Ebeye

So, we ended up doing our provisioning in Ebeye, which is a small island to the north of Kwajalein (still in the Kwajalein atoll). Anchoring at Ebeye was a bit of a pain. We scoped out a large area south of the commercial wharf, and in the end, we parked in a sandy spot off the south tip of the island. It was fine at low tide but very rolly at high tide. We just stuck it out since we weren’t staying long. We never did find a good place to tie up the dinghy when going ashore. I just had the boys drop me off either at the main wharf or in the tiny small boat harbor on the south end of the island. Once ashore it was like being back in The Marshalls again, and it was a bit of a relief. Social pressure of being around American landlubbers was gone, and we were back in exploratory mode. There was a small grocery store near the main wharf where I was able to do most of the provisioning.

Although there are a lot of taxis, Tim and I walked pretty much the whole island, and people were mostly shy and not very friendly. Ebeye is very crowded and I can think of no real reason to visit there unless there is something specific that you need. It seemed as crowded as Tarawa; however, the roads were better and there were far, far fewer trees. As we were walking, we noticed a little girl petting a dog, and it occurred to us that you don’t often see dogs being pet in the islands. They aren’t usually treated like pets like we are used to back home, but this little girl seemed quite fond of the dog. There are no ATMs in Ebeye, so luckily, we had enough cash for everything we needed.

We intended to buy a bunch of rice and flour for the next atoll we planned to go to, Ebon, but then found out that missionaries just took them something like 200 bags of rice, so we figured they were OK. We went ashore on a Friday with the intention of clearing out so that we could make a break for it over the weekend if the weather looked good, but it turned out to be Good Friday, which is a national holiday, so all the government offices were closed. So, we stuck it out over the weekend in the rolly anchorage. Tim took advantage of the time to finish a few projects like fixing the starboard macerator pump and finishing the sewing on the new stackpack (cover for the main sail when it is down to protect it from the sun.)

Satellite image of the densely populated island of Ebeye

An unexpected treat while we were at Ebeye was meeting the family from sv Cloud Nine. They had been there for months, and their cruising journey was taking a markedly different trajectory than ours being that they were missionaries. We told them we had heard about them from our friends from sv Sweet Dreams, who we had met back during our summer in Mexico. They came over to Exodus one evening, I can’t remember if it was for dinner or just drinks, and it was refreshing to be with cruisers again. In typical cruiser fashion we rapidly moved the discussion past typical small talk pleasantries and discussed how we have grown accustomed to their cruiser lifestyle, their roles as missionaries and the impact on the local cultures (both positive and negative) and our own personal religious position, or lack thereof. The kids hit it off, and Brenden even remarked how much he enjoyed being with cruising kids again. I paraphrase from memory, but he said something like, ‘It’s so much easier. You don’t have to worry about anything, and you can just have fun.”

Passage planning to leave Ebeye was a ridiculous exercise in picking the least bad weather window we could find. Weather forecasts were wildly different from day to day, which meant picking any window was mostly a gamble. In the end we decided to clear out and then lay low until we got the weather window we wanted. That way we could leave on very short notice.