone, left the hospital and refused to go back in, requesting to be transferred a week early to our hospital. Her husband brought her down. Ironically for her, the cell phone was very important to grab because she is on the list for a lung transplant and a disaster like this might give her a good chance at a donor.

Later, in the ER, I met a woman who had 3 fingers partially amputated when she had her hand on top of her desk as she hid under it and debris fell on the hand. Ordinarily trauma like this would be a big deal—3 fingers on one’s dominant hand—but in this case, it was minor. At least she was alive. Everything has changed perspective in the wake of this disaster.

Like other disasters we’ve skirted, this one seems a bit surreal. Here we are, cozy and safe, while just three hours away, people are living without sewage or water or electricity. I spoke with the specialist who works with our CF patient in ChCh and she said they are being asked to conserve water in the hospital (they do have running water but are not allowed to drink it) and are told to flush toilets as little as possible. The floor she’s working on is being kept open but the 2 floors below were evacuated—but they’re told the building is safe. Can you imagine? It really is like a war zone up there. And the true scope of the impact is yet to be seen.

Dispatch 63 Great Barrier Island

2010-12-19T00:30:00.000-08:00

1-12 December, 2010

Finally, in December, I took a real holiday—two weeks off work! It was a luxury well deserved after 7 months straight. Richard preceded me to Auckland by a few days to get the green patina off the boat (a typical consequence of a wet winter without attention) and get the systems up and running, or at least identify those that aren’t working, as was the case with our refrigerator on the boat. Buoyed by my excitement of being sprung from work, I was undaunted by holiday aboard without a refrigerator—heck, our first 7 years on the boat we never had a fridge! He also was telling me all kinds of stories about going out and about town in shorts and t-shirt. Right, like I could believe that after months of Oamaru!

Well, upon arrival to Auckland, I discovered that, in fact, there is summer in New Zealand. Much like travel from Seattle to San Francisco (a comparable latitude change), the climate is really different and we were WARM! Ironically, upon our first arrival to NZ, all we felt was cold after years in the tropics. Now after one winter in Oamaru, Auckland seemed balmy—funny how the body adapts. We wined and dined with friends and enjoyed the big city for a couple days, then took Qayaq out to Great Barrier Island, about 50 miles from Auckland and a real treasure!

Great Barrier Island (so named by our hero Captain Cook) is a large and mountainous island with many, many beautiful inlets and coves. The Department of Conservation has built beautiful and well-maintained trails all over the central island and we enjoyed many of these as well as the lush greenery and the absolutely stunning coastal scenery. The island is complete with its own hot springs, which we visited as well. We didn’t take a dip in the pools, though, once we saw the signs at the head of the trail which mentioned “DANGER - Amoebic Meningitis; which can be fatal” A brief note from the MOH,NZ (Ministry of Health, New Zealand), put it all into perspective that we thought prudent to observe, “Amoebic meningitis is a very serious illness that almost always ends in death”. As the mode of acquisition is via the nasal passage, you are warned not to put your head under water. Now since we have been in NZ we have never heard or seen so much as a danger notice on any of our tramps so this one got our attention and we opted to stay dry and amoeba free. You have to wonder who the first lucky (???) diagnosis was. We ended up renting a car so we could really appreciate all the scenery of the place. The roads are partly sealed, (NZ speak for paved) and partly gravel, and about 1 to 1 ¾ car widths wide. SO travel around some of the sharp curves meeting large gravel trucks and the locals driving at break neck speed was exciting and there were NO danger signs regarding the road width or conditions but the hot springs rates a warning, hence our reluctance for a dip. An additional bonus was the start of the trip; we had a gorgeous sail out to the island complete with a dolphin visit. On the way we stopped off at another island and “summited” Rangitoto, an extinct volcano visible from Auckland (a very well marked trail of 3 hours walk). We think this is the volcano that erupts and destroys Auckland in the “must miss” movie by the name “Volcano”. Mmmm, altogether a delicious holiday.

As, usual, we focused on the local wildlife. There is an endangered duck on Great Barrier Island called the Pateke, a little brown teal (“endearing” as the brochure describes it). There are only a 1000 pair left in the world it is estimated, and all are on Great Barrier Island. Well, we got a close look at a pair which was a thrill until we realized that, just like Mallards, they were swimming around our boat begging! Awww. There’s also a parrot-like bird called a “Kaka” which, just like the parrots in Costa Rica, went squawking its way across the sky each evening flapping its fool wings for all it was worth. Each evening we would enjoy the show of the Gannet’s fishing. We loved to watch as they dive for their fish. They sound like a big kid doing a cannonball in a pool—they hit the water with such force, coming up shaking their heads, and, if successful, take multiple sips to help their meal go down. If not successful they are off again for another attempt. But it is odd to be in such a wilderness and not see mammals. In fact, the lack of snakes in this country was highlighted by a story in the local museum which told of a snake that was found on shore after a shipwreck and it was hypothesized that the ship must have acquired the snake in Panama.

Once again, we ponder how it happened that eons ago NZ separated from Godwondia, the combined continent that included Australia and how all the dangerous things (other than NZ drivers) ended up on Australia (salt water crocs, box jellyfish, man-eating sharks, all manner of poisonous snakes and spiders, etc.) and not one in NZ. As the naturalist on our cruise said in reference to the split from Australia hundreds of thousands of years ago, “Best thing we ever did, ey mate?”

Our last night, we headed to an anchorage that afforded easy exit from Great Barrier heading back to Auckland. Part of the reason for the choice was that our engine was acting up and overheating very quickly so we needed to be able to get out into the wind as soon as possible to sail home, and, we needed to sail virtually all the way to our marina because the engine would only get us from the marina entrance to our berth without overheating. All of that was OK with us—we’ve done it before, the weather report called for a favorable wind (enough, not too much, and supposedly from a good direction).

As we pulled into the bay we planned to stay in, we could see two pods of dolphins in separate areas of the bay. There was one other sailboat so we motored in past it looking for shallower water. No sooner had we passed that sailboat than the dolphins came rushing over to our boat. This was not a social visit—we could tell they were unhappy with our intrusion on the inner bay. They “ganged up” on the port side of the boat and literally swam against it as if to turn it away. Well, we got the message immediately and turned back, and, as soon as we were behind the other boat, they swam off—mission accomplished. We dropped anchor behind the other boat and watched them for a couple more hours. We wondered if one was sick or was giving birth, or what, exactly was going on, but we couldn’t sort it out. There were some young ones but none that looked small enough to be newborn. But their behavior couldn’t have been clearer.

The next morning, off we went, full of optimism about our sail back. It was a sunny day and a gorgeous sail. We saw whales at one point—always a bonus. It was a 50 mile jaunt and we were undaunted by the initial headwind because the weather gurus were clear about the wind shift about to happen any minute (early morning). Well, as morning became afternoon and we were still beating into 15 knots and growing seas and tacking back and forth and adding miles to our voyage, we suddenly realized that the weather wasn’t going to change. Sure enough, the revisionist history weather report shifted around 3 PM to call for SW winds all day (after they had been predicting SE then NE shift in the morning). We were traveling, you guessed it, SW. Then around 7 PM we really started to wonder what we would do as we were still 30 miles or more from our marina and dark happens around 9 PM. We started looking for an anchorage and found one we could get to in a couple hours, but, as the sun was setting, the wind started to drop and we suddenly realized that if there was no wind the next day, we’d be stuck where we were with no engine.

It was a gorgeous night, the wind dropped to light breezes, the stars started to emerge and we looked at each other and decided to keep going. After all, we’ve traveled many a night by sail! And a magical night it was—the wind was just enough to keep us going, we were traveling down the coast now with no seas and Auckland skyline lit up the horizon and provided us a cityscape as we got closer. The only dicey part was the shipping channel which we sailed through slowly just outside the shipping markers and watched as huge freighters chugged by at close quarters. We could only imagine what they were thinking about us! The wind continued to drop until, in the wee hours (4-5AM), there was barely a breeze and we ghosted through Auckland harbor, thankful for a favorable current (at times our only forward momentum) and the virtual lack of traffic at that time of day. The last 5 miles took us more than 2 hours, our 50 mile trip had morphed into 82 with all the tacking, but after sunrise, we were at our marina, fired up the engine, and arrived at our berth, safe and sound on a very still morning. We were pleased to have made the right decision to keep going as there was no wind that day until mid-afternoon, happy to be in our berth and crawled into bed for a nap before putting everything away. You see, even the most mundane of outings can turn into big adventure when sailing!

Dispatch 62 Victorian Heritage Festival

2010-12-19T00:27:00.000-08:00

17-21 November 2010

Every year in November, Oamaru relives its Victorian heyday and puts on a several day festival in celebration. The festival features a variety of activities including tours of the special limestone buildings and other Victorian era features of the town, little readings and presentations in a Victorian style, an afternoon band concert at which one is expected to don Victorian garb, a ball at which the women must be in costume and men in tuxedos or uniforms of the Victorian era, plays, a parade, pennyfarthing bicycle racing and, finally, a street fair with all manner of crafts and food for sale as well as demonstrations, street performances, etc. We had been eagerly anticipating this one great event for which Oamaru is well-known.

On one of the evenings we attended a one act play and soiree called “Sheeps Ahoy”. It was an amateur, amusing bit of theater. The one act play featured 3 women dressed as sheep discussing the best way to promote their wool—they came up with the idea of crocheted wool sails for the America’s Cup boat. The only problem, in the end, was that they should have knitted rather than crocheted because the wind went right through the sails. Cute. The second half was literally a Victorian style soiree with about 8 people doing various parlour entertainments—reading aloud, playing the piano and singing. It was quaint and entertaining.

Richard was more able to enjoy the weekday activities and captured the amazing dresses that the women put on. People take this festival very seriously. On the weekend we saw the parade and went to the street fair which ended a bit early when the skies opened up into a torrential downpour, but otherwise was very enjoyable. Walking the streets of the historic district, seeing even the children in Victorian garb, one could almost imagine what the town was like at its pinnacle. Small towns can be so wonderful at times like this.

See the link to see more pictures than the above samples. http://gallery.me.com/richardspore1

Dispatch 61 Fjordland

2010-12-12T00:31:00.000-08:00

October, 2010

Fjordland is a magical part of New Zealand! In

fact, the general magic of the South Island is we can go from Iowa type farmland to Vancouver Island type coastal ruggedness, to Rockies type mountain terrain, to Olympic peninsula type rainforest to Alaska type fjordland all within a few hours drive. And, no bears, no spiders, no snakes, no raccoons, no kidding. If you look close, you can find penguins and how scary are they?

I took a Friday and Monday off work and we set off to take a cruise on Doubtful Sound in Fjordland, SW New Zealand. This area is just beautiful with mountains that fall straight into the water, still with some snow at the peaks. Everything is green because it rains a lot there, but, miraculously, not while we were there. We just nailed the weather. And, we were also privileged to get half price on the cruise because we live here! Bonus! Doubtful Sound is so named because James Cook, that intrepid explorer who conveniently has charted nearly all the

waters we have sailed in, took one look into the place and “doubted” that they would find good anchorage. We assume he remembered his experience at Desolation Sound, another drop dead gorgeous place he named so negatively because, for him and his crew, tall mountains and narrow waterways spell disaster. Desolation Sound trapped them for days—no wind and wild currents, usually in the wrong direction! So, the wiser for that experience, he didn’t venture into Doubtful Sound where he would have found trouble with the wind, but no currents to plague him.

We were on a purpose built tank of a ship with symbolic sails, but really comfortable little cabins and an awesome galley that produced food of both quality and quantity. Mmmm. With about 60 passengers aboard, we went out into the Sound, spotted dolphins, Blue and Fjordland Crested penguins, Fur Seals and albatross, (Mollymawk). We enjoyed Kiwi calls in the night on a still anchorage deep in one of the fjords and kayaked to one of the islands to see waterfalls up close and provide the sand flies with their dinner before we had ours. The weather was so calm,

the reflections in the water were perfect mirrors of the mountains above. Nearly every cliff face sported multiple waterfalls from recent rains even though we had gorgeous clear weather. Did I mention high quantity food? There was a dinner and breakfast buffet and we took good advantage of those. The trip

was also enriched by a naturalist who was both informative and funny. It was a fantastic experience!

After that overnight cruise, we took advantage of being on the West Coast and drove a stunning road up to Milford Sound on another beautiful sunny day. On the way there, we finally encountered Keas, the native parrot like bird of New Zealand. We have been trying to see them because they are interesting and pesky. They like to eat the rubber out from around the windshield and the wipers. We kept our eye on them every minute when they landed on top of our car. The road traveled through some of the most glorious mountain scenery we have ever seen and was well worth the side trip.

Remember we talked about farmed deer? As we drove the countryside, we noticed a guy driving a herd of big animals ahead of his truck in his paddock. He then proceeded to put gates across the road to stop traffic and create a lane to herd his animals to the other side. We looked closely at the animals as they passed (we got out to watch and take pictures) and thought they looked mighty familiar and not really deer-like. We talked to the farmer and, sure enough, the animals are Roosevelt Elk, exactly like those that run wild in the Olympic National Park in Washington State. The farmer raises them for their antlers which fetch a huge pricetag from places like Korea and are, after all, a renewable resource. He also farms some Elk for meat. He explained to us that the group in yonder paddock were soon to go on their “OE” (overseas experience) in little boxes.

On our detour home, we headed to the southern-most point of the South Island, Slope Point, latitude 46 degrees, 37’ 26”S. We came from Seattle at Latitude 48, so we’ll have to go down to Stewart Island, or beyond, to get equally south.

The south part of the south island is famous for its constant high winds. The trees reflect that environment, although, once again, we were lucky in the weather and enjoyed a walk around the rocky coast near Bluff in still conditions.

And here’s how small NZ is. In Bluff, we stayed at a small hotel. Unbeknownst to us, the couple running it are both ambulance crew which became apparent when I asked where the hospital was in the next town (a place where I had been offered a job so wanted to check it out). They wondered if they could do anything to help (thinking, of course, I needed medical attention). Well, I told them who I was and where I work, and we started comparing names of the people they know who work in Oamaru and used to work in Bluff, etc. It turns out they had trained one of our hospital porters who also happens to be an ambulance crew member. It’s not that strange, really, remember, only 4.8 million people in the whole country.

Dispatch 60 Shake, Rattle and Roll and Lamb Season

2010-12-12T00:29:00.000-08:00

4 - 30 September 2010

I was on call in the hospital when the earthquake happened. It was quite long and intense here, 180 miles from Christchurch, but we haven't felt the aftershocks. There have been a record number of heart attacks in the hospitals near here and some people credit the earthquake. I could do without the extra business—it’s been really busy. Our town clock stopped at the exact time of the quake which seemed sort of momentous, and, because it was a Friday night, it didn't get reset until Monday. Friends of ours own a house that was right near the epicenter and they had extensive damage. It’s been really sad and people have been quite traumatized by the frequent and fairly strong aftershocks.

During my on-call stretch, we walked out to see the yellow eyed penguins again on a late sunny afternoon day. I cajoled Richard into bringing his camera. We got there a little late and most of the little guys had already come up the beach, but one of them was hanging out waiting for its mate right near the viewing platform (but behind some bushes.) We could barely see it but it was squawking periodically. Its mate then made an appearance which made for some good pictures, and then, miracle, the penguins both walked within 3 feet of the viewing platform. They are amazing. I was so glad Richard had his camera for that moment!! He was pretty excited too. He’s also

captured some of the local spotted shags (their word for cormorants).

Living in NZ seems like what living in the US must have been in the 50's. At least in our little town, nobody locks house or car, everyone knows each other, kids have kids (meaning they start young: 18,19,20 if not younger) and that's the way it is and everything is family/kid oriented. So all the nurses I work with, most of whom are in their 50's, are grandparents. As you might imagine, I'm a bit of an oddity with neither kids nor grandkids, but we've found other things to talk about.

But here's the thing about NZ. Kiwis don't whine. They push themselves hard and they don't really want to hear it if you are tired/overworked/whatever. I've just finished 12 days in a row of work because I was on call last Friday night and on second call Sat and Sun so I came to the hospital and saw patients both days and then all this past week. It was a long haul and I got good and sick of it by the end which everyone noticed by Thurs. when I was being a little bit naughty and grumpy. But the staff seemed a little bewildered—what’s my problem? Suck it up.

Here's another story to illustrate. I went skiing the other weekend at a place called Treble Cone—a place where the ski teams used to go to train because it’s pretty challenging (well, and summer up there is winter down here so you can ski year round that way). I hooked up with some locals for the afternoon which was a good thing because, in the morning, I had nearly found myself skiing over some cliffs because I didn’t know the terrain and was just skiing wherever I felt like it. They were telling me about a particularly bad condition day when they saw this guy coming down the run under the chairlift and it looked like total ice even from the chair. The guy was struggling mightily and stopped at one point, stood looking at the slope and then, in frustration, looked up at the chairlift and said sort of funny exasperatedly: "This snow is crap!" My acquaintances told me they yelled back, "It looks like crap from here (meaning, what the hell were you thinking taking that run anyway?). Do want us to call your mum?" Ha, ha, meaning, suck it up buddy.

Treble Cone is just outside the town of Wanaka which, like Queenstown, is a resort town built on a very large lake surrounded by mountains. It is much less built up than Queenstown and the scenery is simply gorgeous. It too is a town filled with "adrenaline" adventures such as paragliding, sky diving, and, I think, bungy jumping, none of which we did while there.

Another Kiwi vocabulary lesson. Ski areas are called “ski fields”. That fits because there are exactly zero trees on the ski slopes, none, which makes for some pretty difficult navigation when it fogs up—there’s nothing to show you where the trail is (as opposed to where the cliffs are). On the other hand, it’s weird because “fields” as we know them, aren’t called fields, they’re called “paddocks” or “reserves.” I always thought a paddock was a fenced in area. Well, come to think of it, all their fields are fenced because they mostly hold sheep though there are those with the odd deer herd thrown in.

So it's spring and it seems every sheep has lambs, one or

two each. There are lambs in every paddock frolicking around and nursing. It is cute in the

extreme. If NZ has 48 million sheep normally, it must have 70 million at the moment during lambing season. Of course, many of these go on to become edible so the population doesn't keep rising. There's a meat processing place in Oamaru, one of the biggest employers. It is called the "Freezing Works" (a meat freezing place), which beats the real description which is a slaughterhouse. I can't even imagine working there but I've met many of the patients who do and it sounds just too awful. When we walked back from the penguin place, there was an orphan lamb in one of

the yards that we had seen the woman of the house bottle feed when we were walking out. It saw us and started bleating and came to the fence so we went over and petted it. It kept trying to nurse on Richard's finger and we almost went to the house to tell them to come out and feed it again, but I decided that it wasn't our business. Later I learned from one of the nurses who used to farm sheep that lambs are always hungry and will nurse as much as they can and that this little guy would probably be fine--he was just being greedy. I guess they get orphaned a lot because the sheep will be busy having their second lamb and the first will wander away and then the mum loses its scent and rejects it. (They don't sound like such smart animals...) So the orphans often end up as pets and bottle fed. The cows are having calves too, but it's rare to see them together--it looks to me like the calves are removed from the mums really early and they're often in a paddock together (the calves). Let's not think too hard about the meaning of that observation. Almost makes you want to be a vegetarian, huh? But, having said that, first of all, ALL the cows here are grass fed so the beef is unbelievably delicious. Also there are no signs in the grocery stores proclaiming “free range – grass fed” anything, isn’t grass what cows are suppose to eat. We shop at the local butcher shop 4 blocks away where someone you saw in the field a couple of weeks ago is getting ready to become your next package of mince. And second, Kiwis are just not all that sentimental about the animals--it's a luxury of city life that you can just not think about how your meat comes to the table.

Speaking of soft hearted, we had our big chance to join the “Kiwi club” and nail our first possum who darted across the road as we drove to the ski mountain one night. We both had the mixed reactions of “Yay, now we’re real Kiwis” and, “Aw, I hope he’s all right, he was kind of cute.” Bah, soft Americans!! New Zealand is getting ready to spend $4 million on new traps going after the cute little things. Here are the headlines: “Funding to trial new killer traps announced”.

Also a little known tidbit regarding New Zealand to impress your friends with:

“DOC spends more than $20m a year controlling possums and ground-based pests like rats and stoats”.

There was a spot on the news about the efforts of an Australian animal control team attempting to get a possum out of a tree in a rural town in Australia when it stumbled(?) into town. Well the last glimpse before returning to the news was a rather large animal control person chasing this possum down the street. The possum was much faster. The NZ news announcer was just chuckling away as she said they could have done it much easier if they had just shot the thing out of the tree. Save time, money – where is the compassion?

Dispatch 59 Small Town Medicine

2010-08-07T21:39:00.000-07:00

10 May - 6 August 2010

As part of my job here in Oamaru, I have agreed to alternate with my fellow medical officer between the medicine service (2 doctors, me and my supervisor) and the Emergency and Surgical Service (2 doctors, me and the ER supervisor). The medicine service is work I’ve done for years and the Emergency and Surgical Service often tests my experience and knowledge base since I’m seeing Paediatrics (that’s how they spell it here), trauma and other things I haven’t done as much of in my career (I’m not doing surgery but rather take care of post-operative patients sent home from Dunedin to finish their hospital course and rehabilitate.) As mentioned before, the medical ward is the place where the rooms sometimes have 3 patients which is a bit surreal when exactly none of them is in their right mind (all with dementia or other mental health issues). But the staff are quite accommodating and sometimes just let the more pleasantly confused patients hang out at the nurses’ office rather than wander off the premises.

One of the enduring images I will have of New Zealand is an endless parade of teenage boys arriving in the Emergency Department covered in mud in their rugby uniforms with varied injuries (head injury with bite on the forehead from collision with teammate, broken finger, knee sprain, lacerations, abrasions, sprained ankles, loose teeth, broken collar bones, separated shoulders, concussions, etc.), all with grins from ear to ear. This is a tough group of people. A current television commercial shows a grown man rugby player and a 7 year old boy sitting next to each other in the ER waiting room. The little boy looks like he’s going to cry. The man looks stoic and crosses his arms. The little boy watches him, then he too crosses his arms in imitation and looks stoic. That’s the role modelling of NZ for you!

Then there are the girls with their “net ball” injuries. Net ball is a sport similar to basketball but there is no dribbling and the basket has no backboard. Scoring and team size are different too but I haven’t worked out the nuances. I’ve seen several sprained knees and fingers and, again, injuries appear to be a mark of courage rather than anything to break down over.

This week, I took care of a 15 year old girl with possible appendicitis. She is a “boarder” at the local high school (family lives an hour and a half away and so she lives at the school). She was all alone in the hospital being observed for a day and a half. I commented to one of the nurses that I couldn’t believe her parents hadn’t come to be with her under the circumstances and the nurse said, “She a boarder—that’s the idea, she’s grown up enough to be away at school.” Still, don’t we all regress a bit when we’re sick and in pain, even tough Kiwis?

So, as I’ve alluded to before, Kiwis seem to have some inherent aversion to indoor heating. I can see the consequences of this as I examine my new admissions to the hospital. I go to pull up their shirt to listen to their lungs and up come 1, 2, 3 and sometimes 4 layers—the top layer of which might even be their pajamas! And we always have to give them a day’s notice before we discharge them from the hospital so they can get the heat turned on at the house before they go home.

We've also mentioned before that Kiwis tend not to like to wear shoes. On my on-call nights in the hospital I get a chance to visit with the late shift nurses. One of them was astounded that I didn't have to use pumice stones on my feet to soften the callouses. I explained that I don't go barefoot much, especially in the winter. She, apparently, is always barefoot at home on her farm. One day, when she was running late, she showered and dressed for work, jumped in her car, drove to work and only realized when she got there that she had forgotten to wear shoes.

And, working in a small farming community, I’ve definitely seen some things I never saw in Seattle. Here are a few of my favorites so far:

Broken facial bone and laceration in the face covered with cow dung—“Kicked in face by cow”.

Testicle pain in 20 year old—“Mashed into fence by cow.”

Extensive bruising of the whole right body—“rolled truck down 50 meter hillside on farm” (and got himself out of the truck, walked 4 kilometers to the next farm and got a ride to the hospital.)

Foot injury—“Stepped on by cow.”

Severe rotator cuff injury of shoulder—“Run over by herd of deer.” (Deer are farmed here like cows, by the way. He said “I just turned my back on them for a minute.”)

Recently, I was on my way to Dunedin Public Hospital (the university hospital which is an hour’s drive away) to finish up my Advanced Cardiac Life Support re-certification. I worked Emergency Department that morning at Oamaru, then Richard and I were going to drive down that afternoon. As luck would have it, one of the first customers of the morning was a 49 year old guy having a big, bad heart attack. After giving him clot busting medicine and arranging for transport to the University Hospital, the cardiac team in Dunedin asked if we could send him in an ambulance instead of the helicopter because they were short on doctors to go with the helicopter and they wondered if one of us could go down with him. So instead of driving with Richard, I was pushing medicines in the guy’s IV in the ambulance on my trip down to Dunedin. I wondered, do I really have to finish the course since I’m doing advanced cardiac life support right here in the ambulance? And darned if riding a curvy road in a big ambulance doesn’t feel like being in a 32 foot boat in a cross sea—I took motion sickness medicine before we left just in case.

The language barrier continues to be an issue in medicine. I was telling a patient to soak an abscess with a hot washcloth. She didn’t know what I was talking about. A washcloth here is called a “flannel.” Sweater is “jersey”, or “jumper”. Being short of breath is called “puffy”, the urinary system is referred to as “waterworks”. When you’re sick you feel “crook” and when you’re doing well, everything is “fluffy ducks.” And on it goes. Perhaps I’ll speak the language before I leave, but it’s funny how little things can really make a difference in instructions to patients. They’re often too polite to ask me to repeat or clarify I think. And they often look at me after I’ve said something quite slowly and clearly and say, “Pardon?” Excuse me, but you’d think a population whose television shows are almost all imported from the US would understand my accent!

Oh, and the trips to Dunedin for my course were an opportunity to see more of the countryside.

We saw albatross flying out on the Otago peninsula, Hooker’s sea lions roaring at each other on the beach and more yellow-eyed penguins emerging from the ocean onto the beach. We saw the last two on a beach called Sand Fly beach—thank goodness we were there in the winter with several layers of clothes on! And we explored some gorgeous waterfalls in an area called the Catlins in the very south of the South Island, a wild and extremely beautiful place with a rugged coastline. The scenery in this part of the world continues to astound and delight us and the winter, at least so far, has been mild.

Dispatch 58 Small Town Life

2010-08-07T21:37:00.000-07:00

4 June – 31 July 2010

Life continues in Oamaru, a small town with big city aspirations. We have an Opera House here which is extremely grand. It is built of Oamaru limestone and is a gorgeous building and a really fantastic show venue. Les Miserables will be showing there this September—all the big shows in New Zealand pass through Oamaru because of the Opera House. The other night I went to a show there called “Hot Pink Bits”. It was a one woman show and it was, well, hard to describe. This woman has done a fair amount of research about the sex trade since humankind began and has lots of funny bits as well as interesting facts to share about sex. By the way escort services and houses of entertainment, (nudge, nudge, wink wink know what I mean, eh), are legal in NZ and the adult entertainment ads in the papers offer a wide range of services, but back to the show. She is also outrageous and funny and a pretty good singer. She also has humongous breasts that she stuffs into a outfit that they are mostly falling out of for the show and interacts with the audience, mostly the men, in a most irreverent way. It was LOL funny. I sat next to a grandmother who had come with her 26 year old granddaughter. Clearly the two had no idea what the show was really about or they would definitely have not been there together.

Tonight, a Friday night, I was so looking forward to a relaxing evening at home after a long busy week of work. Just as I was about to leave the hospital, all the power went off. It was pitch black for about 20 seconds, and then the hospital back-up generator went on and everything returned to normal. That was the hospital. As soon as I stepped outside I realized the power to the WHOLE CITY was off! The hospital was the only place with lights. I walked home in the pitch black—a beautiful starry night that I appreciated while I contemplated what awaited me at home. We do have a fireplace which I haven’t mentioned before –actually, a quite good one that is built to throw out heat effectively. And, when we moved in, we had found candles around the place. And, when I thought back on it, there were other clues about this not being a particularly one off experience (power outages) because the prior tenant had warned us that the oven doesn’t work when the clock isn’t set which happens when the power goes off. . Hmmmm, okay I’m starting to see a pattern here. Oh yeah, and the house keys are on a key chain that includes a little flashlight, uh, I mean torch (Kiwi speak).

I arrived home, found my way to the door with the torch on the keychain, walked straight to where I left my headlamp (every good cruiser always knows where that is!), and proceeded to make a fire in the fireplace. I realized I had a little portable propane cooker from our camping days and knew I could even heat up a meal if the power didn’t go on. I exchanged a few texts with Richard (who is out of town still awaiting the catamaran delivery to Fiji, or so he says) and a local woman I have befriended. I learned this is not an unusual occurrence but the duration is a bit odd (it lasted 1 ½ hrs). Thank goodness the cell towers weren’t down too. And, at last, the power went back on. The weather was not extreme and I have no idea what turned the power off. Too many portable space heaters overloading the system?

My hospital life is really a throw back to times I spent in old Veteran’s hospitals in the US.. Although it is a modern facility, it is built with many shared rooms with beds for 3 people. This is purposeful—I guess the thinking is that patients can sort of look out for each other, which, it turns out, they do. The rooms are sex segregated except the HDU (high dependency unit which we would call a step down unit—that is, it’s not really an intensive care unit but the next level of care. My hospital doesn’t have an ICU—anyone that sick gets transferred to the big city.) There, both men and women are cared for, separated only by curtains. There is virtually no privacy. And, no need, since, it seems, everyone knows each other. In fact, as the Oncologist explained to me today in his monthly visit to the rural hospital, there’s lots of cancer here partly because everyone is RELATED to everyone. OK, never mind.

So, one night this week, one of my patients suddenly had a turn for the worse. As I was in there checking him out with the nurses, another patient of mine in the same room, who has had a stroke and is quite confused generally, said to me from his bed where he was lying quietly, “He’s been having quite a time of it tonight—I think it’s his heart.” And, this morning, I found another patient of mine who is feeling much better and told me she needs to go home because she is, “quite bored in here” helping the other ladies in the room fill out their menu requests for the next day. I greet the patients who aren’t mine with the same familiarity as my own since they are all in the room together. People in our hospital are often not very sick—there for rehabilitation as much as anything--so they are fully dressed and sometimes go home on leave over the weekend since nothing really happens in the hospital on the weekend (no lab, x-ray, PT, OT, you name it). Contrast this with the US hospital I’ve lately worked in where I often commented that they might as well do away with the dietary department because we send people home as soon as they are well enough to eat. Which brings me to another observation about my hospital. I’ve had occasion to eat the food when I’ve done overnight shifts. One night I picked the spaghetti thinking that it’s a foolproof meal. Well, apparently it is not foolproof in New Zealand. My colleague the next morning nodded knowingly and said, “You should have had the toasted sandwiches…” He’s been there for 12 years or so. Thank goodness Richard is back to bring dinner down to me. Well, actually, the evening meal here is called “tea.” Really, it is.

When I walked home in the really dark night with the power off tonight, I admired the Southern Cross, the Milky Way, the constellation Scorpio all while being serenaded by the surprisingly loud tiny blue penguins who had come in for the night (and were probably really happy about the lights being out). You, know, things really could be worse!

Dispatch 57 More Oamaru Adventures

2010-08-07T19:35:00.000-07:00

14 May - 25 May 2010

As life went on without Richard, I became more adventurous in order to color my solo existence. So, one Sunday, I had heard about a ceremony to take place on the waterfront where the last 1 kilometer of a proposed bike trail from the Alps, (these are the New Zealand Alps not to be confused with the slightly more familiar European ones), to the Ocean was going to be officially opened. As it turns out, this is, so far, the ONLY kilometer of said bike trail to have been completed. And because the Prime Minister, Mr. John Key, is an avid bicyclist, the celebration was timed to coincide with a visit of his to the area and he had agreed to attend the dedication of this bit of the bike trail.

So off I went to join the couple hundred people milling about on a cold but sunny day. Several people were dressed in Victorian garb, something this town is known for as its heyday was during the Victorian era. The gorgeous

limestone buildings of the historic district were all alive with activity. A new historic bicycle shop which has Pennyfarthing bikes was being opened that day and there were several of those bikes in attendance being ridden by people who knew what they were doing. You know the ones, the huge front wheel, tiny back wheel with a seat nearly 2 meters off the ground. I watched as they mounted the bikes, pushing them to get momentum and balance, stepping on a small footstep and UP onto the seat. Smoothly done by those that know how to do it.

I had a vague idea that I might try to meet the Prime Minister as it is such a small town and there really weren’t that many people about. He and his wife stepped off the historic steam train and walked down to the ribbon at the start of the bike trail. I followed along with the crowds and stood while a bagpipe band performed, then the mayor made a speech, then the prime minister made a speech. The latter was a bit sheepish about the “somewhat backward” way the trail was being done, that is, last kilometer first, but he was amusing and brief in his comments. Afterward, he cut a ribbon and borrowed a bike to ride a short distance on the new trail (which ends by the way at the blue penguin center).

When he returned from his short ride, he stood with his wife and staff (if they were security this was truly low key!) while members of the community came up, introduced themselves and had their pictures taken with the PM. Well, yours truly decided, “What the hell,” and joined the small knot of people waiting to meet the country’s leader. Sure enough, my time came and I shook his hand, introduced myself as “An American doctor working here in Oamaru,” and he chatted me up for the obligatory minute or so he spent with everyone asking where I was from and telling me he had visited the area around Seattle and spent some time in Vancouver, BC as well. He was very smooth and gracious and I was, well, THRILLED. I contemplated writing to Barack Obama to tell him that I had met the leader of a foreign country before meeting the leader of my own in the vague hope that an invitation to meet him would be forthcoming and then thought better

of the whole thing. Remember, New Zealand has 4.8 million people and nearly 50 million sheep. Between the people and the sheep, the Prime Minister here would still have a much smaller job meeting everyone! (A little note on the Kiwi language. I have been chastised for using the expression “chatted me up” to describe my meeting with the PM because in Kiwi English, that basically mean “hit on me”. So, let me clarify that the PM chatted with me for a minute or so and was not hitting on me!…)

So, to cap off a truly momentous day, I walked out to the beach where the other penguins come in at sunset and tried to catch a glimpse of them. This beach is quite scenic and the Department of Conservation has built a trail out to a shack where one can watch the penguins come in from above and not disturb them. Once again, I was not alone in my vigil. It was a

cold afternoon but 25 or so people gathered to watch. There were fur seals down on the beach just lolling around. Then a little shape darted around the surf line, cruised in to shore, stood up and began that distinctive waddle that could be nothing else. Shortly after, about a half dozen of the darling little things followed suit. They waddle all the way up the beach, into the bush that forms a steep hillside and climb up. In fact, they climb up quite a ways because we were treated to a close encounter as one of the early birds climbed up the 200 feet of hillside to within 30 feet of where many of us were standing and started to squawk instructions to its mate.

These are Yellow Eyed Penguins and they are quite flash looking with yellow bands through their eyes. They are nearly twice as big as

the blue penguins (so about 2 feet tall as opposed to 1 foot tall).

When Richard rejoined me another week later, Oamaru was in the middle of a “100 year storm.” It rained nearly 10 inches in a couple days and kept raining for another 4 days. Our little town was isolated by severe flooding to the north and south so the major highway was impassable. We had to airlift a patient to our referral hospital by helicopter because the roads were closed. It was an impressive bit of bad weather with big winds to cap it off, but not necessarily the best introduction to Oamaru that Richard could have enjoyed. Finally when

the rain stopped we took a brief road trip to see the Moeraki boulders, a set of stones that are nearly perfectly round that litter a beach nearby. Our drive was still detoured as not all the flooding had receded and several trails had experienced landslides and were closed. We did see fur seal pups up on some rocks nearby, had a nice lunch and headed back to try to see the yellow eyed penguins. Alas, that trail had been closed by landslides and surf was quite high so Richard has yet to enjoy our “other” penguins.

And he’s off again on a second attempt to get the catamaran to Fiji. I’m sure he’ll be back with stories and I might have a few more of my own. I wonder what other celebrities might visit our little town this year?

Dispatch 56 Life in Oamaru, week two

2010-05-18T01:04:00.000-07:00

15 May 2010

I've amused Richard with my descriptions of life in our wee house in Oamaru so I thought I'd just put it in a blog and share the experience. He is on his way to Fiji on a friend's catamaran so I've had to deal with my first week in the house and the first week at work alone. He has spent exactly one night here so far. Perhaps we'll add pictures to this when he gets back.

We are living in a cute house, 2 BR, rather a rabbit warren layout with, as is to be expected here, no insulation and no really effective heat. I met a Swiss doc who described the houses here as "thin" which sort of sums up their cold resistance capabilities. There's a "heat pump" up near the ceiling in the living room which doesn't effectively get heat anywhere else in the house. There's a space heater in the kitchen. And, after 4 days I found out from Richard that one of the 3 switches in the bathroom turns on a little space heater in there too so now I don't have to turn blue as soon as I take my clothes off before my shower. There is, however, a towel heating switch--a very British thing that I've taken a liking to.

So, my first couple days here in the house alone, I would awaken at 6 (dark, cold) shiver out of bed, take a quick walk for exercise, turn on the space heater in the kitchen so I could eat breakfast with some modicum of heat, shiver into my clothes after my shower, turn off all the heaters before I left for work and come home to reverse the whole process. Oh, and there's heating pads on the bed to get that pre-heated.

Now I've got it all worked out. I bring the kitchen space heater into the bedroom for the night, cart it back to the kitchen in the morning, shower in relative luxury with the heater kicking out all kinds of warm air in the bathroom and only shiver on the way between there and the bedroom to get dressed while I let the space heater (now in the kitchen) heat up the breakfast area. All the electrical outlets have on/off switches so I do have to remember to, say, turn on the outlet while I'm charging my phone, or, oddly, the phone is no more charged after a full night plugged in than it was when I started.

There is a TV in the house and, since I had 10 minutes I felt like doing something mindless last night, I tried to turn it on using the remote. No go. So I tried to turn it on using the power button on the TV. No go. Then I noticed it was plugged into an outlet with a switch (some have indicators to say they are on, some don't and you just have to guess) so I flipped the switch and the power turned on at the TV, but the remote still didn't work. Then I noticed that one of the two batteries wasn't quite in place (and the cover for the battery compartment is gone), so, when I shoved that back into place, lo and behold the remote worked too. Man, I was feeling really good about all my problem solving abilities. Then I noticed what was playing on TV: that medical TV show about Seattle's Gray hospital (Gray's Anatomy I think?) Damn. I turned the channel to what turned out to be the only other channel we get. What was playing? House. I don't know about other people but I gotta say, after an 11 hour day working at a damn hospital, those are just not the TV shows that are high on my list to watch!!

I wrote the above about my 4th night here. Since then I washed my clothes in the washer that the previous tenant told us doesn't spin the clothes dry real well. I figured out why: it doesn't spin at all. So, after wringing them out one by one I hung them on the line outside (people don't really use dryers in this country). I was waiting for them to stop dripping before I hung them on the drying rack inside that I had bought because it occurred to me that it might take a mighty long time to dry clothes in 42 degree weather outside.

And, I'm enjoying the medicine here. It is up to date, the doctors are thoughtful and read the research closely. They like to discuss the patient's problems and think hard before they order tests, weighing whether the test will change the treatment in any way. The only problem is that they are keen to keep costs down so occasionally treatments that are more convenient for the patient (but more expensive), yet have shown no advantage in outcomes or health measures, are not used in this country (like insulin pumps for instance) and that makes me upset. There's so much more to say about the medical practice here but I haven't got my thoughts completely together. But I am trying to write about it while it's fresh in my mind and everything is new to me.

The Kiwis are a tough and self-sufficient bunch. They are also friendly and helpful. The town has some of the amenities of a much larger community like an awesome public pool (which I've already used a couple times) and an Opera House where Liberace will be performing next month (who knew he was still touring, let alone still alive?!) And we have two kinds of penguins and fur seals for the wildlife lovers among you. So I say, come visit! Oh yeah, but wait until it gets a little warmer!

Dispatch 55 South Island: First Impressions

2010-04-15T13:23:00.000-07:00

13 March - 25 March, 2010

New Zealand’s South Island is often described in superlatives and, as we discovered, with good reason. We boarded a ferry in Wellington and made the 3 plus hour ferry ride with our car.

The ferry ride was reminiscent of our Pacific NW ferry rides. It started with almost an hour’s transit out of Wellington harbor with wild rocky scenery, then there was a little more than an hour of open water crossing during which we had 25 knot winds that drove us inside to watch the silly movie being shown.

The final hour was spent transiting Marlborough Sound which reminded us strongly of the passage from Anacortes to Sydney via the San Juan and Gulf Islands—if you don’t know the area, suffice to say it is gorgeous! The land and islands were partially forested and virtually uninhabited with steep hills down to the water. As everyone had warned us, we wished we had our sailboat there.

We felt our time was running short so we just tried to skim the surface of the sites we might want to return to. We blasted through Nelson, an arty community, past apple orchards and vineyards, stopping only to pick up some fresh, crisp, delicious seasonally fresh New Zealand apples (mmmmm) and look at a fabulous glass gallery. Many of the roadside stands in NZ use an honor system.

Stands are set up, prices are listed and there is a box to deposit your payment—often there is no merchant there to collect. We headed right for Abel Tasman National Park, a little gem of a park that would have been perfect for a kayak/camp trip—many are organized there, but we just took a water taxi up the coast as far as we chose to walk back and did a day hike with another couple we met at our campground. As it turned out, Shirley and Brant just gave up the cruising life last year and we knew several boats in common. The 10 mile or so hike was on well developed trail and was stunning, passing several gorgeous golden sand beaches. We had beautiful, sunny weather.

Christchurch was next, both to visit one of our cruising buddies Paul (and Gina, but she was back in the US working), and to get our car’s heater checked out. It turns out that the heater repair is a huge, labor intensive job, so we scheduled it for the following week and continued on our way.

Meanwhile, Christchurch provided many galleries and a lovely botanical garden. The little storm from Antarctica which we experienced in Wellington had left a cold spell in its wake and our day in Christchurch was freezing—the night reached 3 degrees Celcius and the mountains in the distance were suddenly dusted with snow—winter approaches.

Finally we arrived in our soon-to-be home, Oamaru, down the coast from Christchurch. The town of 15,000 people has a fairly benign climate and attracts a retirement community, more elderly than elsewhere in NZ. It is known for its limestone buildings constructed during the Victorian era which are picturesque in the extreme.

The town somehow froze in that era and is now re-created for tourism. And the tourism focuses on one of its unique little features which is the penguin colony which comes ashore nightly just on one end of the Oamaru harbor. One cannot spend a second in Oamaru without seeing some reference to penguins. This colony consists of the smallest penguins in the world, the blue penguin, only about a foot tall as they waddle up the beach. We’re here to tell you that they are cute as the dickens though we had first seen them in the Bay of Islands on the North Island.

I spent an afternoon and part of the next morning at the hospital doing paperwork and meeting my future colleagues. Everyone was incredibly friendly. Richard met a local wool merchant who taught him, and later, me, a bit about the variety of wool produced by the amazingly diverse breeds of sheep here in NZ. He also let Richard know about various “bloke” activities engaged in locally like going out and shooting Wallabies (another introduced pest—a group of 14 guys dispatched with 240 of them one evening). Richard and I also spent time sightseeing and got to see our future house, a 2 bedroom place nestled in a lovely if a little overgrown garden full of roses and fruit trees (apple, pear and plum). The second night there I was determined to meet our little penguin friends so we went down to the carpark at the harbor and, rather than join the tour, we joined 20 or so other cheap people who waited for the straggler penguins who come in somewhere else than where the tour goes. We were lucky just after dark to have a couple penguins come ashore just where we were all waiting quietly.

A few gawkers couldn’t help but take pictures which made the penguins freeze in alarm, but, at some unspecified signal, everyone present suddenly became quiet and froze in place and the penguins cautiously advanced up the shore. They waddled past several of our legs within inches, hiding in the shadows we cast from the nearby building lights. They were, well, sooooo cute!!!

We left Oamaru for our last hurrah before I start work and headed to Queenstown, center of the gravity challenge adventures (bungy jumping, canyon swinging, tandem skydiving, paragliding, you name it). I was flirting with the idea of a canyon swing and we stayed near one of the places that does this adventure. For merely $199, you can stand on a perfectly good platform out of harm’s way and lean over the edge where they will release you (in a harness) to free fall for 60 yards or so, then the line tightens and you swing through the canyon and are winched back in to the platform. As our campsite receptionist said when I asked her what she thought of it, she said she hadn’t done it but she had observed it and “there’s a whole lot of screaming involved.”

So, rather than join the people “confronting their fears” as the brochures suggest, we headed out to do one of the most breathtaking hikes we’ve done. I was humming “The hills are alive with the sound of music,” through much of the hike as the scenery was staggeringly beautiful. It took us past the Shotover Canyon swing where we watched a couple people “take the plunge” (and scream—I guess they all do!)

We took the Moonlight Track past the Moonlight Valley and encountered very few other souls on the tramp. When we finally crested Ben Lomond Saddle and dropped into Queenstown to pick up the gondola ride the rest of the way down, we suddenly found others on the trail. But before that, only a few hardy souls and a few cows and sheep. It was 6 hours spent in paradise.

We left Queenstown with a list of things left to do (canyon swing is still on the list) but time was running short. We headed toward Mt Cook hoping to catch a glimpse of NZ’s tallest peak, but, although we drove on a sunny, gorgeous road along the lake that leads up to the peak, just after the visitor center, apparently the evil spirits of Mordor descended upon us and a curtain of broiling clouds and rain obscured our view. Oh well, another visit for another time. The scenery we saw was fantastic enough minus the full view—what a teaser!

Next stop is the US for a whirlwind visit with friends and family and then we’re back to start work in Oamaru and live like Kiwis for the rest of the year, which becomes winter in a couple of months.

Dispatch 54 New Zealand Hot Spots

2010-04-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

5 March - 12 March, 2010

New Zealand sits on a fault line between the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates. That fault line goes right through the middle of the North Island where the crust of the earth is particularly thin and there are several active volcanoes. Naturally, Maori folklore has many interesting theories for the natural disasters having to do with their mythical ancestors, but, truly, the area is worthy of some magical thinking.

We finally left Auckland on a sunny day after tidying up a few loose ends. We bought a car

instead of a van. We had decided that we would “tent” our way around the country and buy a slightly newer era car focusing on the seller rather than, per se, the car. As a result we ended up buying what is referred to here as a rather “flash” car, that is, an Audi A4 in beautiful condition. It has been a dream on the road so far if a bit of a challenge to fit all our camping gear into. My work permit finally came through and we heard the day we left Auckland that Richard’s had been approved as well. We got an extension from Customs to allow our boat to stay in the country duty-free for another year and, at the very last second, we learned our jib repairs were done (the UV protection layer for those of you who might care about those kinds of things) and our inverter had been repaired as well. Qayaq was tucked away for the duration as best we could.

And off we went! We visited Muruwai beach, a beautiful black sand beach on the Tasman Sea near Auckland and surveyed the large Gannet colony that nests there with their chicks.

They nest just out of “pecking range” as the information sign says, which is to say, pretty close to one another. Gannets are a beautiful huge bird with a lovely yellow head.

From there we headed to Rotorua, the center of geologic activity on the North Island. This also happens to be a center of Maori civilization. The area has steaming land forms as one drives along and many volcano cone type land formations.

We chose to visit the village of Whakarewarewa where Maori families still live in a wild geothermal hot spot. Only 20 something families can live there because they can only build on

solid rock—anything less than

that could sink into a hot pool at any moment. Many areas of the village were fenced off having recently become hot pools. The villagers literally bath and cook using the natural pools there.

Many of the pools stay at 100 degress Celcius, boiling temperature. We ate corn cooked in one of these pools. There are also boxes scattered through the village that are natural ovens where chicken is roasted, veggies cooked. Our guide was very amusing and really brought the village alive. There are geysers on one edge of the village. The tour ended with a demonstration on making decorative skirts from flax and traditional Maori song and dance.

Maori carving and dance show signs to us of more Indonesian influence than strictly Polynesian. For instance, in the dance, eye position plays a role, seen in Balinese dance. It was a fascinating day and we walked around more of the geothermal area to observe after the tour. The area reminded us of Yellowstone and, indeed, there are limestone terraces that have formed in the area, but some of the most famous were destroyed in the 1800’s by the volcano eruption of Tarewa. Of course, as you’d expect, there are hot springs everywhere and the motor camp we stayed in had their own pools which we enjoyed.

The next day we went to another volcanic/ geothermal area:

Wai-o-tapu.

There we walked the self-guided tour past gorgeous hot pools, gurgling mud pools and limestone formations all within a gorgeous forest area. Truly the area held us spellbound.

From there we went to Tongariro National Park to “tramp” (hike) “arguably the best day hike in New Zealand” according to the Lonely Planet. The area is known to “Lord of the Ring” fans by a familiar outline of one of the volcanic peaks, Ngauruhoe, known in the movie as Mt. Doom. The day we hiked, Mt Doom showed none of its lightning from the sky and other special effects from the movie folks, in fact it looked picturesque and placid.

The other two volcanoes on the hike were Ruapehu, the most active of the three with the last eruption in 2007 and a fairly major one in 1995. The last volcano is Mt. Tongariro which is the oldest and quietest of the three. The tramp is challenging, 19.4 km (around 11.5 miles), climbing up between 2 of the

volcanoes, past 2 craters, emerald lakes colored by the volcanic minerals and down the north slope of Mt. Tongariro ending in a lovely forest with a cute little waterfall near the end. It was a hike that provided nearly everything—sunshine to start, clouds and mist by the end and scenery to die for. We were tired but fulfilled by the end. Oh, and we did the hike with over a hundred other people! One thing that puzzled us having been there is why the hobbits took such a difficult path to Mordor—I mean there are boardwalks and stairways to get you up the track—why take the hard way? The area was so beautiful we stayed and did another hike the following day, a bit shorter we must admit.

The weather has turned quite a bit cooler on us as we head into fall here. In fact the nights have been, at times, frankly, COLD. So, we learned that these camp parks we’ve been using also often provide basic cabins in addition to tent sites. No bathroom, use of a communal facility for toilet and kitchen, but inside nonetheless. We decided we are too soft to stay in the tent in this weather and have started to sleep indoors. Wimps, we know.

We headed down to Wellington by way of the west coast where we stayed in a beach camp but discovered a terribly cute town called Foxton on our drive. This little place must have more museums per square kilometer than any place we’ve ever been. And the buildings were well preserved, the stores full of cute stuff.

Wellington is another marvelous artsy city. We literally spent most of a day at the fantastic museum called Te Papa. It was 6 floors of fascinating exhibits that somehow managed to have just enough to be interesting, enough interactive parts to the display to keep us awake and not to overwhelm. The visiting exhibit was about the city of Pompeii buried by volcanic ash complete with a 3D movie. It was so well done and even more fascinating given our recent visit to the volcanic central plateau. We ate lunch at the café and stayed for more. Just as we were leaving the museum, the city was hit by a fluke storm that was unpredicted. Now Wellington is often referred to as “Windy Welly” so wind is no stranger. And Wellington sits on Cook Strait where, when we first arrived in the country, gale force winds were being warned about 5 days out of 7. Still, this storm really blew people out of the water, or, in one case of a yacht racer, into the water. It came on in minutes with black clouds that suddenly poured rain sideways. We just sat down in the museum lobby to watch the carnage. Literally people were having trouble standing up against the wind. We learned the next day that the peak gusts were 150 km/hr. (around 90 mph!) The storm came from the south (Antarctica) bringing cold with it—the temperature dropped 11 degrees Celcius in minutes!! We sat and waited and finally braved the rain to find ourselves a place for dinner. We had a great dinner and finally drove “home” to our motor camp. That was the moment we learned that our “flash” car did have one defect—the heat doesn’t work. Oops, that might prove to be a problem this winter!

The next day, we took in more of the city. We were there during their arts festival so we stopped in some galleries. Since the weather was beautiful the second day, we took the cable car to the Botanic Garden.

This garden is huge and beautiful and thickly forested and planted. It was really remarkable. We had another great lunch at the café there and walked back down to town in the afternoon sunshine.

We wandered Cuba Street, one of the retail centers and finished with a drink on the waterfront with live music reaching us from a variety of venues nearby. It was a great short visit and I definitely want to go back. The city has a picturesque harbor from which we depart to take the ferry across Cook Strait to the South Island.

We’ve had to get used to the idea that heading further south means the world gets colder. I suppose we’ll just have to buck up and get used to it. While we walk around in several layers topped with fleece, our Kiwi friends are often barefoot in shorts and t-shirt. In New Zealand there are no signs that say “no shoes - no service” as stores would not have any customers in most cases. In Auckland we have seen women walking out of their office jobs “barefoot” carrying their shoes in their hands. We have a lot to learn! But I bought a new “jumper” (kind of a sweater of merino wool—but feels more like fleece) today that the saleswoman assured me was “toasty as.” That’s good because it’s getting under 10 degrees at night (Celcius)!

Dispatch 53 “Bureaucratic As”

2010-02-14T16:35:00.000-08:00

February, 2010

Kiwis have some funny ways of speaking English. Their “e” sound is more like an “i” so my name is “Bitsy” here. They call the thing on the front of the car the “bonnet” and the place in the back where you store your luggage the “boot”, cookies are “biscuits”, “lots of” translates to “heaps of” and so on. Perhaps the most unique and charming figures of speech are where they don’t finish the similes and just say things are “good as” or “sweet as” or “cheap as.” Friends who have lived here for several years after cruising here on their boat gave us a quick seminar and we thought some of these things were quaint but perhaps not universal. But, the “cheap as” expression is even on a website for discounted airfares. They have the occasional airfare between cities of $1 (which you basically have to be on-line full time to grab) but then they have the category called, “Also Cheap As.”

Well, after dealing with the New Zealand Medical Council for over a year and now grappling with the Immigration department, I am here to coin a new term, “bureaucratic as!” Here we are, people who actually achieved a 1 year visa in Mexico in Spanish, on our own without the benefit of a translator or agent, checked in and out of French Polynesia in French, on our own, twice, without the benefit of an agent or translator and we have been brought nearly to tears by the sheer incomprehensibility of the process we are attempting to get a work permit. You might think that a country often crying out about its severe shortage of doctors would be greasing the skids to make it easy for yours truly to come and work here. But you think wrong.

First there’s the application, written allegedly in English. So far, here’s my favorite quote (one of the check boxes in the health section): “If you have not spent three months or more in the past five years in a place that is not on the list, you do not have to provide a medical certificate at this stage.” Unfortunately, we had spent three months or more in the past five years in a place that is not on the list so we did have to provide a medical certificate with a chest x-ray, we think. But, without the examples they gave I would have been undone by the triple negative.

Then, there’s the Medical Council whose job it is to decide whether I qualify for work as a doctor in New Zealand. But part of the review of documents is done, NOT in New Zealand, but in Australia--what they don’t have enough doctors in New Zealand to review your documents? – OH right they have a doctor’s shortage here. They required “original certified copies” of all my documents (are those originals, copies, or what?) which are generally referred to as “qualifications” here (as in diplomas, certifications, degrees, what have you). And, after a year of pondering my suitability, they have yet to decide. After 20 years of practicing medicine in what is commonly referred to as “the most advanced medical system in the world” (OK, don’t get me started on that one, suffice to say that I didn’t get my training in Grenada), they are still hemming and hawing and have required that I have 2 supervisors before they’ll let me work here. Did I mention that they have a severe shortage of doctors? Is it any wonder?

So between our car disaster, our boat issues (there were more, but then, there always are, aren’t there?), the rodential stowaway and the bureaucratic insanity, we have not seen nearly as much of this country as we intended and we haven’t been as favorably impressed with the place as we were initially. We hope that will all change for the better.

Meanwhile, let us admit that we’ve enjoyed the heck out of our little sojourns out in the Bay of Islands and our trip down this stunning coast to Auckland. And we’ve had a blast every time we’re in Auckland even if it’s only to get medical exams for our immigration paperwork. (By the way, neither of the doctors we saw were originally trained in NZ, hmmm, makes you wonder, huh? How did they get through that paperwork?) We’ve seen blue penguins, a Dwarf Minke whale, dolphins, identified innumerably new birds, swatted many mosquitoes and sand flies, tried but failed to participate in the national sport of running over possums (they are an introduced pest here) and “tramped” (hiked) the many Department of Conservation trails. By the way, switchbacks occur on their trails only in situations where the alternative would be rappelling—the trails go straight up and down as a general rule. So NZ has much to recommend it. The cost is similar to the US even given the exchange rate.

But living in a country where first names suffice has its charm. While in a hardware store looking at new propane tanks, we told the salesman we would go to our boat and check the size and, if it fit, we’d be back to buy a second one. He said that was fine but we’d have to buy the first one before we took it to the boat. What he then said was that if we were locals, we could have just taken it and paid for it later. At that very moment a local lady came in, grabbed something off the shelf and walked out saying she’d be back later to pay. And we went to open a bank account here. The banker gave us all the information we needed to wire money from the US to our bank account and then opened us an account, with nothing in it. Our balance was zero. We were bummed that, in the half hour we were in the bank, we didn’t even make any interest. Oh yeah, another quaint thing is that the savings accounts earn 4-5% interest here. Remember that?

So, as with any other paradise, this one has its good and bad sides.

Dispatch 52 More New Zealand

2010-02-14T16:28:00.000-08:00

January, 2010

Here’s the latest from New Zealand. We took a road trip in our van to Cape Reinga, one of the northernmost points in the country. It is where the Tasman and Pacific oceans meet which we, of course, assumed was a symbolic description. Actually, we were there on a very calm day and, standing on the headland where the lighthouse is, we could look down and see separate wave trains from the 2 oceans which met and clashed below us in a whitewater frenzy. Fascinating! The Cape is gorgeous and a very spiritual place for the Maori—they believe that the souls of the dead depart to the underworld here. We had beautiful weather and some great camping.

We outfitted the van minimally to be able to sleep inside and prepare food. We arrived at a campsite in the midst of the busiest season of the year, the week between Christmas and New Years. Kiwis are great campers and they don’t seem to go in for the tiny pup tent approach. No, they set up camp for a week, with a large group of friends or family in their tents in whole communities. The tents have multiple rooms, and, judging from the peeks we took inside, are complete with folding cots and furniture. The temporary patio is equipped with large awnings, tables, chairs, BBQ and some of the camps had shower tents. They are amazing!

We had 2 chairs and a cooler for a table outside our van. Talk about minimalist camping! Starting one evening at around 5:30 PM, we were SWARMED with mosquitoes. We were maddened despite being fully dressed and having repellant on any exposed skin. As the rangers came by to collect from us, we asked about the mosquitoes and they told us we were in the “bush” where it was worse, but it was nearly the last site available now we knew why. They said to use repellant. A few minutes later we were visited by 2 friendly kids, perhaps age 9 and 11, brother and sister, who were fundraising for their trip to the South Island to go to ski camp. They were carrying the box we have come to associate with “World’s Finest” chocolate bars and we were momentarily distracted from our mosquito issue, eyes aglitter at the thought of helping out these nice kids while having a dessert of chocolate. (If you think we weren’t already carrying chocolate for dessert, all I can say is, you don’t know us very well… but you never turn down the opportunity to maintain your supplies.) They finished their spiel about ski camp with, “So we’re selling…sun screen or insect repellent to raise the money.” What, no chocolate? Well, naturally, we had to buy insect repellent, but we did ask the rangers if they had put the kids up to it or if they were their kids. Welcome to NZ! Next, we met the woman in the camp next to ours when I asked her if the mosquitoes were bothering them. She said, “Don’t you have fly spray? Oh you must get some, here let me have you borrow mine.” Fly spray is a product by Raid that the campers here spray inside their tent an hour or so before bedtime to rid the place of mosquitoes. Well, we were just desperate enough to spritz a little, really a lot, into our van to see if it would help. The mosquitoes were really not bad that night in our little van bedroom, but Richard wheezed all night (not a good thought about what he inhaled). By morning, we found the dashboard was covered with hundreds of dead mosquitoes. In truth, it was very satisfying.

I had learned how to make flowers from flax leaves, a Maori craft, and used the technique to mark our trail so we wouldn't get lost.

On the road back from our travels to our boat, we climbed one of many long windy hills. As we pulled off at the scenic overlook at the top, we noticed water pouring out of our van—not good we thought. Then we noticed the water was mixed with black oil. Much worse, we thought. Well, to make a long, very sad saga, very short, the car probably blew a head gasket on that climb. In our research about repairing it, we learned that this style vehicle with a diesel engine has this problem quite often and we couldn’t find anyone very enthused about repairing it or even taking it off our hands for parts. We tried to sell it “as is, where is,” with no takers and finally found a diesel mechanic who wanted to buy it to work on himself. Needless to say, we took a big loss on the thing but have emerged sadder but wiser about buying our next vehicle.

Meanwhile, since bad things happen in threes, we’ve had issues with our 30 year old diesel engine on the boat. We arrived and made the mistake of talking to other cruisers who were replacing their engine (same vintage) with a rebuilt one. Their symptoms sounded much like ours, sort of. (You’d think someone who lived through medical school where everyone gets every disease because the symptoms are fairly general and you have to understand the degree of the symptoms to understand the disease would have known better!). So we decided to do a little maintenance on it. After having the compression checked, the injectors leaked for the first time in their lives. Well, about 5 years ago, our good friend Harold said we ought to have them rebuilt, so, since they were leaking, we went ahead and had them rebuilt along with the fuel pump and, just when we thought all was good, we find that they still leak. Damn frustrating.

And lastly but not leastly, on one visit out to these very beautiful islands by boat, we returned to hear we had picked up a stowaway. That is, a rat came aboard at some point in our travels and took up residence. In 6 short nights (they are nocturnal so, other than the morning-after mess, we didn’t notice our “crew” except at night), this animal managed to reduce us to cranky, frantic, blood-thirsty crazed human beings. We could hear it chewing various parts of the boat, ripping at things deep in compartments where we couldn’t find it and generally disrupting our sleep. It got into everything—tore up foam, toilet paper and pipe insulation for nest material, chewed on fruit that was in hanging nets in the cabin, ate our CHOCOLATE, nuts, cranberries and we’re pretty sure we haven’t found the last of the destruction. Despite 5 loaded traps, rat poison and a bowl of anti-freeze (covering all the bases of the various bits of advice we got on how to do this creature in), it lived with us for 4 more nights, evading all our desperate measures. At last, one final night of no sleep, we found the thing in our galley, Betsy put a trap right by the last place she had seen it. Twenty minutes later, we heard the most satisfying sound of a trap being sprung and, upon investigation, found the critter fading into oblivion. YES!!! We gave it a burial at sea. Never have two caring, life-sustaining healer types of people been reduced to such blood thirst! “Bring it on”!

Now, having been here a while, we hear announcements on VHF about checking your boat for rodents before venturing out in the islands so the islands can remain rat-free. I know where I stand between a rat-free boat and a rat-free island! I’d put that sucker back on the island in no time!!

But to offset the series of unfortunate events, I have negotiated a job on the South Island of New Zealand in a small town called Oamaru at a rural hospital. This town is known for its Victorian history and for the colony of blue penguins who live offshore and come ashore each evening. The uniform response we get when we tell Kiwis where we will be living is, “Oooh, it’s cold there, BUT it’s really beautiful.” So we look forward to the next chapter of life and work in New Zealand. We intend to leave our boat in Auckland, where, if we find the time, we should be able to fly in and enjoy some sailing in the Hauraki Gulf. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, we should be in the US for some family events this spring before work starts.

Dispatch 51 Arrival New Zealand

2010-02-14T16:18:00.000-08:00

November 21, 2010

New Zealand – the cruiser’s “Promised Land”. The country relishes boating on a scale known almost nowhere else—the main city, Auckland, is referred to as the City of Sails. We felt extremely welcomed from the second we arrived. The infrastructure for boat entry and processing was as efficient as it gets. First, we had the fly-overs so the officials knew we were arriving. Then there are volunteer services that we could call into to track our progress, and, if the need had arisen, to organize help for us. We arrived at Opua in the Bay of Islands where Customs has a Quarantine dock for all arriving yachties. We tied up there, and, as we had arrived after 5 PM on a Saturday, spent the night waiting to be processed the next morning, Sunday (Customs works 7 days a week here). The Q dock, is separated by just a narrow fairway from the marina and we were greeted by many of our boater friends upon arrival. However, the Q dock is locked so that we couldn’t escape or get rid of contraband before we were searched. However, two of our boat friends snuck us in some ice cream that night as a welcome gift, but I don’t think anyone would be prosecuted for that kind of trade and we made sure to get rid of the evidence so to speak.

The Customs and Immigration officials could not have been nicer. They actually came around with a welcome packet presented in a locally woven flax carry bag which they handed out to each boat. Within was a wealth of information about local services, brochures and maps and, hey, what’s this? INSECT REPELLENT!

That very morning, we learned about New Zealand’s dirty little secret, well kept from all who look forward to visiting until this very moment when I will share it with you. There are sand flies in New Zealand who will eat you alive and drive you crazy if you don’t take evasive action. While speaking with a Custom’s agent, I looked down at a little itchy spot on my ankle, innocently bare (without cover of repellant) and found a black spot which represented the sand fly. As I smacked him, I noted the spot of blood he left behind. By the end of day 1, Richard and I were covered in bites on our feet and ankles, but, it wasn’t until day 2 that we experienced the profound itching that follows. And these spots are not the type to fade in a few days time, no they leave what, to date, has been an indelible mark. UGH! But, we can learn from our errors and from the first day, we learned to wear pants and socks or smear repellent on before emerging from the boat. The good news was we have mosquito netting and the sand flies are just a bit bigger than no see ums so the netting keeps the little buggers out. Whew.

OK, so we got the worst over with at once. After that, it’s been all gravy. The country is beautiful and the people are incredibly friendly. When a propane tank we had ordered failed to arrive, the man at the marine shop lent us his off his boat. Everyone freely offers touring advice. The islands here are stunning, wooded with walking trails, protected anchorages and all within a few miles of each other. The Department of Conservation works hard to make walking trails very accessible and there are heaps of them everywhere. We took a road trip to visit the Kauri forest and saw giant Kauri trees, 15 feet or more in diameter in a beautiful forest. During the same day, after walking a few miles through the forest to view the trees, we were able to go to the beach on the Tasman Sea and walk a trail down to the headland and around on the beach. Not only is it beautiful and well maintained, but the country is of a manageable size. The roads, however, are 2 lane and very curvy so road travel is not fast—but it is stunningly beautiful.

Our guide book put the whole population of New Zealand at 4.8 million while the population of sheep is 40 million. That means that the whole country with 2 major islands, is smaller than greater Chicago in terms of population. As our friends told us, everyone is on a first name basis here. Though the scenery in the Bay of Islands reminds us of our Puget Sound area, when looked at closely, the vegetation is interesting and quite different, like the trees that are actually ferns!

And finally a few weeks after our arrival, I got word that my medical license will be approved and I can start looking for work. Now I have to look for motivation to work. Perhaps an expensive road trip around the country will be enough motivation, for, though the NZ dollar is below the US dollar, it is not enough to offset the fairly steep prices here. Sigh, when will we learn to stop looking for something for nothing?

We bought a van. It seems that everyone is in the business of either buying or selling vehicles for travel around the country. There are many venues for shopping for used vehicles, from the usual used car lots to car auctions in most major cities and huge car sale at the race track every Sunday in Auckland, and another car sale at a car park near the harbor in Auckland on Saturday. Then there’s Trade Me, the NZ equivalent of E-Bay. To say the least, it’s bewildering, that is, until you realize that some of the same vans turn up in multiple places. We started with a couple for sale on Trade Me and couldn’t come to an agreeable price for the one we wanted. That owner showed up at the Saturday sale where we finally did purchase our van. Vans poured in from 8-9 in the morning and the owners just let everyone look and take a short test drive. One guy whose van had all kinds of new parts on the engine let us drive his car. We took it 4 blocks and stopped it to check out all the features (windows, sunroof, etc.) and change drivers. When I got in to re-start it, it didn’t start and then the battery began to make that distinct sound like it was going dead, which it promptly did. OK, guess that van wasn’t for us. The owner came running back with Richard, opened the hood where he found the battery cable detached and we saw that the connection was no good. He jumped it with another battery he had in his car (battery fluid running all over the place as he turned it upside down while I winced.) Very amusing. Luckily, we found a van we like at the price that seemed good and, on the 3 hour drive from Auckland back to the boat, she continued to run.

We just finished the longest day of the year, December 22, celebrating Richard’s 60^th birthday as many times as we could. We celebrated with friends in Auckland and here in the Bay of Islands. He is happy to reach this big milestone and neither looks nor acts his age.

It is Christmas season and, just like in the tropics, being in the upside down world of the Southern Hemisphere makes for some conflicting images. While I shopped in the grocery store amongst all the specials for the holidays, it was 78 degrees outside and I was humming along to “Sleigh bells ring, are you listening, in the lane, snow is glistening…” or “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas…” I giggled to myself. Rather than the dark days with snow last Christmas, we are putting on sunscreen every morning and squinting in the bright sunshine, sipping the last of our champagne for Richard’s birthday in the fading light at 9:00 PM. Don’t worry, when you all are running through sprinklers for July 4, we’ll be battling icestorms in the dark. Fair’s fair.

Meanwhile, we are looking at job offers from far afield and trying to understand how to make a decision about where to live in this beautiful and varied country. Hope all your holidays were wonderful and keep in touch.

Dispatch 50 North Minerva Reef

2009-12-03T13:17:00.000-08:00

Nov 6 - Nov 12, 2009

Minerva Reef is a place we have both dreamed about for years. The

description of it always made us curious to see it and, as it is en route to New Zealand, it is frequently a stopping off point for yachts. Before we arrived, 22 yachts had been anchored inside the reef. There are both
North and South Minervas. They are the remains of old atolls which

have all but sunk into the sea leaving a very dangerous navigational obstacle, a nearly circular

reef which doesn’t even show at high tide. At low tide, the reef is visible a couple feet above the level of the ocean. There is one area of small sand beach and a navigational light

placed here by Tonga, the
titular owners of the reefs. When we approached by sea, it appeared to be a hole in the ocean which was calm; the boats anchored there looked for all the world like they were anchored in the middle of the ocean. While we had considered carrying on past the reef as our passage was going well, we decided to stop and have a look.

We had left Nuku’alofa in a very good wind on a very rainy day. The passage here was notable for reasonable winds and seas and gloriously, no seasickness!

Within North Minerva were anchored some boats that were friends of ours including our

friends of 4 years, Bruce and Alene on a boat called Migration. We pulled in, anchored (there is room for probably hundreds of boats here) and were immediately invited for hot showers and dinner aboard Migration. We had made dinner for them upon arrival to Nuku’alofa after their passage and it is such a luxury to be treated so well when one is sleep deprived and exhausted. We accepted. The next day we had a jubilant visit from them to invite us to a party the following day. With a little encouragement, they finally told us the reason for the party—they had become engaged that very morning! Bruce, ever the trickster, had thrown a bottle overboard with a message in it. He got Alene to notice the bottle and they fished it out. The

message said, “WYMM” (will you marry me) and she had said an enthusiastic “yes”! While we walked on the reef that afternoon, we told them that some other friends of ours also anchored here at Minerva were both ship’s captains and had performed a wedding ceremony at Suwarrow, legally marrying another cruising couple. Their eyes lit up but they needed to think about it more.

The reef is fascinating. We were able to walk on it at low tide. It was a few hundred feet wide blocking the ocean swells from reaching inside except for a little bobble at high tide. We snorkeled just inside the reef and found a little microenvironment there. As we swam back to our boats, we splashed quite a bit because we were cold and swimming hard. Alene called out “shark” when she saw the gray shark that had come to investigate the sudden splashing. As we stopped and hung in the water quietly, he swam silently away. Later we snorkeled outside the reef where we found gorgeous and healthy coral in abundance.

Bruce and Alene decided that the opportunity was too great to pass up and they decided to get married in the middle of the ocean. So within a day, the whole random group of boats

assembled there conspired to make a wedding. I made a 2 tiered white wedding cake as Alene

requested and decorated it with a little Ecuadorian couple woven from straw that we had on our boat as well as shells collected in Panama with Bruce and Alene. Everyone brought nibbles to enjoy after the midday wedding, performed on their trimaran, we all witnessed their union in one of the most remote places on earth. It was a stellar day. For the wedding reception, they motored their boat towing about 5

dingys and all the guests to the pass, anchored, and everyone snorkeled outside on the reef. What a day! We were so happy to be there to share that great moment with them.

While we were snorkeling another day, a New Zealand Air Force Orion airplane made several low passes over Minerva Reef. They called to each of the sailboats there to verify their identity. While on our passage to New Zealand we were flown over by a customs plane who also called

to us. While some may feel paranoid from the surveillance, we found the attention comforting—were we to have trouble en route to New Zealand, obviously they were aware of our presence and available to help. Eventually, it came time to leave and head on passage to New Zealand. Everyone takes this passage very seriously and we all watched the weather like hawks. Richard and I had engaged the services of a weather router to help us pick our moment to leave, but it still felt uncertain as nobody can know the weather for sure and several boats left the day before we did. As luck would have it, our delay meant we were just at the outside of the one major frontal system that passed through when we approached New Zealand.

The passage to NZ was very calm. We had been looking for a mild weather window and we found it. If anything, the problem was too little wind. We ended up motoring 113 hours to try to move forward on the calm seas with no wind. We sailed the rest of the time on light wind

except for one day where, although gales had been predicted (35-45 knot winds), and even our weather router wrote a special e-mail to warn us about this, we experienced nothing of the sort, no wind over 26 knots and that from behind, so we counted ourselves mighty lucky to have missed that little storm. Apparently, the weather was fairly extreme in NZ because we received a couple, “hang in there” type e-mails from friends assuming we’d really been blasted. We were not and for that we are eternally grateful. As Richard said, “It’s better to be lucky than good.” Our main frustration on the passage was the slow going, but, we were rewarded in the end with a passage without boat damage and arrival, at last, after 4 ½ years of travel with this as our destination, at the Bay of Islands, NZ. It is an amazing feeling to have achieved this final goal in our travels by boat.

Check-in to New Zealand was friendly, professional and efficient. Rumors had abounded about

the many things that would be scrutinized and removed from the boat, but the officials were polite and rational and, other than all fresh produce and our garbage, nothing was taken away.

So our next chapter includes travel in New Zealand to see more of the country and, possibly, if my license is finally approved (in the final stages at this point), some work here in the country. As always, our plans are fluid and we’ll continue to keep in touch.

Dispatch 49 Tonga (Ha’apai and Nuku’alofa)

2009-12-03T13:16:00.000-08:00

Oct 18 - Oct 26, 2009

Briefly we stopped in the long set of islands and reefs between Vava’u and Tongatapu called the Ha’apai group. These islands are small and lovely with white sand beaches and have extensive reef surrounding them. The navigation is a little more challenging because of the reefs. We only stopped at 3 of these islands but enjoyed long beach walks and shell collecting here. There were whales here as well although no close encounters for us. We stopped at one island with a village and were accosted by the local children once again asking our names, our ages and asking for lollies. We were impressed with the English these children had at a much younger age than elsewhere, then learned there was a Peace Corps worker on the island teaching them English. We also met the nurse practitioner who provides th

e health care here and at about 6 other islands (around 1800 people altogether) and found her with a whistle around her neck left over from her athletic event with the children that morning. Part of her health program is to get the kids out every morning to do some kind of sport. I also learned the expression for no smoking in Tongan at the health center: Tapu Ifi Tapaka.
Our stay in this group of islands was short and sweet because we were on a schedule to arrive in the capital in time for the big “end of the season” party. As luck would have it, the party was scheduled for my birthday and it is also called a “birthday” party for the resort that hosts it—its 7th birthday. The resort is called Big Mama’s Resort on a little island called Pangaimotu. When I e-mailed to RSVP our attendance I mentioned that the day was my birthday and was promptly e-mailed back that Big Mama’s chef wanted to bake me a cake. Wow, what fun.

Pangaimotu is a 15 minute ferry ride from the capital city of Nuku’alofa. Big Mama has figured out all the things that cruisers need to make life happier and she offers them at her resort. Besides the obvious food and drink, they offer to fill jerry cans of fuel, arrange for larger fill-ups at the town

dock, do laundry, sell crafts, offer several ferry rides into town for grocery shopping and will do virtually anything to make your stay better, for a price of course. From the moment we arrived we felt taken care of—the anchorage was calm and full of our friends and Big Mama was very warm and friendly. We got a few things done before the party, but some of our time had to be spent with Big Mama because she had bought some fabric to make a traditional Tongan outfit for me to wear at the party and to take as a gift. I was floored by her generosity.On my birthday, we spent the day shopping in town, came back for a final fitting of my outfit and got ready for the party which was a costume party for Halloween. One other cruiser who had helped arrange the party had a Tonga outfit made for her too and she and I were treated like queens. We had a traditional woven skirt covers put on with beautiful woven belts and were seated on “thrones” in places of honor. The woven skirt covers are thick, hot, and awkward in case anyone wants to know—as best I could tell, they are indistinguishable from the weavings that are used as floor coverings! Dinner was a traditional Tongan feast preceded as usual with speeches of thank you by Big Mama, etc. I forgot to mention that this whole evening is FREE. Marcy, the other “queen for the day” and I sat on our thrones wondering whether and when we could go partake of some food, when, magically plates full of food

arrived in front of us and our drink orders were filled. WOW! To cap the whole thing off, Big Mama had made a cake for her resort’s birthday and another cake for mine— chocolate because that’s the only type she likes. A woman after my own heart! As more speeches were made, a group of my girlfriends from this cruising season came up and presented me with their birthday gift: a lei of giant chocolate bars purchased in town and decorated with ribbon. I was blown away. At last I was free to take off my overskirt and, as there was a live band, we danced until the party ended. It was a birthday I will long remember.At the birthday party, I met a Tongan woman named Malaia who had lived much of her adult life in the US and had married a US man. They have since become divorced and her two boys live with him while her daughter has moved back to Tonga with her. She had some amazing stories to tell. She was working for a company as a secretary when they had some embezzlement and fraud issues. Because of her role in the company, her name was on fraudulent documents so she was indicted with the rest of the employees. But, as a green card alien, she became immediately deportable and was considered a foreign detainee. Because her husband and children were living in the US, she opted to go to prison in the US as a detainee rather than be immediately deported to Tonga. She spent 5 years in prison and has written a memoir, I was an Alien to describe her experience which, as she told it to us over the next couple days, sounded pretty deplorable. She, for some reason, took to me and invited Richard and me to church and then a traditional Tongan Sunday meal afterward. Our friends from the boat Migration, Bruce and Alene, joined us as well.

Malaia brought us to the church in town where the King usually attends although he was out of town and not there, but his mom (the Queen mum) was in attendance. We were seated in an area where the nobles usually sit and listened to, as usual, the beautiful singing and the Methodist service. After the service, we went to Malaia’s boyfriend’s house where we enjoyed the Sunday feast of food cooked over the umu (oven in the earth). Her boyfriend was a banker, now retired, who is distantly part of the noble family. Interestingly, his house burned down over a year ago, and, in contradistinction to how any of us would have dealt with that, especially given that he was a banker and clearly of a socioeconomic strata one would expect something different of, his house remained a shell and he was living in some temporary shelters on the property along with his pigs and dogs and many children. He came from a family of 10 kids and he has, I think, 11 children and many grandchildren. We met several of the family members during our lunch.
The Sunday feast took place out in the driveway on a folding table and featured exquisite food. Malaia understood that we would enjoy taking part in a “regular” family occasion and this was just an ordinary Sunday luncheon at a Tongan family house. Dish after dish was pulled from the umu with pork, chicken, corned beef, veggies, all cooked in this earth oven within packets of taro leaves, some with coconut milk to flavor them. We ate until we were stuffed and then were brought back to the ferry dock to go back to our boats. The next day, Malaia took us on a tour with Sio, her boyfriend. We saw most of the island with them. We saw a tree where the flying foxes nest, then went to an area where there were blowholes. I had almost

encouraged them to skip the blowholes since we had seen plenty in our marine travels. But, this coastline was astonishing. There were about 4 miles of coast with a cliff/porous rock material that create infinite blowholes. When the waves hit the coast, the blowholes spout all the way down the coastline in sequence and it is quite spectacular. There were 10 foot waves hitting and the reflected waves combined with them to give some 20 ft waves or so for our viewing

pleasure. It was quite a scene! We also saw the Trilathon, a Stonehenge type gateway of very

huge stone that nobody quite knows the purpose of. At a lovely protected bay we learned that Captain Cook formed a favorable impression of these islands (calling them the Friendly

Islands). Meanwhile, unbeknownst to him, the locals were plotting his murder, thwarted

only by their own disorganization.
Over the next several days, we enjoyed visiting with various friends while we readied t

he boat for the next big passage to New Zealand. When we finally felt ready enough, we checked out from Tonga. In the end, we spent nearly 2 ½ months in the country and would happily return!

Dispatch 48 Tonga (Vava’u Group)

2009-12-03T13:08:00.000-08:00

Sept 4 - Oct 17, 2009
Just 160 or so miles south of Niuatoputapu lies the next group of islands in the Kingdom of Tonga, the Vava’u group. The Vava’u group consists of about 150 islands. We arrived there after a 2 day passage that was a bit rough (seems they all are in this part of the world) and featured a 4 hour storm with 20-25 knot winds and rain that ended with one lightning strike very near the boat. This island group immediately reminded us of the Pacific Northwest and the waters in the San Juan Islands. It consists of islands close together with protected waters between and many secluded and lovely anchorages. As this is a world renowned cruising ground with charter sailboat companies, there is not much privacy. At this time of year, there are hundreds of yachts here and we have hooked up with many of the friends we’ve met along the way. Dinners, potlucks, parties on the beach abound and a good time is being had by all.

On the second day after our arrival and about 2 hours after we had settled into the anchorage at the main town, a calm peaceful Sunday morning, we were just preparing to go to church to hear the beautiful singing when a drama unfolded. There had been a big party the night before after a sailboat race to an outlying island, part of the festivities of welcoming the cruisers, when, in the morning, one of the revelers had dropped a heavy hatch on his finger nearly severing the finger. He had immediate “first response” care that was appropriate and someone mentioned that we had a doctor on our boat. So help was rallied to race him back to town where we were moored and he arrived, via a large power boat at 25 kts., within an hour of the accident. The hospital, like nearly everything except churches, was closed on Sunday and nobody was able to locate the town doctor.

So, with our friends on a yacht named Solace, both of whom are nurses,

we put our equipment together, set up an operating table in their salon, and our patient William arrived for treatment. We had everything we needed, his wound was pretty clean and, to be honest, Solace’s crew Paul and Gina had an amazing first aid equipment supply. We irrigated the wound and I was able to suture the end of his finger back on with Paul and Gina’s great support. William was stoic and all went well and we are hoping he’ll be able to keep his whole finger but time will tell. So much for a quiet Sunday morning. The Tongan law says that there is no work done on Sundays so no services are open and people are not allowed to swim either. But sewing up a finger can’t wait.

Gina and I again visited the local hospital. Very similar to Samoa, the hospital equipment looks like donated old equipment from the rest of the world. The vinyl hospital mattresses were often torn with the stuffing hanging out. The exam tables were the ones most offices in the US had replaced 20 years ago. The head doctor was a jack of all trades (his own laughing admission “and master of none” or so he said.) He was trained as a GP, had some general surgery experience and had also had training as a radiologist in Australia. He was doing a pregnant woman’s ultrasound when we first arrived and did minor surgery, took care of patients on ventilators, did amputations of bad diabetic feet if it was required, managed the diabetic sepsis, and delivered babies or did caesarians when needed. There were 2 other doctors there and some visiting medical students, a dentist and, at the time we were there, a visiting team of eye doctors going to the outlying villages and doing exams and cataract operations. Edgar, the head doctor, admitted to us that he was often short of supplies, but, as in Samoa, they did the best they could. Definitely it looked like challenging work conditions.

We were amazed that Vava’u, this island group, seemed to have a good amount of supplies. When we had left Niuatoputapu, they had been nearly out of flour, gasoline, lard for cooking and most other basics. There was little hope of a supply ship there in the near future as the supply ship and passenger ferry had sunk a couple of months earlier, with a large number of casualties. By contrast, the stores here seemed extremely well-supplied and a ship came in soon after we arrived. We are told that the supplies are a little thin here as well, but, compared to N, this place is paradise for shopping. We can’t figure out why the King cannot arrange for supplies to be delivered just 160 miles further north from here, but that is the way it seems to be.

One of the highlights of visiting this part of the ocean is that, at this time of year, the humpback whales migrate here to calf and mate. Tonga is one of the only places where one is able to swim with whales. So one day we went out on a whale watching boat with friends from another cruising boat to swim with the whales. It was a very windy day, but, much to our delight, one of the only sunny days we had experienced in a week and a half. Whales are hard to spot on windy days, but a female and calf were spotted and we waited our turn to go in and swim with them. We felt a little guilty that boat after boat would drive up to the whales and let people in the water to look at them up close, but we were so eager to do it, we tried not to feel too badly about it.

While we waited for our turn, we opted to visit another “not to miss site” called Mariner’s Cave, a cave within the rocks that is only entered by going through an opening 6 feet under water and swimming about 15 feet into the cave under water. It is not a hard swim, but psychologically, especially on the way in where it is dark, it takes a leap of faith. We tread water outside getting psyched, then dive down to the blue underwater opening. We swam hard with anxiety, not sure when we could rise without hitting our head on the rocks, and finally surface, inevitably, many feet further inside than we needed to go, but the margin of safety is a good thing. The cave is huge and does not communicate to the outside, thus it has an airlock feeling inside. As the water surges with the waves, one feels the pressure in one’s ears and the air in the cave mists up then clears within seconds. It was magical. We could also hear the whales singing while we were underwater!

At last it was our turn with the whales. We slipped into the water and were treated to a view of a young calf (they thought maybe only a week old), its mother and an “escort” whale, likely a male waiting for the female to be receptive according to our guide. We have seen many whales in our boating and kayaking lives, with some quite close encounters from our kayaks, but there was still nothing quite as exciting as swimming with these huge animals so nearby. Like an iceberg, the major bulk of a whale is underwater and being next to them only underscored how small we are and how big they are. With lazy tail flicks, they move faster than we can swim and, despite their bulk, are amazingly graceful. It was a marvelous experience, but one we savored without the pressure of trying to take pictures too. Sorry.

We’ve become very fond of Tonga and Tongans. I love walking through the market and saying hello in their language (Malo e leilei), how are you? fine, thank you, etc. They have been gracious at teaching me these few phrases and appreciative when we try to speak their language. They are friendly and welcoming. I finally attended the Catholic church service one Sunday where a hundred voices raised in harmony through much of the service. It was heavenly. The produce market here has a welcome assortment of so many of the foods we like and many we haven’t seen for months: green peppers, apples (imported from New Zealand), lettuce of all kinds, fresh herbs including basil, dill, cilantro, thyme, parsley, beautiful tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini. There are the ubiquitous bananas, papayas, pineapples, and coconuts. Town has its gravitational pull on us all as the center of our social life—often we put off leaving after we come in for provisions because we are invited to just one more event—and the place where we can all access internet from our boat. We befriended most of the “palangi” (foreigner) restaurant owners and it would be nothing to sit down to a cup of coffee and a 3 hour conversation about how in the world they came to live and run a business in Tonga and share our experiences with them. With all the cruisers passing through they were always interested in our stories as well.

One of the restaurant owners is from Southern India and holds a weekly Indian cooking class. We returned to town specifically so I could take part in the class. Not only was it a marvelous bonding experience with various women from boats I had not met previously, but the dinner was delicious and has led to more tasty experiments on the boat. Richard has been quite pleased with the change.

Our last sojourn into town came days early when we experienced a “fatal error” with our shipboard computer with which we communicate by SSB radio for weather information. Indeed, the hard drive had crashed irreparably in this 6 or 7 year old computer. We had a distressing and rather expensive few days of learning the fate of the computer and making the decision to replace it via Amazon and have a crew member on another boat who would be flying into the capital city at the end of the month bring it with him. We have become so dependent on computer technology in general, and, at this moment on the verge of our passage to New Zealand, we did not want to do without a computer to download the weather information while underway. It was a “birthday present”, Richard said, a new Toshiba netbook, similar to the stove I and the boat got several years ago, also a “present”.

The outlying anchorages in this area of Tonga vary from very protected harbors to wild islands exposed to the tumultuous Pacific on their outer side. We have often seen whales with some of our friends having had close encounters while swimming. The coral in one spot was the most beautiful we have seen and we went back several times to enjoy it. At another anchorage, we spent the night alone enclosed in a “one boat anchorage” within a reef “lagoon” hearing the swell break just behind our boat. That island could be circumnavigated in a 20 minute walk on a white sand beach. There are so many “bite-sized” islands in this country that are little gems. We walked between two islands at another anchorage, carefully navigating the bridging reef in ankle deep water. As we walked across the reef in the flat water of low tide, just 30 yards away from us the ocean waves were angrily breaking “outside” so that it looked like the ocean water was several feet higher than the reef level. Mirroring the water, the beach was placid and flat on the “inside” and the terrain was wild and rocky on the “outside” where the ocean batters it. Fortunately, we timed the tide right and the waves didn’t approach us as we walked up and down the 2 mile other island and back across to our “home” island. There are many long sandy beaches that invite walks and hours of shell collecting.

Besides the whales, other wildlife is interesting. The flying fox, a type of fruit bat, is ubiquitous here, and, at sunset each night, they fly from their nests to islands where they can feed. They are the most bizarre flying animal we’ve seen, looking just like little foxes but with a 3 foot wing span. We searched for and found one of their roosting trees where they hang upside down grooming and sleeping during the day. While snorkeling, we’ve found lion fish, pipefish, sea snakes, squid and new fish nearly every immersion. And last but certainly not least, every little village has its collection of pigs, piglets and very mangy dogs along with chickens and roosters, occasional cats, cows and horses. Sadly for us dog lovers, Tongans eat dogs as well as pigs. In fact, one of the store owners we befriended told us how her adopted stray dog had nearly ended up in the “umu” (underground oven), having been plucked from the street and taken to an off-island. Fortunately, one of the passengers on the little “ferry” to the island recognized the dog as a pet, its collar and recent surgical scar from being spayed, and insisted the dog be returned to town.

Tonga is truly an endless playground with pleasures to enjoy in air, land and sea and wonderful, generous people living much as they’ve lived for centuries. We are so lucky to be able to enjoy it. And this island group has allowed us to sail placidly between anchorages (5 to 10 miles apart) in protected waters. This is as good as it gets!

Dispatch 47 Tsunami!

2009-10-03T14:54:00.000-07:00

Sept 30, 2009
We experienced very little with the earthquake and tsunami, safely tucked into Neiafu Harbor in the Vava'u group of Tonga. People on land felt the quake, but we did not, only heard from a fellow cruiser at around 7:45 AM local time that there had been an earthquake and that there was a tsunami warning. The cruiser community (of at least 100 boats here at this time) got on the radio and started giving first hand observations. At first, nothing was noted. Then there was unusual current in an area called Mala Island where there is a coral bed. The bed was exposed (not normal at any tide), then water rushed back in and took out a couple resort wharfs and beached local boats. There was no visible wave. Other cruising boats noted strong currents and mostly raised anchor and floated around until the activity stopped. In Neiafu Harbor which is deep and entered through a bottle-neck, we saw only a rise and fall of the water level slowly over a 30 minute period. Perhaps as much as a 5 foot change about 4 times, but no wave, nothing dramatic.

By contrast, the day after the tsunami, 4 boats arrived from Niuatoputapu, the northern island of the Tonga group. We had spent 2 weeks there and were eager to hear about how they faired. That island has a nearly completely reef enclosed anchorage with a well marked quarter mile channel through the reef and the harbor faces north, the direction from which the tsunami came. Even before the tsunami, at best this island could have been called rural--very few businesses and people lived fairly simply in very basic structures. The living was very much subsistence, people depended on their plantations for most of their food (as well as their chickens and pigs). There were very few stores with few supplies thanks to the supply ferry which sank in June or so. They had received no supplies for 2 months when we were there a month ago. The water pump for the water supply of one of the villages had broken and been down for a couple weeks with no hope for repair any time soon and this was the water pump that supplied the medical center. The airport had been non-functional due to a broken beacon.

There were 6 boats in the anchorage at the time of the tsunami. 4 had already planned to leave just coincidentally and 3 of the 4 were out of the harbor by the time the tsunami hit. That morning, the boats that were leaving were so absorbed in preparations that only one realized there was an earthquake. That boat had their anchor up but was the last to leave the harbor. The other boats were already outside when, 25 min. after the quake, the water receded out so far the fringing reef was exposed (it never is at any tide). Seeing this, the outside boats radioed the boat still inside advising them to stay where they were and not enter the channel. Then a huge wave broke over the whole NE part of the island and continued to break over the reef.

The guys on the boat still inside the anchorage said, “It was like a movie. The wave was 20-30 feet high, steep and we just drove right into it. Luckily it wasn’t breaking and we rode up the front and down the back. After that, there were 4 more waves, maybe a little smaller than the first.” The wave broke over the island, swept inshore and swept out bringing with it all manner of debris including houses, roofs, clothes, yard tools, wood, everything that had been on the ground. They waited about 20 min. then left through the channel (channel markers severely damaged but they followed their GPS track) worried all the time about debris in their engine The boats described hearing a pounding on the corrugated tin roofs right after the earthquake that they belatedly realized was the villagers’ communication with each other to go to higher ground which they must have done for the death rate to have been so low as the villages are near sea level. The health center was also damaged which is amazing because it was a big sturdy cement building and had to have been at least 10-15 feet above sea level not to speak of a half mile from the water.

I offered to go up and help but local health officer assured me that a full medical team was already there. Two sailboats stayed there to help. We have talked to them on SSB and I also spoke with the head doctor at the Vava'u hospital who went the day after the tsunami to Niuatoputapu on a rescue mission and airlifted the most injured people back here. The island was devastated. The island consists of 3 villages with a total of about 950 people. 9 people are confirmed dead including 2 small children, the rest adults. The wave swept as much as 1 km into the island devastating 2 of the 3 villages that were on lower ground. The Health Center was reportedly destroyed as were the government buildings, the telecommunications building and the bank among all the residential structures destroyed.

People lost everything because they ran and their houses were destroyed. Relief efforts have come from the capital of Tonga (within the first 36 hours) and those critically injured were airlifted here. Supplies were brought up along with a medical team. Now there is a supply plane on its way up 72 hours after the event and the cruiser and local Tongan community have been collecting money, food, clothes and building supplies for the people on the island. In some ways the island is finally getting some of the attention it needs, but now the needs are enormously greater than they were when we visited before the tsunami. Reportedly the island smells horrific due to the dead animals and disruption of sewage.

It is mind boggling to realize that the place we had known and loved has been nearly completely destroyed in just a few minutes. As to cruising boats, there are some amazing stories and one tragedy when a sailor was swept off his boat in the huge wave that came into the harbor at Pago Pago, American Samoa, and was crushed in the water and drowned. One family survived in that harbor by holding onto a telephone pole as the wave crashed around them

Thanks to all our friends who e-mailed us in concern soon after the news reports. As you all can see, we are fine.

Dispatch 46 Tonga (Niuatoputapu)

2009-09-10T20:11:00.000-07:00

August 21 - Sept 4, 2009
Just a couple hundred miles from Samoa, we arrived at the northernmost island group of Tonga which spreads several hundred miles and 170 plus islands from north to south. This island, Niuatoputapu (referred to from now on as “N”), is remote and pretty primitive. The name means island of the many sacred coconuts. Of all the places we’ve been, this has been the one where our donations are most appreciated. We brought reading glasses to give away which are well appreciated here, and notebooks, pencils and pens for the kids. Just a couple weeks before our arrival, the ferry boat sank in high seas in Tonga. It was on international news because 70 plus people died as the ship went down very quickly (mostly women and children), but, it also happened to be the supply ship so this island received nothing of its usual supplies before we arrived (they only get supplies once/month)—they’ve had no supplies for more than 2 months. Even so, the people, though sad about the tragedy, have dealt with the lack of supplies with equanimity—they are not strangers to deprivation. Besides government jobs (and many of the people assume multiple roles in “government” here), we would be hard pressed to know how people actually make money here. There is no commerce per se, no tourism and the life is mainly subsistence. One islander makes money selling kava to his fellow Tongans and also travels to New Zealand to sell kava. The women make beautiful weavings that are sold in tourist shops in other islands and to Tongans overseas. The visiting yachties have been warmly embraced and become a vital part of island life, supplying donations of goods and sometimes money to keep things going. Today 5 of the guys went to see if they could get a village water pump working—vital because it serves the only health center on the island. More on that later.

On arrival, we are expected to ferry the 4 officials out to the boat for check-in. There were Customs, Agriculture, Health and Immigration officials. The Immigration official is also the principal of the high school so check-in had to occur after 4 PM. The Health official is the only health care provider on the island, a nurse practitioner, and she is also the head of the water commission. During the check-in process we arranged to visit the Methodist church in one of the villages followed by a luncheon at the local resort (singular), which rarely seems to have guests but whose proprietor has become integrated into the local community. The island consists of 3 villages (mainly extended family groups). When I asked about who everybody marries, the pastor’s wife giggled and says they often marry cousins but everyone ignores the family connections. The villages are all connected by a very rough dirt road, driving on either side of the road seemed to be okay unless you meet another vehicle and then the rules of the road apply but only loosely. Driving here is on the left side, we think.

The day after we arrived, a tour of a neighboring island had been planned and we came along. This island Tafahi is a perfect volcano cone, very picturesque and about 5 miles away. The husband of one of the Customs officials came from there and he leads tours there. We piled into his small motorboat early in the day and drove over to the island (8 of us) seeing humpback whale blows along the way (they come here and mate and calf this time of year, very exciting). The island has a primitive village at the base of the mountain which a couple of our group stayed at rather than hike. The rest of us hiked up to the top, an initially reasonable trail that became quite steep near the top and a little slippery. It was a good work-out and a dirty, sweaty, but satisfied group rested at the top. Niko, our guide, provided coconuts for liquid refreshment (using his machete masterfully to cut open the nuts so we could drink the juice), and collected bamboo to demonstrate the very fresh water within which we also drank. Niko was amazing. He caught 2 fish on our way over, cut down a banana stalk and quietly, in 5 minutes, fashioned a carrying device for the very heavy stalk, made of pandanus leaf and a green branch, as well as collecting the coconut and bamboo. He climbed the volcano slope in flip-flops and, when it got too slippery, reverted to bare feet. Meanwhile, in the village, they had collected mangoes, papayas and taro leaves for Niko to bring home. A woman in the village fashioned 2 baskets out of the palm leaves in just a short time to carry the supplies. A tired but satisfied group returned to our boats in a wild squall with rain so hard it blotted out all visibility for a short while.

The church visit was amazing for the beautiful harmonic singing and afforded us the opportunity to meet the minister, his daughter and her friend and his wife. We feasted with the nurse practitioner and her husband and family as well as other yachties that afternoon on the resort and walked around to some sunken lava tubes where we swam through lava tunnels and generally frolicked.

Gina and I visited the health center one morning. There we were aghast at the rudimentary conditions in which the nurse practitioner works. There are so few supplies or medicines, no lab testing facilities to speak of and so little equipment. Also, at the time we visited, the water pump was not functional so there is also no running water of all crazy things at a health center. But we were impressed with the public health nurses statistics on the entire population (1010 people), their diseases and health status and goals for each year’s improvement in population health. The nurse practitioner does an amazing job with what she has to work with. We offered to come work with her and I consulted on a puzzling case she was dealing with. This is the kind of place where anybody can help because the people have so little.

The villagers are delightful. The children see us coming and run out to say “hello” or “bye” (which I don’t think they understand). They say “what is your name” and “where’s my lolly” (which means candy) almost all in one breath? It is odd their training to beg for candy but they are distractable and take no for an answer and enjoy interacting with us in other ways after the initial contact. Richard was a hit with his camera and the kids love to mug for pictures and giggle when shown what they look like on the digital screen. And by the end of our visit, “where’s my lolly” was replaced with “take my picture”. Progress. On Sunday we took advantage of the bakery which only bakes that one day and doubles as a police station the rest of the week—the police chief is the baker.

Our calendar seems to be fuller here than anywhere else we’ve been. There was the volcano visit, the church visit and luncheon, the health clinic visit and subsequent volunteer mornings at the clinic, the water pump work party, the resort party, the village fundraiser with dancing, a feast, demonstration of weaving and chance to sample kava and a traditional pig roast. In between we cleaned the bottom of the boat and tried to enjoy the marine life—whales outside the reef and snorkeling on the reef. Yet, it is the least developed of the places we’ve been. It is wonderful to be drawn into the village life and we hope that we have been able to help, all in our unique ways. For the most part there have been around 7 or 8 boats here and we are all dragging our heels a little because the next island group in Tonga is where hundreds of yachties are finally drawing together for their last South Pacific destination before the cyclone season and the run for Australia, New Zealand or north of the equator. We are relishing the relative quiet and the marvelous community here.

One morning, Gina, an RN on another boat, and I went to the village clinic near the wharf. The nurse practitioner for the island rotates between the villages during the week and, at this village, she has to bring traveling supplies because they see patients in the community hall—a big empty room. Patients sat on mats waiting, kids playing, and we health care people sat on another set of mats on the floor seeing patients one by one. There is no privacy so no real exams are done (just the relevant part shown). But the nurse practitioner did make use of the gathered patients to do some group teaching on hypertension and diabetes (weight loss and exercise) since the gathered group had many people with these problem. There was no running water in the building and the mats we sat on were filthy so it was a stretch for me to tolerate those kind of conditions, especially when presented with several kids with disseminated scabies (!) But the people were stoic and patient with interesting medical issues and there was always lots of laughing. While the nurse practitioner went to deal with the water pump problem (wearing her other official hat), I saw patients myself, adding my notes to the charts. Her nurse was an excellent support, providing some translation services. Regardless of how busy we were, we stopped for tea around 11 AM which on this tropical island turns out to be coconut water (from fresh coconuts) and bananas. Very civilized. When we packed up to go, someone had brought more fruit for us to take with us and some cooked sweet potatoes as a gift. Overall, it was a lovely experience and enriched my life of travel.

3 boats went to the high school one afternoon to see the students practice a dance and singing presentation in preparation for an anniversary celebration of the school. We were placed in chairs watching the kids in formation doing their dance. The “conductor” stood on a plastic chair and beat on it with a wooden stick to keep time. We watched them practice the whole routine twice. At the request of the principal they also did some singing including the Hallelujah Chorus, done in their magnificent harmony. We so enjoyed being able to see the kids in their element. On a subsequent visit, we were given gifts of a placemat woven by the students. The high school happened to also be the only place where internet is available on the island so we made one journey there to use the computer. We timidly poked our head into the classroom where the computers were and found the economics instructor in the middle of class. He motioned us in and let us work on the computers on one side of the room while the class went on in Tongan and English on the other side. They had to start up generators for us to use the computers which the school clerk quietly did on our arrival.

Just before we left, we heard from a boat struggling in wild conditions 20 miles away—they wanted to come into our anchorage after dark. We responded on VHF radio and arranged for Niko, the one who took us to the volcano, to take Richard out to the entrance and meet the boat and guide them in and to an anchor spot for the night. We well remember the feeling of looking for relief from a nasty passage and how grateful we were for the help of our fellow cruisers and this was a chance to give back. Richard and Paul encountered 8 to 10 foot waves outside the reef entrance and were able to bring the boat in successfully. The crew was tired, grateful and thanked us with dinner the next night. Ultimately, the day came to leave the island when the wind finally calmed to a manageable level. Time to move on.

This was one of the most enriching experiences of our cruising life. So rarely are we brought into the local people’s lives to the extent we were here. The Tongans we met were friendly, warm and self-sufficient, generous with whatever they had to share. Perhaps this is why Tonga is referred to as “The Friendly Islands” since the time of Captain Cook!

Dispatch 45 Samoa

2009-09-10T18:18:00.000-07:00

August 4 - 19, 2009
Next stop, Samoa. We had intended to stop at American Samoa, a 450 mile voyage from Suwarrow. On our way there, we heard from friends by e-mail that the place was so unpleasant they had literally only stayed 15 hours, long enough to buy supplies, pick up schoolbooks for their kids and get some rest. American Samoa is the only American port south of the equator and has “enjoyed” a longstanding reputation as a dirty, unpleasant port. One friend said they couldn’t distinguish the anchor buoys from the trash in the water. Another saw floating dead rats and cats washed down the river into the harbor by some of the nearly daily torrential downpours (one of the wettest ports in the world). The bottom of the harbor is littered with plastic bags and boat wrecks thus creating a poor holding ground for anchoring and the possibility of fouling one’s anchor on wreckage such that it cannot be retrieved. Add to that the $150 fees for checking in and out (to our own country?) and we were beginning to wonder about our plan to stop there. Unlike some of our friends, we had no supplies waiting for us there and, although the lure of the giant bags of M & M’s at the Costco like store was intense, we realized we could probably survive without “American style food” for a while longer. When, just in the nick of time, we heard from friends in Samoa (formerly Western Samoa) that we could likely buy any food we needed there, we diverted, spent another night at sea and went directly to Samoa.

The Samoans are Polynesian and theoretically this was one of the first island groups populated by Polynesians in about 1000 BC. From here, the Polynesians spread to French Polynesia, Cook Islands, Easter Island, New Zealand. Yet, each of the Polynesian groups seem distinct to us in looks and traditions. The similarities include the crafts—carvings, tapa cloth painting (as we saw in the Marquesas), basket making—and the heavenly singing that is universal in the Polynesian churches—multi-part harmony done effortlessly and without accompaniment except drumming usually, and sometimes ukulele.

As our Samoan tour guide assured us, “Samoans LOVE to eat”, thus their ahem often bulky body habitus (and frequent occurrence of diabetes). But they are delightfully friendly people. The islands are verdant, hot and humid with steep hillsides and volcanic rock formations. The weather is HOT—feels hotter than previous places. When I mentioned this to the marina representative, and then puzzled about the heat because it is, after all, winter here, she replied, “Yes, but it’s only winter at night”—when it cools off enough to be tolerable. We tied up calmly at a very modern marina, built 2 years ago because the harbor wasn’t big enough for the visiting yachts at anchor and the huge freighter supply ships that arrive. It looks good, but there are still a few glitches like the coral heads that inhabit a few of the slips and trip boats up in the main fairway! Samoa has some lovely very upscale resorts, yet, it is very affordable, a nice change from French Polynesia. The primary language is Samoan (a Polynesian language) with the second language of English which is taught in schools. English is not universal, however, and many of our taxi drivers and people we met on the street had pretty limited comprehension of English.

Sample conversation with teenage girl:
Her: Hello

Us: Hello, how old are you?

Her: Fine, thank you, how are you?

The geography is stunning. The islands are volcanic. The interior mountains are comprised of rain forest with many waterfalls. The coast has some beautiful beaches rimmed by coral. We enjoyed a drive around the country with a verbose and enthusiastic guide. He explained the practice of burying “Mom and Dad” in front of the house to keep them nearby. He has enthusiastically encouraged his fellow islanders to clean up the rubbish and plant attractive gardens to better attract tourists. We saw a deep volcanic trench with a pool in the bottom that communicated by underwater cavern to the ocean. We were supposed to have seen a 100 meter long waterfall but it was enshrouded in fog, part of our very rainy day of touring. But we did appreciate the beauty of the island. Robert Louis Stevenson spent his last four years in Samoa and his house is now a gorgeous museum. We hiked up to his grave on one of the mountainsides and slipped down the trail as the rain became ridiculously heavy on our way back. There is a marine reserve just outside the main harbor and we snorkeled there one day. There was a surprisingly rich undersea world especially over the reef drop off considering it was right next to a city harbor.

Samoans live in “villages” that are made up of extended families. There is a chief or matai of each village and disputes are settled by the chiefs sitting down together to talk. Apia, the major town on Samoa’s island of Upolu, is made up of several “villages” lumped together. It has most goods and services available although some searching is required for obscure items. Transportation on the islands is done often by bus—very colorful painted all wooden buses. Alas, these are soon to be obsolete because, just after our visit, the country is changing from driving on the right side of the road to driving on the wrong side, I mean, left side of the road. This is because so many of the imported cars are British style and have right seat drive. The buses will need to be replaced. We had mixed feelings about missing this momentous event—surely we will miss witnessing mayhem on the road! We also enjoyed watching the police marching band which marches from the police headquarters to the government building Monday through Saturday just before 9 AM to raise the flag. The men in Samoa wear skirts (lava lavas) as do the women, a practical way to dress given the climate. We also now know the best time of day to rob the bank in Apia, Samoa.

While in Apia, I took the opportunity to call the head of the local hospital and go up and take a tour. He was pretty distracted by the swine flu outbreak on the island but took some time to talk to me and Gina (an RN from New Zealand who we’ve befriended) about their medical issues in Samoa. Diabetes and its complications are a big part of their medical care (what he called “lifestyle diseases”) unsurprisingly. But he assured us they had good programs to deal with their issues. What was more fun was talking to the actual doctor on the wards during our tour while they regaled us with the “reality” of medical care there: the lab test results come back so late they are of no use in caring for the patients. Sometimes the machinery doesn’t work and they don’t have the supplies they need. It certainly looked like challenging work conditions in our brief visit. Although I offered my volunteer time, they never contacted me, and, in retrospect, I suppose I’m glad not to be exposed to swine flu.

With another boat, we explored the other major island in Samoa: Savai’i. We anchored off a shoreline that, within a half mile walk comprised 5 villages. A “village” is simply a family group. One could see the change by the color of the raised garbage containers outside the homes. This island had beautifully maintained yards and was very rustic. The people raise horses, dogs and pigs, all of which run mostly free (except the horses). The people were shy but open to our overtures albeit with limited English. We always learn the local words for “hello” (Talofa on Samoa) which vary from Polynesian island to island and try to learn “thank you” and “goodbye”. This island is mainly formed by one large volcano and evidence of its many lava flows from the early 1900’s still abound. Apparently the lava flowed so slowly everyone was able to avoid it and there were no fatalities. But some of the churches had lava flow right through them dramatically. Some of the villages are built right on the lava.

We stopped at a variety of tourist attractions where we were charged a small amount to see the sights. There is a rainforest canopy walkway. One end is anchored to a couple hundred year old banyan tree and the walk up the stairs around the tree was magnificent. Alas, the canopy walkway was “closed” because it wasn’t safe which we learned after Richard ducked the board that blocked the entrance and made it all the way across without incident. Oops. We saw a lava tunnel and little swiftlets—birds that nest inside. We stopped at the “Virgin Grave” where the lava swirled around and missed this patch of land, “because the virgin was so pure.” The tour guide told us she had a husband and children but could not explain why she is referred to as a virgin (?!) Mysteries abound on Samoa. The scenery was dramatic. Perhaps our most memorably experience was when we stopped at the “women’s collective” building in a village where we had heard there was some of the best traditional weaving. Around 20 women were gathered weaving their own pieces, talking and singing in harmony as we approached. They allowed us to take pictures and answered a few questions, but, just to observe their craft and hear their singing was moving.

After a lunch of fish and chips, we returned the rental car and readied the boat to leave that very evening for Tonga. Never let a fair wind go unappreciated!

Dispatch 44 Suwarrow “La Bombie”

2009-08-10T01:21:00.000-07:00

July 17 to 29, 2009
Suwarrow is an amazing atoll within the Cook Islands, located at 13 degrees 14’ S latitude and 163 degrees 06' W longitude. The entire atoll has been designated a National Park, about 11 miles long and 4 miles wide. Within this atoll are several islands, which are nesting sites for several different species of birds and the coconut crabs which are found here, and have protected status. There are lots of uncharted reefs and, as such, travel within the atoll is restricted by the park regulations. The park is inhabited by a warden for 6 months of the year and deserted 6 months of the year. The 6 months during which the “yachties” arrive, roughly April thru October, the caretaker and his family help enforce the rules of, basically, look but don’t touch or take. Because of this it is extremely pristine, is full of birds, fish, sharks and has such intensely healthy and beautiful coral, with water visibility up to 100 feet. Suwarrow is only accessible by private yacht, there is no official transportation here and no services—no airport, stores, hospital, post office, nothing. The caretaker and his family are “dropped off” by freighter and given supplies for their 6 months of residence when they will again be picked up and returned to Rarotonga. They are completely self sufficient for this time except for items and assistance cruisers stopping here might offer.

Our passage here from Bora Bora was, well, difficult (Betsy prefers the word “rough”). We started with good winds and they only got “better” so to speak (15 rising to 20, rising to 25, rising to a high of 30). The seas, which were confused at the beginning, became only larger and much more confused with each increase in wind speed or direction change by the end of our 6 day passage. Needless to say, the winds were higher than forecast (a common occurrence around here) or we wouldn’t have set out. As in each of our passages we are in daily radio contact via a radio net with a large group of cruisers in various places either on their own passage or in an anchorage, this included a group within the atoll at Suwarrow. Coincidentally, the day before our arrival, cruisers already anchored in the atoll had beefed up and rebuilt a mooring buoy that already was in place. They were intensely sympathetic to our experience “outside” on the ocean because they, too, were experiencing high winds and could only imagine what turmoil was going on where we were. They offered to assist us with our entrance into the atoll if we could arrive by sunset and tie us onto the new mooring. That would mean some real rest after 6 days—much to be desired—so we put the “pedal to the metal” on Qayaq, sailing much harder and with more sail area up than we would normally. Sailing faster than usual with boat speeds reaching up to 7 knots we arrived just at sunset. The caretaker met us at the pass and guided us in, another cruiser sat in his dinghy at one of the reefs on the way in so we could easily avoid it, and yet another cruiser sat in his dinghy holding the mooring buoy line with a light on, so we could locate it in the dark with no problems. We arrived on the mooring, tied up by 7:30 PM, dark, intensely thankful for the calm seas and a bed that did not have a motion similar to a carnival ride. Everyone understood and had been pulling for us to get in rather than spend another night out with confused seas and high winds and were incredibly supportive and friendly the next day.

The next day, we met most of the other boats anchored here. There were of 11 boats anchored in the park, one having been here almost a month. The caretaker, John, lives here with his wife and 4 boys (ages 8, 8, 10 and 13). They have done so for 5 years, during the winter season, (Southern Hemisphere winter is Northern hemisphere summer remember), and they are delightful people, very self-sufficient needless to say. John and family fish often, usually daily as they have no refrigerator and this is their main source of food and they will share their catch—a park regulation is fishing must be done outside the atoll. Cruisers offer the same to John and his family when fishing is good, everyone eats, a great communal spirit. He will guide boats to the outlying islands to see the birds, take hikes and snorkel even more pristine waters than those around the anchorage. The cruisers, as is their style, organize parties, potlucks, and activities with the caretaker’s family, everyone has a fabulous time here. Cruisers with experience in different areas all offer John any assistance he might need, from improving his SSB antenna to new fishing lures, guaranteed to work(?). There were several boats with kids aboard, a special time for the caretaker’s kids and spirits were high. The boats included US, Canada, Austria, Italy, France, Australia and we all got along more or less with English. The people of the Cook Islands speak English as it is a New Zealand protectorate.

Our days were spent in boat projects interspersed with great recreation. We snorkeled the beautiful coral (curious black tip reef sharks usually hanging out somewhere nearby, inspecting your work if it entailed cleaning the boat or rearranging the anchor chain), walked the circumference of the islands, saw nesting birds and their chicks, (boobies, frigate birds, tropic birds and fairy terns to name a few). We would walk on the reef at the edge of the islands. The caretaker has begun feeding the sharks fish guts outside the atoll in one particular bay and the sharks are now trained to show up there if they see or hear people on the beach. One can go and just stand there and quickly, a half dozen then 10 or more sharks arrive from 1 foot long babies to 4 foot or bigger white tip, black tip and gray sharks in water a little more than a foot deep looking for handouts. Quite um, interesting, to say the least. Even more interesting is the behavior when the fish guts are thrown in—our own feeding frenzy up close right near the beach. Wow. The kids on one of the boats painted a sign to keep people away from that particular beach.

Just because it was such a amazing snorkeling site, here are a few gratuitous, beautiful underwater shots.

Another unique experience on Suwarrow had nothing to do with the setting, we just happened to be there for the partial solar eclipse. We were aboard a friend’s boat visiting when Richard stepped forward to watch the lovely sunset. It was then that we noticed the dual points of sun rather than single and someone recalled the eclipse. It was an amazing sunset also because it was one of the few that elicited the famed green flash seen just as the sun drops below the horizon, and, in this case, there were TWO green flashes. Incredible.

I called this dispatch, “La Bombie” because the anchorage is more of a coral head dance than a nice sandy place to put an anchor down. We refer to coral heads as “bombies”. While we were here, the wind did a full 360 as a front passed over within a 2 day period and, during that time, we were caught on 5 or 6 different coral heads, shortening our chain’s scope more and more with each turn. In fact, there isn’t much sand here so the best “holding” is to have your chain wrapped on a coral head that will hold the boat firmly, and hope that you are able to free the anchor when you want to leave. With the squalls, there were 30 plus knots winds again and everyone was out checking their anchors to make sure they were firmly caught on something. We were rocking and rolling so much that we got lots of sympathy in the big winds and, when the wind calmed down, Richard got on the radio and announced that the roller coaster ride was over and we were sorry we wouldn’t be able to honor the tickets of those who had purchased them for our amusement park ride. In fact, while we were pitching so much, we were down below reading and noticed a hermit crab emerge from somewhere on our boat and walk drunkenly down the salon floor. I imagined that he thought he’d stow away and go someplace more exciting only to decide to emerge and “abandon ship” because it was too rough and he was getting too sick to stay aboard. Once the weather calms down you dive your anchor chain and see what “rearranging” needs to be done. Richard was in the water free diving in 30 feet for over an hour to lift, tug, unwrap and lay out the chain in a more orderly fashion in the hopes that with the next wind shift the chain would wrap around smaller coral heads and not the bigger 5 foot tall ones. This also allows you the hope of getting your chain back on board when you leave without too many wraps. It worked as when we left the chain came up smoothly without one wrap. If you anchor too deep you need someone with dive gear to clear your chain before you leave, always interesting. Our anchor never did set properly the 2 weeks we were here but we never moved with the coral holding us in place – “bombie anchoring”.

We were making our plans and getting the boat ready for our passage to Pago Pago, American Samoa when we learned the caretaker’s wife, Veronica, was celebrating her birthday. Passage was delayed as, once again, we had an excuse for a party. John and Veronica took me and Richard out across the atoll to the “Big Island” where we witnessed the art of catching coconut crabs, an endangered species in general but still plentiful here, thanks to John and the park regulations. John is very careful to only catch the older crabs and to limit consumption to special occasions; in this way the population continues to thrive. Though they are called coconut crabs because they eat coconut, they are omnivores and coconut is not their sole source of food. They are intensely ugly but come in some pretty colors—they burrow in the sand and John catches them by finding a likely hole usually by stepping in it, up to midcalf sometimes and digging the inhabitant out. We proceeded to hike across the island benefiting from John’s naturalist knowledge, enjoying noddy bird nests, unripe pandanus fruit, the various booby species that live here. John scrambled up a coconut tree to get us some young coconuts for the nectar inside. Then we went back to the skiff and cooled off with a snorkel around the coral gardens there. We found a huge moray eel under the dingy tucked back in his coral cave, black tipped sharks, groupers and other tropical fish enjoying their protected status. I got back in the skiff first and came eyeball to eyeball with one of the coconut crabs. He had been securely placed in a large cooler, lid on and a heavy beacon light placed on top. He had easily pushed the lid up, displaced the beacon and crawled out. I had to sit on the cooler to keep him in it for the trip back. And most amazing that day, Richard caught the two fish we had for the feast—a grouper and a black jack on the line we trolled behind the dingy.

That night, the sailors joined ashore once again, all complaining that they were nearly out of food (we’d been a month or so without a store), but managed to put together a magnificent feast with whatever was available on the boat including the fish, coconut crab, various salads and, of course, birthday cake and cookies. We joked that it was a “national holiday” on Suwarrow and “all the government offices were closed as were schools and stores” (of which, of course, there are none) and nobody asked Veronica to process their paperwork that day (the only quasi-governmental function that occurs on the island in their open air dining room.) It was a fabulous event and we were so glad we stayed. Don’t tell John, but we prefer Dungeness crab, our home specialty!

We have certainly enjoyed our time here!

Dispatch 43 Tahiti Encore (et encore)

2009-08-10T01:17:00.000-07:00

April 19-July 11
Once back in French Polynesia to resume our boat travels, we found ourselves moving slowly. First, there were boat problems, then there were new islands to explore in the Society Islands, still part of French Polynesia. I was feeling good about my French and having fun with it. We had settled into the Polynesian pace, slow and methodical. So here are a few “snapshots” from our time back in French Polynesia. Cut up a tropical fruit, grab a cold glass of something to drink, pull up a boat cushion and read on.

“Recharging in French Polynesia”
Sometimes it takes a while to realize that a system is failing on a boat. Unbeknownst to me, Richard had been secretly worried about our batteries ever since we returned to Costa Rica and he found a set nearly dry. They lasted another season, but, upon return to Tahiti, they were once again dry. We were thrilled to be back aboard and all systems seemed to be “go”, so off we went after splashing the boat. Sure there were glitches: the outboard, already geriatric, was now not resusitatable. We bought a new one. One of the bilge pumps no longer worked. We bought a new one. There was a bit of mildew to clean up, but not much compared to Costa Rica. Everything did work, but, it turned out when we went to run an energy hog like our desalinater, the refrigerator suddenly refused to work because of low voltage. Uh, oh, that never happened before. After a few days of running around and fixing up things, we figured out the obvious. The batteries were terminal. Alas, the replacements were a bit more expensive than those in the US, but new batteries have given new life to our on-board equipment and decreased the worry factor significantly. And, I got to read up on a new system on the boat and know a lot more about electrical stuff—cruising is SO educational.

“The Boatyard Blues”
Every time I’ve thought to write about our experience in various boatyards all I come up with is a song called, “The Boatyard Blues”*. Honestly, for me, I would almost rather be doing anything than boatyard work (well, shoveling poo as one of our friends did once for a job probably ranks lower). I know there are some guys (and maybe some gals) who LIKE boatyard work. For me, it’s a toxic unpleasant environment that’s a necessary evil to cruisers. Somehow, the weather always seems funky: in Seattle, when we pulled the mast to wax it and put on the storm track, it was, uncharacteristically, below freezing temperatures for nearly a week. In Mexico, Costa Rica and here in Tahiti, it’s just dang hot and humid and buggy most of the day. I wore blue bottom paint from head to toe and probably in my lungs too the first time we sanded the paint off the bottom and I didn’t think about protective equipment. The boat and we get unbelievably filthy. Our stuff fills the inside of the boat so we can barely walk let alone live aboard. We keep the boat closed up to avoid most of the dust/dirt getting inside which means it’s often 100 degrees down below. Hauling and splashing are always fraught with anxiety and twice we’ve had the boat slip off a trailer and get damaged by the fall. And then because we’re always the soft touch, there’s inevitably some sweet, mangy, pathetic dog who adopts us because we don’t throw things at him and pet him and say nice things and then wonder if we should feed him or let him continue to starve so the end comes sooner. Last, there’s inevitably some communication challenges since we’ve always been in a foreign country doing boat work, like the time we bought bottom paint, were assured it was ablative as the can said, priced like it should be, only to find that the black paint listed on the can came out red, making us wonder what was switched and where? Did we misunderstand?

“What’s ours is theirs”
One day, we were blissfully out of the boatyard and med moored to the marina dock. As all good Polynesians do, we leave our flip flops on the threshold of our home—in this case, on the dock in front of our boat. Of course some of our flip flops are Keens and not the $1.99 types most commonly seen here. Our marina is right in front of the Ecole de Voile, the sailing school. A VERY cool thing about public school here is that it is a regular part of the curriculum for 10-12 year olds, boys and girls, to spend a week of school learning to sail, read charts, navigate and reviewing boating rules of the road. So every day there were hordes of kids back and forth doing their lessons. On a day we were gone on errands, 2 pairs of flip flops disappeared from our “front porch.” Richard was devastated because his were a favorite pair of well broken in Keens that had been good for hundreds of miles (and would not be cheap to replace.) Mine were absolute bottom of the line crapola ones that I thought were good to lose—I only had 5 other pairs of sandals on the boat. Nonetheless, with my hangdog husband hounding me, I dutifully went to the sail instructor and reported our loss (in French). He told me the kids got into everything and not to leave things out, but he’d ask around for us. While I was chatting with him, I suddenly spied one of Richard’s Keens and a quick look around located the other one in the office of the sailing school—perhaps they weren’t what the kids liked after all. Well, Richard was thrilled and I was ready to let go of the other pair. But the next day after hanging out with the kids on their break and chatting about sailing, life, sharing English words with them: (They asked how do you say “cool” in English?), a boy came running up, “Madame, Madame,” and dumped my sandals at my feet. It’s a communal type of culture so what’s ours is theirs.

“Food in Paris”
While in the “hotel” we stayed in while the boat was in the yard (both times), we met a nice couple who occupied the other room and with whom we shared the communal kitchen. She’s Polynesian, Hinerava, he’s French, David, and their 4 year old son, Inaho. David was there visiting his young family having developed the relationship while working in Tahiti for 4 years but being transferred back to Paris and, as it turned out, the mom and son were soon to move to Paris to join David. Hinerava was a chatterbox, quite good for my French when we first arrived, and soon shared her many misgivings about her move to France. I had the opportunity to hear the litany more than once as we ran into her a second time when we returned for our re-haul. It was a great test of my language comprehension to follow her many concerns which included the climate (understandable), the crowds/big city change, the fact that it was so impersonal, the schools so unfriendly—brick buildings instead of the open air buildings they have in Tahiti. No friends or family around. People much less friendly. And, here, to cap it off, was my favorite part of her rant—“What will we eat? There’s no good food in Paris like there is here.” Certainly, that’s the first time I’ve heard anyone express that concern on traveling to Paris. I hope she finds something edible.

“Another slip while hauling”
So, enough of the foreshadowing already, yes, we had to go back to the boatyard and re-haul the boat. Three weeks after the initial launch (during which the boat had slipped but we were unaware of a problem at the time), we were finally at Moorea at a beautiful anchorage with clear water right near a beautiful reef for snorkeling. In we plunged into the swimming pool clear warm water. Life was good, at least until we did what we always do which is to survey the bottom of the boat for growth or problems. Only then did we find the big gouge on the keel all the way down to the lead which could only have happened during the launch as we had hit nothing else since being in the water. Our snorkel thereafter was a bit half-hearted as we both processed the implication of the damage. That anchorage had great snorkeling: we found a couple eels near the boat, saw tons of tropical fish, found the one and only anemone that we had seen so far in French Polynesia complete with its own little Nemo (clown fish) and one day saw the black tipped reef shark that probably had been checking us out as it cruised by, all business. Meanwhile, we communicated with our boatyard guy 50 miles away who agreed to haul us free and repair the damage.

When we left the marina/boatyard, we’d had a blissful downwind sail. That meant going back was against the wind, naturally. So we slogged back in a very long day of sailing against moderate winds and exhaustedly dropped anchor. The boat was hauled last thing on a Friday of a holiday weekend—the yard closed at noon and would re-open Tuesday morning. But Yvan was good to his word and gave us access to all the equipment we needed to repair the keel and Richard did most of the repair with a little painting help from me over the next couple days. Rather than stay aboard, we went back to our little hotel which allowed us, this time, to meet our hosts.

“Bonjour tous le monde”
The first time we’d been at the hotel, Maithe, the hostess, and her husband, Jean Jacques, had been out cruising on their catamaran. We had communicated by e-mail initially, she left the key out for us with a detailed note about everything. When we requested to stay an extra day (left a note for the cleaning person), we got a note back from the cleaner that Maithe agreed and, when we left, we had to hunt down the neighbor at the specific house down the lane who was expecting to hold our payment for her. All very trusting and amusing and, somehow, Polynesian. When we returned, Maithe was literally at the boatyard as we hauled out, so we got a chance to meet her (even before we knew who she was) and then arranged to stay back at her place. She was worth meeting—absolutely delightful. She is so energetic and caring. The rooms had fresh hibiscus flowers every day. She brought us passionfruit, papaya juice and other sliced fruit that first morning when she learned it was our marriage anniversary. (Oh, and as an aside, I don’t recommend hauling a boat as an anniversary present for your wife.) When she learned that we would finish the work a day before they could re-launch us due to the holiday, she immediately offered to take us on her own special tour of the area of Tahiti they live in, Tahiti Iti. The tour included a visit to feed the sacred fresh water eels (rather fascinating in a disgusting snake-like eel kind of way—they grow to 2 yards in length). We went to a glorious overlook up in the mountains where it was cool and we could see the island spread out in front of us like a nautical chart. When we arrived, Maithe greeted the dozen or so others up there, strangers, “Bonjour tous le monde,” hello everyone, with her cheerful manner. We saw an orchid farm, swam in a cool grotto above glorious waterfalls. We had taken it upon ourselves to visit the Botanical Garden—a very wonderful spot where we ran into Hinerava the second time picnicking for a little boy’s birthday party. So the re-haul visit turned out well and, by then, I felt like practically a local in the small town nearby where I went to shop almost daily.

“It’s Greek to me”
The family we shared the hotel space with the second time was Tiffene and Guillaum, kids in their 20’s who are cruising on their 34 foot sailboat, and Tiffene’s parents visiting from France. After meeting them, we buddyboated a bit with them as they took the parents aboard and sailed to Moorea and then to Huahine. It was always a cheerful bonjour when we saw each other at the anchorages and we were as pleased as they were when the first overnight sail ever for their parents was a perfect one—we left the same night and it was a glorious sail, perfect wind on a reach, a beautiful moon and a sky full of stars. We arrived at sunrise—they had left later and arrived later. So, I guess my French isn’t so good after all. In a secluded anchorage we shared with them (the parents were staying ½ mile down the road in a hotel on shore), Tiffene came over to invite us to a BBQ at the parents’ hotel. We were thrilled, asked what we could bring, etc. They agreed that we’d go to the hotel together since we weren’t sure where it was. That evening around the appointed time, we were ready to go, had a salad, freshly baked banana bread, a bottle of wine. We waited quite a while and then wondered if maybe we had misunderstood and were supposed to go to the hotel on our own after all. They did not appear on the beach and, nearly an hour after the appointed time, we rowed to shore in the dark. The family that lived there immediately helped us out by driving us to the hotel and, when we arrived, the problem became clear. The date was for the next night. I guess Tiffene had asked Guillaum when they rowed away, “Do you think we were clear that it is tomorrow night?” So much for my confidence in my French. We decided, after that, that we would do all our communicating in both languages as they also needed to practice their English for New Zealand…

Huahine was a beautiful island. We rented a scooter to circumnavigate the whole thing in a few hours including stops at sites of interest. The scooter could not have been more uncomfortable nor, we imagine, have less power. As we headed up a long incline to the gorgeous wooded overlook, a dog started chasing us and barking. We think he had to slow down to keep from running in front of us the scooter was so slow!

“Shark bait”
We found a coral garden off the island of Tahaa. The coral was lovely, there was a fierce current running through and the fishes were abundant and not so shy due to exposure to lots of tourists. The water was so shallow that, at times, it was possible to get into a spot where it looked like there wasn’t enough water to float over the coral. We were mesmerized—Richard was lost taking pictures and I was exploring in ecstasy. I even found an octopus swimming in the open, watched him land on a rock and change color to conform to the rock. At one point, I found myself in a tight spot and ended up scraping my thighs on the coral as I floated over. It is very hard and abrasive. Shortly thereafter, I was thinking about whether there were any sharks in this very shallow area and, voila, right in front of me appeared a half dozen black tipped reef sharks and then a couple more, little guys, but, there I was by myself. I looked at my scraped thighs—they looked just a little red—briefly wondered if the appearance of the sharks had anything to do with the scrapes, then carried on as always, headed back to the dinghy eventually to warm up. When I checked with our other friends about the sharks, nobody else had seen any. My thighs, when I emerged from the water, were bleeding a little. Was it a shark coincidence? Perhaps not.

“Free mooring”
We also stopped at a restaurant/hotel/yacht club to take a mooring ball and visit a vanilla farm. We had been assured that the mooring was free if we ate dinner at the restaurant and that the vanilla tour would also be free (or whatever the cost of whatever you bought from the farm…). Sounded good to us. We went in to check out the restaurant and look at the turtles they rescued—they ran a service for injured turtles, healing them then releasing them in the wild again. We asked to see the dinner menu. The woman running the place laughed and said, “You like fish? We have fish.” That was the menu. OK, we like fish. That night we had a marvelous dinner of fresh reef fish but the bill was a bit of a surprise (on the high side). So our “free” mooring and vanilla farm tour ended up costing us more in the long run. The lesson? If you have to ask the cost, you can’t afford it!

“Donating blood in Bora Bora”
Bora Bora was our last stop. We had heard that it was very touristy and we expected to want to have a very brief stay there. So we were pleasantly surprised when we found gorgeous shallow sandy anchorages near good snorkeling grounds in the lagoon around one of the most scenic islands in the world. We enjoyed the island very much when we stayed in our marine environment. The day we went to shore to cut Richard’s hair, we barely lasted 5 minutes on the beach before we finished the haircut in mid-bay in the dinghy. The mosquitoes were unbelievable. We found another place to snorkel with stingrays and sharks who are fed by tour operators. This time a bunch of us went and there were no tour boats and we had no food. The rays and sharks were well-behaved enough to swim around for a while despite the lack of food and this time Richard was armed with his underwater camera. Beautiful!

So we leave soon for the Cook Islands. The “fleet” of boats sailing this area this season is now splitting up, choosing different destinations in the Cooks and we will most likely see many of them again in Tonga. Some will carry on to Fiji and eventually to Australia, some will end up in New Zealand as we hope to do.

*The Boatyard Blues (to the tune of any blues song you can think of)

It’s time to haul the boat again,
The signs are plain and clear,
The paint job’s getting thin now or
We’re headed back to work my dear.

It’s rainy every day you know,
The mosquitoes growing thick,
Aside from the blasted itching,
With dengue I don’t wanna be sick.

They promised us ablative paint
Understood with a nod of the head,
So how come our paint can says black,
And what’s coming out is red?

The trailer haul is ready, Spanish
Or French exchanged with a frown,
They know what they’re doing, right?
So why’s our boat a slidin’ down?

The dogs they always know somehow
That we’re gonna be their friend.
We lose our heart to each one even
Though they’re one meal from the end.

These chemicals can’t be good for a soul,
Surely exposure’s gotta be bad?
So why is it every blasted day,
With our chosen paint I’m totally clad?

Now we’re on our last nerve,
We both gotta really short fuse,
We’re sore and tired and dirty,
Yeah, for sure it’s the boatyard blues.

Dispatch 42 Easter Island

2009-05-15T23:45:00.000-07:00

April 23-29, 2009
Easter Island has been a place of mystery for several hundred years. It is a small island in the Pacific, owned by Chili, and is remarkably isolated. It is about 14 x 9 miles in size, sits 3700 km (2220 miles) from the South American coast, 2000 km (1200 miles) from Pitcairn Island (its closest neighbor to the north which is a very minimally populated island in itself and has its own fascinating stories), and 4100 km (2460 miles) from Tahiti. It is best known for the remarkable huge carved stone statues around its coastlines. Because none of the currently existing native peoples retain knowledge of their ancestor’s religion or practices, little is known and lots is surmised about the statues and the early life on the island. In her book, The Mystery of Easter Island, published in 1919, Kathryn Routledge wrote about the archaeological work done with the team that included her and her husband and the interviews she did with the natives of the island at that time and still very little was remembered. That’s because a population of, once, 20-30,000 was reduced by in-fighting, western diseases (small pox, tuberculosis, influenza), and starvation to around 2-3,000 and survival became paramount to retaining oral history.

A couple boats we know sailed to Easter Island, one on their way to French Polynesia and one on their way back to the coast of Chili from Central America. Their reports were so fascinating and compelling that we decided to visit Easter Island ourselves. By now, our boat is long past the place where prevailing winds could carry us there, and, as our friends confirmed, the island is very exposed, often windy, and anchoring there was a toss of the dice—one boat left in gale winds because there was no longer any satisfactory protection to remain anchored. So we took a plane there—as it turns out, there are two places with direct flights to Easter Island: Santiago, Chili and Papeete, Tahiti. So here we are in Tahiti, we thought, let’s go. A small side note if ever the opportunity arises to fly LAN airlines, jump at the opportunity. The service was incredible, hot “full” meals served with wine and real silverware were just part of the “standard” services offered as well as a large selection of movies and other entertainment on one’s individual screen. And this was the economy class--imagine what first class may have been like. Now try flying United.

Easter Island on a sunny day is one of the most photogenic places imaginable. The stone Moai (statues) stand guard and cast interesting shadows and the hillsides are a gentle rolling green. We found a place to stay on the internet and it turned out to be great. It was a little house, owned by an American married to a Rapa Nuian (the island is known in Polynesian as Rapa Nui and the native people are, therefore, Rapa Nuians) and was fully equipped for independent living. It was located a 5 minute walk from the center of the only town so we shopped and cooked at home, saving us some expense, and, as it turned out amusingly the one night we did try to eat out, some aggravation. The yard provided us with avocados, mangoes and lemons and we collected guayaba on the trail, so we ate well. The yard also provided us some entertainment that proved to be fairly loud at night—it was a major highway for the wild dog population and home to some of the wild chickens and (more loudly) roosters.

First, the statues command one’s attention. They do not, as one might imagine, stand guard looking out over the ocean. Rather, they were built with the spirits and likeness of a clan’s ancestors and look over the clan’s land—toward the center of the island in almost all cases. Because they are enormous, made of stone and hugely heavy, and because they were all carved at one quarry in the SE corner of the island but appear all along the coast, the first mystery of Easter Island is how the statues got where they are. One of the most outlandish theories is that they were carved by extraterrestrials and moved by some kind of space age technology. The more sober archaeological minds guess that they were dragged somehow from the quarry to their resting spots over long periods of time requiring lots and lots of people. The mythology of the native people is that the statues “walked” to their locations so they may have been moved upright, but most scholars think they were dragged face down on wood sleds or some such contrivance. How big are they? Average height is 4 meters and average weight is 12.5 metric tons. Some fell over in the delicate process of movement from the quarry to other parts of the island, and, if their necks broke when they fell, it was felt that the spirit of the ancestor left so the statue was no longer any good. Nearly 100 statues were found “on the road” toward their destination having fallen and broken, suggesting however they moved them, it was an imperfect process. But the carvings were truly awe inspiring even now centuries later. The faces definitely had personality (they were said to resemble the ancestor they were carved from) and presence, especially those we found still intact at the quarry.

Another “mystery” about Easter Island is where the original inhabitants arrived from. With the successful voyage of Kontiki from South America to Easter Island, one theory was that natives of South America arrived by raft. The more accepted theory is that Rapa Nuians are Polynesian and that the island was populated as part of a wave of population from Tonga/Samoa through the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Easter Island and ultimately New Zealand, all considered part of Polynesia. The evidence to support this is stronger—the stone carvings actually resemble those done in the Marquesas (and we saw the resemblance although those in the Marquesas are rarely as tall as a man), and, more compelling, when James Cook arrived during his Pacific explorations in the late 1700’s, he brought with him a Tahitian who was able to converse with the Rapa Nuians, suggesting a common language.

One of the most disturbing but fascinating pieces we read about Easter Island came from Jared Diamond’s book Collapse in which he described the island as the site of an ecologic disaster. Originally, according to the data he describes, the island had a native population of very large palm trees, in fact, the largest species known. Over the centuries of classic civilization on Easter Island (roughly 800-1680 AD), the trees were systematically deforested to provide for the lifestyle including the building of ocean going canoes for fishing and to provide the materials to move the statues (rope out of the bark and logs for support scaffolding), and possibly burned in funeral pyres. During this time, evidence would suggest a healthy diet including deep ocean fish, a peaceful coexistence with clans having split up the island like a pie and stone carvings being moved peacefully across clan territories and possibly cooperatively. Resources were plentiful, life was peaceful. According to the chapter, then, as resources gradually declined (the trees did not re-populate, canoes deteriorated, statues couldn’t be moved as easily, food became less and less easy to get), society also deteriorated devolving into competition, warfare and cannibalism. According to most theories about the island, when first seen and reported by Europeans, all the statues had been toppled, some while being transported, but most in situ statues were toppled by rival clans in warfare—this conflict period was short, only around 1680-1864, and population size plummeted from murder, starvation and disease as mentioned above. The island was also described as barren of trees by the first European explorers. The Ruttledge expedition’s cook in 1914 despaired about how he would be able to fuel their cooking fires.

So one of the most interesting parts of the visit for us was the feeling that little existed of the spiritual connection with the heyday of the Rapa Nuian culture. In some areas, the statues have been re-erected as they were thought to have been done originally, but, since the necks of most of the statues were broken, their spiritual essence is no longer intact.

During our 6 day there, we visited the various archaeological sites, often walking many miles to get there for the pleasure of it. The island is volcanic and the coastline is dramatic and beautiful. We took a tour with our American host who was very knowledgeable and then returned to some sites (such as the quarry) on our own in a rental car to take more pictures and explore further. We went to the beach one day (there are a couple very attractive white sand beaches and snorkeled at little (the weather wasn’t very cooperative the day we tried.) There were options to horse ride or scuba dive which we didn’t do, but we stayed pretty busy.

Other things we learned about contemporary Easter Island include the horse and dog problems. Dogs have proliferated horribly, and, while once there was a spay/neuter program, apparently someone wanted to do a natural rabies experiment and discourage sterilization and the program has not restarted. The dogs sometimes travel in packs which can become dangerous of course. Our experience with the dogs is that, as we like dogs, we generally are kind to them (short of feeding them) and one nearly always adopted us on our walks for the day, seeking “protection” of sorts by acting like our pet. One was with us for several days and we named her—a young shepherd like dog before her first heat (you always know because they immediately become pregnant with their first heat). She must have been pretty adept at “adopting” humans because she wasn’t terribly skinny and her coat still looked good. The horses too have proliferated and are wild but very tame. The locals do brand the new foals to claim them but then don’t do much as “owners” per se. The problem is that someone imported lupine, a wildflower that is poisonous to the horses but that they like to eat, so they are slowly being eliminated by poison. We saw a couple dead horses by the roadside. We started to refer to one road as “dead horse road” until we realized with our ongoing explorations that nearly every road could be named that, sadly.

Tourism appears to be the major economic driver of Easter Island. Of course many people still live traditional subsistence lifestyles supplemented by mainland goods flown from Tahiti or Chili or shipped in by freighter every few months. We were told there are discussions about building a huge dock for cruise ships and to land Japanese fishing boats, both of which we think would be a mistake.

The last night on the island, we decided to eat out. We chose a medium range restaurant (sort of comparable to US prices surprisingly), and sat down with the menu. When the waitress came back to take our order she told us what she had forgotten to tell us when we were seated which was that there was no fish tonight. None. How about chicken, we asked? No, no chicken either. Hmmm, this was fascinating as the island is overrun with chickens as we well knew, and is surrounded by ocean suggesting the possibility of fish being available (and they were on the menu). OK, we decided to try another restaurant and there, too, there was no fish. Must have been too rough that day to fish? Ultimately we found chicken curry that was satisfying and laughed our way home, glad we’d had a kitchen for most of our stay.

During our stay there were several sailboats anchored in the main harbor, one just having arrived via Cape Horn. Also friends emailed us about a 110-foot sailboat that was suppose to “drop” by during our visit and sure enough one day it appeared, very majestic riding at anchor though it only was there one day before heading off. The anchorage there is adequate in “most” conditions, though when the winds change, boats go around to the opposite side of the island and anchor in the shadow of one of the largest ahu (platforms) with moai (statues) reconstructed until conditions allow a return to the city harbor side. We met cruisers out on tours of the island having left their boats comfortably riding at anchor. Though I must say when the conditions and swell changed direction the peaceful anchorage soon disappeared into a series of hobby horsing boats and they were quick to head for the opposite side and the lee.

While the current Rapa Nuians may not have a knowledge of all their ancestors traditions, they are actively embracing their unique Polynesian culture. They represent 2/3 of the population of the island (out of about a total of 4000 people, the rest being Chilean) and they give performances of native dancing and music for the tourists. This was truly a fascinating place way off the beaten track and we’re glad we went.

Dispatch 41 Seattle Winter Wonderland

2009-02-27T11:48:00.000-08:00

August 24, 2008 to April 18, 2009
The Seattle climate is generally very mild, a well-hidden fact, hidden in an attempt to keep millions more people from discovering our wonderful land of riches. OK, it is cloudy a lot of the year and the winter days are very short since we are on the same latitude as Maine, but the summers are dry, even drought conditions from a gardeners point of view. And when it is clear here, well, there is hardly a more beautiful landscape to be seen.

This year, Seattle had a white Christmas! Starting on December 14, temperatures dropped below freezing almost continuously and we had our first snowfall. Sure, it was only 3 or 4 inches, but it promptly froze. Then on Dec 18 we had another 3 or 4 inches which froze on the roads and ongoing intermittent snow thereafter until nearly Dec. 25. OK, Richard and I grew up with snowy winters, learned to drive in snow for months every year. It took a couple feet of snow in Ohio to close schools. In Seattle, schools can close for the whole day based on the threat of snow which happened on Dec. 17. Why?

Seattle is built on 7 hills like Rome. Some of the main arterials have a grade of 19%--we know because it’s marked on the arterial a couple blocks from our apartment--which is on a block with a similar grade. Icy roads on the flat are one thing, but throw in a whole lot of hills and you have mayhem. In fact, 2 charter buses trying to navigate down hill to their bus station nearly fell over the retaining wall onto the highway. The sounds outside our window are of spinning tires on ice and, ugh, occasionally, the sound of the moving car hitting one of the parked cars.

We enjoyed the snowy break—we walked everywhere or took one of the rare busses downtown to run errands. I had most of the snowy week off work so we had no obligation to be anywhere in particular. We rented DVDs, stopped to enjoy a sled ride on one of our walks, laughed with both kids and adults frolicking in the unusual winter weather. When my work week began again, I borrowed rides to work as neither of our vehicles, (one a poor excuse for a car – a rental, the other a wonderful Mercedes convertible, lent to us by a friend for the duration of our stay, too nice to submit to the snowy conditions, besides it refused to leave the comfort of our garage until conditions improved ), really were suited to the conditions. Still, our experience as cruisers helps us adapt to adverse conditions and to improvise as needed.

Seattle is certainly an appealing place to live when the weather is right. Then, there’s the winter. The “great snow storm of ‘08” had its own “extreme” appeal, but the rest of winter here especially during a La Nina year leaves a bit to be desired. Seattle is at Latitude 48, similar to Maine. When winter strikes, it is dark here 16 or more hours a day. Pair that with the fairly constant gray skies and you get a whole lot of people with Vitamin D deficiency and sunlight deprivation. Perhaps we don’t see much frostbite, but, Seasonal Affective Disorder are Us. Spring on the other hand is magnificent. And just as we are preparing to leave, spring is finallyin the air. The crocuses and daffodils are peaking and the tulips are up. The azaleas are starting to bloom and, we can only hope, we might see a bit of the rhododendron show here. Rhodies are the state flower and a native species. One finds them growing in the woods on hikes in the Olympic National Park. When the city is abloom, clear skies, Cascade mountains to the east, Olympic mountains to the west, Puget Sound sparkling in the sunshine and Mt. Rainier standing regally over the skyline, there is no place prettier in the world. Perhaps the weather will oblige us with more gray days as we leave so we can appreciate the tropical sunshine and warmth all the more.

Being “dirt dwellers”, as some of our cruising friends dub the land life, had other appeals. We didn’t have to speak a foreign language for every interaction, everything you could possibly need was nearby, our snug apartment was a warm place to be in a storm. The US stay meant we visited with family, I got to ski for the first time in 4 years, and our lives were filled with visits with friends, great meals and companionship.

On the other hand, the incessant 24 hour news cycle meant that all the disastrous economic news was played, replayed, re-analyzed, and drummed into our brains and we joined the ranks of the shocked and depressed public as we received our monthly financial statements. It was a bipolar winter, the ecstasy of the Obama election followed by the despair of the economic crash have helped us look forward to the simplicity of life on the boat where we get news sporadically and can live for weeks on our own stores.

Soon we leave to resume our nautical travels. First stop is Tahiti but shortly thereafter we fly to Easter Island, ( Rapa Nui) — we’ve decided we don’t want to miss it even if we didn’t sail out of our way to go there by boat. Stay tuned for more reports from the high seas. Hope all of you had a healthy winter. Please keep in touch.

Dispatch 40 Society Islands Farewell

2008-09-24T19:22:00.000-07:00

August 1 - August 24
From wilderness to the big city, we arrived in Papeete, Tahiti, one of the main cruiser destinations and experienced the culture shock of crowds, buildings, a busy waterfront and traffic. We left the Tuamotus before we would have liked to because we loved the family on Toau, but we had a weather window and we caught it, arriving in Tahiti two days later with the wind in the 20’s nipping at our heels. It was a nice sail as the wind was behind us, but it blew fiercely for several days thereafter and we were snug in an anchorage off a fancy marina just south of Papeete.

Having been here before, we weren’t as shocked by the big city as some of our fellow cruisers and we settled into the errands easily. We had mail waiting for us at the post office. Well, WE knew we had mail there, it took some convincing for them to work their way around to finding it. We wandered the supermarket aisles in awe of our choices—it was a store worthy of the US but with prices almost twice those at home. While we might not have been suffering from culture shock, we certainly continued to reel from sticker shock. We visited the market, took a bus down to Port Phaeton to decide whether to leave the boat at a marina/yard there, did happy hour, did laundry, etc. The only “excitement” was we tried to get our propane filled. When the bottle hadn’t returned 3 days after it was promised, we braved a wet dinghy ride in the remains of a 25 plus knot day in the anchorage, arrived at the station only to find that Gaz of Tahiti was “en greve”, on strike. I was most amused to find that our French for Cruisers guide actually had a listing for the expression “on strike” suggesting, one might imagine, that, in the French speaking world this happens often enough to want to learn the phrase. After the weekend, we went to Gaz of Tahiti and found a very lame strike action indeed—no posters, no marchers and business was going on as usual although they might have been managers running the place. They found our bottle, filled it and were quite cheerful about the whole thing. Phew.

Meanwhile a good portion of our time was spent on wireless internet on the boat (what a luxury!) arranging for work for me. We are now headed to Seattle where once we are settled will figure out the rest of the storm season activities. We are leaving before the Southern Hemisphere storm season (which is roughly from Nov. to April) because, after 3 months, we get kicked out of French Polynesia and there is not another place to put the boat on the hard before New Zealand which is still a long slog away. This way we get to leisurely make our way through the South Pacific next season if desired, starting with these Society Islands.

When our lives were arranged as much as desired and we had the propane bottle back, we headed for Moorea, the next island in the Society group. Tahiti and Moorea are beautiful. The islands are green, mountainous and lush, similar to the Marquises. However, these islands have reefs around them which make the anchorages calm and lovely. One can dinghy to the reef a half mile away and snorkel with beautiful fishes, lovely coral and the occasional black tipped reef shark. On Moorea, we went to an area where they have regularly fed the stingrays. Thus, the rays (up to 4 feet across) are very tame, eerily so as they approach and nearly crawl up on you while you stand in waist deep water. We could stroke them—their bodies feel like velvet—and the guide of another group fed them while we watched and explained how to tell male from female, etc. He would stroke them all the way along their long tail/stinger, but I just never got my nerve up to do more than stroke their backs. They are bizarre and beautiful creatures. After feeding the rays, the guide then started throwing food for the black tip reef sharks so the group he was with could see them. They swam near and took the food, but, thankfully from our point of view, they didn’t swarm and start crawling on us. Nice sharks.

On our way to Moorea from Tahiti, we saw another old friend: humpback whales. We watched whales breaching outside the reef from our anchorage on Moorea.

The days have been beautiful here and we look forward to returning to explore more fully without the task of getting a job hanging over our heads. We will return next spring to relaunch the boat out of the boatyard and continue on at least through the Society Islands, the best of which, according to our friends who have gone on, is yet to come.

It has been a big year of cruising for us. We left from latitude 9 degrees, 42’ North and are now at 17 degrees, 29’ South and longitude from 84 degrees, 39’ West to 149 degrees, 51’ West. We were as far east as Florida (while we were in Panama) and are now as far west as Hawaii. We crossed the equator by land and by sea. We have sailed almost 5700 miles this year, and most of it has been done under sail with passages of 1000 miles in 9 days and 3100 miles in 29 days making up the bulk of the travel. We have only visited 4 countries but have switched from Spanish to French. Qayaq has held up well throughout and we are pleased with her performance, though, at various times, we both have longed for a bigger boat to be able to go faster between destinations. We have met many more international cruisers and have seen lots of marine wildlife.

How lucky we are to have been able to cruise these beautiful parts of the world and still go back to work each year to keep our minds stimulated, see our friends and family and appreciate what is wonderful about the US. As with all travel, we learn from all we meet about life’s richness apart from actual money and, to those who have continued to teach us those lessons, we say thanks. Naturally, this is probably the last blog for a while, but do keep in touch.

Dispatch 39 Les Tuamotus

2008-08-03T20:10:00.001-07:00

July 5 - July 30

the Marquises, traveling south by southwest there is a patch called “The Dangerous Archipelago” on the charts otherwise known as Les Tuamotus. These were once volcanic islands that have slowly sunk. Reef grew along their edges and as the island sinks, the reef remains, so, today, there is reef surrounding a large lagoon. On the north side of most of these reefs, islands or motus have been built up made of coral/sand and lots of palm trees. On the windward side where the sea waves crash on the reef, there is only reef and the water pours in over at high tide. The lagoon fills and the water finds its way back to the sea by way of passes located around the atoll. Most of the atolls have one or two of these passes, others none. These passes through the reef, if large and deep enough, provide access for sailboats to the inner lagoon where the waters are often still and beautiful.

It is difficult to describe the colors once inside the lagoons as they are brighter than a Kodachrome world. If you’ve ever used that Microsoft screen saver called “Azul” with the sailboat and the desert isle, that’s close to the look. The water is clear at times for at least 50 feet of depth and is swimming pool color in the shallows. The beach is bright white, the palm trees bright green, the sky bright blue, etc. You get the picture. We were intimidated by the pass entrance into the lagoons as it is important to go in at slack tide. The first pass we attempted was luckily on the leeward side of the atoll (away from the waves) so we did not have crashing waves to distract us. As we approached a couple hours before slack tide (calculations based on moonrise and moonset), we found a very familiar scene and relaxed a little. We’ve done this before, often in kayaks—it’s called dealing with currents in the Pacific Northwest. Good, we watched, read the water, entering just before slack and it was no problem. So those of you in the NW enjoy those well published tide and current tables.

Then came the fun. What we don’t have in the NW are coral heads most of which are not charted nor marked by pilons. In some of the atolls, once you’re away from the villages, you’re navigating in “uncharted waters”, listed on the chartplotter by large white areas. Navigation is done using your eyes to differentiate depth and obstacles by water color, at least you can when the sun is overhead. And the water is loaded with obstacles. From 100 foot depth, coral heads will rise to the surface and just break the water at low tide creating a color change and water change. If you’re not looking, they can wreck your boat! We had the stupidity to transit almost 20 miles of uncharted lagoon as the sun went from high noon to dusk and learned how hard it is to see without the high sun and with the sun in your eyes. Luckily we got away with hitting nothing but it was nerve wracking to say the least. Our destination that afternoon was a place that was idyllic. We parked the boat behind a reef that extended from shore about ½ to ¾ of a mile but once around it, it protected us from the wind waves and provided us with hours of fascinating snorkeling. It was beautiful. The reefs are in shallow water with beautiful tropical fish (our friends called it aquarium snorkeling) and gorgeous coral in which are embedded huge clams with gorgeous colorful membranes. The only difference from an aquarium was the black tip reef sharks and they were everywhere, even sometimes in two feet of water when we first walked in from the beach. They’re small and harmless though and the whole experience was incredible. Sigh.

These atolls often have settlements/villages on the islands along the edges. Again, the people are subsidized by the French government so they appear to live pretty comfortable lives, albeit incredibly remote from the rest of the world. The supply boat comes twice/month, and, at one island, we watched them unload a bunch of bikes, probably fuel in 50 gallon drums, food and, basically, everything the island people would need. The people drive new cars on the brief stretches of road that exist (we’re talking very little amount of road in these villages), they have satellite dishes for television, cell phones, nice clothing. The only similarity to the tiny villages on islands in Panama, as best we could tell were the mangy dogs. The grocery stores carry a wide assortment of junk food as well as staples and then some very French surprises. Would you expect to find Brie, Camembert, excellent saucisson, fine French wine, gourmet tea biscuits, baguettes at your neighborhood 7-11?

We settled on one atoll, Kauehi, for the 14 July celebration—that’s Bastille Day, the French independence day, but the islanders don’t seem to know that so we referred to it as Quatorze Julliet (14th of July). The celebrations are much like we experience in the US over the fourth of July and we enjoyed being in a very small town. The normal population of this town is around 200 people and, for the celebration and because the older kids come back from school in Papeete for the winter holiday, there were 370 people there. We met the mayor who encouraged us to stay. We met a visiting priest who travels among the islands and happened to be there the weekend before the holiday. He brought a friend from Papeete, a farmer who spoke with the people about trying to compost so they could enrich the soil and grow vegetables and fruit trees. And we met the traveling medic who was on this island for a couple months and would leave for another island soon.

We were invited to the Saturday night church service. Most of the islanders are Catholic. The service is conducted in French and Tahitian and the hymns are also sung in both languages. The singing in French Polynesia is sublime. The whole congregation sings and all singing is done in at least 4 part harmony. I don’t know how they do it, when in their lives they learn it, but it is just beautiful. After the mass we were invited to the church luncheon the next day, and we decided to attend. We were seated at the “visiting dignitaries” table with the priest, the farmer and the medic (sounds like the start of a joke according to my brother). They were all very warm, friendly and interesting people. The food was typical local food with poisson cru, pork stew (they told us it was pork, but they are well known to eat dog as well and I’m sure they wouldn’t have told us that), rice, pasta and taro (the carbohydrate triad). There was also a seafood dish that we both enjoyed. After we ate it we were told it was sea turtle. Well, we very well know that sea turtle is endangered, but we were assured that this is a delicacy they enjoy only 2 or 3 times/year and that the single turtle is prepared for the whole village. When in Rome…still, our consciences made us feel we should go to confession for eating turtle!

I had offered to see patients with the medic, mostly out of my own interest so that afternoon he showed us the infirmary. It was a nicely stocked little place. We looked in the clinic freezer expecting icepacks and found a large frozen lobster, however. Island life is a little different. The next day was the 14 July and there was a parade in the morning. All the kids and some of the adults got dressed in traditional costumes and did traditional dancing, the mayor gave a speech and it was over. After the parade I went to the clinic and saw 2 patients with the medic. One was a diabetic, apparently diabetes is very common among the population (as it is among all Pacific Islanders) and the diet doesn’t help. I was told by a nurse on another island that the problem is the villagers can’t afford the fruits and vegetables brought in from Tahiti as they’re very expensive. The farmer didn’t get much response to his talk about composting and growing your own, so I also think the people are rooted in their traditions and fruits and vegetables are not much a part of their diet where carbohydrates are. The “junk food” at the stores in these villages takes up a lot of shelf space and seems to sell very well despite its expense!

The afternoon was filled with town games. The playfield was the scene of the celebration. They started with javelins thrown at a coconut suspended on a pole about 20 feet in the air. It was amazing they hit that small a target in the first place but they hit it many times! First the men competed and then, I was pleased to see, the women stepped up and took their turn. Next was the copra preparation race. Copra is made from the coconuts—the meat is dried to be ready to be pressed for coconut oil. The men, in teams of two, axed coconuts in half (milk flying everywhere), then quickly carved out the meat from the shells. They had to bag the coconut in burlap sacks, pick up all the little pieces, neatly stack the shells and then they were done. The winners were the oldest guys who had done it the longest. Then they all went and helped the young guys who were way behind. I’m sure the copra will be sold—that is the major source of their livelihood. The women then took their turn at the copra race. The event the women did alone was palm frond weaving which was judged on quality, not on speed. Then the men did a race with coconuts tied to poles. In Tahiti they do “Men Carrying Fruit,” which, although it sounds a little Monty Python-ish, is nothing to sneeze at as we were told the fruit weighs 50 kg (110 lbs!). The young men ran with the coconuts on this island (Richard picked up one of the poles and was astonished at how heavy it was but not 50 kg) and they ran fast! Meanwhile, as at any July picnic, the children were organized into games of carrying eggs on spoons, burlap sack races, and tug of war. There were booths where the kids “fished” for prizes, a “disco” for the evening, food booths, everything on a very small scale though. It looked like the whole town had fun. We took pictures, printed some of them and presented them to the mayor the next day.

The mayor, the husband of the woman who runs the store (singular), also owns and runs a black pearl farm and offered to take us on a tour. He cut a colorful figure. When we first met him he was in shorts, shirtless, tattooed, with gold chains around his neck that would please a mafia kingpin and with a dive knife strapped to his calf. I suppose the dive knife was the equivalent of a gun in a holster for a western sheriff or something. Then he appeared at the parade as the paragon of propriety, long black pants, a long sleeved white shirt and the French tricolor draped over his shoulders but then went back to his usual “uniform” the rest of the time. He took us to his pearl farm where we watched technicians implant individually the graft and the nucleus in each oyster for the hopefully future pearl. Their oysters produce 4 pearls each, taking 12 months to do each one, and then they are no longer good to be used so they are eaten. We watched the technicians graft each oyster, the men cleaning and sorting the shells for the viable oysters, went out in the boat to watch them hang the oysters and then we ate some of the oysters at the end of the day. It was fascinating and the technician work is amazing.

Feeling we had exhausted the excitement in that town we moved on to Fakarava, a much “bigger” town of 1000 people. The infrastructure there is markedly better—more stores, several hotels and resorts, a few dive shops, excellent roads and, voila, internet! Fakarava is a tourist destination. There we did some e-mails, arranged airfare home and walked the streets. We met a couple from Tahiti who were there running a restaurant for the July celebration, (one month only), and, after a lovely dinner, I admired the wife’s black pearl bracelet whereupon she walked in the back and returned with 4 black pearls that she gave to me as a gift. We were speechless, but very pleased. We came back the next day with some crayons and pens for their daughter and spent some time chatting with them. Our last night there we went to a traditional dance presentation at a local snack shack. The owner’s 3 year old daughter unofficially started the entertainment as the musicians were doing introductory music by doing a solo spontaneous dance that was a real crowd pleaser. At one point when the musicians were taking too long a break between numbers, she stood watching them with hands on hips and even stamped her foot in frustration. A diva in the making! The initial presentation was a food tasting of various coconut preparations. Then a woman demonstrated about 12 different ways to tie a pareo to make various outfits—I was mesmerized as I have a pareo and wanted some alternative ways to wear it. Finally the dancing started. There were nine girls/women who danced to a combination of drum music during which they twitched their hips wildly and ukulele music where they danced in a more fluid way (like at luaus in Hawaii), likely telling stories with the hand motions. Either way, the men were drooling. It looked like an intense aerobic work-out judging from their wet-with-sweat bodies and rapid breathing. What a wonderful evening.

Our next adventure took us to Toau, a tiny settlement with a family of 10 people who have made a wonderful destination for cruisers. Alas, we had a headwind all the way there and ended up arriving just after dark with a much more exciting than desired entrance in 14 knots of wind, dark and swell. When we saw where we had arrived by the light of day in the morning, both of us were astonished that it all ended well, but we were assured by a friend on a boat inside the cul-de-sac that the entrance was well marked, as it was, and he held a buoy for us with a strong light from his dinghy and helped to tie us up.

Toau was enchanting. First, the family is lovely and generous. Valentine and Gaston offer dinner for any cruiser who arrives. Other members of the family run a set of bungalows that are clean and beautiful and there is a dive operation from this little motu as well. Testimonial to how kind the family is are the delightful and affectionate dogs. Whereas everywhere else we had been the dogs cower if you approach them and slink away in fear, these dogs are affectionate and obviously cared for pets. One large retriever actually swims ¼ mile across to another island and “fishes” along the way. He stands on coral heads and watches the fish swim by and whines if none of them are shallow enough for him to catch. The others accompany various cruisers on walks around the island. On our walk, I was “attacked” by a tiny furball of a puppy who wanted to play and jumped on my feet as I was standing admiring the bungalows. Awwww, can I keep him? They had also “rescued” a frigate bird who they were feeding until she was old enough to be independent. They feed one of the Napoleon wrasses (a fish!) each morning and he comes when he is called! And each of us got a chance to test the sharpness of their kitten’s teeth and claws as she attacked each one of us in turn over dinner from under the table.

I offered any medical advice that they needed and, as it happened, they were having a couple issues and I gave them medicine for those, in exchange for which, they made sure we had fresh fish for dinner that night! Lovely people. We love how the Polynesians laugh so easily. A German friend celebrated his birthday while we were all there and Valentine and Gaston put on a gorgeous feast. Gaston collected 20 lobsters from the nearby reef the night before and roasted them on the grill (using a satellite dish to deflect the wind—we couldn’t think of a better use for a satellite dish!) and Valentine prepared poisson cru, breaded baked fish, coconut bread, and a scrumptious birthday cake. They joined us for dinner en famille and we laughed a lot that night. The following night we all brought potluck dinner and helped Valentine in the kitchen including doing our own dishes. We loved every minute.

The snorkeling in this cul-de-sac is the best ever. In one outing we saw at least 15 new fish—the water is clear, the coral is beautiful and healthy. The family maintains some fish traps and, in one of them, we saw 3 reef sharks and several huge (5 foot long) Napolean wrasses. We were strongly encouraged away from one coral head by the 5 foot moray eel.

These islands have been absolutely enchanting and it is so hard to leave to hit the “big city” of Papeete, Tahiti, but the time has come to make preparations to leave French Polynesia. We plan to leave the boat here and return to the US for the storm season, this time for a much longer stretch, possibly as long as 8 months. That will give us a chance to vote in the Presidential elections at the very least!

Dispatch 38 Les Marquises

2008-06-30T13:27:00.000-07:00

May 25 - June 30

French Polynesia constitutes several groups of islands: The Society Islands including, among others, Tahiti and Bora Bora, Les Iles Marquises, Les Tuamotus, Iles Gambiers, and the Astral Islands. It is truly a beautiful paradise. At a similar latitude in the Southern Hemisphere as Hawaii is in the Northern Hemisphere, the climate is like Hawaii—sunny, warm, humid, trade winds to cool the air and frequent rain squalls to keep the hillsides verdant and lush. The people are Polynesian, like the native Hawaiians, friendly, brown-skinned, often tattooed and with their own language, a version of a Polynesian language. Here in les Marquises, they refer to it as “Marquisien”, “hello” is Ka-oh-ha, similar to Aloha. The official language is French and the locals speak Marquisien, French and often some English.

The Marquises are “newer” geologically and have no reef system surrounding them, similar to the Hawaiian islands. By contrast, the Tuamotus are reefs that enclose a lagoon with no central island (the island having slowly sunk into the sea) and the Societies (including Tahiti) are islands with a fringing reef. For a boater, this is significant because, first, it means the navigation is simple in the Marquises—if there’s a bay that is shallow enough to anchor, you can pull right into it. In the Societies and Tuamotus, we will have to go through a pass in the reef, often with significant currents, to enter the lagoon area. Second, the Marquises anchorages are almost uniformly rolly because they have no reef to stop the swell of the ocean. Often we bow and stern anchor to keep the boat facing the swells.

We arrived in the mid-morning after 29 days at sea. The island we first came to was Hiva Oa—volcanic, steep hillside covered with green, flowers everywhere once we were on land, beautiful. Upon arrival there were a dozen boats in the anchorage, many boats were ones we knew from the Galapagos and from having spoken on the radio nearly daily. We went out of our way to meet each other and spend time together to compare notes. It was very fun. The check-in process was not quite as smooth as we would have liked but it went fine ultimately. It’s been fun to speak French, a blast actually because my French is still so much better than my Spanish ever was having learned French when I was so much younger.

In the Marquises, there are archaeological sites in many of the anchorages with “tikis”, small stone statues, somewhat similar to the famous stone statues of Easter Island. The Polynesians populated Hawaii, many of the other islands in this area, Easter Island and New Zealand. Polynesians were cannibals—they ate enemies they killed in warfare. The famous and brilliant navigator Captain Cook met his end by being killed and eaten by the Hawaiian natives. Lucky for us, cannibalism has gone away although there are often nervous and politically inappropriate jokes among the cruisers. (If one is invited to dine with a local family, the joke is often whether we are eating or being eaten!) The two main threats of these islands for us today are wallet depletion and death by insect bites. As all goods are shipped here and, other than baguettes which are subsidized and cost about 60 cents, food costs a fortune. Ditto for gasoline and diesel. It’s almost better to just pretend you can’t figure out the exchange rate and just buy what you need. As to the insects, they are infamous—the “no-no’s” of the Marquises are so dreaded that ships from here are fumigated before arriving at, say, Hawaii, to avoid having these insects exported elsewhere. They are tiny, take a hunk of skin with their bite and leave a burning, itching, blistering little bump that does little for a good night’s sleep. There are garden variety mosquitoes and at least one other biting fly. Hey, no paradise is perfect!

On Hiva Oa, we walked all over, visited a petroglyph site, visited Paul Gauguin’s grave and got our “city” fix (ie., internet, grocery shopping). We then went to Tahuatu, a nearby island where we had a couple days of lovely snorkeling. We tried to fight 20-25 knot headwinds on a couple occasions to get back to Fatu Hiva (45 miles to windward), an island famous for the Kontiki landing there, but we just couldn’t stand the seas (up to 8-10 feet) and finally decided to move on. We spent several days waiting out the winds in a lovely valley on the north side of Hiva Oa. The village there had no stores, just people living their quiet lives. The houses and yards and streets were immaculate, lined with flowering plants and the people were lovely. We were given handfuls of fruit from the trees, the grapefruit, papaya, lemons. We picked guavas, lemons, oranges from that valley and another we hiked to. It was nearly an idyllic existence. The hike was through a pristine valley where goats periodically crashed through the woods, and ended on a gorgeous white sand beach with turquoise water where we cooled off before heading back.

We then headed north to Oa Pou, an overnight trip of 70 miles with fair winds. That island is spectacular with rocky spires and the villagers were delightful. We watched a group of girls rehearsing their dance number for the upcoming July dance festivals. The dancing was hula-like, story-telling through body motions. The church in town was stunning with carved wood—a specialty of these islands. We bought a tapa painting here. They are made by beating wood bark until it is flat like parchment and then painting Polynesian designs on it. The art of the islands is beautiful in wood, painting, tattoes, carvings in stone and other materials.

Next we headed to Nuku Hiva, the largest island with the largest settlement. First we went to Daniel’s Bay, the one time setting of one of the first Survivor shows. We had been led to believe that the TV show had ruined this idyllic spot, but we were happy to learn that it was as wonderful as ever and that there are no signs of previous celebrity. The anchorage itself is spectacular—high cliffs, green hillsides. Because there is a sharp turn at the entrance, one goes from wild waves breaking on the rocks on all sides to flat calm, nearly a perfect place to stay. We walked up the valley to a 2000 foot waterfall (not much water because it’s been dry here). On the way back we were spontaneously invited to lunch by an older couple, joining some boater friends who were already there. We were gifted fruit by the couple and told to return the next day to get more. They served us beef in coconut milk, breadfruit prepared 3 different ways, taro (like potatoes) and fruit.

The villagers from what we have seen live comfortable lives. Rumor has it that the islanders enjoy a government stipend from the French government which allows them to afford the prices which even we find steep. The couple who invited us to lunch had an open air house on beautifully maintained grounds. They grew grapefruit, oranges, limes, starfruit, breadfruit, coconut, papayas, mangoes, guava, bananas and noni. Noni is a fruit that looks like a potato and is harvested, mashed up and sent to the US where it is used in various elixirs for both drinking and applying to the skin. It reportedly has healing properties. It is, or was, big money for the locals, but we gathered that Martinique began growing the noni and has undercut the price these islanders were getting. The couple had a TV and satellite dish (the dishes are ubiquitous even in towns without a single store or other service like this one) and a very large solar panel array with many batteries to supply their energy needs. Many new model trucks and SUV’s are seen on the streets. In the valleys we visited that are without “services”, the life is very much a subsistence one. The people take a boat to the nearest place to get supplies a couple times/month. Otherwise, they live off their land—food consists of goat (readily abundant in the woods—we saw a group of men return in their pirogue—canoe with a pontoon and outboard engine—with a goat they had shot that day), pig (raised in the homestead but not as pets), beef, taro, breadfruit and various other vegetables only if they grow them, and tons of fruit. It is a bit confusing that they have many luxuries, yet the pace is slow, the supplies arrive at unreliable time intervals, but it is not a third world country.

The fruit grows in excess here. The only way to get fruit actually is from the friendly villagers, either as a gift or by trade. It is not sold in the stores, we gather because everyone grows their own. The highlight of the local fruit is the pamplemousse, the local grapefruit. This fruit is larger than our familiar grapefruits and infinitely sweeter. It is so juicy we bring it on every hike to supplement our fluid intake.

From Taiohae, the largest town on Nuku Hiva, we walked to two archaeological sites, visited their, also gorgeous, church, enjoyed internet from the boat (!),bought delicious farm grown fresh produce at early morning markets in town, and enjoyed a traditional pig roast and dance presentation. The pig was steamed in a pit in the ground for hours and lifted out for our photo op at the time of dinner. The food was mixed—the pig was delicious, the goat in coconut milk was also delicious. We enjoyed poisson cru (sounds deadly but is raw fish marinated in lime juice and coconut milk) and a banana pudding. What we tried hard to enjoy was the breadfruit cooked up in several ways. We’ve now tried the breadfruit in about 5 different preparations and have heartily concluded that it is not, despite what the Polynesians believe, a food product. We spent hilarious long minutes at dinner trying to come up with other uses for breadfruit—home insulation, packing materials for delicate electronics, mattress stuffing, perhaps it induces some altered state of consciousness if smoked we wondered? The dance that night was done to hypnotic drumming and featured men in grass skirts whose movements looked decidedly warlike or hunter-like. The women had a smaller role in this dance but had the most amazing hip twitching movement. Richard was mesmerized. In short, we’ve had a wonderful time.

We then visited the anchorage and village of Taipivai, made famous by the Herman Melville adventure when he jumped a whaling ship and lived there. Our last anchorage was a stunning, calm bay filled with coral which afforded us beautiful snorkeling as well as gorgeous hikes. The hike over the pass to the next village brought us to the largest and most impressive archaeological site yet—very cool.

Lest you all think life is nothing but drinking rum drinks with little umbrellas in the sun after a day of snorkeling coral reefs, we remind you that there are always boat projects especially after the miles of sailing we’ve done. The boat has decided she, too, will be Polynesian, and she grows a grass skirt at the waterline every week which has to be scrubbed vigorously if we want to maintain any boat speed at all. We’ve just felt no need to report on the many projects or let them spoil our time in paradise. Some days when the watermaker AND refrigerator decide to act up, it brings us down. Sigh. Time to move on to the next brand of paradise, the coral atolls, the Tuamotus.

Dispatch 37 Passage to Les Iles Marquises

2008-06-20T19:15:00.000-07:00

April 26 to May 25, 2008
Since it represents almost a month of our lives, it seems apt to write something about our passage from the Galapagos to the Marquises, part of French Polynesia, across 3000 ocean miles. This is the longest passage we have ever done. Of course, we had a bit of anxiety, after all, anything that happened out there was ours to handle alone. Having said that, we are continually amazed at the numbers of boats doing this same adventure. Reportedly 400 boats have checked into the Marquises this year. No longer is it the lone wild sailors that strike out for distant harbors and no longer does one need to be incommunicado. Still, if there are problems, the other boats are days from being able to help.

Here’s what Encyclopedia Britannica has to say about the Pacific Ocean: “It occupies about one third of the surface of the earth and is by far the largest of the world’s oceans. Its area, excluding adjacent seas, is approximately 63,800,000 square miles, twice that of the Atlantic Ocean and more than the whole land area of the globe. Its mean depth is 14,040 feet.”

We left the Galapagos on a rainy day and picked up the wind within a couple hours of leaving the harbor. Other boats who left before us had found they had to motor for a few days to find wind. We had lovely wind, 10-15 knots for the first two weeks. Then the second 2 weeks, the wind became more light and variable until, by the last week, we were motoring occasionally in zero wind and finally motored most of the last 2 days as we were so close yet there was very little wind. We ran the spinnaker a lot, at one point 4 days straight including overnight. It took us 29 days, an eternity. Another boat 2 days behind us and 8 feet longer took 28 days, another boat our size took 23 days. It all depends on the amount of wind and we did not have enough. Yet, it made for a calm passage—a nice trade-off.

I once wrote that the first day of a passage can really suck (2006, Dispatch 8) and I’ll amend that to say that the first 5 days of a passage can really suck. Despite our benign conditions, the ocean is a place of constant motion and we feel the need to keep watch 24 hours/day (not true for all other sailors out here, especially the single handers). Thanks to an impossibly rolly anchorage just before we left, at least my seasickness was really not a factor. However, I guess I just had thought that after a few days, one gets used to the motion. Not so—the motion is constant and unpredictable so that, to move around the boat, one is always hanging on or reaching for a potential handhold in case of unfavorable lurching. I had prepared 5 meals in advance and that served us very well. Thereafter, I had to learn to cook on this mechanical bull. Meanwhile, our bodies were trying to get used to 3 hour watches and trying to sleep through the motion and the racket on the boat (water swishing, blocks creaking, woodwork creaking, occasional slamming as the sail loses the wind and then fills again). Veteran friends of ours wrote us on day 6 and mentioned how they really loved the day of a passage (somewhere from day 3 to 6) when they were finally both on deck, rested and actually having a conversation with each other instead of just reviewing the conditions and the off watch member stumbling down to the berth for some well needed sleep. That very day we had finally reached that state.

I know I had preconceived notions about this—all this quiet, contemplative time to think about writing, read books I had been saving, listen to French tapes, have all day to cook or bake. Here’s the reality behind that fantasy:

Cooking. Forget about anything that requires prolonged chopping. There’s bound to be a minute when a lurch of the boat leaves one propelled to the other side with the knife in one hand and the onion in the other hoping for some purchase or a favorable lurch back. Forget about placing round objects on flat surfaces. Tomatoes go to ground faster than you can blink. Lots of non-skid and thoughtful placement of objects is learned quickly. We are fortunate to have 2 deep sinks which are a safe place to put things and a stove that moves with the boat motion and therefore ends up being the flattest surface in the galley. Still “one pot slop” as a friend dubbed it is the order of most days. One unnaturally calm day, I roasted chicken breasts with vegetables, but most days it’s some variation of rice/beans/stew. We didn’t starve.

Reading. We got lots of reading done but it took me several days before that was completely comfortable (motion sickness only reared its ugly head while trying to read at night).

Writing. We wrote e-mails nearly daily, but long periods of concentrated writing don’t happen due to distractions: need to change the sails, too rocky conditions, need for sleep, time for meal preparation, etc. Lame, I know.

French tapes. We listened to French tapes. Luckily we have a really handy book made especially for boaters with all the French words for the things we really need. I already know how to make a hotel reservation, but finding an oil filter or replacing a stainless steel part wasn’t a part of my high school French. Shame on them.

Laundry. During a month, laundry needs to be done so we fill buckets and wash the clothes by hand with plenty of sun and breeze for air drying. With our desalination watermaker, we can replenish our water supply while on passage for drinking, bathing and laundry--another modern advantage over our earlier cruising counterparts.

As to communication, well that is really a phenomenal change from 30 years ago and must, in some small part, account for people’s comfort with setting out to sea along with the advent of GPS. From our boat, I call my parents once/week on a satellite phone. It’s a comfort to them and a safety factor for us. Pretty much daily we download e-mails and weather charts from our single sideband radio. We hear from others ahead of us about what to expect at our landfall (expensive food and fuel!!), where to go and what to do. And while on passage, we spoke daily with boats traveling within a few hundred miles of us about the conditions and any problems they had encountered. While this eliminates a certain amount of the thrill of discovery, it also eliminates a lot of uncertainty and helped us to plan our provisioning to avoid unneeded expense.

In the end, 4 weeks of ocean passage is a long haul. We travel at fast walk/slow jog pace and the scenery is spectacular but pretty unchanging. The stars and moon are beautiful at night. The visitations by sea creatures are thrilling or just amusing. One day, we had 10 or so false killer whales swimming alongside and on our bow for about a half hour. We’ve had pilot whales swim behind us steadily for a half hour. We pull out our books and identify the sea creatures and birds we encounter. We had squid and flying fish on our deck nearly every morning. One night, a flying fish made a surgical strike and flew right into my head in the cockpit. I don’t know who was more surprised, but we both survived the attack.

We made landfall on day 29 at Hiva Oa. The evening before, we saw our first glimpse of the islands from 65 miles away. They are beautiful with severe cliffs, verdant with vegetation and a welcome sight after almost a month at sea. While our boat is our home and we have everything aboard we could want or need, it is wonderful to have our home stop rocking and for life to begin to return to normal. We can only imagine the thrill of seeing the islands when one’s navigation was all done by celestial.

A word about language. While in Spanish speaking countries, we always referred to this destination as “The Marquesas” which would be the Spanish version. Now that we are here, I prefer to use Les Iles Marquises which is the French name and, as they are French, the more appropriate one. It will be fun to speak French again. Bienvenue a les Iles Marquises!

Dispatch 36 Islas Galapagos

2008-04-22T09:41:00.000-07:00

March 22 - April 22, 2008
We have so many glorious experiences while out cruising and so many close encounters with marine wildlife that there was a tiny voice inside our heads suggesting, perhaps, the Galapagos might not be as amazing after all these other fantastic experiences. After all, we’ve been face to face with hundreds of nesting blue footed boobies on Isla Isabela offshore of Mexico and seen iguanas, sea lions, dolphins, whales, frigate birds, sea turtles, etc. through our nearly 3 year voyage. Aren’t we thrilled to discover that the Galapagos, Islands of Enchantment, still provide all the enchantment we ever need. We left Panama and voyaged for 9 days, arriving early on the 10th day, here at Isla San Cristobal, the easternmost island of the group. We kept in touch with other boats traveling ahead and behind us to the Galapagos via single side band radio and had visual contact with a couple including one boat we had last seen in Costa Rica—one of those “small ocean” moments. So here is an alphabetical accounting of our time here.

‘A’ is for Autografo and Albatross. Our good friends Bruce and Alene on the trimaran Migration did a lot of advance research on permits for the Galapagos and, despite that, they arrived without a clear idea of what was best. After a couple weeks they discovered this permit called an “autografo” had been done for them by agents at one of the islands thanks to their months of e-mail communication. It allows a private sailboat to travel to 5 populated ports instead of just one port and allows up to 90 days in the Galapagos (!) instead of the usually issued 20 days. Our friends quickly wrote us with the e-mail for the agents who could issue this permit and we were able to send all required documents by e-mail and secure the permit before we even arrived in the islands. That turned out to be unbelievably fortuitous because, even before we arrived, the autografo became unavailable due to new regulations. But, thanks to our brilliant and thoughtful friends, we had slipped in before the door closed. So we have enjoyed utter luxury of time, open door policy at every port captain’s office (unlike many others’ experiences) and the wonder of 4 islands of the Galapagos via our own sailboat.
As to the albatross, well, we haven’t been so lucky. It nests here, but during another season.

‘B’ is for Boobies, Boobies and more Boobies. There are 4 varieties of boobies here, two of which exist nowhere else. There are Blue Footed, Red Footed, Nazca and the ever present Brown. We’ve particularly enjoyed the dive-bombing of the boobies here at our current anchorage. They drop from 50 feet, diving several feet underwater and come up swallowing a fish. They shake their heads as if to clear them then fly off. We watched the courtship dance of the blue footed variety where they turn their heads skyward and also lift their beautiful blue feet one at a time to impress the female. Marvelous.

‘C’ is for cactus and city. Here we are at the equator and on islands with rain for more than 6 months per year, yet one of the predominant plant species is a cactus which also provides food for the iguanas and other animals. It seems strange somehow.

Also, much to the amazement of those of us who thought the Galapagos were a wilderness outpost, there is a city of 12,000 people here on Isla Santa Cruz. It is the tourist center and has numerous stores, tourist agencies, hotels, restaurants, internet places. Things are expensive here by Ecuador standards, often US prices, but the fact that so much is available is a surprise.

‘D’ is for, well, Darwin and Dengue Fever. You just can’t get away from Darwin. We have read the Galapagos section of the Voyage of the Beagle, pretty dry reading. Still, the place hasn’t changed much since his description of it other than the city mentioned above.

Dengue fever is a mosquito borne viral illness and one of our friends is recovering after a 3 week illness he contracted here; the islands aren’t always enchanted.

‘E’ is for Eagle Rays. We have seen numerous beautiful spotted eagle rays while both snorkeling and scuba diving. They “fly” underwater so gracefully.

‘F’ is for Finches, Frigate birds and Flamingoes. The finches are ubiquitous and made famous by Darwin’s discovery that they had evolved different beak shapes to better adapt to their diet on the different islands. The Frigate birds are old friends, puffing up their red throats to impress the girls. Flamingos are native here unlike in Florida we learned. They look just like the lawn ornament models.

‘G’ is for Gecko, one of the many interesting lizards here on the islands. We wish we had one on our boat because they eat mosquitoes and we could have used some help with that type of wildlife (see Dengue above).

‘H’ is for Hammerhead sharks. Despite literally hours in the water we have yet to spot one although in every outing at least one person sees one. We’ll keep looking.

‘I’ is for iguanas. There are so many varieties here but the unique version is the marine iguana who swims in the ocean and eats algae off the bottom. They are unbelievably prehistoric looking.

'J' and ‘K’ well we got stumped on these 2, so on to ‘L’

‘L’ is for lava, lava tunnels, lava lizards, lava finches, lava heron, lava gull, etc., you get the idea. These islands are of volcanic origin and much of the terrain is made of lava. Some of the beaches are black as the sand is of lava origin. Lava rocks are not comfortable to walk on—they are sharp and black so they absorb heat. Nonetheless the sea lions haul out all over them. We’ve visited some bizarre beautiful landscapes where lava tunnels are now submerged in water and form arches and beautiful underwater chambers for snorkeling. We walked through a quarter mile tunnel on land left by racing lava where the outside cools and the lava stream continues inside. On that particular outing we managed to lose our guide (a group of 11 of us) so we explored the cave alone using flashlights until we found the light switch at the other end and illuminated the whole tunnel and went back for a better look.

‘M’ is for Manta Rays. Here like elsewhere they come jumping out of the water somersaulting or just flapping. But here we’ve seen large ones in and out of the water, sometimes just swimming peacefully at the surface with 6 to 8 feet between their “wings” on the surface.
‘N’ is for Nazca boobies, one of the unique varieties here on the islands.

‘O’ is for the Galapagos Owl which has eluded us to date.

‘P’ is for Penguins and petrels. The penguins are completely adorable. We are now anchored at one of the only islands to have them, Isabela. They originally migrated here from Antarctica on the cold Humboldt current. They swim around our boats every morning feeding and they’re just darling. Petrels of several varieties fly between the islands and only deserve mention as we’ve spent long moments pouring over the various wildlife books trying to figure out which species we’re seeing.

‘Q’ is for Qayaq our trusty boat that took us on this nearly 1000 mile passage uneventfully. We arrived after 9 days and a slow drifty passage punctuated by a couple high wind days and some motoring in flat calm seas. We crossed the equator—a momentous event in any mariner’s life—and thus went from pollywog to shellback. We marked the experience (at around 6:30 in the morning) with champagne, offerings to Neptune, read a poem we wrote for the occasion, and placed tattoos (temporary ones—another tradition). The champagne certainly went to our heads as we hadn’t been drinking for a couple weeks and it was early in the morning so most of the champagne went to Neptune which is appropriate. This was our longest passage to date and, as we hope we can always say after a passage, there’s not much to report.

‘R’ is for rays of the many varieties already mentioned.

‘S’ is for Sea lions and Sharks. First and always foremost at the Galapagos there are the sea lions. When we arrived at Isla San Cristobal, they were everywhere. To say that they have no fear of humans is to miss the point of their pest like behavior. They see every surface as a potential haulout spot. So the local taxi boats surround their decks with barbed wire which still sometimes doesn’t dissuade these animals. They were all over the public landing dock napping in the sun. One got too hot and decided to saunter over to the shade scaring a small child, but, undaunted, installed itself beneath one of the benches for more napping. The many sailing catamarans which usually have 2 swim steps in the back right at water level are major targets for the beasts and we saw every variation of obstacles placed up the steps to keep the visitors off including nail boards (which, by the way, makes getting aboard one’s own boat or as a guest damned difficult!) One of our friends resorted to spike boards when they awoke one morning with a sea lion looking into their bedroom from the front deck. Any dinghy left in the water is fair game and we had 3 in ours one night while at a friend’s boat for dinner. For the most part they left our boat alone until we were the only sailboat at one anchorage and awoke to a huge thud above our heads early one morning and found madame sea lion making herself comfortable right on top of our doghouse, 5 feet and 2 levels above the water. She was grudging but not hard to convince to leave.

Having said all that about the obnoxious interactions, we have also had several opportunities to swim with the sea lions and they are the most adorable creatures imaginable. They are basically sea dogs. Usually it is the pups who engage with swimmers. They swim at you upside down and, if you start to somersault or give chase, they play with you for as long as you like. Sometimes they get riled up and start nipping at each other, just like land puppies. We watched several playing keep away and tug of war with a stolen snorkel just like a dog would do with a stick. We were charmed. The rare floating piece of flotsam provides playful entertainment. At our current anchorage, the sea lions are much better behaved and stay off the dinghies and boats (other than those irresistible catamarans) and just fish and play around our anchorage.

Sharks are everywhere here. We scuba-ed and snorkeled with white tip reef sharks and Galapagos sharks. There are many others and, for the most part, they are minding their own business. It is unnerving still to find yourself in water 8 feet deep with a 6 foot reef shark though…

‘T’ is for turtles, the namesake of the Galapagos. There are marine turtles which we have swum with before and here and are always a thrill. They are mellow and beautiful swimmers. Then there are the, perhaps most bizarre creature of the Galapagos, land tortoises. They are the most

ill-suited design for land life yet they survive more than 150 years. They are huge (males can be 200 kg or more) move ponderously and, when approached, hiss quietly as they retract their heads into their shells, more like a bellows sound than a hiss. We’ve seen them at breeding centers where they are being preserved because they are endangered by the many human introduced species and we saw them “in the wild” on local farms. It’s bizarre to find them sitting in a field or by the side of the road, but they are definitely easy wildlife to “sneak up on” so to speak. But it is awesome to think that some of the old tortoises here were alive when Darwin was walking these same islands.

‘U’ is for the ‘unbelievable’ experience of traveling here in our own boat.

‘V’ is for volcanoes. These islands are very geologically active and formed by volcanic activity. Historically, they formed from volcanoes then floated south and east. The island we are on currently, the westernmost island, has 6 volcanoes, still active, the latest eruption being in 2005. We took a horseback ride up to the crater, the second largest volcanic crater in the world, which was notable mainly for the very sad, tired, overused horses. But the volcano landscape was lunar and stark and the views were spectacular.

‘W’ is for Windmills. The islands are trying hard to be energy independent. Our first island used windmills for all its electrical needs. The second island had a huge array of solar panels for the electrical needs.

‘X’ is, well, another one that stumped us.

‘Y’ is for cruising Yachts. This year there have been so many of us visiting the Galapagos. There must be 50 or 60 boats who have stopped here on their way to French Polynesia just as we are doing. The group is quite international with boats from Sweden, England, Australia, New Zealand, France, Canada and US (east and west coast of both), Italy, Germany, Austria, Denmark to name just some of the boats we’ve met.

‘Z’ is for zarpe which is the exit document we need from the Port Captain prior to leaving any port either for travel between ports or an ‘International zarpe’ for our exit from the Galapagos and entry into the Marquesas or from any country to the next.

We feel privileged to have had this opportunity to visit the Galapagos with our home. At one stupendous snorkel site, we arrived and snorkeled for an hour, just the two of us and our guide (an absolute requirement), before hordes of tourists on the tour boats unloaded to begin snorkeling the same site. And, despite regulations, we’ve been able to float along watching the darling penguins here at our current anchorage as they live on the rocks that are merely a couple hundred feet from our boat. (We’re supposed to hire a guide to be out on these rocks, not go in our private dinghies). The Galapagos are struggling with the volumes of tourists who want to visit versus the need to limit visitors in order to preserve the natural splendor of the place and maintain their World Heritage Site status. Everywhere we turn, there are locals who want to dip their hands in our pockets to help us enjoy the Galapagos. Still, regardless of cost, they are a unique place that we have enjoyed immensely.

Our next step is the biggest yet, the 3000 mile crossing to French Polynesia. We will leave later in April and arrive in May, perhaps as long as a month’s voyage in our boat. That should at least give us enough time to put away the Spanish dictionaries and find our French reference materials and start to tune our ears for the first new language in 3 years. We will, no doubt, not be in touch much during that long ocean passage. We wish you all well and will update the website when we arrive.