Jaluit

We entered Jaluit through the southwest pass, and it’s hard to imagen a more beautiful pass entrance. It was a winding pass, but very wide and easy to navigate and see the reef. We motored across the southern tip of the atoll and dropped anchor near the main village called Jabor on Jaluit Island. There are a few coral heads in the lagoon, so we navigated upwind by eyeball across the lagoon, and the anchorage was deep with many coral heads.

It was a Friday afternoon when we arrived, and we did our usual ritual of safe arrival drinks and a boardgame, this time scrabble. We were the only boat there at anchor, but unlike most of the previous outer islands we’d been to across Tuvalu, Kiribati, and The Marshalls, the local villagers paid eerily little attention to us, and we decided to wait until the next morning to go ashore.

Southern tip of Jaluit Atoll

Satellite image of Jaluit Southwest pass

The village of Jabor was a relatively large one, and unlike Ailuk, there was no smiling welcoming committee of children when we went ashore. It’s tempting to think the people of Ailuk must just be more friendly, but the cynical side of me wonders if the kids of Ailuk were just used to cruisers bringing them lollipops, so they are conditioned to rush us when we arrive.

We tied up the dingy at the concrete wharf, where there were some kinds hanging around, so we asked them if we could tie up there and if they would watch it for us. We had already cleared out of The Marshalls, so technically were stopping here illegally. We were taking advantage of the total independent operation of different government offices. We had our approval form to visit Jaluit from The Ministry of Internal affairs, which we got while we were in Majuro. So, we took that ashore to show as our permit to be there. Meanwhile, as far as customs and immigration back in Ebeye were concerned we had left the country. Breaking the rules like that isn’t something to brag about, but sometimes it’s necessary as a cruiser given that official ports of entry/exit are often dead upwind. You have to be careful about where and when you take this sort of risk, but this time it wasn’t any big deal.

We asked the first person we came across where we could find the Mayor and we were told he was off island in Majuro, but maybe the councilwoman could help us. Her house was right near the wharf. She directed us to the courthouse, and since that was closed, we ended up at the Police Station, and eventually someone was able to fetch the council clerk, and we paid him our fee and he gave us a receipt. We explored the village a bit, but mostly the local people had little interest in us and kept their distance. We chatted a bit with some women who were operating a small desalination setup. We walked through the school (on a Saturday) and made our way out to the windward side of the island. We didn’t wear out our welcome and headed back to Exodus so Tim and Brenden could do a little spearfishing in the pass. According to Tim he fed the sharks a large grouper in an epic display of shark ball.

Yikes! We never found any danger.

We stayed only 2 nights at Jaluit before deciding we should continue our journey south. We made a mid-morning departure through the Southeast Pass, which is right near the village. Since Tim and Brenden had spearfished the day before they had some pass condition intel that made our exit pretty smooth. They had seen huge breaking waves in the pass when the current was outgoing (wind against current), so we timed our departure to be close to slack tide, but on the side when the current is still going in. We hugged the island of Jaluit as we were going out, and it was quite calm.