November 7-20, 2015
Funafuti is the capital of the island nation of Tuvalu. If you’ve heard of Tuvalu, it’s probably in reference to the fact that their low-lying islands are in danger as ocean levels rise. We found Funafuti to be surprisingly pleasant for a port city.
Logbook – November 7, 2015 (Rotuma to Funafuti)
Passage Log Highlights
- 0548 engines on
- 0615 engines off main + genoa
- 1845 SB engine on to reef
- 1922 SB engine off. Main (1 reef) + genoa
- 1924 Fish on! Yellowfin tuna!
Daily Notes
- T – naked tuna dance, caught a tuna!
Logbook – November 8, 2015 (Rotuma to Funafuti)
Passage Log Highlights
- 0410 main (1 reef) + genoa
- 0500 squall (25 kts)
Logbook – November 9, 2015 (Rotuma to Funafuti)
Passage Log Highlights
- 0300 main (1 reef) + genoa, squalls, lightning, thunder
- 0525 SB engine on (charge battery) – need to check SB engine alternator)
- 0600 SB off, P on, tack
- 0612 P off
- 0630 both engines on
- 0645 both engines off
- 0730 both engines on
- 1545 engines off Funafuti
Daily Notes
- Safe arrival drinks with Navire
Email to Family and Friends dated November 9, 2015
Subject: Exodus – Arrived in Funafuti
This ended up being a very trying passage for me. From a weather and sea state perspective, we’ve had much, much worse, but overall my spirits were lower on this passage than any other. Perhaps it was the combination of upwind sailing, lots of squalls (thunder and lightening included), and the horrible heat and humidity. Needless to say I was happy to arrive. We enjoyed safe arrival drinks with our dear old friends from the boat called Navire, who we just met in Rotuma. But having shared the experience of Rotuma together, the connection is there, and it felt like they were old friends when they greeted us on arrival.
Funafuti is an atoll, but in contrast to others we’ve been to, it’s much older, further on in it’s life cycle. The lagoon is deep and there are very few, if any, coral heads in it. The motus are very low lying, and overall, it’s not exactly the most picturesque place we’ve been. Apparently the atolls of Tuvalu could be the first victims of higher ocean levels due to climate change. What I read with the boys the other day said by the end of the century these islands could be underwater.
We haven’t been to shore yet since we arrived late in the afternoon, but we’ll do our clearance in the morning and then explore a bit. Tomorrow is “plane day” when the weekly airplane arrives and apparently it’s a big deal on the island, so we’ll have to see what that is all about.
Love and miss you all,
-D.
Logbook – November 10, 2015 (Funafuti)
Daily Notes
- Cleared in w/ Customs & Immigration (whew!)
- Lots of swimming to keep cool. Busted out the water hammocks.
- T/D – to shore for dinner – Filomona Hotel
- Walk along the airport tarmac
Logbook – November 11, 2015 (Funafuti)
Daily Notes
- D – 2 visits to Customes, scout the town for bakery & groceries
- Happy hour on Exodus w/ Navire, TBV, and French Boat (Francis, Colin, Sally)
Logbook – November 12, 2015 (Funafuti)
Daily Notes
- Plane day! D – visit post office for collectible stamps. Laundry day.
- Drinks at Filamina w/ TBV
Logbook – November 13, 2015 (Funafuti)
Daily Notes
- Filled propone (Sulani), morning Taiwanese market w/ Janet & Leann. Caught in rainstorm @ TY
- Joseph visited – boys took him dinghy surfing
- T/B – trolling w/ Craig
Email to Family and Friends dated November 13, 2015
Subject: Exodus – Fun in Funafuti
I love this place! To write about everything we’ve been doing and seeing would take a couple pages, so let me just share about the airstrip here. The island is long and skinny and slightly boomerang shaped, and there is an international airport right in the middle of it. A plane comes from Fiji twice a week, and all other times the runway serves as a place of fun and activity for everyone. One of our first evenings here, Tim and I went for a walk before having dinner on shore, and there were rugby and soccer games going on, people running and walking, and people on their scooters buzzing down the runway. Then it’s always big excitement when the plane comes, and we caught the bug and went ashore to watch the plane land. A fire engine sounds three sirens to warn people to clear the runway because the plane is coming, and even then there are scooters crossing at the last minute. We stood right, and I mean right on the edge of the runway as the plane landed. Where else can you can you do something like that at an international airport?
Overall, Funafuti has been a very pleasant surprise. The people are very nice, even if a bit reserved at first. There’s a small library and at the post-office they have an extensive Tuvaluan stamp collection, I even bought some as a souvenir. Things are pretty cheap here, and most things are available… I really didn’t need to do 4 months worth of provisioning in Fiji, but I guess at least now I don’t have to worry about it.
We are still waiting to hear back from Customs and Immigration to see if our request to visit a couple islands north of here en route to Kiribati has been approved. One boat has already been denied, so I’m not exactly hopeful.
Love and miss you all,
-D.
Logbook – November 14, 2015 (Funafuti)
Passage Log Highlights
- 0958 engines on
- 1037 engines off – reanchor
- 1800 engines on
- 1915 engines off Funafuti
Daily Notes
- Kioa picnic at southern tip of island
- T/A/B – rugby game at stadium
- Squall from hell
Logbook – November 15, 2015 (Funafuti)
Daily Notes
- Sunday quiet day
- T – fixed and cleaned macerators
Email to Family and Friends dated November 15, 2015
Subject: Exodus – Picnics and Squalls
Yesterday was a lovely day until about 5 pm. We were invited to a picnic here with the people from the island of Kioa. Kioa is in Fiji, but it is not inhabited by Fijians. 67 years ago, a small community from the island of Vaitupu in Tuvalu purchased the island of Kioa and migrated there. Now, there are many people who migrate back here to Funafuti, either permanently or temporarily, and they make up one of the small subcommunities within Funafuti. They even elect a community leader, and they have many social gatherings, like this picnic yesterday. Why were we invited? Call it being in the right place at the right time. When we were in Rotuma we met another boat called Navire with a very nice couple from New Zealand. Well, they had a passenger with them, called Kailopa, and they were giving him a ride from Kioa to Funafuti so he could visit family. Kailopa is wonderful man, and we enjoyed getting to know him a bit in Rotuma, and now that we are in Funafuti he is including us in all the festivities. Also, he has a grandson who is 17 years old named Joseph, and Joseph is being very good to Alex and Brenden, and he’s even been out to Exodus for some dinghy surfing!
So, the picnic yesterday was great, I would say abut 50-60 people including lots of kids. They cooked a pig in a lovo and they also BBQ’d chicken. They apologized that there wasn’t any fish, but they said the boys who normally do the fishing were practicing rugby and didn’t have a chance to go fishing. Alex was OK with that. The picnic was down at the very southern tip of the island, about a mile away, so we took Navire and Exodus down there and anchored off the beach. It wasn’t a great anchor spot since it was steep to, so we were close to shore without a lot of chain out, but as long as the wind direction and strength stayed the way it’s been for the past week, nothing to worry about.
After lunch everyone piled into the back of a pickup truck and headed to the stadium for a big rugby game. Tim and the boys joined them, but I stayed behind “with the women”. Shortly after, I noticed that the wind was blowing from a strange direction, from the NW, so I headed back to Exodus. With this wind direction we were laying exactly perpendicular to a lee shore facing the fetch from across the entire lagoon. But the wind was only 11-12 knts, so I set an anchor alarm with a tight tolerance, and sat down to do some writing without worrying. I actually thought to myself, “If it were blowing 25 kts, then I’d have something to worry about.”
Well, pretty soon it was blowing 25-30 kts and we were hobby horsing in 4 foot wind chop. Exodus was doing fine, but I kept my eye on Navire, which was unattended because David and Janet also went to the rugby game, and after about 30 min of these conditions I could tell they were dragging back after a few particularly violent up and down movements of the boat. I started thinking about what I could do, and quickly concluded that I couldn’t really do anything. First of all getting to Navire would be difficult in these conditions, there’s no way I could drop our dinghy by myself so I would have to swim, and not being a particularly strong swimmer, that didn’t seem like a smart thing to do either. Plus, I would have no idea what to do when I got there. Maybe I could figure how to start the engine, but maybe not. And I’ve never driven a monohull, so would I just be making a bad situation worse? Plus, and this was really the decisive factor for me, I couldn’t very well leave Exodus unattended. We were also in a precarious position and I could just imagine getting to Navire and then Exodus starts dragging, and I’m on a boat I have no idea how to save while I watch the boat I do know how to save drag onto the shore. I wished to myself that it was Exodus that was dragging, because then I could do something. I got on the radio and called for assistance, but that was really an impractical thing to do since we were away from the main anchorage so I would basically be asking someone to dinghy down to help, but still, if by some chance someone was willing and able, I had to try. Then I looked to the shore and was so relieved to see everyone on the shore getting ready to head back to the boats. They had seen the weather rolling in and had come back early.
Navire got their anchor up first, and wow, did the waves toss them around as they headed out of the anchorage. I joked that even Lady Carolina had never provided such a show during our adventures together. Exodus tried to follow quickly, and we got the anchor up as the wind was still blowing 30 kts and the rain was pelting down (being the princess of the boat I got to stay dry under the helm bimini driving the boat, but don’t think that driving Exodus in 30 kts of wind is easy!) Not long after the anchor was up Alex started yelling that a surfboard went overboard. So, Tim jumped on a paddle board to retrieve it, and my job was to keep Exodus pointed into the wind while drifting back slowly to pick him up, since there would be NO way he could paddle back upwind to us. Alex kept a visual on Tim the whole time and let me know when he was near the back step so I didn’t engage the engine. At this point it was imperative that they got both boards and Tim on board very quickly, because without propulsion, Exodus is at the mercy of the wind and will get pushed back rather quickly towards the shore. The boys managed this operation flawlessly, and we were off again. I’m not kidding, not a minute later, our large plastic tub, that was full of rainwater to do laundry, slid overboard. Tim sees it slipping but can’t quite get there in time. So, he yells, “diver down!” and he’s back in the water. If weren’t in such a serious situation, it would have been funny. Perhaps with time we’ll laugh about this.
So, by the time we’ve completed our man overboard drills it’s completely dark. We follow our track back to the main anchorage as Exodus bounces all around and things fly around the salon and galley, like books, apples, wine bottles. As we approached the anchorage we were able to make out all the anchor lights and one of the boats was broadcasting AIS, which helped get us oriented to the layout of the anchorage in the dark. We were able to make it close to our original anchor spot, but out a little further in order to have more room. We put out plenty of chain and got the anchor set and shut down the engines. At this point the squall passed and the wind died down.
This was one of mother nature’s reminders that we cannot get complacent and we have to be prepared for the unexpected. We are not in the tradewind belt anymore, we are up in squall alley, and a squall can blow in any time. Plus, in addition to squalls, the general forecast is somewhat less reliable. Down in Fiji during the cruising season, the weather is mostly caused by systems far to the south, the highs and lows as they travel across the southern latitudes cause the tradewinds and then the periodic backing winds as a trough from a low goes over. Since the systems causing the weather are relatively far away, errors in the forecast of the tracks of those systems result in relatively small errors in the wind forecast up in Fiji (land effects aside, of course). However, up here, the systems causing our weather are closer and less stable, so forecasts are all over the place and much less reliable. After thinking all of this over, I now have a full appreciation for how difficult it will be to pick a weather window for our next passage north.
Anyway, life is always an adventure and a learning experience out here.
Love and miss you all,
-D.
Logbook – November 16, 2015 (Funafuti)
Daily Notes
- T/B spearfish, rainbow runner
- D – run on the runway
- Party on Exodus w/ Navire, TBV, Ska, Ariel IV
Logbook – November 17, 2015 (Funafuti)
Passage Log Highlights
- 1405 engines on
- 1425 port engine off
- 1428 SB engine off
- 1540 both engines on
- 1612 both engines off, south anchorage
Daily Notes
- D – Taiwanese market + groceries
- T – diesel
- Move to south anchorage
Logbook – November 18, 2015 (Funafuti – South Anchorage)
Daily Notes
- D – swim to beach, snorkel
- T/B – spearfish – 0
- Bonfire on beach w/ Ariel IV, etc.
Logbook – November 19, 2015 (Funafuti)
Passage Log Highlights
- 1305 engines on
- 1508 engines off Funafuti
Email to Family and Friends dated November 19, 2015
Subject: Exodus – Rain doesn’t stop bonfires
It turns out that the storm that hammered us the other day was the axis of a trough passing over us from the north. This is somewhat comforting news, in that it was forecast, if I had just been watching the right weather products. We had another trough go over yesterday evening, and because I had been watching I knew approximately when the rainy, squally weather would start, and I knew approximately when the axis would pass over. Thank you NWS-Honolulu. This one wasn’t as bad, we saw 20 kt for about 30 minutes at the most. And of course we were anchored in a better spot with enough scope out, since we knew it was coming.
Most of the boats in the fleet here (we are 9 total now!) have moved down to anchor in the southern end of the lagoon to get away from the “big city” for a couple days. We’ve met a lovely couple from Sweden who cruised with their 3 boys when they were younger, and they organized a bonfire on the beach yesterday. They were going in to get the fire started, and they radioed to see if the boys would like to come help. I thought it was a very nice gesture, and I all of a sudden realized how important it is for the boys to have time with people without Tim and I around, so they can forge their own relationships. No, it’s not other kids, but there’s no reason they can’t get to know the adults too. Alex was happy to take his machete and get coconuts for everyone. After about 45 minutes they came back to get Tim to join the party too, while I stayed on board to enjoy the boat to myself. In case you were wondering, yes, I did walk around naked in the rain. Just because I could.
The worst of the wind and rain happened during the bonfire, but when the boys got back, it was clear that it didn’t put a damper on any of the fun. The fire didn’t even go out!
Love and miss you all,
-D.
Gresham Family Exodus 