Aries 32 - Thistledown
So, here I am on the atol of Tarawa, in Kiribati (pronounced Kee-ree-bas). Jill has left. The boat is in rough shape. For those of you who like to see exactly where I am in google-earth, the boat is anchored at 1 degree 21.972' N latitude, 172 degrees 55.732' E longitude.
From Suva, Fiji (where I wrote last), Jill and I sailed around the west coast of Fiji (the big island of Viti Levu). We left Suva on October 19th, and arrived on the 20th (my birthday) in a bay called Likuri harbour, at Robinson Curusoe Island. It was pretty nasty that day, and we had been out all night, hove to, waiting for daylight to sail into the harbour. As we pulled in, another young couple on a boat there hailed us on the radio offering to pick us up for some tea... it was quite nice.
Robinson Curusoe Island was a little backpacker resort. These sorts of places are nice for a change of scene... to hang out with a different sort of community of travelers. We hung out there for a couple of days, and watched some native dancing there and drank some kava. We met a film crew who was staying there before going to a bay a little ways south, to film a stunt for some movie. We decided to go watch them film the movie shoot, and brought a girl named Ryan from the resort with us for the day sail. It was back in the direction we'd come from, into the heavy wind, so a very nasty sail. We stayed in the movie shoot bay for a couple of days, and ryan got a ride back to the resort on a jet ski with the movie people.
I did a little work on the electrical system while we were in the movie-shoot-bay, finally installing my new stereo and LED cabin lights... then we sort of harbour hopped up to Lautoka on the north-west side of the island. When we check out, we get a port clearance saying where we will go next. We were planning on filling out the forms for Vanuatu or Papua New Guinea, but after talking to some people, and hearing about hurricanes building already near Vanuatu, at the very last minute we decided to go north to Kiribati instead. Once we got near the equator, we would be out of the hurricane belt.
After checking out, we sailed along the north side of the island, out to bligh water, a night-time-navigable area between the two big islands of Fiji. This was probably also a mistake, in the northern lee of the island we had light variable winds, and only made 10-20 miles per day, anchoring each night in random places along the coast. we couldn't sail at night at all, since we were nagigating through narrow channels with reefs everywhere. Much of it we were tacking upwind, having to watch carefully for the change in color of the water for the shallow spots where I would have to tack. I almost ran aground at one point, suddenly I could see the coral under the boat... I tacked, flipped on the depth sounder, and saw that I was in 6' of water. I actually found some of the anchorages to be quiet nice up there, and I felt like we were able to actually do a lot of cruising around in Fiji, but some of the sailing was frustrating, or difficult. Bligh water also was probably a mistake, it funnels strong winds between the islands, and was a pretty nasty place to sail. By the time we shot out of bligh water into the open ocean, we were both sea sick. It was my first time throwing up since California. Even after we were out in fairly calm / normal sailing, it took us a few days to recover from feeling sick.
The passage north also ended up not being so nice.. we had an extended area of very light winds. What wind there was always seemed to be blowing right on the nose, and it took until November 24th for us to arrive in Tarawa atol, in Kiribati. One day I broke a large jar of sundried tomatoes in olive oil, which left the whole floor as a greasy disgusting mess... I think it took me a day or two before I had the stomach to really throuroughly clean up that mess. When going to windward, we took on water somehow, and the bilge flooded up through the floorboards, flooding the cabin. Every time something would fall on the floor... a pillow, clothes, a book, it would get soaked in foul bilge water. For some reason I couldn't get it to drain to the sump to be pumped out, and I couldn't get the floor dry. Walking in the cabin meant walking through a few inches of foul bilge water (or slippery olive oil depending where you stepped), which really sucks when you're getting up to check the horizon every few minutes. The boredom and sea sickness made Jill lethargic, and she was generally pretty misserable most of the way. This was pretty discouraging to me, and we seemed to make each other worse. One day I dragged her out of bed and we did excercizes on deck and took sponge-baths etc, and then we cleaned up the boat a bit. Things became more pleasant after that, but she has decided that she hates sailing. She almost considered staying until the Marshall islands (just a few days from here, and easier flights), but a cheaper-than-expected plane ticket, as well as a good window to see family, encouraged her to leave from Kiribati. I was hoping that having Jill aboard would make it easier for me to appriciate all the positive aspects of this trip, and to help me relax about all the things that go wrong... but I think trying to keep her happy just made it all that much more difficult and stressfull. Maybe next time I should find someone who has some experience with this sort of thing...
There will be some advantages to sailing alone, and I can kind of appreciate the space right now, but I'm also nervous about sailing alone again. I've become pretty accustomed to having her around, and it feels a little strange without her.
On the passage north: on November 12th a bird hit the boat ... must have broken a wing or something. It puked on the deck, and then died in the night. We almost got runover by a fishing boat on november 16th, it was kind of frightening how close it got, and that they didn't respond on the VHF radio or change course, even when we blared a three-million-candlepower spotlight at them. Also on the 16th I caught a mahi mahi. It was our third bite. I guess the fishing boat chose a good place to be fishing. I didn't know what it was, so threw it back, but now I wish we'd eaten it. It would have been good. We got two other bites earlier in the trip, but the first one broke the hook. I didn't realize the hook was broken (thought he'd just slipped off), so there was nothing at all there to catch the second fish.
When we pulled into Tarawa, we saw that herbert was here. It's good to have some company. He came via Tonga. He had a swordfish puncture the hull of one of his ama's on the way here (he sails a trimaran). ... pretty scary. He patched the hole with some epoxy or something at sea.
There is internet here (obviously), and it's nicer than I might have expected from what we'd read in "the sex lives of canibals." It's an interesting country. We met up with Anne, a friend of Jonah's (of the boat "Araby"). Anne is teaching english here through the peace corp, and was able to show us around some. We helped her one day doing english-language interviews at a marine training center.
We didn't provision well enough in Fiji, and store-bought food is expensive here, so I'll probably just buy enough to get to the marshall islands, and provision more there. I think I'm going to need to get more mail soon... My brand new GPS that I got as a replacement for the last broken one, already died! I think I'll get two more GPSs. The windlass that I installed in San Francisco already broke, and I think I'm going to have to replace that too (Jonah has the same one and is replacing his), but I think I'm going to need a welder for the installation of the new one. I keep forgetting that that project is on my list :-/. I might wait until guam to get mail though... I'm not sure exactly what I'll do.
Restaurants are very cheap here, so I'm trying to eat out as much as possible. Jill bought a bag of potatoe chips at the store one day for almost 4 dollars, but then we go get dinner in a restaurant sometimes for less than 3 (australian dollars). Some things are really cheap here.
Water is difficult to obtain here. The entire country runs on rainwater collected from their rooves. There is a groundwater system but even the locals don't drink it. Me, Jill, and Herbert all got pretty sick here. I got some rainwater from a tourist office that I treated, and caught a little rainwater with a tarp. I need to setup a better rain-water collection system. While collecting rainwater one day, a jerry jug blew over board. I went to jump over to fetch it, but slipped, fell, and landed on my thigh on the bulwarks as I fell in the water. It hurt quite a bit, and I limped around for a couple of days using Jill as a crutch. I thought I just bruised the muscle on my hip, but no bruise formed, and my hip hurts. It makes me kind of nervous, but hopefully it'll get better soon. I can walk and everything, but it makes it hard to sleep and I'm worried about how long it'll take to fully heal.
Jill left on monday, I think that was December 4th.
Herbert and I met a guy who has a boatyard here and builds boats that are exported to Australia. Aparently he only pays 1-2 australian dollars per hour. He offered us jobs :-P. The experience might have been nice, but it doesn't look like there's any way he could pay us enough to justify taking the job. He also bred clams there that he exported to germany. It was interesting.
I started to do some work on the boat, and after poking around a little noticed a huge rotten spot in the deck, that I'll now be repairing. Three spots actually... three big holes in the deck. I'm pretty sure this is where all the water was coming from. While it is an overwhelming project that I didn't really want to work on just yet (I knew I would have to glass that part of the deck at some point, and it's worse than I thought), I think this might finally solve the majority of my leaky-deck problems. Fixing the leaky deck will help in many ways... For example, many of the electrical projects come from rotten wiring that rotted from being soaked in sea water. Much time goes into cleaning stuff that got moldy from being soaking wet, and I'm frequently scrubbing rust off of the dishes. Sea-water when stagnant starts to smell like sulfer, and the boat has been smelling pretty foul lately. The biggest win though is that I think much of the water in the cabin, initially comes from the leaky side-deck. Many define "cruising" as "working on your boat in exotic places." Sometimes I wish I bought a catamaran, which would at least be stable, and the bilge-water would stay in the bilges. I guess most of the appeal of having such a boat though would be that it might make it easier to keep someone like Jill aboard :-P
One day me and herbert went and saw a play called "the last virgin in the pacific." It's the first time they've ever put on a play here. This place is a little strange. That book, "the sex lives of canibals," really could have said a lot more relating to the title. There's a big problem with underage prostitution here (which isn't even illegal) servicing the fishing boats. They have a high number of aids cases, but I've heard from peace corp volunteers that when someone tests positive, the people at the hospital often know the person, Not wanting to be the bearer of bad news, they will lie about the results. On the radio they've been saying that some strange jealous sorts of people that want to take people with them, have been walking around in crowded clubs poking people with needles that they'd poked themselves with... trying to spread the disease. I don't know if this is just a rummor, but I'm not going out on "pay fridays" ... every other friday, when the clubs are packed and everyone get's pretty rowdy. They have this relationship system where basically, if someone says they like you, and you like them, 8 days later you get married. If the girl doesn't bleed on the wedding night, then the marriage doesn't happen, and the girl is ostrasized by her family. Once married, there seems to be a high level of infidelity. It is a nice place though, and people are friendly. I do like it here.
I have until probably March or so before I have to get south again to avoid the northern typhoon season. This isn't a lot of time really for the distance involved. If I don't make it, I might end up having to wait out the season somewhere or something.... or maybe I have to sail south to better weather before reaching Asia? I'm not sure what's going to happen. I'd like to fly home sometime too but I'm not sure when I'll get a chance... flights are expensive from these remote islands. I was thinking that if I could make it to singapore by late February, I'd put the boat on the hard there, and fly to beijing to take a one semester intensive chinese language course... and then travel back to the boat by land as a backpacker, hopefully in time to fix up the boat a little and sail on in the correct season to India. I'm not so sure it'll work out though. The class starts in February and I don't think I'd make it in time. I'm also thinking that if I have time sometime, maybe I'll buy an around the world plane ticket instead of just a round trip flight home... They're only 1-2 grand usually, and allow a number of stops. Since I'm already so far around the world, it might not be much more money than the flight home would be anyways, and could be a fun break from sailing. I was also considering a job on Kwajalein atol in the Marshall islands (there's a US military base there), just to take a break and make a little more money, but I sent them a resume and didn't get a response. That makes the decision easier anyways.
The short term plan is, I'll probably head to some of the outer islands of tarawa, then continue north to majuro in the marshall islands. after that I'll continue west, either through the caroline islands, or maybe to guam, ... then to asia.
Pictures since the last mailing will be posted here:
/sailing/aries32/batch12/ and here: /sailing/aries32/batch13/
-brian