Gresham Family Exodus

Originally posted on September 1, 2014, by cruisingrunner

When you are having a potluck, and you make a pasta salad that is WAY too big for the number of guests, what do you do with the leftovers?

At home, I probably would have saved just a little for my own lunch the next day and tossed the rest. Well, that may be getting ahead of myself a bit, because at home it would be unlikely I’d be having a potluck at my house in the first place. In contrast, out here, potlucks are a way of life. And so is not wasting. There were a lot of valuable provisions that went into that pasta salad, and some would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace, like a can of hearts of palm from the U.S. or a can of salsa from Mexico. So, I resolved not to dump it, and once that decision was made, the first task was to figure out how to fit the HUGE bowl into our tiny fridge. Fitting things into the fridge is often like a big puzzle, and I can usually find space for that one last item. But this time, the puzzle could not be solved, so the lettuce and the bok choy had to spend the night on the counter in order to make room.

The next task was to figure out how to serve so much pasta salad to a crew who is lukewarm to pasta salad in the first place. The first afternoon, I went the straightforward approach and told the boys they had to eat it for lunch. Leaving the last two loaves of bread in the freezer so they couldn’t make sandwiches instead was my only hope for success. For dinner, I made chicken Milanese, and I tried to pass off the pasta salad as a side dish with some red sauce on top. Not disguised enough. So, the next night for dinner I upped my game. I put the pasta salad in a baking dish, topped it with red sauce, sausage, cheese, and herbs, and then threw it in the oven for some sort of baked pasta casserole. Winner! The boys loved it, and the pasta salad was finally gone. No wasting.

Food isn’t the only thing we waste less of out here. Out here, you never waste an opportunity, and this applies to a whole variety of different things. If you see something you want or need at the store, grab it right away, you never know if it will still be there or be restocked when you go back. If you want to do a particular hike or snorkel, do it as soon as there’s good weather or good sunlight, do it then, because the clouds can roll in any time. If there’s a highlight of a particular anchorage or town that you don’t want to miss, check it off the list first or you may end up leaving or missing your chance. If there’s fuel at the fuel dock, go now, because there might not be any tomorrow, or they might be closed because of some holiday you, the foreigner, didn’t see coming. If there’s a good place to run, run everyday, because the next anchorage may have nothing but a rocky beach. OK, you get the idea.

Yesterday’s run was along a spider lined trail again, but I pressed on and did it anyway, and I even did a bit of speed work. Turns out to be a good thing, because although we are in an amazing spot on the outer eastern edge of the Vava’u island group with nothing but a small island and a reef separating us from the pounding pacific ocean, and we get to hear waves as we drift off to sleep at night, there is sadly not much running room. So, yoga, paddling, and swimming will have to hold me over until we move again.

There may be little to no correlation between the fact that out here we waste less, and we also want less, but I thought I’d take advantage of the tired ole cliche anyway.

-D.

Exodus was pretty much ready to cruise at the time of purchase, but every once in a while, Tim makes a small improvement to make things a little easier or more comfortable. This time, it was an improvement to our 12 Volt Electrical Panel. First of all, our VHF radio was on the same switch as the rest of our entire navigation system (instruments, radar, GPS, depth sounder, etc.) so, while at anchor if we wanted our main ship’s VHF radio on, we would have to keep the entire nav system on, which is a bit of a power draw. We had gotten in the habit of just using a handheld VHF at anchor, but this significantly reduces our range. So, Tim took this opportunity to put the radio on its own switch, which has been really nice. One of those things we wish we had done sooner. Tim also added another 12-volt outlet at the nav table as well as a secondary 12-volt panel also at the nav station. The main panel has a switch to provide power to the secondary panel, and then the secondary panel has switches for: 1) The Main VHF Radio, 2) Charging the handheld VHF, 3) The Salon LED lights around the bench that we use when we need/want low lighting, 4) The cockpit low level LED lights, 5) The Wifi Router, 6) The Bullet Router, 7) The previously mentioned new 12-volt outlet, and 8) The compass light. There also 4 spare switches in case we think of anything else.

September 2, 2014

The four boys (Exodus and Lady Carolina) negotiated with True Blue V to clean their waterline (not the whole hull) for a big container of candy and a box of chocolate cake mix. They tried to get a tub of ice cream out of it too, but Craig and Leann drive a hard bargain. So, the 4 of them spent 2 hours in the water, not a bad deal for True Blue V! Afterward, they told me they also got cans of 7up, and that Craig said he’d also get them the ice cream next time we’re in town. So, it turns out Craig’s a softie after all.

September 1, 2014

While we were making our way between Nuku island and Kenutu Island (anchorage #30) there was quite a bit of radio traffic regarding a vessel to the south of Tonga needing assistance. From what I gathered, there was an elderly single hander on a vessel called Fidel who had left Niue (an island nation to the east of Tonga) and was now adrift because he had lost steering capability. I guess he was making contact with people in Neiafu via satellite phone, because I never actually heard him on the radio, but there was certainly a lot of traffic among the expat community figuring out how they could help him. There were sort of three centers of radio organization that I could identify: 1) The lady that runs the Tropicana Cafe, 2) Barry from Hunga Haven, and 3) Analulu, a land based station who spoke the same language as the guy on Fidel (I’m thinking it was German, but I don’t quite remember), and she served as interpreter. It seemed like they had identified a fishing motor vessel, called The Godfather, who was potentially in the area, but they were having trouble reaching him by radio, possibly because he was out of range.

As we are motoring along in the southern end of the Vava’u group, we thought maybe there was a possibility that we might be able to reach The Godfather. It was probably a long shot but certainly worth a try. So, I got on the horn and hailed The Godfather on VHF 16, and sure enough he responded. So, for the next 20 minutes or so I served as a relay between the land stations in Vava’u, mostly Analulu, and The Godfather in order to give him all the info he would need to find Fidel and help him. Eventually, either because of our movement east to Kenutu or, more likely, because of The Godfather’s movement south, we lost contact and could no longer serve as an effective relay. We learned later that The Godfather cut their day of fishing short, gave the guy a tow to Neiafu, and was never reimbursed for any fuel.

I didn’t really think much of the incident. It had a mostly happy ending, and I’ve become so comfortable on the radio that serving as a relay for something like this was not really any big deal. But our friend from New Zealand had an interesting cultural take on our small role in it. His observation was that Americans are different than British (and Australians and Kiwis.) From his perspective, he thought that when I first got on the radio, all the traffic was kind of chaotic and my offer of assistance wasn’t immediately jumped on. In his words, though, I persisted. I persisted until someone paid attention and realized the help we could provide as a relay. I didn’t really remember it that way, which in a way might support his observation. He said Americans will do what it takes to get a job done, while a Brit might respect order and hierarchy so much that they wait to be asked to help. I interpreted this as being a positive observation about Americans, that if we see something that needs to get done, we are more likely to just do it and less likely to worry about stepping on someone’s toes. Sure, this is a generalization, but Americans get such a bad wrap in the generaliztion department within the international community, I enjoyed hearing this positive one.

Nuku is a very small island off of Kapa Island south of Port Maurelle. Anchorage #7 is listed in the guidebook as being nearby off of Kapa Island, but we chose the north side of Nuku as our preferred anchor spot. Off of the east tip of Nuku there is a wonderful beach that provided a playground for hours of fun for the kids. Our first evening anchored there, Steve (Lady Carolina) and Brenden circumnavigated the island on foot at low tide. The other boys didn’t have shoes on, so they just hung out at the beach. I was able to dinghy over to Kapa Island for a run, picking up the trail that goes by Port Maurelle. As I was running past Port Maurelle I noticed a boat that I thought looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite make out the name on the side. So, in stalker fashion, I took some photos and then zoomed in on the image, and sure enough, it was the vessel Dafne. They are a kid boat with 3 girls that we met way back in Tahanea in the Tuamotus. I stayed in stalker mode until I got back to Exodus, and then I hailed them on VHF, but got no answer. Sudoeste responded though, and confirmed. So, Nuku turned out to be a great bonfire beach, and in addition to Dafne and Sudoeste, we met two more new kid boats: Moxie and Elena.I went on several solo snorkles along the shallow reefs at Nuku Island, but just a little further away is the island of A’a, and Tim and I took a short dinghy ride over to check it out. The coral was steep to along the island making for much more interesting snorkeling if I challenged myself to go deep enough.

August 28-30, 2014

Anchorage #16 is a small bay on the Island of Vaka’eitu. The anchorage is surrounded by coral with just a narrow deeper spot to get through. It was plenty deep, but it’s still nerve racking to watch the depth sounder click to lower and lower numbers as you move along. The anchorage itself isn’t very pretty, but it was well protected from the strong SSE winds that we experienced while there. The island was definitely inhabited, but we never saw the people, so we weren’t sure if it was just a fishing outpost or something. There were corrugated tin structures, a few animals including a pig and a dog, and trash, lots and lots of trash. Like a disgustingly huge amount of trash strewn all over the settlement. Tim, Craig, and maybe Steve (don’t really remember) went ashore with food scraps to feed the pig, and they ended up also petting the dog for a while. They said the dog is clearly NOT a pet and had clearly not ever been pet before, because it shied away from their hands at first, but then just couldn’t get enough of the petting. Poor puppy.  The cruising guide shows a short trail to the other side of the island to a secluded beach. I hunted around and eventually found the trail (38 paces left when facing the house from the beach), but unfortunately, I never made it over to the other side to check out the beach.

The real highlight of being here, the whole reason we were at this anchorage in the first place, was to snorkel at the coral gardens. There is solid reef between the islands of Vaka’eitu and Nuapapu, and on the outside of that reef was the so-called coral gardens. We took the dinghies and anchored them off the small beach on the tip of Vaka’Eitu Island, and since the tide would be dropping, we anchored the dinghies out quite far. Then, we swam as quickly as we could over the reef to the outside, timing it just right in between the smallest of the wave set that was crashing onto the reef. I was very glad to be decked out in a full wet suit, thick booties under my fins, and gloves.

Once out there, wow, was it amazing. Here’s an email I sent out to friends about it: “Yesterday, we once again topped our snorkeling experiences with at what is known as the coral gardens along a reef that extends between two islands. We were anchored in a sheltered cove on the inside of the reef, so we had to swim across it with waves coming over to get out to the good stuff, but once we did, wow was it worth it. The color of the coral was unlike anything I’ve seen before, and it was cloudy, so the sun wasn’t even out that bright. I wore a weight belt with almost the right amount of weight in it, so I was able to dive down deeper than I ever have before. My reward was being able to hear the whales singing, since you couldn’t hear them near the surface.”

August 28, 2014

Neiafu is basically a big mooring field. There are places to anchor, but they are further away from the dinghy docks, and the moorings are only $15 Pa’anga (Tongan currency) per night, so we usually just pick up a ball. One of the times when we were leaving our mooring ball, I had a serious lapse in judgement. Normally when departing, after dropping the mooring ball you intentionally drift back a bit in order to clear the ball before moving forward. This time I just plowed forward and all of sudden I hear a “thunk!” and the port engine cuts out and the electrical let’s out the continuous beep you normally hear when you’ve switched power to the engine starter but haven’t started it yet. Tim and I both realized right away what I had done. I was mortified. We moved away from the mooring field and out into the channel under one engine, and then Tim inspected everything to make sure there was no structural damage to the engine or the housing. Out here, you have to keep your wits about you continually. A small lapse in judgement can end up being catastrophic. Luckily, this time it wasn’t.