Category: Uncategorized

The first night we arrived at Nanumea, there was loud music playing and lots of activity at the dock. We had no idea what was going on, but as the music kept going into the night and then all night into the morning, we figured these Nanumeans must really know how to party. The only time the music stopped was briefly in the evening and again in the morning for the church bells to ring.

We finally made our way to shore at about 10am the next morning, and we found people dressed somewhat ceremonially and they had decorated the wharf area very intricately with woven palm fronds. There was even a woven welcome sign saying “Talofa” which is hello in Tuvaluan. So, after joking with the people that we appreciate the elaborate welcome party they prepared for us, we learned there was a tourist boat coming within the hour. After walking around we met more and more people and we learned that they had prepared a huge feast for the tourists, and of course we were welcome to join them. After getting over the shock that there was actually going to be a cruise ship here, in Nanamea, which is possibly the most remote place we’ve come in our entire journey. We learned that the last time they had tourists here, other than the few cruisers each year, of course, was back in 2010. So, this is a rare event. You could feel the excitement among the people of the village, and we decided to make the most of it. We went back to the boat and dressed up and then went back and enjoyed the party. One local lady I met commented to me that, “it seemed like you really understand our customs.” She was referring to the way we were dressed in contrast to a lady from the cruise ship who showed up in bikini bottoms (they were going snorkeling after all). Someone had to give her a sulu to wear, because they said she couldn’t go in the meeting hall like that.

Coconuts for the tourists

Who needs a straw?

After enjoying coconuts at the wharf, we all made our way to the meeting hall, which was also nicely decorated with palm fronds. They gave a presentation of speeches, dancing, singing, and the feast was very well done, and we piled our plates high. The finale was a traditional song/dance called Fatale. Everyone sits close in loose circles around each other. There are drums and men and women singing and they start out quiet and slow and it gradually builds and gets faster, and it was quite captivating, quite moving. I loved it and I was so glad for the cruise ship at that point, because we probably wouldn’t have seen that otherwise. But at the end it was almost embarrassing how few of the tourists were still there. They only had a few hours on the island, so they were all wandering around or snorkeling or whatever. Very few of them seem interested at all in the people. Anyway, we were very glad to be included, and now we are very glad to have the island and the village to ourselves.

Ready for the feast – with True Blue V

Traditional dancing

The Fatale

After the tourist boat came and left, things seemed to quiet down a bit, and the people of the village got to enjoy all of their leftovers from the feast. We walked around a bit more and made a visit to the church in order to climb the steeple and check out the views. They were spectacular views, but the windows were dirty and it was hot as hell up there!

A view from the church steeple

Exodus in the lagoonThe first night we arrived at Nanumea, there was loud music playing and lots of activity at the dock. We had no idea what was going on, but as the music kept going into the night and then all night into the morning, we figured these Nanumeans must really know how to party. The only time the music stopped was briefly in the evening and again in the morning for the church bells to ring.

We finally made our way to shore at about 10am the next morning, and we found people dressed somewhat ceremonially and they had decorated the wharf area very intricately with woven palm fronds. There was even a woven welcome sign saying “Talofa” which is hello in Tuvaluan. So, after joking with the people that we appreciate the elaborate welcome party they prepared for us, we learned there was a tourist boat coming within the hour. After walking around we met more and more people and we learned that they had prepared a huge feast for the tourists, and of course we were welcome to join them. After getting over the shock that there was actually going to be a cruise ship here, in Nanamea, which is possibly the most remote place we’ve come in our entire journey. We learned that the last time they had tourists here, other than the few cruisers each year, of course, was back in 2010. So, this is a rare event. You could feel the excitement among the people of the village, and we decided to make the most of it. We went back to the boat and dressed up and then went back and enjoyed the party. One local lady I met commented to me that, “it seemed like you really understand our customs.” She was referring to the way we were dressed in contrast to a lady from the cruise ship who showed up in bikini bottoms (they were going snorkeling after all). Someone had to give her a sulu to wear, because they said she couldn’t go in the meeting hall like that.

Coconuts for the tourists

Who needs a straw?

After enjoying coconuts at the wharf, we all made our way to the meeting hall, which was also nicely decorated with palm fronds. They gave a presentation of speeches, dancing, singing, and the feast was very well done, and we piled our plates high. The finale was a traditional song/dance called Fatale. Everyone sits close in loose circles around each other. There are drums and men and women singing and they start out quiet and slow and it gradually builds and gets faster, and it was quite captivating, quite moving. I loved it and I was so glad for the cruise ship at that point, because we probably wouldn’t have seen that otherwise. But at the end it was almost embarrassing how few of the tourists were still there. They only had a few hours on the island, so they were all wandering around or snorkeling or whatever. Very few of them seem interested at all in the people. Anyway, we were very glad to be included, and now we are very glad to have the island and the village to ourselves.

Ready for the feast – with True Blue V

Traditional dancing

The Fatale

After the tourist boat came and left, things seemed to quiet down a bit, and the people of the village got to enjoy all of their leftovers from the feast. We walked around a bit more and made a visit to the church in order to climb the steeple and check out the views. They were spectacular views, but the windows were dirty and it was hot as hell up there!

A view from the church steeple

Exodus in the lagoon

Nanumea has a narrow, shallow, man-made pass, therefore the current in the pass can get quite high. It’s on the south side of the lagoon, and our navionics charts were pretty far off for Nanumea. The pass entrance is approximately: 05 40.380 N, 176 06.368 E.

We arrived at about 10:30 and found True Blue V standing off, waiting for a more favorable tide conditions. So, we dropped the dinghy and Tim and Craig went to recon the pass at close range. They found about 3 kts of current flowing in. It was so much current that the hand held depth sounder wouldn’t work. We did not want to enter with so much current, so we decided to wait until later in the afternoon, closer to high slack tide. And what did we do floating around with time to kill? We made pizza of course! I had dough and sauce in the freezer, and since it’s hot as hell, these things thawed out in about 15 minutes.

We went in when we estimated it to be about high slack tide, and there was negligible current in the pass and the minimum depth we saw was 13 ft near high tide (on the lagoon side of the pass).

Both sides of the pass are lined with lighted markers (port to port when returning to port), so lining up for a straight approach was easily accomplished.

The tricky thing about this pass was that we had a ground swell coming in from approximately south causing waves to break on the left side of the pass entrance (as you are facing the entrance). True Blue V went in first, so Leann had passed on the info that the swell will push you to port. We tried to time it between swells, but we ended up doing a bit of surfing into the entrance, but Tim was ready for the swell to push us off center to the port side and he counter steered perfectly.

From my perspective, our ride, was, well, exhilarating? I watched the video I took as we went through and as we surfed a wave into the pass you can hear me say, “we’re gonna end up on that reef right there,” and then, “Oh my god, I’m so scared!” Meanwhile, at the helm, Tim’s yelling, “woo hoo! Surfin!”

However, while we were there, two other boats hit the reef in the pass. One was on entry just a few days after us with similar conditions and only by a stroke of luck did they not lose their boat. The other was while exiting the pass with the swell coming from the other side so that while exiting they got pushed to port.

We ended up making a rather abrupt decision to depart Funafuti. There was a low-pressure system coming that would pass to the south of Funafuti, and although the forecast changed from day to day, it was looking like Funafuti was going to see somewhere between 30-50 kts. The worst part about the forecast is that the winds would come from the W or NW, which would make the anchorage at Fongafale totally untenable. There were potential places to anchor on the other side of the lagoon, but without first-hand knowledge of the anchorages we decided perhaps it would be better to just leave. We decided to head all the way up to the atoll of Nanumea, which had two things going for it with respect to this low pressure system: 1) it was north, and the further north you could get, the less severe the winds would be, and 2) it is a very small lagoon, so we would have decent protection even from W or NW winds.

A quick VHF call with True Blue V revealed that we were on the same page, and we both quickly cleared out on a Friday and were out the northern pass of Funafuti by dusk.

Unfortunately, heading directly to Nanumea meant we would have to skip over Nukufetau, but weather was, is, and always will be, the boss of us while we are out here living on a sailboat.

However, while the weather forecast was telling us to get the hell out of Funafuti, it wasn’t willing to give us good passage weather to get anywhere, and we knew we would have to motor a fair bit to get to Nanumea. And we did end up motoring. A lot. At one point during a long daytime calm spell we stopped the boat and the boys got in and cleaned the hulls in order to improve our speed through the water and therefore improve our MPG. We actually calculated a 31% improvement. Not bad!

But that didn’t mean it was an easy passage, because intermittently there was sailing wind, and then were lots of squalls with crazy wind directions, and then there were periods where we were becalmed. Furl the genoa… unfurl the genoa…port tack… starboard tack… Even though it wasn’t horrible or uncomfortable sailing, it was pretty trying. Long gone are the days when we can just set the sails and forget about them.

Our last day was particularly frustrating in that the wind picked up strong directly from the direction we wanted to go. This was totally unforecast, and if it had persisted much longer than it did, we would have had a hard time getting to Nanumea. I was tacking back and forth, hoping it was just a squall and that it would end soon, and at one point my velocity vector in the direction of Nanumea was actually negative. After several hours, we found out it was just a squall, and we were able to point to our target. However, that night there was a serious lightening show to the SW; it was so bright it would light up the cockpit. True Blue V was north of us, and they worried that we were caught in it, but it was still very much to the south of us. It was that low pressure moving in from the west. It was a beautiful show that kept me fully awake during my last night watch of the passage.

(The low-pressure system that created the lightening for us on passage did eventually give us some wind too. We were safely tucked away in the lagoon at Nanumea and didn’t see much more than 25 kts and most of that was gusty rather than sustained. The rest of the boats in the Northbound Fleet that stayed in Funafuti saw as much as 50 kts. They all found places to anchor on the west side of the lagoon, and they all came through with just a little bit of drama, but we were happy with our decision to head to Nanumea. Ultimately, that low pressure turned into Cyclone Tuni, the first named cyclone of the season.)

It was in Funafuti that “The Northbound Fleet” started to gel. We loosely organized an SSB radio net and made our way north together with not so much coordination.

The Northbound boats were: Exodus, True Blue V, Navire, Anahata, Free Spirit, Clara Katherine, Ariel IV, EOS II, and Skua.

Skua didn’t have and SSB radio, but we stayed in touch with them via inReach.

We wanted to visit one or two other islands north of Funafuti en route to Kiribati, so, we wrote a letter requesting permission and we gave a copy to both Immigration and Customs (at the Government building, not at the wharf). It is still unclear who is in charge of this process, and it seemed like maybe there was a bit of turf war going on. Two other boats before us had requested permission only from Customs and they were denied. I personally talked to the lady at the Immigration office, and I believe that she was the one who got the ball rolling to get the permissions. To cover all bases, we were glad we submitted letters to both offices.

However, when our approvals came back there was some conflicting information. The immigration office told us we had permission to stop for 1 day and that they would call the police on the islands and that no letters were needed. The customs office asked us how long we wanted and when I said one week he said no problem. He gave us letters that gave us permission for one week. (When we got to Nanumea, the Police Officer originally told us we only had one day permission, but then when we showed him our letter from customs, he honored the one week.)

The process for getting these approvals took well over a week, and many follow up visits to both immigration and customs. All of the boats that we are aware of were approved once they made their request to both customs AND immigration.

On our way back south I emailed the Immigration office in Funafuti requesting permission to stop at Nanumea inbound. Surprisingly, my email was answered immediately, but permission was denied. She said that their laws only allow for stopping outbound, not inbound.

It’s about time I introduce The Mighty EOS II into our story. EOS II is the name of the boat, and they are a family of four from Australia with two young daughters: Kiani (4 yrs) and Ahia Kai (2 yrs). Now, those that know me know that I’m not a kid person; I mean I can barely stand my own kids (just kidding boys!) Anyway, these two girls really stole my heart. And Slade and Lahnee are pretty fun to hang out with too. Anyway, EOS II would become our most consistent companions all the way from Funafuti up to Majuro.

Since I didn’t go to the beach bonfire, my first introduction to Lahnee was a VHF radio call as we were leaving the anchorage.

The background on this is that Tim and Slade went out spearfishing. Before they left, Tim and I had a conversation that went something like this:

D – “I need you to be back by 2:00 at the latest so we can get back to town to pick up our veggie order”

T – “You and Alex know how to raise anchor, what do you need me for?”

D – “You always say that, but this time I really do need to be back in town, so if you’re not back by 2 we’ll leave without you and you can catch us in the dinghy.”

T – “OK”

It’s still not clear to me if Tim thought I was joking, because he really, really, likes to give me a hard time about how I left him, but when 2:00 came and went the boys and I hauled up anchor and started heading back to town. And as we were leaving the anchorage I get a VHF call from Lahnee, and she said she was starting to get worried that the guys were gone so long, so she is kind of surprised to see Exodus leaving the anchorage. I told her the deal and that Tim would have to catch us in the dinghy. I was probably a little short with her only because I was driving Exodus out of the anchorage and focused on not hitting any coral.

She recently told me that she really got a wrong first impression of me that day, and I laughed and responded that it doesn’t seem very wrong to me, it seems pretty spot on.

So, Lahnee and I became an unlikely pair of fast friends. She’s a bit younger than me and is a former world-class gymnast, she has a refreshing candidness about her, and she’s got a sense of humor you can always count on. We had taken very different paths to arrive in Funafuti, but I’m so glad those paths had the opportunity to cross.

Slade – Tim’s new spearfishing bro-friend

The Mighty EOS dinghy

This an email I sent out while we were anchored down at the south end of the Funafuti atoll, near the island called Mateiko:

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 (Ariel IV) 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!

This was one of the highlights of Funafuti, especially after thinking that fresh vegetables would be hard to find. On Tuesday and Friday mornings you go early in the morning (when we were there it was 7:00 on Tues and 6:30 on Fri) and put your name on a list, which is basically a queue. Then you come back an hour later and you get to go in order to pick out piles of vegetables: cabbages, green bell peppers, lettuce, and cucumber. We were also able to order for pick up on a Thurs morning, and there were a few additional things available, like green beans.

When we were there, we met two young Taiwanese men who are university students doing their internships there. Apparently 8-10 years ago Taiwan funded this project to teach the Tuvaluans to grow vegetables above ground, in containers. Now it’s operated by the Tuvaluans, except for the occasional interns.

A trip to the vegetable garden

This is an email I sent out to friends and family, and I’ll just include it here rather than re-write about this incident:

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 sub-communities 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 about 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.

Navire heading down to the picnic with Kailopa and Joseph on board

Taking the pig out of the lovo

Quite a feast

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 kts, 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.”

Piled in the truck headed to the rugby game

The storm rolling in

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, which 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 we weren’t in such a serious situation, it would have been funny. Perhaps with time we’ll laugh about this. (Spoiler alert: it’s now about 6 months later and I *am* kind of laughing 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.

As a follow up, it turns out that the “squall” that hammered us that day was a trough passing over us from the north. When I figured this out it was somewhat comforting news, in that it *was* forecast, of only I had been watching the right weather products. We had another such trough go over us several days later, and because I had been on watch I knew approximately when the rainy, squally weather would start, and I knew approximately when the axis of the trough would pass over. Thank you NWS-Honolulu.

We were pretty sad when we were leaving Fiji without True Blue V. They were the ones who had originally put it in our heads to go to The Marshalls, so when they changed their minds and decided to stay in Fiji for the off-season, we were missing their company. However, in true cruiser fashion, guess who pulled into Funafuti just a couple days after we did? That’s right, True Blue V changed their mind again after the Fiji Met report was issued, which warned that the El Nino could cause the cyclone season to be even worse in Fiji this year. So, we were back together with one of our long-time buddy boats after all.

And we had another encounter with a “blast from the past” while anchored in Funafuti. Sally is a woman we met way back in Mexico and we had also run into her in The Marquesas. She crews on different boats and manages to see the world that way. Imagine my surprise when a dinghy pulls up to Exodus and there’s Sally with a warm greeting for us. So, we had a get together on Exodus with all of our old and new friends to catch up and get to know each other better.

A fun get together with old and new friends