Living & Learning Aboard the Good Ship Learnativity

LTY UPDATE: Tuesday, August 28, 2012

LTY UPDATE: Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Port Resolution, Tanna island, Vanuatu

LTY time: 18:10 (Vanuatu time = UTC +11)
Location: Port Resolution, Tanna island, Vanuatu
Position: 19 31.483 S, 169 29.800 E (you can cut & past this into Google Earth to see on map)
Wind: 5-10 knots SE (inside the bay)
Seas/Swell: 1ft @ 6 seconds SE (coming from)
Air temp: 77 F 25C
Sea temp: 84.2 F 29 C
Barometer: 1021mm

WOW!!!!!

That’s about the best I can do to try to describe what it was like to stand on the edge of the volcanic cone of Mount Yasur and look down into the boiling lava pit below. It is yet another of those great experiential learning events where you just have to be there to understand it. Something majestic and “raw” about the whole thing. Standing there looking into the “core” of Mother Earth, the moon like terrain of fallen lava rocks all around you. It is a very visceral experience with the smell of the sulphur from the explosions, feeling the ground shake with each eruption and feeling and hearing the lava “bombs” as they land not more than 20 meters away in some cases. Yet another awemazing life experience and learning for me!!

Looking down into Mother Earth herself: Mount Yasur, Tanna Island, Vanuatu

 

I’d made arrangements with some of the villagers ashore for this trip and went ashore in my dinghy about 4pm to meet them. They have a small (Toyota) pickup truck with some wooden seats made up in the back and we crammed about 12 adults into the cab and truck bed for the half hour ride up to the mountain top. Roads were all carved out of the black lava dirt/sand and surprisingly good condition most of the way. They have a little entry way at the base of the mountain where they collect the 3300Vautu fee (about US$33) which I think is very reasonable and goes to support local schools and road upkeep on the mountain. The road goes up very close to the top and you only have to climb about the last 300m up to the edge of the cone which you can then walk around about 1/3 of to get different viewpoints. The volcano is quite active and there were about 15 eruptions or so I’d guess in the 2+ hours I was up there. Some are relatively small and just cough up some molten lava that sprinkles back down on the surrounding inner cone. And then there are some much larger eruptions and explosions where very large volumes of lava come right up and out and flings hundreds of lava “bombs” a few hundred meters up into the air. They make a sizzling sound as they make their upper arc and come back down to earth and you can hear and feel the larger lumps of molten lava, some larger than a big beach ball and many the size of a basketball, as they thump the ground upon landing only meters away on the slopes of the inner cone below you. Huge clouds of dark grey ash erupt with this and slowly rise upward and there is a noticeable but not overpowering sulphur like smell.

The eruptions are all very sporadic of course so trying to have your camera at the ready is a game of patience and timing. I haven’t had time to go look yet but I think I got several very good photos and at least two good video shots that will give you a much better idea of what it was like. I will likely get a good internet connection this weekend or next week when I think I’ll make it up to the big city of Port Villa so I’ll post the video and pictures then and you’ll get a much better idea than my poor attempt to describe it in words. Trust me, it was AWEMAZING and as real at it gets!!!

 

 

I’ve also spent more time exploring ashore and it is equally authentic an experience and a bit like going back in time. The Vanuatu people prefer to live in small little villages and don’t cluster together so even in this small bay where I am there are 5 different villages within about a 2km radius. Several have buildings for Primary and Secondary schools and there are even a few “Cafés” that would serve you if you wanted to apparently.

 

I just enjoyed walking around, learning and looking. You ask permission in each village with the first adult you meet and they are very happy to show you around, answer questions or let you go on your own. In one of the villages there were about 20 ladies and young girls all busy weaving palm leaves together for a new thatched roof on some of the village homes. They apparently last about 2-3 years and they spend about a week at a time creating a whole set of these woven “shingles”. The men look after building the superstructure for the roof (out of branches) and then layering on the palm fronds that he ladies have sewn together. They were happy to let me sit there and watch for about an hour, answer my questions and do a lot of giggling. Amazing to be able to be a part of for a bit.

Their villages are immaculate. Well groomed and cared for, nicely built and lots of attention to details. The walk ways and roads are all made of the dark almost black volcanic sandy soil and they must rake and brush these several times a day as they are so unbelievably smooth and clean that I was almost hesitant to walk on them. Children are everywhere, some helping out with various jobs with the adults, some playing by themselves. There are chickens, some pigs and some cows doing their thing and mostly in the areas on the outskirts of the village. Like I say it is like stepping back in time and feels very special to me that I’m allowed to walk into their world and experience it with them.

Meanwhile back on Learnativity today I spent the whole day doing some needed boat jobs. My house batteries are pretty much done after 6 years and I’m doing my best to coax the last bits of life out of them before replacing them. Two of the eight have dead cells in them now so I needed to do some rewiring to isolate them and I think I’ll be fine for a while now. I really should have replaced them in Fiji I guess but I was spending so much money there on all the other parts of the refit and I always like to squeeze every last penny out of all my equipment so I’ve left it till now. I’ll have a look around the big town of Port Villa when I get there and see what I might be able to source for new batteries there but I’m hoping I can make it up to the Marshall Islands where I have much better options for getting good batteries. I’ve got lots of ways of producing lots of electrical power from solar to wind to diesel generator to the alternators on my main engine, so no shortage that way, but as with what’s keeping solar and wind power from becoming true solutions for electrical power ashore, the issue is being able to STORE all that electrical energy which is where the batteries come in. However I use VERY meager amounts of electrical power compared to most so I’ll be fine.

Tomorrow if the weather looks good I’ll make head off and sail up north to the next island of Erromango. It’s about 55nm so just a day sail and there is also a tiny little atoll about 20nm NE of here that I may stop at and will just wait to see what weather and whim dictate tomorrow. After that is on to the big island of Efate and the big city of Port Villa, largest port and city in Vanuatu, about 30,000 people. I’ll let you know more about these as I experience them and should get a full internet connection in PV so I can upload pictures from the past few weeks.

Till then I wish you well and thanks again for joining me on this amazing journey!

Wayne

LTY UPDATE: Friday, August 24, 2012

LTY UPDATE: Friday, August 24, 2012
Itchepthav Bay, Aneityum island Vanuatu

LTY time: 16:50 (Vanuatu time = UTC +12)
Location: About 170nm WSW of Fiji
Position: 20 08.479 S, 169 46.633 E (you can cut & past this into Google Earth to see on map)
Wind: 3-10 knots SE True (in the bay)
Seas/Swell: flat
Air temp: 78.8 F 26C
Sea temp: 84.2 F 29.0 C
Barometer: 1023mm

ALIVE & WELL AGAIN

I’m finally back, both online and to the world of the living again! I spent the last seven days quite literally flattened by what now appears to have been Dengue Fever. As I wrote just after I arrived here last Friday, I wasn’t feeling great and figured it was just a bad case of the flu. However it continued to get worse and after doing a bit of research all the symptoms seem to support it being Dengue Fever. This is a mosquito borne virus that lasts about seven days and there isn’t much you can do but sweat it out. In my case it certainly lived up to its name as Dengue fever is also known as “break back fever” and it felt for most of those days that I had broken my back again with intense lower back pain that feels like it is right inside your spine. Along with the cycling fever/chill, severe headaches and pain behind the eyes and all your joints it wasn’t the most fun week I’ve ever spent. However I was in the perfect “sick Bay” in the form of beautiful little Anelghowhat Bay and the surrounding verdant majesty of the surrounding hills and mountains offset by the little palm lined Inyeug island on the other side of me. And so I sat, never left the boat for seven days and just slept, read and ate.

Kustom Ceremony Ashore

But it worked, and yesterday it all seemed to break and I felt human again. Perfect timing as the little village closest to the anchorage had organized a welcoming and cultural event for all of us and I was VERY happy to finally splash the dinghy and head ashore with the other cruisers yesterday afternoon about 3pm. Once ashore they took us to their small little village on the beach where they had several small cabins and a whole evening worth of entertainment, education and eating all prepared for us. It was wonderful as they are SO proud of their customs and heritage and so anxious to share it with us. I think pretty much every man woman and child in the village was involved and the children in particular were a real treat. They ran it as almost an educational seminar with one of the elder ladies acting as the “teacher” as she carefully explained all the different parts of their culture, customs, food, dress and dancing. She would have several members of the village come forward for example and go through the whole process of creating their “formal” dress which they make from local plants and she explained the whole process as it was being completed right before us. Additionally they showed us how they gathered wild grasses to make their homes, treated and wove Pandanas leaves into baskets and started a fire in less than 30 seconds using nothing but the friction created by rubbing a small pointed part of a branch with the larger branch. They also did several dances that acted out some of their historical activities and it all culminated with a full spread of delicious dishes for dinner. They had prepared chicken with tarrow, and fish with cassava both cooked in a fire pit with lots of coconut milk inside banana leaves. There was also fire cooked Parrot fish, squid & tomatoes ceviche and a very tasty and spicy coconut sauce. I had mine on a traditional “plate” of a fresh cut banana leaf and it was all the more delicious to me now that I felt like eating again and had my appetite back.

They also took us through their way of preparing Kava which is very different that what I’d become accustomed to in Fiji. In Fiji they use the dried root, the older the better and pound it into a powder which they then put into a cloth bag and strain out the kava by ringing the bag over and over to extract the kava flavor and oils, a bit like making tea. However here in Vanuatu they use freshly picked Kava roots and chop up every part into small cubes about the size of a sugar cube and then crush this by putting it through a grinder. It was explained to us that in the old days and still in some cases today, when they are just making enough for themselves they simply chew the root to shred it. But when making larger quantities for a celebration they now use either hand powered or electric powered grinders to speed up and improve the process. The result is quite noticeable in that the Vanuatu Kava is MUCH stronger than the Fijian ones I’ve had. It would still require three or more cups full to have you feeling quite “relaxed” I think but even just after one you can feel a significant relaxing effect that is quite pleasing. Locally they have Kava pretty much every evening to help relax after what is usually a very physically tiring day. Women now also drink Kava much more although there are still ceremonies they don’t participate in and the men and the women do tend to congregate separately in the evenings still.

There is also a very noticeable difference in the people as they are now all Melanesian by ancestry. The children seem to reflect this the most to me in their faces and many of them also have very different hair colours that include a whole spectrum of blondes and reds in their curly locks. I took a number of pictures which I’ll upload whenever I next get a good internet connect so you can see for yourself. For me this was a great introduction to the people of Vanuatu and has me all the more excited about the experiences to come as I start making my way north through the various islands.

 

On to the Next Anchorage North

As interesting and enjoyable as this all was though the anchorage was getting very crowded by my selfish standards. When I arrived there was just one other sailboat and by Wednesday there was TEN! And so I pulled up the anchor this morning and motored my way the short 10nm up to the NW corner and a tiny little bay I’d seen on the charts called Itchepthav Bay and it turned out to be just what I was looking for; small, well protected and not another ship to be seen! I thought there might be a small village here and I’ve seen about 10 people ashore in the past eight hours I’ve been here but they are all just passing through on their way to villages elsewhere. Works well though because I could finally sneak Ruby ashore for her favorite pastime of running on the beach. The beach is mostly all very well rounded rocks and stones with a few patches of mostly all black lava sand and there are two different palm covered areas where grass has grown up under them and makes for a very park like setting. So we spent a few hours ashore walking and exploring the beach and treed areas before returning to Learnativity, with her shiny new dark blue hull gleaming away in the late afternoon sunshine. I think it is the first time I’ve been able to see her from a distance in this type of setting and really feel the pride and pleasure of the past many months of hard work. No other feeling like that of enjoying the fruits of your labours and brought lots of joy as I slowly approached in the dingy.

Tomorrow I’ll try to get an early start and make the crossing from here to the next island north which is Tanna. I’ll put in at Port Resolution which is supposed to be a very well protected little harbour over on the SE corner. Looks to be about 50nm so should be an easy day’s passage and I can arrive in the early afternoon so I have good light for the visual navigation needed here in these waters that are all filled with beautiful but dangerous (to a boat) coral. The big attraction on Tanna is that it is home to one of the two active volcanoes here in Vanuatu and so I’m hoping that while I’m there the volcanic activity is low enough that I’ll be allowed to walk up to the top and look down into the cauldron below. Just have to wait and see and I’m sure the island will have many other fun adventures to discover while I’m there as well.

Night for now, will write you from the anchorage in Port Resolution tomorrow to let you know how the sail across went and what this next island has to offer.

Wayne & Ruby the Wonderdog

Talk about Exponential Learning Density! Year #5 Begins

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.

 

		s/v Learnativity: the Adventure Begins! VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

The Wonders of Niue and Friends

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. 

View Full Album

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.

Non Stop Novelties on Niue

After an early morning arrival in Niue (June 21, 2010) I ended up putting in a very full Monday to Friday work week looking after the priority boat jobs that needed attending to after the fast and furious sail up here from Whangarei NZ and this was just much too dangerously close to resembling a regular work week so i decided to take the weekend off to explore the wonders of this small island country.  As it turned out I needed to get back to work on LTY to get a rest as the weekend was non stop hiking up and down coral trails, trekking through dense jungle growth, climbing up and down caves and snorkeling in pools and coastal caves. But more on that in a separate posting to follow.

NIUE INFO:

Niue (see this link for a good overview and map) is referred to as the largest uplifted atoll in Polynesia and is about 260 square kilometers in area and about 65km in circumference. 

Niue is absolutely gravid with fascinating facts and places to explore.  For example, Philip and I have been discussing and pondering just how this island formed and how to account for the very unique “ground”, which consists of nothing but broken up pieces of very sharp and rough old coral. Some of these pieces are huge boulders, some are the actual island base itself that makes up the whole coast and some are smaller sizes down to fist size or so.  This coral is literally ALL there is everywhere; every trail, every cliff, every jungle floor and every part of the coast. 

If you are interested in more, I was able to find some of the answers on a fascinating and extremely informative web site at http://www.seafriends.org.nz/niue/geo.htm which included this graphic of the most likely scenario.  This site is extremely informative and I’m still in the process of learning from it.  Did you know for example that the surface of the ocean is far from flat or even and has very large dips up to 10m depending on what is below it?  This is apparently caused by the difference in the gravitational pull between the water and the earth in different locations.  From the site here’s what that means:

 

One of Seasat's instruments was a radar altimeter, able to measure the ocean's surface from an altitude about 500 miles up, with a precision of 5-10 cm. Surprisingly, the surface of the ocean proved to be curving and dipping, often by as much as 10m up and down (for 5000m bottom relief). When mapped, the dips corresponded to dips in the sea floor and the bumps to sea mounts and ridges. The precision of the measurements allowed computers to make precise and detailed maps of the entire world's ocean floors.
The reason these dips and bumps occur in the ocean's floor, without ships ever being able to notice these, comes from the force with which two substance attract one another - the heavier earth's crust attracting the lighter and fluid water. Thus undersea mountains pull water towards them, resulting in a surface bump, whereas ocean trenches have the opposite effect.

  Who knew? And how cool is it that “we” can measure and map, in part, the ocean floor by measuring these dips and changes in level of the ocean by satellite.  NOW do you understand why I called my boat Learnativity and how seriously fun it is to be learning a living?!!

Father & Son Curvy Coastal Cruising

July 29, 2009

One of the best things that happened when I was back in the USA and California for Lia’s wedding was the time I got to spend with my super son Skyler.  In addition to getting some time to just “hang out” and catch up while I was in the SF Bay area, Sky and I took the opportunity to travel to Lia’s wedding by riding our motorcycles from Petaluma (north of San Francisco) to Lia’s place in Pomona (north of LA) 

We rode down the famous curvy Pacific Coast Highway #1(PCH) which is amongst THE best motorcycle routes anywhere.  We took our time and just enjoyed some all too rare one on one, father/son time, our first motorcycle tour together, a fine ride and lots of stops for food, photos and talk as we stopped often to take in the ever changing scenery.  We got an early start out of Petaluma and managed to get south of all the traffic and congestion of San Francisco and San Jose quite quickly and then cut West over to PCH or Highway 1.  The weather was surprisingly chilly, though as Mark Twain once put it, the coldest winter he ever knew was the summer he spent in San Francisco!  But it was good riding weather and continued to warm up as we progressed southward.

It was particularly fun for Sky and I to recall how we had previously seen all of this same coast from the very different vantage point of the sea when he and I had sailed down this same coast in March last year when he joined me for the first four months of the trip aboard the good ship Learnativity.  We particularly enjoyed our stop in Santa Barbara as Sky had spent almost two weeks there in the SB marina when I flew out for a short business trip and he and Ruby stayed aboard Learnativity and had a great time on their own.  Santa Barbara is very notable to sailors because it is the first port south of the infamous Point Conception that juts out where the coastline of California makes its change from running pretty much north/south and turns heads in a more ESE direction towards San Diego and Mexico.  Point Conception also marks the spot on the coast of the “border” between north and south California and the climate changes dramatically as soon as you cross this line and get to Santa Barbara.  Mariners remark that when you cross Point Conception you take off your sweaters and put on your swimming suits.  But more than just the weather, I can recall being infatuated with Santa Barbara on my very first visit there back in the early 70’s and every time I’ve returned I’ve been more enamored with this idyllic town.  I’ve spoken with many others who have the same feeling and also struggle to describe it with words.  It has a very small town feel, but as I discovered even more as Skyler and I rode the entire length of it from north to south, it is a surprisingly large city.   The university lends a very collegiate and young feel to it, yet the architecture and layout has a wonderfully worn and old look to it.  Sky and I stopped at the marina to reminisce and share our mutual amazement at how it felt as if it had been so long ago and yet just yesterday since we were docked there on Learnativity. 

We had planned to take two days to meander our way down to Pomona so we debated whether to have dinner at the marina and stay overnight in Santa Barbara, but it was only just after 6pm, less than two hours from Lia’s house and we were anxious to get to Lia and Brian’s house to help out with the preparations for the wedding so we called them and asked if it would be OK if we arrived that night and so we did.  Our idyllic ride came to an abrupt halt not far South of Santa Barbara as we turned off of the sleepy two lane PCH and headed East on at times 10 lanes of LA freeways!  But we arrived in Pomona not too long after dark, had a great time catching up with Lia and Brian, going over what all needed to be done for the wedding and hen headed off to bed.

Thanks for the ride and yet another great set of memories Skyler!

Love, Dad

LTY morning UPDATE: Sunday, April 26, 2009

08:15 local 14:15 UTC

Location:    anchored @ Hanga Roa, Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
Position:    -27d 08.625' S    -109d 26,087' W
Wind:         8-15 kts SE True
Seas:        swell = ~ 1 m @ 8 secs
Weather:    early AM showers, late sunrise with clouds, clearing off to be another blue sky and sunny day
Sea temp:    78.9F
Air temp:    76.9F 
Humidity:    74%

Spent the morning cleaning up the boat after two weeks of non stop living/sailing.  The outboard motor on the dingy has been acting up so cleaned out the carburetor and spark plugs, checked the fuel tank for water and got it all back together and seems to be running better.  We'll know for sure next run ashore.  I also climbed the mast to inspect all the rigging and found the starboard halyard block (pulley) at the mast head had lost its bearings.  Spent half an hour at the top getting the old one off and then when I got back late in the afternoon, replaced it with a new one and got the halyard reeved (fed through) and all mounted up at the top of the mast.  Otherwise everything else appears to be none the worse for 2 weeks of wear and tear of non stop sailing.

 

One of the most common questions I get is "What do you do with all your time?".  I don't have a great answer, and sometimes I ask that question myself in terms of where did the day(s) go, but they go amazingly quickly and are filled with a great variety of never ending things to do.  There is certainly never any boredom (not that I really understand the concept) or lack of things on the list to choose from on what to do next and that's just the way I like it. 

 

 

 

Ruby and I spent the day ashore and mostly just did one of my favorite things in an area, wandering around wherever my feet, nose, eyes and serendipity lead me.  We walked quite a stretch of the coastline here and a large part of it turned out to be a national park area that was a long series of Moai (the famous stone face statues) and the large platforms they are built on.  It has been particularly interesting for me to now see these things myself after reading so much about them and having just finished Jared Diamond's "Collapse" which has a long chapter devoted to Easter Island, the events that led up to the almost complete collapse of the island's society and what caused it all.  

It was a perfect day, sunny but not too hot nor humid and it was great to be able to be out for a long walk with Ruby as well.  She was able to be off leash for most of it as were were usually the only ones around.  There are lots of other dogs here, mostly wild/stray types, which has been typical most places we've been but this doesn't seem to cause either side any problems.  Occasionally Ruby will find one that wants to play and they will chase each other for a bit, but mostly they just seem to greet each other, have a couple good sniffs and be on their respective ways.

We also spent some time walking more of the small village here and getting a feel for it and the people. It's quite nice as the tourism part is not too pronounced given the very small numbers and that the town and overall island and population (about 4000) is so small. 

After a lot of walking I stopped for a late lunch at about 2pm in a nice restaurant on the waterfront road and treated myself to a very full meal of salad, ceviche and fresh pescado (Mai Mai) with a mango juice to top it off.  It was quite a surreal experience as I sat there, enjoyed this great meal, looking at and past the carved figures on the road side and out over the water where Learnativity is anchored, listening to the crashing surf, and spending a few relaxing hours reading on my Kindle.  What a wonderful mix of cultures, old/new, history, technology and senses.  The place became very busy about 3pm so I offered to share my table with a couple who came in when there were not tables and they turned out to be from Holland.  We chatted for a bit, in English as my Dutch is almost non existent (sorry Erik) and they were here visiting for two weeks.  She was particularly interested in my Kindle as she had seen two others with them in their travels and so I let her play with it for a bit and we talked about it, technology, traveling and more.  Added to the extreme eclecticness of the whole experience and I just loved it all.

After that I stopped by the hotel where the people I'm trying to meet up with are staying but was not able to find them in on several tries.  I wandered up to 3 different internet cafes trying to find a net connection but after waiting over an hour I decided to let it go for the day and we headed back to Learnativity for the evening.  A bit more cleaning up, a light diner and just to add to the eclectic nature of the day, watched some TV shows that my generous friend John has recorded tons of for me.  I have to just laugh at the whole scene.  I hardly watch any TV or get to see any movies, so I don't know any of these shows that he's recorded but it has been great fun checking them out and finding some fun stuff to watch.  So there I am, anchored off Easter Island and getting to watch & learn about shows like "Dr. Who", "Top Gear", "Dirty Jobs", "Eureka" and of course get to see (after reading the book) Master & Commander.  I just LOVE these kinds of mashups of old and new, low tech and high tech, foreign and familiar. 

Then it was off to bed for Ms. Ruby and I.  AND we got to sleep in a real bed and for a real long contiguous time!  Life doesn't get much better than this I don't think.

Today (Sunday morning) I've been enjoying the sunrise as it burns through all the storm clouds that have been here since about 4am and the day warms up, the sounds of the waking village drift out to us a bit and we roll back and forth with the swell coming in and around this side of the island now from the NE.  Right now I'm using the time to also get this note typed up and sent off to you and then will finish my coffee, do a few more chores. 

Intentions (vs plans) for the rest of the day include going ashore to see what Sunday in Hanga Roa is like, trying for a network connection, exploring a few more parts of the town, meeting up (hopefully) with Sonia, Charlie or Elaine the people here I've been communicating with via Email) and then maybe try some snorkeling in this unbelievably clear water (apparently up to 300' at times!)

Whatever it ends up being, hard to imagine a better Sunday, or any day.  Hope yours is equally GR8!!

Enjoy,

Wayne

Boys, Beaches and a Bat-dog in Bahia Ballenas

Last night and today was a reminder of what life is all about: sunrises, full moons, fireworks, great friends, good food, good fun, boys, beaches and wagging puppy dog tails.  here is a quick summary of the past 24 hours:

Motored yesterday (20 kts but right on the nose!) afternoon/evening from CRYC in Puntarenas down to Bahia Ballena/Tambor and put down the hook about 7pm along with the great family I’ve been sailing and having fun with on Samadhi V.  Seen in the photo here off our port side.

Phil & Kelly invited me for dinner (again! I am SO spoiled) aboard Samadhi and we had delicious meatloaf wrapped in bacon that Phil made (while underway I might add) with buttered new potatoes a la Kelly, and a salad (my minor contribution) and some good wine.

Sat on the deck to get our moon tan from the year’s fullest moon.  Did you see it too??  And as if that wasn’t enough, we caught the impressive fireworks that the swanky private resort on the far side of the bay put on for some reason (just for us we figure!)

This morning I awoke to spectacular sunrise and read for a while on deck to the unmistakable roar of howler monkeys ashore.

Dove the boat to check out the prop and bottom. Both need a good cleaning. 

• Thinking of investing in a “hookah” Sea Breathe system (electric compressor on boat with long hoses to a regulator)

Lunch of garlic sautéed camerones (shrimp), rice and salad ($7) with the Samadhi V crew at the “Bahia Ballena Yacht Club” which is really a restaurant/bar/nightclub on the bay but was a fun spot for lunch.

Next it was off for a fun dingy ride with Captain Phil and the Samadhi V crew, across the bay to explore the mangrove lined river estuary. 

As you can see Ruby had fun in her role as “bat-dog” extraordinaire as we cruised the mangrove channels and flushed out all sorts of birds.

We continued on in the dingy to explore a local beach complete with wrecked trimaran (now a catamaran, missing one hull) and for some fun in the sun and sand with the boys and Ruby who never stopped racing back and forth between the waves and the sand.

Back on LTY, swam with Ruby off the back of the boat to clean out all the sand she acquired and to cool off a bit.  (90f here today)

Spent the afternoon catching up with Emails and blogs on the very good WiFi connection I’m getting from the small village (pop 40) ashore.

Dinner was a juicy thick pork chop out of the freezer, some new baby potatoes with garlic and butter and a big salad..  Cupcakes a la Kelly and the boys! for dessert, finishing up this blog entry and then off to bed!

Not a bad weekend in paradise!  Hope yours was great too!  More to follow here tomorrow as I continue to try to catch up with all the past photos and adventures.  Stay tuned!

PS.  My dear friends, Kelly, Phillip, Alexander & Nicholaus aboard Samadhi V keep up a great blog and I mean KEEP UP, pretty much daily most of the time with LOTS of great photos and video of them, their two great boys Alexander and Nicholas and some of the strays they pick up along the way.  What I ever did to deserve all their kindness and inclusion is beyond me but we’re sure having some fun times together.  Today was just one of many and you may have read of the ful that we all had when Lia, Brian and Piglet joined us for our trip inland to the Arenal volcano, zip lines and eco farm lodge.  Below is a collection of photos as seen through the beautiful eyes of Kelly over the past few days.  Be sure to check it out, just click below, sit back and enjoy!  We sure did!

Changes in Latitudes, Attitudes and Appearances for Wayne & Ruby

As some of you have recently noted in your Emails and messages, Ruby and I both have had a change of appearance and some weight loss somewhere between Florida and Costa Rica.  How observant of you! 

We were both shaved and shorn just before we left our unbelievably extended good times with our second family in Flordida; John, Michelle, Kate, Jaci, Genna, and Jack, plus grandparents on both sides and Coco (Ruby’s buddy) and Elaine (outgoing nanny) and Kelly (incoming nanny).  Whew!  I’ll be catching up as soon as I can with more details and photos from all our time with all of them.  Suffice it to say that leaving what had literally become our home and family for almost 2 months was a bittersweet event. 

So with all these changes as we headed back to El Salvador and our beloved good ship Learnativity, and after MANY months absence of scissors or razors, we figured that the upcoming change in locations and lattitudes required a matching change in attitudes and appearances so out with the sharp instruments and away with all the hair!

Here are some quick shots of the before, during and after results:

Hmmm, maybe I shouldn’t change ANY thing?  Doesn’t seem to be affecting my magnetic attraction!

BTW, these are three of the SIX gorgeous women I got to live with in Florida!  Eat your heart out!!

L-R: Michelle, Elaine, Kelly (baby Jack in stroller) 

Remind me why I left?????????????????????????

 

 

And here is my buddy, baby Jack, who I got to be “night nanny” for.  He doesn’t seem to mind either.

Oh well, here goes! 

Face first, out with the razor

 

 

Face shaved clean, now for the hair on top.

 

All gone and Jack hardly seems to notice?

 

 

 

 

 

And here we are today (Jan 11th, 2009)   Six weeks after leaving Florida, down in Costa Rica and the hair is starting to come back on both of us.

Ruby and I out for a dingy ride to explore the mangroves and beaches of Bahia Ballena, Costa Rica with our friends from Samadhi V.

Photo thanks to Kelly,

Dingy ride thanks to Phillip,

Fun in the sun and on the beaches thanks to Alexander and Nicholaus. (and Ruby at all times of course!)

What a way to end/start the year!

I received the greatest gift of a full week (Dec.26, 2008 – Jan 2, 2009)with my wonderful daughter Lia, her fiancé Brian and of course their dog Piglet (so Ruby got a great gift too!)

* click on any of the pictures below or elsewhere in the blog to see a larger version

I rented a car for their visit and picked them on on Dec. 26th, Boxing Day for we Canadians, and they all arrived at the San Jose airport (near Alajuela on the map below)

right on time and were out in my arms in 20 minutes!  A 2 hour drive West on the Pan American highway and we were at the Costa Rica Yacht Club (CRYC) in Puntarenas and soon had them all aboard the good ship Learnativity, starting to adjust to the heat and humidity, a major change from the cold that was gripping most of the USA and Canada it seems.  Here it is about 85-95F during the day and humidity runs between 60-75%.  Not very winter like but I’m loving it!

We spent the next day just hanging out on the boat, introduced them to my dear friends from back in our time together at marina Barillas in El Salvador, Kelly and Phil aboard Samadhi V and we all went to explore and eat in the local town of Puntarenas.

Lia and Brian and Piglet have stayed with me aboard Learnativity before, but never been out sailing so they wanted to try that out and so bright and early the next morning we cast off at high tide so we had enough water underneath us  to get out of the river estuary.  We ran aground a few times but powered through the mud and soon we were motor sailing (not much wind) south into the beautiful Gulf of Nicoya.  We headed down to Bahia Ballena on the south west tip of the entrance.  This turned out to be a great spot that we had almost to ourselves and Lia and Brian quickly mastered the art of anchoring and we were set for a day of swimming, snorkeling and exploring ashore.

 

We visited the small little fishing dock and got there just in time to see them unloading all the dorado (tuna family).  The one cafe/bar/restaurant was closed so we went over to the hotel on the beach a few hundred meters away and found a great spot for a lunch outside.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The beach was very shallow so we had to pull the dingy a long way up and without the aid of the yet uninstalled dingy wheels so we got a bit of a workout before lunch and after.   Then it was back to the boat and into the water for a refreshing swim. 

 

 

 

 

 

New day requires a new view so we pulled up the anchor and headed north to another great anchorage between Isla Tolinga and Isla Alcatraz and found a fabulous beach that we took the dingy over to and where Piglet and Ruby had a total blast chasing each other and the crashing surf.  Another day, another anchorage so we were off to Isla Muertos and had quite the adventure when we went ashore to find the Bahia Luminosa resort.  We actually found the resort fine but it had been sold  5 months ago and they were just waiting for the new owners to come in and apparently put in new condos. 

But we were hungry! and so there was a small village a few KM away and so we got instructions from Fin, the Luminosa manager and set off on what was supposed to be a 20 minute walk. 

Well, Wayne took the wrong fork in the road and we ended up having a very energetic and scenic walking tour of the local hillside.  BUT, check out the great views we got!

 

 

 

But once we found the right road, a pickup truck stopped and gave us a ride into town and we had a great lunch at this little cafe where “Ray” the owner, cook, VERY proudly showed us the 3 new cabinas he had just built.  The FIRST in town (population about 6) 

 

 

 

 

One more day, one more anchorage so we headed up to Isla San Lucas to check out a wreck that was in one of the bays and found a floating restaurant for lunch.  No menus, no problem, we just ordered the daily special of fresh cooked camerones (shrimp) but forgot to ask the price!  Let’s just say it was a very delicious and very expensive lunch! 

 

 

But enough fun in the sun, time to head back to CRYC as it was New Years Eve!  We got back together with Phil and Kelly who had just picked up their two super fun boys, Alexander and Nicholas, and were treated to not only their great company but a great gourmet treat from the talented chef’s Phil and Kelly.  We did our best to stay up to ring in the new year, but we cruisers are used to early to bed and early to rise so we barely made it.

 

Wanting to get the New Year off to a fun start we piled all 5  adults, two boys and two dogs into a van we had rented (thanks to Kelly!) and we were off for a very scenic drive around Lake Arenal.  (see map above)  We stopped for lunch and realized how different the weather was inland and at higher elevations and then it was on to the bit event of the day; zip line tour!

For those not familiar with this, it involves steel cables that are stretched over canyons and canopies of the rain forest and you slide down them while hanging from a small pulley connected to a climbing harness you are wearing. In our case we had 8 different cables, two of which were over 2000m long so you REALLY get moving, up to 45MPH at some points along the way.

 

 

Here is the "before” shot of us all about to get harnessed up, and then the intermediate shot of what we looked like in full gear.

 

But the most fun was yet to come.  It was raining and misty (not called a cloud/rain forest for nothing you know!) and so  as we were zipping along so quickly, the pulley was providing a constant refreshing spray of all the water on the cable……..

 

AND copious amounts of all the grease on the cables to keep them from rusting and wearing.  SO, here is what we looked like afterwards!

Check out those ear to ear grins shining through all the grease. 

What a BLAST and SO much fun to share this as a group. 

Here is me, thanks to Kelly’s shot, zipping in from the last run.   For more great photos and write up on all this AND a great video that will help you life the fun of zip line tours through the eyes of Alexander, be sure to check out the excellent blog that Kelly and Phil (and boys) keep up at http://www.samadhiv.org/  Worth checking in there from time to time in the future as well as looking back a bit to get a glimpse of what the cruising life is all about!

  Believe it or not, this was not even the best part of the day yet!  We no sooner got cleaned up, (took awhile) than we were treated to what is apparently a very rare showing of the Arenal volcano erupting and we had front row seats from up on the platform of the zip line tour.  Now THAT is how to start a New Year off in style!!

 

 

 

 

 

And we never let up.  Thanks to Kelly’s great sleuthing, phoning and Emailing, she found us a fantastic hotel/B&B/farm called Finca Luna Nueva to stay at and so we awoke to a gorgeous day overlooking the rainforest and greeted by the many birds in the area.  This is a fully working farm where they are growing indigenous plants from the rain forest and jungle and other parts of Central America and helping local farmers to introduce more of these plants into their diets and learn the secrets of bio diversity, sustainability and so much more.  The owner took us on a two hour tour of may parts of the farm and we learned and tasted a LOT along the way.

Along the hike Kelly’s sharp eyes spotted this 3 toed sloth way high up in the crotch of a tree!

But it was time to go and get Lia, Brian and Piglet off to the airport so we headed back towards San Jose in the van, got them there in plenty of time and then the rest of us continued on to the PriceSmart (Costco clone) near the airport to do a round of shopping for provisions for our respective boats and upcoming sailing trips.  We got back to CRYC late that night, exhausted but with smiles we just couldn’t stop.

Hope all of you reading this have 2009 off to a great start as well.

Thanks Lia, Brian and Piglet for helping to get 2009 off to SUCH a great start and for all the fun memories. 

Thanks Kelly, Phil, Alexander and Nicholas for making this such a fun group experience. 

2009 is already a year to remember!