LTY UPDATE: Sunday, September 9th, 2012 Uliveo Island, Vanuatu
LTY time: 17:35 (Vanuatu time = UTC +11) Location: SW bay of Uliveo Island, part of Meskelyne Islands, Vanuatu Position: 16 31.833 S, 167 49.716 E (you can cut & past this into Google Earth to see on map) Wind: 5-12 knots (inside the bay) Seas/Swell: flat Air temp: 86 F 30C Sea temp: 85 F 29.5 C Barometer: 1020mm
LIVING LARGE in ULIVEO
I had a boisterous but fast sail from Port Villa to Uliveo on Tuesday night. Both the wind and seas were quite a bit more than forecast with winds at time over 35 knots and seas up to almost 5 meters at times. The wind was also almost directly behind me which makes it a bit tricky to sail as I’ve described before, but with the winds being so strong and the following seas so large I was able to sail at 6-8 knots with just the main sail up which worked out quite well. The seas were not quite directly behind me so they would roll dear Learnativity all the way from one side to the other, at times well over 45 degrees so it was a very “active” ride but not overly bothersome or problematic.
I did have one nasty problem for a few hours when the outer cover on the main halyard wore through and jammed in the clutch. This is the line that goes up to a pulley at the very top aft side of the mast and pulls the main sail up so it is one of the more critical lines and the boat and takes some of the most stress and strain. In my usual “thrifty” ways I’ve been trying to eek out every last nautical mile from this now six year old line and over 30,000 nm, and I finally succeeded in doing so about midnight on Tuesday. However I’ve been planning on this event for some time and so I’ve had 200 feet of a new high tech halyard in my stores and all ready to go. Most of the lines we use have all their strength in the inner core and then are covered with a different material, usually poly based, woven covers that are better in your hands, protect the inner core from UV and take the wear and tear from the clutches (line holders) and winches. So what happened was that the common spot where the “teeth” of my clutch jaws clamp the halyard when the main sail is in the fully raised position, wore through in the high winds and stress they were experiencing on the sail on Tuesday night. This created two problems; one is that the inner line was now able to slip through the clutch so the main sail slid down the mast a few meters and then the outer cover material bunched up and jammed the clutch jaws. This in turn gave me two problems; a flopping main sail in a full down wind run and no ability to raise or lower it due to the jammed halyard. Both of these conspired to then have the upper part of the flopping main sail to tangle with the shrouds (stainless steel wire line that holds up the mast) and were threatening to tear the main sail.
With no other choice I could see, it was time for me to take a trip up the 70’ mast and free the main sail before it ripped on the shrouds. Fortunately I installed mast steps all the way up the mast shortly after I bought Learnativity for just these type of situations and so I’m used to climbing the mast. However doing so in 30-35 knot winds and with the boat rolling from side to side in the big seas did make it a bit more challenging. It took the better part of an exhausting hour to do so, but I was finally able to get the sail free though not before the batten, a fiberglass rod that slides inside a horizontal pocket on the sail about every 2 meters up the main sail to help keep its shape) snapped in two. Nothing much I could do about that in these conditions and if I could get the sail back under control it wouldn’t likely cut through the sail pocket material. I spent a good while then cutting about 4 meters of the outer cover of the halyard off and managing to tape the ends tightly to the inner core such that this jury rigged line would now be able to feed through the clutches and mast pulleys. With this all done I was then able to reef/drop the main to have less area in these higher winds and then tighten up the luff (edge that goes up the mast) and pull down the boom such that the sail was back to flying properly and we were soon back to sailing along at a good pace. This held just fine all the way into the bay at Uliveo island and the main sail all furled up into the boom just fine to my great delight as we pulled in just after noon time. Best of all, I was greeted by Philip on the VHF and he came out in his dinghy to be show me the way around some of the big bommies and corals here in this lovely little bay.
It has been a salubrious time tucked in here in the small and well protected little bay on the SW corner of Uliveo Island which is one of the small islands that make up the Meskelyne Island group on the SE tip of the large island of Malakula here in Vanuatu. Lots of factors contributing to this welcomed condition, primary amongst those being here with my dear friend Philip and his new mate Teri on their Outreemer catamaran “Blue Bie”. Philip and I first met over four years ago when we both happened to be making our entry into Ecuador at the same time and place and had to wait for several hours before the authorities could process us. We just seemed to hit it off immediately and our friendship has grown more and more with each year as we continue to find ways to meet up as we make our very different ways around the sea.
Best of all I managed to get here in time for Philip’s birthday on Friday which made the time even more special. We spent part of the day on a nearby beach with them enjoying the kite surfing, Ruby enjoying beach time and me learning the details of kite surfing, catching up with Philip and getting to know Teri. I got some shots of Philip and Teri out kite boarding and one fun thing was the juxtaposition of old and new as some of the locals would paddle over in their dugout outrigger wood canoes and you’d get shots like the one on the right here with this centuries old canoe paddling beside 21st century kite boarding.
Then it was back to Blue Bie to celebrate with champagne and then we joined forces to make a fabulous birthday meal topped off with freshly ground coconut cake with Swiss chocolate icing and complete with a full set of Happy Birthday candles thanks to Teri’s great foresight and caring while they were in some shops in Port Villa a few weeks ago.
Over the past few days together we’ve had more kite surfing, beach walks, a trip with the locals to their giant clam farm and ashore for a Kustom dance and ceremony and mostly just lots of time spent being together. Unfortunately Teri’s time is almost up here in Vanuatu and her flight back to Maui is in a few days out of Port Villa so they sailed off yesterday (Saturday) afternoon heading for Port Villa and to be there in time for Teri’s birthday present to Philip of a scenic flight over the islands in a small sea plane. So we had one last late lunch together with hamburgers grilled on my BBQ a few last licks and cuddles with Ruby and they were off into the late afternoon sun heading south. Vanuatu turns out to have amazingly high quality beef, for reasons I’m not completely sure of and while I’m not a big beef eater the fillet mignon we had for Philip’s birthday (he is a BIG beef lover) and the hamburgers, were truly delicious.
The Vanuatu culture continues to be filled with lots of new learning for me and quite different that others I’ve experienced. For example they prefer to life in very small groups and so even on this small island of Uliveo there are at least four separate small villages rather than one large one. It is also quite common that each village will have its own language or dialect and in some cases these are so different that people on the same island don’t understand each other’s language. However they also all speak Bislama, a form of “pidgin English” as well as English so communicating amongst themselves and with us is not a problem. They are all very proud of their culture and traditions and quite anxious to have “show and tell” events referred to as Kustom ceremonies. “Chief Jim” of the nearby village invited us ashore for their such a ceremony on Thursday night after visiting the giant clams and it was most entertaining. This is the third one I’ve been to and the most informal of them all. The dancing was performed only by the men, which is more traditional but on Aneityum both women and children participated which is quite rare apparently.
The only slightly disappointing aspect of Vanuatu I’ve come across is that they have the most focus on charging fees and seeing us as a source of cash income of any of the places I’ve been so far. All quite understandable and reasonable I might add as they have increasing needs to buy thing such as gas for their outboard motors and their sources of income such as from copra (coconut oil) have dropped off precipitously in the last 20 years. Fiji was notable to me in part because some how they continue to avoid the “wanting” or lust for material goods and the deep contentment with other riches they have such as friends and family. Having been living in this culture for over two years I’d become accustomed to it, though always marveling at it and learning more about it, so the contrast here in Vanuatu no doubt seems stronger to me.
The other nice change is that the clouds have cleared off and I’m back to being spoiled once again by blue skies, sunshine, starry nights and increasingly warmer temperatures. From others I’ve talked to and what I’ve read this is an unseasonably cold and wet year so far and it may also be because I’ve dropped down to almost the limit of my preferred “20/20” living (between the two Tropics) zone. However I’m now headed in the “right” direction for my warm weather body, which is north towards the equator so I’m hoping this warming trend will continue as I go and I’ll soon be back to the heat and humidity I’ve strangely come to prefer these past few years. I don’t expect any “sympathy” from anyone but I have the luxury of living wherever I’d like to and I choose to live where neither sea nor air ever goes below 30 C and where I don’t need to wear socks, pants or much clothes at all thank you very much!
I’ve now got the new halyard reeved up inside the mast and through all the pulleys and clutches so that should be good for at least another six years I hope. I have a piece of new batten material that is too short to fully replace the batten I need but I’ve been able to fashion a repair that will hold me till I can get a new one in Majuro in a few months and so all is good to go for the next journey. I’m not quite decided just where that will be as there are lots of great spots and attractions in the many islands to the north and east of me and so I’ll probably just start doing some short day sails and hop scotch myself up north till I get to Luganville in the big island of Espiritu Santo where I will checkout of Fiji and either head up to Santa Cruz in the Solomon Islands or just start making my way on the long passage north to the Marshall Islands. I’ll keep you posted as the sailing goes and as with life, create the path behind me one nautical smile at a time.
Well, the time has come to finally cut the dock lines, both literal and figurative and leave the country I’ve become SO fond of; Fiji. On Friday (Aug 10), ELEVEN months and five days after I entered and with the help of some of the great friends I’ve made, I slipped the dock lines and motored out of Vuda Point marina. This was the fabulous spot where I was able to do a complete “20 year” repaint and refit of Learnativity and spent almost the entire past year enjoying a very different kind of land based life with Learnativity out of the water for nine of those months and then tied to a dock for the remainder.
As seems to be the norm for me the whole thing was a serendipitous and phenomenal experience. I originally thought I was going to be there for a few weeks and ended up being there almost a year, I met and got to know some wonderful people who are now dear friends, both fellow cruisers as well as the gift of getting to know many of the local people who I worked shoulder to shoulder with every day on Learnativity as well as several who worked at the marina. I was invited into their homes and truly shared life with them for the past year. What a rich and charmed life I lead!
As for Learnativity she is quite literally a whole new boat and I’ll simply let the before and after pictures tell the story for now. Thanks to my friends Volker & Michaela on La Gitana, who have been in Vuda Point even longer than me, I have these before and after shots of Learnativity on the day she sailed into Vuda Point and then the one where she went back in the water. Just a bit of difference as you can see!
And you are only seeing the outside! In addition to sandblasting the whole exterior, which required removing EVERY part that wasn’t welded on and even a few which were, she now has all new solar protected triple thickened glass, new prop shaft, new solar panels, new nav system, and a very long list of other improvements and rebuilds.
While an immense task, it has been a labour of love and I’m VERY happy with my “new’ boat and looking forward to making the transition back to sailing and life on the water. I have an equally long list of people to thank for making this all possible. The truly wonderful team from Baobab Marine who worked with me every step of the way to get this all done and who did the lion share of the work. My special thanks to Lorenzo for his constant supervision and assistance and to my “boys” especially Isikelly, Jim, Imran, Daven, Nadeem and the many others who worked with us at various stages. I also received lots of help from other cruisers especially Volker and Michaela on La Gitana and who were instrumental in me coming to Vuda Point in the first place, and then a few special others who became friends along the way such as Terry & Christine on Teka Nova, Steve & Selena on Windward II and Tony & Carolyn on Tuaki. I’m leaving out many, many others, so my apologies to all. Just know that my time in Vuda Point was so special because of the people I met and befriended more than anything else.
Through it all Ruby the Wonderdog truly lived up to her name and became the social butterfly of the entire marina. She was easily the best known entity in the marina and many people had no idea who I was other than “the guy” who was usually with Ruby. Ruby is a great teacher on how to live life well as she simply assumes that every living creature she meets is there to play with her and to be loved. And guess what? They do!
So Ruby had an even better time in Vuda Point and is leaving with at least as many memories as I am. She particularly wants to thank Christine & Terry for her time being spoiled aboard Teka Nova with custom made gourmet meals, lots of snuggles and most of all for walks on the beach at low tide where she worked on her crab digging techniques.
And for the past few months Ruby has spent more time aboard Summer Spirit that was docked beside us as she was adopted by Colleen and Ian. Most days I barely saw her as she spent all her time with them including many “sleep overs”. As you can see in just this one interior picture and the big black & white boat docked beside Learnativity in the other picture, Summer Spirit is a pretty fabulous boat to be on and Colleen and Ian became her favorite Aunt and Uncle. So much so that they are now busy making arrangements to find a Spoodle pup in Australia that they can bring over and have a “Ruby” of their own. I think Ruby should be a Spoodle ambassador as this is about the fifth time she has been the catalyst of others we’ve met getting their own Spoodle after falling under Ruby’s spell of pure unconditional love. It was no easy task getting her back on board Learnativity with just me but Colleen did make up some treats for Ruby’s withdrawal (and some for me too!) so I think we’ll manage.
And so it was that I slipped the dock lines at Vuda Point marina on Friday after over ELEVEN months there and am now anchored off the Customs wharf in Lautoka, the western most check out spot in Fiji. I’m finishing up the last bits of getting LTY all ship shape, shopping ashore for the last of my provisions for the next few months and using up all my internet time for uploads and downloads like these. It is now Monday morning here and I’ll row ashore in a few minutes to do my official check out of Fiji. Though I’m not supposed to, I may stop at one of my favorite little deserted islands west of here for one last night to say goodbye to Fiji. Winds are forecast to be VERY light for today and tomorrow so waiting a day or two may help out. In any case the islands of Vanuatu are calling my name the loudest so my first landfall will be Anelghowhat Bay on the SW corner of Aneityum island which is also sometimes called Anatom island. It is about 450nm from here and also the southernmost island in Vanuatu and just became a PoE so I can check into Vanuatu there. The bay there is supposed to be very nice and the check in is very easy as there is almost no one on the island and you get good personal service from the lonely customs guy! My kind of spot!
My overall plan is to just start island hopping making my way north up through the various islands of Vanuatu. There are active volcano's on Tanna and Ambrym islands where you can hike up to the top of the cone, lay down on the edge and poke your head over to look down into the lava pools so of course I HAVE to go experience that! ;) Will stop at the two big cities of Port Villa and Luganville to avail myself of some good French influenced supplies with the likes of great cheese, breads, cafés and WiFi. Otherwise will just live and sail by whim and weather as usual and keep sailing north till about the first week of October when I will start my sail NNE to Majuro in the Marshall islands. I can get duty free diesel when I check out of Vanuatu and so I’m going to run my tanks as low as I can by then and do my annual fill up with considerable savings before I sail up to the Marshalls.
I’ve decided that I WILL fly back to Canada and the USA see friends and family at the end of October. On the one hand I can’t really afford it after blowing SO much of my overall “life” budget here in Fiji but on the other hand it is a no brainer as I need my annual “fix” of family and special friends. Plus Ruby already has her Bat Dog costume (really!) and how can I break my 12 year record of Halloween of being in the US for Halloween? Still making those arrangements but will most likely spend November and December in North America and fly back to Learnativity in Majuro about Xmas time. I’ve decided that the Marshalls are by far the best option for me, both to leave LTY safely as I did before, plus take one last advantage of a good US Post Office there for any last rounds of boat stuff as well as easy flights in and out.
When I was there in 2010 I didn’t get to see many of the outer islands of the Marshalls which are phenomenal and it puts me in a great spot geographically for the start of sailing season up north of the equator. Never plans of course, but my sailing intentions from there are to explore some of the Marshalls as I make my way west over through Micronesia (Kosrae, Pohnpei, Yap, Palau) towards the Philippines but I also have Solomon’s and PNG calling my name louder and louder so I think I may head south from wherever I am in Micronesia about April and go spend the sailing season (April-Nov) down there and then head back north of the equator to pick up where I left off in Micronesia. All WAY too far ahead for me, but fun to do this kind of what if scenario thinking.
COMMUNICATIONS:
I’ll put a full list of all the various ways of communicating with me at the bottom of this post and just remember that when I leave Fiji in a few hours I will mostly be relying on my satellite phone for my internet connection and therefore I’ll be back to just sending and receiving text based Emails. Therefore if you are sending me Emails please copy me on both my wayne.hodgins@gmail.com and whodgins@ocens.net with any Emails you send. I’ll likely find some WiFi or cellular connections from time to time in the larger ports in Vanuatu but I spend most of my time on small remote islands or at sea so I won’t be on FaceBook or Skype much for the next while. However I will get back to doing daily blog postings on the sail over to Aneityum like I’ve done in the past and frequent updates on my experiences sailing north. I have it set up so there are automated updates sent to FaceBook and Twitter each time I post to the Learnativity blog so you’ll see those as they happen and can follow us as much or as little as you like. Note that I put in the lat/long coordinates for each update report and you can cut and paste these into Google Earth or Microsoft Bing to see where we are in those satellite photos. It will be a lot of open blue water for the next week or so but once I’m in Vanuatu you can have some fun flying around the sat photos of the various islands and bays to get a feel for these spots I’m in.
And with that I’ll bid you and Fiji a fond farewell for now. Learnativity is in GREAT shape (better be!) so no known issues yet and everything is working well so far! Should only be about 4-5 days passage over to Aneityum so a nice easy sail to get started and let me remember how to sail (or at least my version of it) again after being away from it for almost a year now.
Hope you will join Ruby and I as we set sail for our next round of adventures in life and that you too are living, loving and learning every moment of this grand experience called life and enjoying the gift of the present.
Vinaka Fiji and friends!
Wayne & Ruby the Wonderdog, aboard the good ship Learnativity currently anchored near Lautoka, Fiji 17 36.061 S, 177 26.442 E
Regular Email: Wayne.hodgins@gmail.com Email when @ sea or remote via sat phone: whodgins@ocens.net (Yes! This is the correct spelling OCENS) I typically retrieve and answer Emails to this account via our satellite phone at least once every 24 hours. You can send as much text as you like but are asked not to send any attachments such as photos.
World Phone Voicemail: +1-501-492-9634 (has voice mail that is forwarded to me via Email) Text Messages: (to my sat phone) send short 140 character Text msgs via Email to: 881632510270@msg.iridium.com
Other contact info: Skype: Whodgins Twitter: WWWayne
Joined by my son Skyler, seen in the photo on our earlier 4am departure from Bodega Bay) and Ruby the Wonderdog, I sailed out under the Golden Gate bridge on March 3, 2008 so I’m now starting year number five of this grand adventure and Wow! what a ride, what a life, what a privilege it has been every day since!
NOTE: I’ll put a photo album at the end with some additional pictures and note that if you click on any of the pictures here you will get the full size view.
If you will indulge me I’ll do a bit of reflecting on these past four years of truly living life large. Sailing from one great experience to the next have taught an incredible number of lessons and created a life which for me is nothing short of awemazing. Each day has been filed with more adventures, experiences, living, loving and learning than I thought was possible for one person to experience in a full lifetime never mind just four years.
I continue to be struck by what I wrote about a two years ago when I was in New Zealand reflecting on the start of my third year at the time and trying to comprehend how I could have experienced so much in just two years. I eventually made some sense out of it and what I called “Exponential Learning Density” or ELD. In the coming weeks and months I’ll write more about that and some of the other major lessons I’ve learned in the last four years and over 25,000 nautical “smiles” as I like to call them. As I’ve recounted these lessons to others via Email, visits and even some pubic presentations many people have confirmed that these are lessons in life that completely transcend their origins in sailing and I get a lot of requests to write these up and share them online so more people can access them and I’ll do my best to try and articulate these as best I can and share them with you here.
First let me set the scene with a quick overview of how this all came to be.
I named the boat Learnativity, a word I had created about twenty years ago when I couldn’t seem to find a word to describe something I think we do all the time. We have words such as learning, working, creating, inventing, discovering and I use them all a lot. But these individual words suggest that they are discrete and independent activities on our part whereas my sense has always been that we do these all simultaneously as we go about our daily lives solving problems, making choices and just living. Do we really stop learning and start working and vice versa? Not in my experience and so I came up with Learnativity as an amalgam of all these and focal point for what I wanted to explore, talk about, experience and grow.
Sailing is something completely new to me. I grew up living all over Canada and Europe as my Dad was a chef in the Canadian army. No nautical background in my history or my family tree. No life long childhood dream of going to sea. I just happened to serendipitously stumble over sailing about ten years ago on a family vacation in Polynesia, where thanks to Diana’s great planning we chartered a sailboat (WITH a captain I might stress), for a week. I didn’t really know it then but as I reflect back now I think that is when the sailing bug first bit me. Over the next five years I became more and more curious and fascinated by sailing, read lots, had more charted boat vacations with my dear friends John and Michelle and soon reached a familiar conclusion for me that the only way to learn more was through the experiential learning of doing it myself. I particularly relish diving head first into the deep end of my many pools of ignorance and so I figured what I really needed to do was go sailing long term, indefinitely in fact. No destination in particular, rather a journey of grand adventure through the world’s oceans in general. Yea right, that’s the plan, my favorite kind; the no plan plan!
And so the search for my first boat began and spent almost two years figuring out what I wanted and needed in a boat by scouring the worldwide used boat market, going to boat shows, reading and talking with anyone who would put up with my incessant questions. Then one day in early 2005 I found just the right boat for me in Sidney BC, just outside Victoria, the one town where my parents retired and I had finished high school and started university. She is a 52’ steel monohull sailboat built from 1992-94 by Kristen Yachts and after several visits and much discussion I bought her from the original owner and took possession in July 2005 in Friday Harbour. Yikes!
She was in good shape overall having not been sailed much at all but was lived in and used by the owner and sometimes his young family as he used it as an office for his geographical plotting work of sea bottoms. However as I learned more and more, she was not set up for open ocean or blue water sailing but for short day sails and certainly not possible to be sailed single handed around the world. I didn’t know a thing about boats really and somehow I missed the memo that you can’t sail a boat this size by yourself so I just jumped in with my usual ignorant bliss and got going with what would turn out to be a two year refit to get her ready to set sail on this grand adventure. While I didn’t know anything about boats, I’m pretty handy and I can figure most things out and I’m a good problem solver and more than anything I LOVE learning by doing.
With lots of help along the way of my great friend John and his dad Juan on several occasions, as well as too many other friends old and new to mention, I spent the first six months visiting the boat up in Victoria/Sidney and then later moved her over to Port Townsend for more extensive work in the boatyard there as they specialized in steel (and wooden) boats. During the winter months in Port Townsend we sandblasted the bottom of the hull back to bare steel and put on new epoxy primer, sealer and anti foul paint, installed a new bow thruster, cleaned fuel tanks and put in a complete new fuel line system, pumps and filters, new AutoProp propeller and many other renovations.
Joined by my good friend Steve we even managed to take her on a trial run back over to Vancouver Island and docked right in front of the Empress Hotel! One of the things that grabbed me very early on in my research into sailing was the fact that you can legally anchor your boat in the middle of almost any harbour in the world! As long as you aren’t blocking any shipping or sea plane lanes, the world is quite literally your oyster. How kewl is that?! I can anchor in front of hotels that are costing their guests thousands of dollars a night, have a view to die for and sleep in my own bed for “free”! How can you not go for that?!
The Port of Port Townsend (had to say that for you Skyler!) was a great marina to work on a steel boat but it was way too far away for me to get there as often as I wanted and needed to. My home and workshop were down in Petaluma, about 50 miles north of San Francisco so I was anxious to move the boat down close to there as soon as weather would permit. Bodega Bay, which is just north of SF Bay proved to be a great spot that was less than 20 minute drive from my home and workshop and where I ended up working on her for almost two years to get her ship shape for single handed blue water sailing.
There were many attempts to get Learnativity down south to Bodega Bay that were thwarted by weather windows that suddenly snapped shut. Even my friend Robin from England (seen on the right) flew in for one of these aborted attempts and my dear friend Erik from Antwerp had a memorable flight into Port Angeles to lend a helping hand. Erik had an even more memorable experience the next day when he woke up and came up on deck to find himself swinging from a Travel Lift carrying the boat over to its final resting spot on the hard stands!
But finally, joined by a brave crew of John and his Dad Juan from Florida and two of my Autodesk colleagues and friends Dave and JohnH (the mermaid and the shark declined to join us) we finally set out for Bodega Bay on May 6, 2006. As we were to learn, the west coast of North America, in fact every continent, is not very friendly to sailors with few points of entry and all of them difficult.
The weather is also still very iffy this time of year and we ran into a severe storm about 60nm off the Oregon coast and made the call to head for Crescent City on the Oregon/California border to seek shelter from the worsening conditions that kept increasing to over 50 knot winds and 5 meter seas all the while the forecasts were calling for mild conditions. The entry into Crescent City was even more challenging as none of us had ever entered it before, it was a challenging entry at the best times and we were doing it at night in storm conditions! But we made it in just fine and were soon all sleeping soundly down below, snuggly tied up to the docks. Now THAT is experiential learning!
I needed to change the name of the boat as it was the name of the original owner’s business and so began my search for just the right name. Almost as important as naming your children I knew this was a name that would be with me for a long, long time, one I would be saying on the VHF radio every day as I called others or was being hailed, on every document I filled out as I checked in and out of each new port around the world and so I gave it great thought and deliberation. I wanted a name that would be unique and capture the essence of what this ship was all about for me and the great unknown adventures which lay ahead. Not finding any existing names or words that seemed to fit I was soon trying to create my own word by putting together bits and pieces of others such as my kids names and trying these out on everyone who would lend an ear. It was my two great kids who nailed it though when they just looked at me, with those wonderfully quizzical looks teenage children give their Dad when they are so puzzled at your apparent blindness and ignorance, and said “You’re kidding right Dad? You already have the perfect name for this boat; Learnativity!” Duh! Smack! Of course! If there was one single explanation for this otherwise insanity of buying my first boat and sailing it around the world, it was my love of learning. I love jumping into the deep end of my pools of ignorance, and trust me those ends are VERY deep and numerous! Though I had no inkling of the depths of this connection, I was pretty sure that I would be learning, working, inventing, discovering and a whole lot more every day I owned and sailed this ship. So Learnativity it was and she has lived up to that name every single day since then in more ways and depth than I could have ever imagined.
OK, enough of my nostalgic reflections for now. Thanks to every one of you who have helped me so generously and kindly in so many ways to be out on this grand adventure. I could not possibly be leading this charmed and full life without each and every one of you. I’ll be back with more stories of some of the bigger lessons I’ve learned along the way.
Friday night I had an extremely special experience when Isikelli one of the guys on my Fiji paint crew from Baobab Marine (left front behind Ruby in this photo) invited me to his home for a visit and some kava. Kava as you may know from my previous posts over the past two year’s I’ve been in Fiji, is the ceremonial drink here in Fiji and many of the other Southern Pacific islands.
This Kava drink is made from the dried and aged roots of the Kava tree which are then pounded or ground into a fine powder and mixed it with fresh water. Kava is part of a ceremony and historic cultural tradition called “Sevusevu” which is what I experience each time I first anchor off shore from one of the small inhabited islands here in Fiji.
As soon as I have my anchor down and inspected so I know Learnativity is secure, I put the dingy in the water and row ashore to meet with the chief and ask for his blessings and permission to be there. When I arrive ashore I am usually greeted by a gaggle of giggling children and seek out an adult to ask to take me to their chief. I bring with me about a pound or half kilo of kava roots which I have purchased previously in one of the bigger city vegetable markets and keep a stock of onboard. Usually my adult guide takes the kava from me and talks with me as we walk to get a bit of background on me, where I’m from, where I have just sailed from, how long in Fiji, and so on. They introduce me to the chief and give him a summary of from this conversation and I am then invited to sit across from the chief sitting on a large hand woven mat. I present the chief with the kava and he places it in front of him as we sit cross legged he then says a prayer in Fijian, we clap three times when he has done so and the then welcomes me to his island and we chat for a bit more before I take my leave and return to the boat. More informally, Kava is also the traditional drink that Fijian men usually have at the end of the day when they get home from work and is similar to having a beer or wine after work. Several times while anchored for longer times off one of these islands I've been invited ashore to join them which has been a great gift and treasured experience.
On Friday however I had a whole new and even more intense experience with kava and the Fijian people and their way of life when one of my regular Fijian paint crew and friend Isikeli invited me to join him at his home for such a drink of kava. I was not sure what I could bring as a gift of thanks and appreciation but I remembered that I had about 2lbs/1kg of kava root still on board in my stores from sailing here last year and so I wrapped this up with ribbon into a bouquet like form that is the tradition here and took that along with me. Moreover, he had expressly invited Ruby to come along as he had been telling his daughters about Ruby the Wonderdog for months and she is also a "gift" for most people we meet.
Isikeli lives with his two daughters Vani (2) and Marica (4) and his wife Salome who unfortunately was not able to join us as she works nights at the neighboring First Landing resort which is next to the Vuda Point Marina where I’ve been since September. They live only a kilometer or two away and he and his oldest daughter, Marica (Fijian for Martha), met me at the marina and we walked over to their home. They recently moved into a new rental property that is situated in the middle of a large set of sugar cane fields and it was a perfect evening and just starting to cool off as the sun was starting to set (about 6:30pm). Their home is an adjoining half of the landlord's home and he joined us for the last half of the walk to the house where Ruby and I were introduced to the kids playing in the houses and yard and Isikeli's sister in law.
The kava roots need to be pulverized into powder and they fetched a large tall cast iron or steel urn that they used for this purpose. It needed to be cleaned out of rust and water so they wiped it all out and then lit some newspaper on fire inside it to burn off the remainder, wiped it clean and it was ready to use. Isikeli, his older son and the man who owns the houses where they live all took turns in pounding the kava with a long heavy steel rod that was about 4cm in diameter and 2.5m long until the kava roots were transformed into a fine powder.
My offers to assist were politely declined as the men took turns raising the rod high overhead and then bringing it down as hard as possible onto the kava roots inside the urn. This process took quite some time, almost an hour or so by the time it was fully pulverized and was a significant and sweaty effort in the hot humid night air. All the while I was invited to sit on the woven grass mat, enjoy a tea and some biscuits as Ruby and I played with the 3 young girls who came and went from inside the house to the covered porch we were sitting on, and the yard.
As has been surprisingly common, the kids and even many adult men are quite fearful of Ruby at first as they have never seen anything like her. There are LOTS of dogs here but they are mostly roaming free and not in very good health as the concept of having domestic pets is not common in Fiji. With her strange curly black hair and small size many think she is some kind of wind up or electric toy! It took a while for the little girls to get closer and closer to Ruby, reach out and touch her and finally end up sitting with her, petting her and their initial wary squeals were transformed into that joyous giggling of little girls.
Kava has a very distinctive smell that is hard to describe but has a very earthy, spicy smell much like you might expect from a root. They were very pleased with the kava I brought as apparently it was very good quality and this was a very large quantity for them as it made enough kava powder for several months of drinking. Isikeli then brought out his kava bowl and his son put a few heaping tablespoons full of kava powder into a cloth bag which he then kneaded in the large bowl of fresh water. It is a bit like making drip coffee or tea in that you do not want the kava powder itself to be in the water you just want to extract all the flavour out of the powder into the water. Isikeli continued to knead the bag in the water for about 10 minutes to extract all the flavour from the powered kava.
Once it was all mixed to his satisfaction, Isikeli brought out the traditional kava “cups” which are hollowed out halves of a coconut shell and offered me the first drink. You accept the bowl with both hands and while the other guests toast you and clap three times you then drink the kava in one steady go and when you are done they all clap three more times and you pass the bowl back to the “chief” of the ceremony. In our case it was just Isikeli and myself and once we had both had a cup Isikeli would place the lid back on the big bowl and we would talk some more and then he would serve another round about every 15-20 minutes. Kava is apparently mildly intoxicating but I have never had enough to feel any such effect and it just makes your lips, tongue and throat a bit numb. The bowl is then filled and passed amongst all the guests and then you usually sit around, chat for a while, and then repeat the whole process. It is a very old tradition and very special to be a part of.
I had my pocket camera with me and the girls were all quite intrigued with it and wanting to see pictures of themselves so that along with Ruby provided lots of fun for all of us throughout the evening as the girls got closer and closer to Ruby, petted her and worked up their courage with this very strange creature.
Isikeli had even brought out a small can of tuna and some crackers for Ruby which Vani (the brave one of the two) served to her as you can see in this photo. I also used several bites of soda crackers to entice Ruby to perform her full repertoire of entertaining tricks like standing on her hind legs, sit, down, dancing and giving High Fives all the accompanying music of giggles and laughs from the girls.
And so this most wondrous and simple time passed with Isikeli and I talking, sometimes just the two of us, sometimes with his two girls and older son. Fijian families usually speak Fijian in their homes and with their kids and then they learn English “immersion” style once they start school, which is usually when they are about five years old and start half day Kindergarten classes. So the young girls don’t speak much English yet but as usual it was no problem to communicate these simple pleasures of looking at pictures and playing with Ruby. The time passed in that oxymoronic way where it is all luxuriously slow and peaceful and yet in the end seems to go by in a blink.
We stayed until almost 9 o’clock, which is quite late here, and then walked back to the boat. Isikeli and Marica walked us out to the end of the sugar cane fields and then Ruby and I walked the last km back to the boat under a beautiful starry sky. The moon is rising and setting very early now so it was not in the sky at all so the sky was even darker and the stars shining even brighter than usual. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the darkness and find my way along the dirt roads but the road is quite wide and not a problem to walk along as we made our way back to our little nest in the trees. I was not sure if we would be eating as part of this visit and I had been so busy with all the painting that I had not eaten since breakfast so I made up a quick snack back on the boat and was soon nodding off on the settee as I was pooped from a hard hot week of painting. I awoke a few hours later and stumbled my way into the aft cabin and was soon fast asleep in bed with Ruby curled up at my side and we were off to dream land here in this magical land called Fiji.
While it fails miserably to capture the magic of the evening, I have done my best here to describe what this evening was like. As with all experiential learning, this is not something that can be explained well in words and as the saying goes, "You really had to be there". It may sound to many like a very simple and even "boring" evening where “nothing” happened. Yet for me it was truly magical and memorable time. To be invited into the home and lives of these simply beautiful people, to have even just a few hours to become part of this moment in time was such a deeply authentic and Oh so real moment for me. I seem to be blessed with gifts like these all the time out here on this grand sailing life adventure and you can see why I say that I lead a truly charmed life.
Many of you ask what the heck I do with all my time out here “doing nothing”. It is a very reasonable question and one can fully understand as I often wonder myself where all the time has gone. But as you read more and more of my stories perhaps you can begin to understand just how full my time “doing nothing” is! I’m actually fascinated by the whole concept of “nothingness” and is why I have been devouring books like Stephen Hawking’s “Universe in a Nutshell” and Lawrence Krauss’ “A Universe from Nothing” that I am reading now. Turns out that as best these physicists and cosmologists can figure out, everything from our very selves to the entire cosmos around us has been created from "nothing” and how over 90 percent of the energy in the cosmos exists in the “nothing” that is left when you remove every atom, electron, proton and quark of visible matter.
In a similar way, I live a life of profound joy that seems to be similarly created out of “nothingness” with the eclectic range of activities that include sailing from one magical destination to the next, experiencing the wonders of Mother Nature, endless boat repairs and maintenance juxtaposed between equally endless sunrises and sunsets, and then truly living IN life’s moments when snorkeling or laying under a full night sky or sitting with some of the local people I meet along the way. To badly paraphrase Al Green’s “Use me” song, If this is what it feels like to do nothing, then nothing me up please!
Yes folks, the big day finally arrive today. Tuesday March 13th here and a very lucky day it was indeed. After months and months of work the great crew from Baobab Marine and I were finally ready to spray on the new Arista blue paint on Learnativity’s topsides!
The weather looked to be perfect with another wondrous start to the day with brilliant blue skies and sun pouring through the tree branches as it rose this morning. The crew arrived just after eight and we did the final inspection, fine sanded a few small spots and then wiped the entire surfaces down with thinner and rags to get rid of any last traces of dust or grit.
Ron, the new painter for Baobab who has been working with us steadily for the past 3 weeks was all suited up and started spraying at 10am. You can see him here with the very first hit of the spray gun as the new Aristo Blue starts to replace the formerly all white Learnativity. He works his way down one side and back up the other and then starts over again to put on each coat. All in all we put on 5 coats, 20 liters of polyurethane in all so Learnativity is VERY well covered!
Here is my whole paint crew for you to see. In the photo on the left Lorenzo, the overall supervisor who I work with for the whole renovation is on the far right and then he came and took the picture on the right so I could stand in with them. They are SUCH a great group of guys to work with and it has been such an big bonus of doing all this work here to get to know them and learn so much more about the people, cultures and attitudes of the beautiful people of this country. Thanks guys! Now let’s get back to work on those decks!! <g>
I think I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves to show you more about the whole paint job today and give you a little album here to look through at your leisure. Suffice it to say that it turned out GREAT and I am VERY happy. The Aristo Blue colour changes just like I had hoped in the different lighting from shade to direct sun and I hope some of that comes through in the photos. Enjoy looking at my shiny new blue boat! I sure am!
Greetings or as we say here in Fiji “Bula bula” and Happy New Year to one and all!
2011 was another awemazing year for me being one filled to overflowing with life, love and learning and I don’t think anyone could want for more. I know I’ve not been posting or writing as much publically the past few months and so I thought I’d start up again with this overview to bring you up to date and then some weekly updates going forward and add more as seems fit and my experiences warrant. With thanks to all of you who write and call to inquire and encourage me to post more updates, let’s get started!
As most of you know I am seriously “brevity challenged” but I’ll do my best to give you a brief update on 2011 to bring you up to speed to the present and as a lead in to my weekly updates. This will probably end up being a bit like one of those annual “holiday letters” you get from friends and family so if you don’t like those you can just skip this post and maybe the weekend updates will be more you style and length. For those interested there are blog postings you can read here on this Learnativity blog that will give you all the details of my sailing adventures first half of the year from the Marshall Islands to Fiji (and all the way back to my start in 2008) if you missed them or want to review.
I started 2010 still in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands where I had sailed to from Fiji back in October 2010 to get out of the cyclone belt by being north of the equator. (Majuro is about 7 degrees N) While there is no mistaking Majuro for a “tropical paradise” it does have many redeeming qualities such as a US Post Office which is a huge advantage for shipping boat parts and equipment in and out, a good supply of hardware, groceries and other store bought items and a close community of cruisers, many of whom have been there for many years. Majuro is also one of the largest centers for tuna boats and there was always an entertaining steam of both the large tuna fishing boats and the even larger freighters which took on all their catch. One of the local cruisers organized a tour of a tuna boat and one of the carriers and we spent hours going through both these ships with the captains and crew answering all our incessant questions.
Both out of necessity and to take advantage of the supply of parts I did a lot of boat projects, mostly engine related and got Learnativity all ready for another busy sailing season down south of the equator and by mid May I was more than ready to go. I had decided to go back to Fiji as I had truly fallen in love with this country during my extended 5 months stay there the year before and so when the weather window opened up on May 23, 2010 and I bid Majuro a fond farewell, headed out the pass through the coral of the atoll and turned south. Having enjoyed them so much on my way north the previous year I once again made stops in Mili, Funafuti, Tuvalu and Rotuma rather than do it all in one go and arrived back in Savusavu Fiji on June 18th and have been here in Fiji ever since.
I wondered if I my love for Fiji had been a first time infatuation but having now spent the past 8 months here it is clear that for me at least this is the best overall location I’ve ever been to. It isn’t any one thing so much as it is almost everything about this country that I love; the people, the food, the climate, the scenery, the snorkelling, the sailing, the affordability, the cultures…….. well you get the idea. If it weren’t for the fact that I’m such a journey person I would seriously consider buying property and living here. Many do as this is almost the only country in the South Pacific with “freehold” land, that is where you can buy and own property outright. I’m now feeling that urge to head out again and several countries west and north of here are calling my name more and more loudly and so I’m currently VERY hard at work and taking advantage of an excellent marine yard and workforce to do a 20 year refit of Learnativity and be ready when the cyclone season ends which is typically about April/May.
2011 also brought me several great gifts of sharing “my” fabulous Fiji and this great life of sailing, snorkelling and sunsets with friends and family. My brother had just moved to Melbourne Australia with his wife and youngest son where he is establishing a new office and presence for his company and they all came for a holiday in Fiji in July and so I sailed down to the south side of the big island of Viti Levu and anchored in front of their resort at Pacific Harbour. We spent a week together, partly ashore enjoying all the amenities of the Pacific Harbour resort and partly out for some short sails on Learnativity over to the island of Beqa for some amazing snorkelling there.
For the month of August I was delighted to be able to share Fiji and this life afloat with two good friends from Vancouver, Steve and Joy and we had a phenomenal time sailing all over the many islands on the far west side of Fiji to experience everything from postcard perfect little islands where we were the only boat and people there to ones with small villages where we went ashore and had “sevusevu” with the Chief where we presented him with some kava and he performed a brief ceremony to bless us and welcome us to his island. We also went to a few of the popular cruiser spots such as Musket Cove and Port Denarau for supplies and a few dinners out. Once again this sailing season, my dear friend Philip, a single handed sailor from Switzerland, met up. Philip and I initially met when we were checking into Ecuador at the same time and port, were able to meet up in Fiji and although we only had a few days together before I flew out to Florida and he sailed to New Zealand, they were extremely special. I also met Philip’s Dad when he came to Fiji for his annual sail and then later in December I was able to take him up on his offer to come visit him in Switzerland.
On September 5th, Learnativity was hauled out and put up on stands or what we call being “on the hard” at Vuda Point marina which is about mid way up the far west coast of the biggest island in Fiji, Viti Levu. She had been long in need of some serious TLC to look after lots of little things and especially the growing amount of rust spots sprouting up on her steel decks and after serendipitously discovering that there was a very good marine repair company who worked out of this little marina I decided to bit the bullet and have them help me repaint the entire exterior of Learnativity. This is no small task I can assure you as to do it properly, I had to remove EVERY single bolt, fitting, window, hatch, lines and anything that wasn’t welded on, in order to get at all the spots, remove all the rust and cover them with top quality epoxy primer, filler and colour paint. I’ll fill you in on more details in the weekly updates to follow, but suffice it to say that I am still “on the hard” and have a few more months of long hot hard days of work to get her all shiny and new again.
And while this is taking a VERY BIG bite out of my VERY fixed budget I’m quite happy with myself that I’ve been able to pay others to help me as it is something I find very difficult to do. Being fortunate enough to have most of the skills to do all the work on Learnativity and of course feeling that no one can do it better than I can, (and the fact that my life literally depends on the sea worthiness of my boat!) I tend to do all the work myself. But there is only one of me and only 24 hours a day so there is a very finite limit to what I can get done by myself and I’ve exceeded that limit for a while now. So I checked out the work this company, Baobab Marine had done on other boats over the past few years and was very impressed and so they have been working with me almost every day since September to sandblast, grind, weld, prime, sand, fill and paint Learnativity inside and out. We’ve still got a LONG ways to go but huge progress has been made and when I “splash” her back into the water, hopefully by April, she will look like a brand new boat.
2011 was also quite a year for me personally as I managed to fall in, and alas out, of love with two amazing ladies. Thanks Linda and Heidi for making my life in 2011 SO memorable and full of life, love and learning. For now though, it is back to sailing through life’s experiences single handed. While it remains my hope, though not my expectation (more on that theory some other posting) that I will some day find my “soul mate”, I leave that all up to serendipity and synchronicity as to if, when, where, who and how that will happen and by simply continuing to truly live in life’s moments, be present in the present and experience my experiences fully. It’s been working incredibly well all my life, why would I change now?!
Of course I’m never alone as I’ve got so many friends, family and new local people I meet and interact with as I sail, and I have my ever faithful and amazing Ruby the Wonderdog at my side at all times. She is not only a great companion but also a great teacher and I do my best to learn all that she has to offer such as how to adapt to whatever life offers up moment to moment.
I spent the month of November back in New Smyrna Beach Florida with my beloved “second family” where I’m blessed to have four “God children” and two extraordinary friends. This is also one of Ruby’s special spots and she had an extended vacation here with her buddy “Coco” a chocolate Cocker Spaniel when she stayed there while I flew over to Europe. I was also delighted to have my colleague and friend Elliott provide me the opportunity to make several presentations at his large learning conference in Orlando the first week of November and it also provided lots of gifts of time with many other colleagues and friends who come to this annual professional gathering.
At the beginning of December it was off to Europe for a few weeks where I was able to visit with several friends and some family. I spent two day’s with Philip’s parents in their small town near St. Gallen in Switzerland and then continued by train to the lake of Biel to spend a week with my cousin and her family who I had spent lots of time with when Diana and I lived in Germany from 1980-84. Although I had to cut my trip to Europe short to return to Fiji and look after some new boat problems that came up, I was still able to get in some time with my dear friend Erik who flew into Heathrow just to spend a day and evening with me and then I spent one more night at the home of friends Robin and Jayne who live outside of London, before I had to fly back to the USA.
A brief stop in Florida to pick up Ruby and say goodbye to my family of friends there, and then it was off to LA to spend a few days with my daughter Lia, husband Brian and their two dogs Piglet and Ponzu. It is such a treat to be the parent of two such incredible “kids” as Skyler and Lia and watch and learn as they become such amazing adults. Lia and Brian let me just “hang out” with them and catch up on their busy lives. The timing worked out very well as Brian is a high school math teacher and had his last day of classes just before I arrived and Lia had just finished her stint as a lecturer at Cal Poly Pomona before going back to her job with a fascinating nuclear medicine and unique chemical compound making company who made her “an offer she couldn’t refuse” to get her to come back and work for them again.
On December 20th Ruby and I headed off for LAX and caught our flight back to Nadi in Fiji and though we missed December 21st completely due to crossing the date line, we were back onboard Learnativity on Dec. 22nd and back to the hot humid weather we both much prefer. As you may recall, Learnativity is “on the hard” and so we have to climb up a ladder to get onboard as she sits here on her stands so it isn’t ideal but Ruby goes up and down the ladder like a pro and never misses a step. I’ve set up all the systems so we can continue to live aboard with water, stove, electricity, etc. and there is a nice clean show and bathroom facility about 100m away so it all works out well.
So Ruby and I celebrated Christmas and New Years quite literally “up in the air” on Learnativity as we adjusted quickly to the heat and humidity. It is the wet season here in Fiji so most days are around +35C/100F and we have a good tropical thunder and lighting storm with rain most afternoons and evenings. It makes working on the boat trying to do welding, sanding and painting a bit challenging but so far the rain usually holds off until late afternoon and usually after 4:30pm when they work crews like to finish, so it is all working out quite well. If there is such a thing as “sweat equity” I’m building up a fortune!!
Whew! As I warned you at the beginning it takes me a while and way too many words, but that will at least bring you up to speed on where I’m at as this new year gets underway and some background for the weekly updates I’ll start posting now. I continue to be awemazed at the charmed serendipitous life I lead and while much of that is in reference to this life I now live of being on the water, so directly connected to nature and the world around me and truly living IN life’s moments as they happen, I am blessed mostly to be able to love and be loved in return by so many special friends and family. Words alone will never adequately express my love, appreciation and gratitude for all that you do and all you enable me to do, so the best I can do is continue to live, love and learn from you and with you and share it all as it happens. Thanks to ALL of you for making all my past years SO rich and SO full and here’s to continuing that trend for as many more moments we are gifted with.
Many of you have asked how to best stay in contact with us while we are out sailing the oceans blue far and wide. We would LOVE to hear from you and stay in touch and there are many ways we can do so. When we are anchored or moored near developed populations we usually have good access to the internet via Wi-Fi and cellular networks so you can just use our regular Email (Gmail) addresses, check our blogs, Facebook pages, etc.
When we are out sailing or in remote locations (our preferred spots) we rely on our satellite phone for staying in touch Email (text only please) and texting.
We are about to set sail in the next few days (likely about May 22nd 2011) from the Marshall Islands making our way mostly southbound to Fiji and depending on wind and our whim we should be in Fiji sometime between June 4-20th. During that time we will be mostly off line, just using our sat phone to post daily updates to our FaceBook pages and blogs and also checking our sat phone Email account (see below) about once a day.
Please find below all the info you need for all these various ways of contacting us and we look forward to hearing from you and sharing our phenomenal live, love and learning with you all.
Linda, Wayne & Ruby the Wonderdog,
aboard the good ship Learnativity
Currently (May 21, 2011) moored off town of Uliga on Majuro atoll, Marshall Islands
07 06.274 N, 171 22.358 E (cut & paste this into Google Earth or Bing to see where we are)
Regular Email: (when we are anchored near populated areas)
We typically retrieve and answer Emails to this account via our satellite phone at least once every 24 hours. You can send as much text as you like but are asked not to send any attachments such as photos.
LTY UPDATE: Sunday, July 25th, 2010 11:30 LTY time (UTC +13) = 22:30 (Sat) UTC Location: Anchored by village of Falehau, NW lagoon of Niuatoputapu Island, North Tonga Position: 15 56.485 S, 173 46.180 W (cut & past this into Google Earth to see on map)
As usual I’ve extended my stay in yet another spot, this time the northernmost island of the Kingdom of Tonga, Niuatoputapu Island where I’m anchored in a nicely protected lagoon on the NW side near the small village of Falehau. I arrived last Wednesday (21 July) and yet again the whole experience of the past 5 days has been serendipitously super, and so I wanted to get you a brief update on some of the details that made this adventure so memorable.
It is these situations when I really miss having an internet connection sufficient to add photos to these postings, but since arriving in Tongan waters last month, internet connections ashore have been few and far between and even when I do find them they have not been good enough to support uploads the size of photos or Skype calls. I am however taking lots of photos and will do my best to post these, likely next month some time when I get to Fiji I suspect.
* July 29th: photos now added to this and several other posts
This has me rethinking and reexamining my budget to purchase one of the new stabilized satellite based broadband options so I could have broadband internet wherever I roam, but that will have to wait for another day yet. In the interim, I’ll do my best to use my limited writing abilities to paint some pictures for you.
As I’ve mentioned and as you can see above and if you have checked the lat/long coordinates on a map or Google Earth, this is the northernmost of the many islands that make up the archipelago of the Kingdom of Tonga and is apparently the most remote and least visited of all of Tonga. There is actually “Tin Can Island” of Niuafoou which is a bit further north yet but it is completely inaccessible by boat so can’t call there. Here on Niuatoputapu from what I’ve read and experienced this is about as close as you can get to what “true Tongan” culture is/was like, and I’ve been so I’ve been very warmly welcomed into a group largely unaffected by external forces, other than natural ones. They were for example hit by the tsunami I was in last year and are still busy rebuilding homes, roads, etc. But I've been very fortunate and pleased to be invited into their homes and lives and will be heading ashore in a few minutes to join in a Sunday Tongan feast that Cici and Niko are putting on. There is now one other boat that came in on Friday, “Navire” out of Wellington NZ with a very interesting couple, David originally Canadian but grew up since he was 13 in NZ and Janet. We had a fun afternoon hiking up to the highest point here on the island (some great photos to follow) and we've had each other over to our respective boats to enjoy the last 2 sunsets, some wine and good food. (she's an ex chef!)
Everyone ashore, population about 800 are a bit shy but very much want to engage and talk, the children especially. They speak their native Tongan language of course but all but a few are also extremely fluent in English and so the conversations are deep and rich. I’ve been able to barter some of my skills and tools for all their kindness helping Niko diagnose a poor V6 that was running as about a V2 and then pull the camshaft and crank pulley on a diesel van that has blown a timing belt. Fortunately I’m a bit of a travelling tool shop and tools are one of the biggest limitations here. The monthly supply ship came in yesterday and so it was a big day on the island for everyone to get their various supplies from food to building materials to diesel. Several large pallets of building supplies from the Red Cross also were unloaded as part of the ongoing rebuilding after the tsunami. The locals explained how the government workers who are here are busy repairing the roads, which are actually in quite good shape while most of the people are still living in tents or with tarpaulins over the remains of old buildings! Seems to be an all too typical mismatch between what the officials think priorities should be and what the local inhabitants do. Some things are rather universal in this world aren’t they!
I’m now just back from a delectable Tongan feast compliments of Cici’s long hours and ably assisted by Janet who was able to spend most of the morning, after church of course, learning some of the tips and tricks of Tongan dishes and cooking methods. We had a veritable feast of fish and pork (Iots of domesticated pigs running around here) that was done up in coconut milk wrapped in papagayo leaves then in banana leaves and cooked in a fire pit, along with tapioca root and breadfruit that was simply cooked as is in the fire pit as well. And then plenty of a papaya and coconut dish to add even more flavor and color. We ate this all, Cici, Niko, Janet, David and myself with some of their boys coming in and out, on the floor of the excellent new first part of their new home which Niko has built from the wood and other materials they were able to salvage from what was left behind after the tsunami waters cleared away.
So as you can see, I continue to lead an unexpectedly and undeservedly charmed life and am doing my best to wallow and live within each of its moments. But now it is time to head out for the next adventure, I’m leaving in about an hour to sail up to another small remote spot of a pair of island groups known as Wallace and Futuna, about 14S and 176W if you want to hunt them down. These are French overseas territory tied administratively to Noumea, New Caledonia with a total land area of about 93 sq. miles and a total population of about 15,000 spread out over many islands. One interesting thing about them is that the people of Wallis, or Uveans as they are called after the main island, are descended from Tongans, whereas those of Futuna originally came from Samoa. It will be most interesting to see the differences as I visit each one as they are equally different geographically as well apparently. I’m leaving late this afternoon (Sunday here) as I don’t want to get there and go into the rather tricky pass at Wallis until daylight and it should take me somewhere around 36-40 hours depending on the winds and currents. Forecast looks very good for the next few days with wind and seas mostly behind me and little chance of rain, so the window is open and I’m jumping through it.
Hope you are enjoying an equally great weekend wherever you are and whomever you’re with. I’ll post some updates while underway as usual and report back to you about my experiences in Wallis as they happen. I gain a day and lose 2 hours in the process due to the odd fact that Tonga uses Fijian time zone but I’ll likely head for Fiji later on as well so it will wall work out.
Wayne & Ruby the Wonderdog Aboard s/v Learnativity 15 56.485 S, 173 46.180 W Falehau, NW lagoon of Niuatoputapu Island, North Tonga
As you may recall if you’ve been reading the daily LTY Updates, the aluminum joint which attaches the boom to the mast snapped off on the way to Niue and fixing this turned into yet another story to add to many others where serendipity gets involved and helps turn a problem into a great experience.
If you look closely in the photo on the left here, you can see the broken aluminum part at the very base of the boom (large silver casing with FurlBoom on it), just in front of the black strap that was was part of my emergency lashing, along with the red spinnaker halyard you can see holding the boom up. You can also see how the main sail furls or rolls up into the boom as it wraps around the inner mandrel or shaft in the center. The boom has also slid about 25cm/10” back in this photo which is also a problem because this pulled out a short shaft that is attached to the far aft end of the boom and slides inside a bushing in the end of the mandrel that lets is turn freely. With the shaft pulled out of the bushing, the aft end of the sail and mandrel are just flopping around loose inside the boom. Not a good thing.
I spent several hour creating a system of webbing tie down ratchets that I used along with the vang (strut that helps hold boom up and runs diagonally from base of mast to 1/3 back on boom) to pull the boom forward little by little. The tricky part was to get that short shaft (about 8”/20cm) back into the bushing. I needed to elevate the rolled up sail and mandrel to jus the right height to align with the shaft, get the shaft just started into the bushing and keep it there while I pulled the boom forward with the ratchets. Oh, and did I mention that I’m sitting straddling the aft end of the boom, riding it like a not too well broken in horse as the boat is heeled well over in about 30 knots of wind and 3-4m waves? But after many tries and by holding my tongue just the right way I was finally able to get the shaft back in and pull the boom the rest of the rest of the way forward to where it is supposed to be as in this picture on the right. I was then able to use the tie down ratchets to keep the boom in position sideways and we were soon back to sailing again!
I then Emailed ahead to the Niue Yacht Club, which they fondly call "The Biggest Little Yacht Club in the World" and to which I am now a proud member, and let them know about my impending arrival and to ask if they had any aluminum welding equipment on the island to fix the broken boom fitting. Murphy’s Law was in full force as I have welders on board but of course only for steel and stainless steel, but not aluminum, as I have very little aluminum on Learnativity, other than the mast and boom. Commodore Keith was very prompt in getting back to me and we Emailed back and forth as he worked on finding some options to fix the fitting. They did indeed have a welder on the island capable of welding aluminum and Keith was able to track down Graham, the island’s welder. Unfortunately Graham said his AL welder was broken but there was another one on the island that he thought I could use, so I left it at that and waited till I got to Niue to figure it out.
The sail and boom were working quite well and I would be able to get over to Tonga where there are much better facilities if I wasn’t able to weld the fitting in Niue, and I had a plan in mind to use some stainless cable I have to secure the boom fitting better if needed. But as soon as I went ashore to check in, there was Keith waiting at the landing in his car, and he whisked me away to Customs and Immigration and then off to see Graham. Turns out Graham had been able to fix his welder with parts he had ordered long ago and never got around to using and because he now had another job on the other side of the island that he had to look after the next day.
Great news! But I needed to get the parts to Graham ASAP as he had to weld them today as he would be gone the rest of the week on the other job. So back to LTY I dashed and set about removing the aluminum casting on the mast end of the boom where the two tabs had broken off. The long SS bolts holding the AL casting to the boom were not easy to get off, aluminum and SS don’t get along well, but my faithful impact screw driver (one of THE best tools I have) and a small sledge hammer to run it got 7 of the 8 bolts out and I only had to drill out one of them. You can see the casting successfully off the boom in the photo above right and I then radioed Keith to let him know I had all the parts ready to go.
I headed back ashore in the dingy where Ernie, one of the island elders and NYC “Admiral” picked me up and took me straight over to Graham’s house. We plotted out the best way to do the repair and within a few hours the two broken tabs were fully welded back in place with lots of extra aluminum built up to brace them further. Welding aluminum castings is always very iffy as you never know what combination of alloys have been used but you can usually tell a lot by how well the new aluminum welding rod melts into the old casting material and in this case it seems to look quite good and I am full of my usual optimism and faith that this repair will hold for the several months it will likely take to get a new part shipped in to me.
Soon after the boom had broken I had also been in touch with my faithful friend John to discuss options and give him all the details so he could contact people at FurlBoom, the manufacturer, to get their advice and see if they could supply a new part. Dougall at FurlBoom in Costa Mesa who I had worked with when I ordered the boom and picked it up (see 2007 post for details and pictures on that), got back to us immediately on Email and he was extremely helpful and immediately offered to have a new part prepped and shipped to John, all free of charge.
As Dougall, John and I discussed this further I told him about my concerns for the design of this casting from the beginning and a new improved design I had been working on with John. As it turned out FurlBoom had made up a boom for a large catamaran which has quite high lateral forces on the boom and for this they had built a special modified version of the gooseneck fitting using a new stainless part for the two tabs that had broken on mine and this design was almost identical to what John and I were preparing to fabricate! Dougall said he would have one of these new ones made up and would be able to get that sent to John within a week, no charge. Great service and only adds to my appreciation of deciding to go with both an in boom furling system and this one from FurlBoom. I can’t imagine sailing, especially single handed, without this kind of a setup which along with all the other modifications to my running rigging let’s me manage all my sails, lines and controls from my cockpit.
Now I just need to figure out a way to get the new boom fitting to me and I’m working on convincing John that he needs to hand deliver it at an upcoming fun destination so I’ll keep you informed as to how that goes. For now I’m quite confident with the repaired casting and I’ve got alternatives I can use even if it breaks again that will let me keep sailing for the next few months until I can get the new casting delivered and installed.
And so yet again, what could have/should have been a very big problem turns into yet another great experience and story to add to Wayne’s charmed life. I don’t try to understand such things I just put all my trust and faith into serendipity and synchronicity and use these as my strategy and guides in life as they have sure worked fantastically well so far.
Stay tuned for more I’m sure and hope you enjoyed this latest saga. We now rejoin regular broadcasting from the good ship Learnativity with Wayne and Ruby the Wonderdog!
OK, back to my time ashore and learning more about Niue first hand.
SWISS SERENDIPITY & SYNCHRONICITY:
As wonderful as Niue certainly is, one of the best things of all was that I got to explore it with my dear friend and fellow single handed sailor Philip, who is from Zurich Switzerland on his very fast and sleek OutReemer catamaran “Blue Bie”. Philip and I first met when we both sailed into Salenas Ecuador at the same time and were waiting outside the entrance to the marina to go in. We had lunch together while waiting for some of the officials, really hit it off and have been kindred spirits and stayed in close touch with each other ever since. We went our separate ways after leaving Ecuador but found ourselves together again in Polynesia and ended up anchoring near each other in Papeete, Morea, and Bora Bora as we explored that area for a few weeks. Philip decided to go north for the hurricane season so he headed up for Hawaii while I went west to Suvarov and American Samoa and then turned south with stops at Nuku’alofa in the Kingdom of Tonga and a surreal few days (see Oct.2009 LTY blog entry) in Minerva Reef on my way to Whangarei New Zealand.
Philip and I stayed in regular contact via Skype, Twitter, Emails and our blogs, and I knew he had changed his plans from going further north in Canada to heading back to the South Pacific, but I hadn’t been able to reach him for the past month. However when I was able to get online here in Niue I got some of his automated Tweet locations and knew he was heading further south and west through Penrhyn, Fanning and Cook Islands. With my delays for repairs and weather in leaving Whangarei I figured that the serendipity and synchronicity factors were rising for us to meet up again and sure enough, on Thursday afternoon as I was out on the deck working on the boom fitting, I heard Philip’s unmistakable voice and accent on the VHF radio as he called in from off shore with his approach to Niue! Spotting Blue Bie as she rounded the south west corner I jumped into my dingy and went out to welcome him, and his crewmate Loly, to Niue. This is one of the best things about this sailing and cruising life is forming such serendipitous friendships and then synchronistically having our wakes cross as we get to share yet another anchorage and time together.
Philip has a lovely lady from Paris France, Loly, who started crewing with him in Hawaii and the three of us rented a car for the weekend and spent all of it driving around the 65km circumference and inner roads and trekking down the many small pathways down to coastal caves, pools and arches.
It is impossible and would take me far too many words to try to explain and tell you about all we saw so I’ll instead let the pictures below tell most of the story for you.
The short version is that with the help of a well detailed local map, Philip’s Lonely Planet book, and Loly’s expert navigating, we were able to find these all but hidden trails that led us down to some of the most amazing sights.
Below is a photo album so you can hopefully get some sense of just how magical this place is. You’ll see magnificent limestone arches carved out by the waves, freshwater pools to reward a challenging vertical climb down inside a cave, other world like coastal areas covered in jagged peaks of worn away coral, spectacular stalagmite and stalactite filled caves and just generally nothing but unique and awemazing sights.
Some of the hikes were short and easy with steps, ropes and pathways. Others were much longer and more strenuous as we barely found our way through barely discernable paths hacked through the jungle of growth including lots of overhead roots running down into the ground all around us. We needed to mark our way in with leaves and other markers in order to find our way out, but this one lead us to the underground freshwater cave that Philip and climbed down to and went swimming in to discover some of the other underwater caves below.
We spent all Saturday covering all the points around the south and eastern coasts from Alofi where we are moored and then all day Sunday doing the north and western ones. Two VERY full and fun days and I certainly slept well after each one.
Hope the pictures give you a better sense of what this was like and you may want to fire up Google Earth to fly around and see more that way. In any case do enjoy! We sure did.
![P1000151_thumb[1]](file:///C:/Users/Wayne/AppData/Local/Temp/WindowsLiveWriter-429641856/supfilesDAFADB4/P1000151[3].jpg "P1000151_thumb[1]")
