For obvious reasons, we got a late start leaving Somosomo for our daysail up to Rabi Island. So, after making our way through the reef system labeled “Florida Reefs” on our open CPN charts we knew we wouldn’t make it any further than Katherine Bay on the south tip of the island before darkness set in. Neither Open CPN nor Navionics are very accurate for all these reefs, so we relied mostly on satellite imagery and our own eyes for all of our navigation.
Katherine Bay is a beautiful, lush, green bay lined with hills and mangroves. Our first anchor attempt was way up into the head of the bay, but it did not seem like good holding and the anchor didn’t dig in after a couple tries. So, we moved out a bit to the anchor waypoint listed at the end of this post. We had a quiet evening in Katherine Bay without even leaving the boat, and in the morning, we were off to make our way up to Albert Cove.
On our way up to Albert Cove we made a brief stop at the main village, called Nuka. We had gotten the impression either from something we had read or something someone told us that we needed to go to Nuka to check in with the local police and request permission to visit the island. It turns out that really wasn’t necessary. In fact, they asked us why we come to check-in; don’t we know that Rabi is part of Fiji? So, maybe now is a good time to explain that the people of Rabi are not native Fijian. They are from an island, which is now part of Kiribati, called Banaba and formerly known as Ocean Island. They were relocated to Rabi shortly after WWII because their island became barely habitable due to phosphate mining by the British and then the invasion by the Japanese during the war. Their story is a sad one as they seem to have gotten screwed from every direction. This website is a good one for more information if you are interested: http://www.banaban.com/contents/en-us/d17_Banaban-historical-overview.html
Today, they seem to be doing OK being administratively part of Fiji, however their infrastructure was a bit tired as it was obviously decades old. During our brief visit to Nuka, we found the people, on the surface, to be much less friendly than the Fijians we had grown accustomed to interacting with. They reminded me much of the Tongans; it’s not that there’s any ill feelings towards you, it’s just that they are not so extroverted as the Fijians. We seriously could have walked through the whole town without anyone talking to us, but we know better than that by now, and we stopped and talked to several people, and they were all nice, helpful, and curious about us. It’s just that we had to make the first move. They seemed pleasantly surprised when we greeted them with, “Mauri,” which is how you say hello in their language, Gilbertese, instead of the well-known Fijian, “Bula.” The “anchorage” at Nuka isn’t ideal, so we didn’t want to leave Exodus unattended for too long, but we visited a couple shops and stopped to talk to some moms who were gathered near the school. We also had a short conversation with a teacher, so we learned that their school system is integrated with Fiji, so in addition to their own Gilbertese language, the kids learn English AND Fijjian.
As we transited between Nuka and Albert Cove, we stayed inside the reef, and it was easy to navigate and spot the bombies, since we just kept a lookout the whole time. As we arrived at Albert Cove we saw two boats already in the anchorage, so I can’t say that we got a prime anchor location. And as luck would have it, a squall blew through and it poured down rain on us just as we were dropping anchor. Oh well, I guess Tim needed a shower anyway.\
One of the boats already there was one I had briefly met in Savusavu. They are a memorable couple, because they are from Israel, and you don’t meet many cruisers out here from Israel. They invited us over to their boat, and it’s always nice when people love their boats, but this guy was way over the top. The whole afternoon turned into a “look how cool my boat is” session. It was a very nice boat, and he has obviously put a ton of thought into it, but he has also obviously put a ton of money into it. As he was borderline lecturing us on safety and how he has redundant EVERYTHING in his boat, I wanted to say, “you know most people don’t have the budget for that sort of redundancy and they have to put careful thought into their prioritization rather than achieving safety by brute force spending…” but I held my tongue. Anyway, after we were back on Exodus, Brenden asked, “Where’s Israel?” and I realized perhaps I needed to step up on the geography education. I told a friend about Brenden’s lack of knowledge about Israel, and the response was classic, “what kind of American are you?”
In Albert Cove there is a family who lives on shore: husband, wife, and wife’s father. Their two kids live and go to school in Nuka, and some weekends they come to stay with their parents here in Albert Cove. There also seemed to always be a group of fishermen there with them, and they liked for us to use the binoculars to look for birds before they headed out to fish. The woman’s name is Maria, and she was quite friendly, and I went ashore a couple times just to hang out and chat. One day she took us on a guided hike to the other side of the island. It was a pleasant hike, and on the other side we met a family who had just arrived and was going to establish themselves on their family land. The man’s name was Tarawa (easy for me to remember because that is the capital of Kiribati). He has had a long career in Suva, and now, you could say, he is retiring and settling here with his family. Even though they had just arrived by boat the day before, their hospitality was impeccable, and they served us what I think was warm, sweetened milk.
One evening, after dinner and after the darkness had set in, one of us, I don’t remember which one, noticed a fire on shore. Now, people often burn trash, so we are used to seeing fires and smoke coming from the kind of places that might make you a little nervous back home. But this fire seemed different. It grew quickly in intensity, seemed quite uncontrolled, and seemed to be coming right from where Maria’s house was. “I’m sure it’s fine,” was our first split second reaction, but then that was quickly overcome by, “but what if it’s not?” So, we rushed to shore with all the buckets we could find hoping we would get there in time to help before everything went up in flames, and when we got to shore Maria calmly came out to greet us. Everything was fine, of course, and her father was just burning some trash. Silly palagis.
On the morning we were planning to depart, we went to shore to say good-bye with a few thank you gifts in hand. Maria and her husband weren’t there, it was just Maria’s dad and a man called Teri, who also lives nearby in Albert Cove. We left some magazines and a cleaned-up, fixed-up pole-spear that Tim had once found while out diving. Later, just before we were ready to depart, Teri swam out to Exodus in order to give us a lobster for the passage. Brenden called dibs, but he’s a crazy kid.
Gresham Family Exodus 