Moving on...

We’ve planned our next leg of our adventure and it involves 4 atolls and 1400 miles, ending in Yap.  There won’t be any grocery stores between here and Yap so we’ve spent the last few days stocking up.  I wasn’t really planning very well until Andy brought it to my attention that this would be the longest time between stores, including our Pacific crossing…that got my attention.

We don’t have nearly as much on board as we did when we crossed the Pacific.  I wondered if it was because we’ve gotten better at this provisioning thing and just don’t need as much.  But in the end, I think it’s because there is no Costco or Walmart here and things cost at least twice as much as they did anywhere else and well, there’s just not that much available.

You’ve heard my rant on the lack of veggies.  Well, the ship came in a few days ago, so there are plenty of [moldy] veggies.  The problem is, they’ve all been refrigerated and in order to take enough for a month, they need to stay out of the fridge…  I’m being forced to be creative.  I’ve gotten out my “green” bags, which I’ve never used.  I’m hoping they help keep things fresher.  And I’ve got plans for those things that start to go off.  Like my peppers, for instance.  We’ll eat them as long as they’re good, but when they start to go bad, I’ll roast them and then put them in a jar with some oil to prolong our enjoyment.  I bought a local pineapple.  Like everything else, they’ve picked it very green, so I’m thinking we’ll be cutting that open in a week or two.  We’re loaded to the gills with apples and believe it or not, pears.  Onions are swinging from the net and I have the obligatory cabbages.  My favorite part (and I’m not sure I bought enough) is the cucumbers.  All in all, I think in about two weeks we’re going to be out of veggies….then we’ll move onto the cans.

We’ve bought diesel, gas, propane, beer, wine, eggs (I finally found local eggs that don’t have to be refrigerated and they taste 100% better than the tiny things we’ve been buying in the store), cereal, milk, juice, soda, snacks……  I think we’re good to go.  I know we’re out of money, that’s for sure.

We rented a car to get the diesel and gas done.  It took us three trips.

Too much stuff in the car, he had to hang out the window like
the rest of the local kids.

Trip one.... two more to go.

Today we said our final goodbyes to our good friends Rodney, Monica and Luke.  Jake has met so many kids on our adventures, but the ones he truly connects with are few and far between.  Luke was definitely one of those kids.  His sweet little self followed us all the way up his driveway, then his road, and for a few minutes the boys decided he was going with us.  We’ll miss Rodney and Monica as well….great people, kindred spirits.  Who knows, it’s  a small world.  Monica and I are convinced we’ll end up on the same Carribean islands somewhere (or small suburb of VA, either way).

And now it’s time to go.   We’ll check out at the dock in the a.m. and if we can get out of here before noon, we’ll head on out to Ant for a few days and then off to the Morlock Islands.  We have no idea what we’ll find.  I can’t find any research where any cruiser has been there and written about it.  Stay tuned…this should be our least traveled path so far.  Remember, no internet = no pictures, but we’ll be updating the blog via the radio, so tune in for more.

Happy Halloween!

Captain America and Ceratosaurus get ready
to explore town.

Jake has been planning his costume for Halloween for about 3 months now.  As you might remember from last year, he gets very particular ideas about what he wants to be and it usually can’t be bought in a store (even though this year we had plenty of stores to chose from while we were home).   This year he decided he wanted to be a dinosaur.  But not just any dinosaur, he wanted to be a Ceratosaurus.  He wanted horns, stripes, blood stains and claws like a real therapod.  

I got ambitious and bought fabric and a pattern while we were in the states.  After stressing over it for quite some time, Andy finally had the brilliant idea to have the seamstress here in Pohnpei sew it for me.  So we did.  But that was just the beginning.  Jake had to make it just right.  So he and Andy spent a whole day putting stripes, horns, and blood on it specifically to Jake's directions.  They made a mask and claws as well (he ended up not actually wearing the mask, but it was his "favorite" part).  Jake thinks it's his most creative costume yet...he was very proud.

After spending so much time on his costume, we had to make sure someone saw it!  We were lucky this year in that we had another kid to go trick or treating with and we had places other than boats to go.  

We started out at the Rusty Anchor with Luke and his dad.  The boys got to show off their costumes and have some dinner to get them energized.  Then we got in the car and off we went.  

He wanted to make sure we all saw his tail.

Every dinosaur needs a bit of sushi before going out to hunt.

Trick or treating in the kitchen of the Rusty Anchor.

Getting their "treat"...ice cream!

Andy and I weren't sure if Halloween was a big deal here or not.  We quickly learned it was a HUGE deal.  Kids everywhere, cars everywhere, candy everywhere.  It's a lot like in the states only no sidewalks and no streetlights.  People pick their favorite neighborhoods and the parents drive them there.  Unfortunately, there's not many "neighborhoods" so everyone picks the same ones.  And it's the ones the Ex-Pats live in...the best candy and fewest dogs, I'm guessing.  You use the same general principal in deciding which houses to go to - the ones with the lights on.  Only the Pohnpeans don't want you to be confused so if they really don't want to hand out candy (or aren't home), just to make sure it's clear, they leave their dogs on the porch to bark and run at you.  Cool, huh?

The kids had a great time and were very excited about their candy.  It's still funny to me to watch Jake eat candy as he doesn't know the names of everything and his favorites are still those weird candy's they don't sell in the US.  Which makes it good for Andy and I.  While Jake eats his wacky jaw breakers, Andy and I get the Skittles and Snickers bar.

We're heading out next week, so from here on out we'll be doing our thing trying to get ready.  It might be a month or so before we actually get to Yap, so a bit more planning is in store this time.  Stay tuned.

The Elusive Waterfall....and other stuff

Another hodge-podge of events…  we’ve gone diving, had some friends over, and gone exploring the mangroves.  We’re going to be leaving here in the next week or so, so we’ve been trying to fit everything in….and we finally found that elusive waterfall…

While we waited on the ship to come in, we managed to live off of mangrove crabs and cucumbers!  Not bad...

A Japanese boat came through.  They were on their way back to Japan
with NO stops....good luck s/v Dolce!

 Rodney and Luke kayaked out to the boat one afternoon and the boys played and played...We took them back in the Mangroves at high tide and the boys had a blast.  The adults managed to have a good time too :).

They had their adventure to the "other side."

Drinking the "gift" from the Japanese folks...

 Before we left California, we met a guy from mom and dad's church who was volunteering as a teacher in Pohnpei.  Jake and I promised to meet up with him when we got back.  Well, here we are with Cole and 3 of his friends, enjoying an afternoon on Savannah.  I'm afraid the parents won't be too happy about it.  One of the kids is now thinking about the military and the other three are trying to figure out how to crew on sailboats....  sorry...

Sunday, we decided to go on a dive/snorkel on the other side of the island.  Jake and Luke played in the water ALL DAY LONG....

Our driver, Incher...

The boat ride back, after a VERY long day.

 There is a US Post office here.... our first purchase, a brand new grill...

And we finally found the elusive waterfall... You might remember that we tried to find this waterfall when we first got here with Lee and Richard on s/v Before.  Well, today we found it.  We had to cut the engine at least 6 times and duck under numerous trees, but alas, we found it... well worth the effort...

A bit of trash on the way...

Our own personal Gondalier (sp?)...

 On our way back, we all had to take our "Mangrove" pictures.

Sokehs Rock

Stay tuned for the next post....Halloween....and a very scary Ceratasorous  (a big dinosaur for you guys not in the know!).....

The ship has arrived!

After living on mangrove crabs and cucumbers for a few weeks (not a bad existence when you get right down to it), we finally have veggies again!  The ship came in and we have veggies, cheeses, good bread and semi-fresh meat!  We stocked up as is everyone else on the island.  You never know the schedule of these things and it could be another month before we see it again.

I'm not extremely organized in my thoughts lately so this is another hodgepodge post.  We've been spending a lot of time with other kids and due to one of the parents being ever so generous in his babysitting offers, Andy and I actually got to dive together the other day!

It looks like we'll be here a few more weeks.  We want to wait until after halloween as Jake has his costume all ready and since there are other kids, he's overly excited about trick or treating.  Then we'll wait for the wind to die completely and sail, motor on out of here.  Yes, we know we're leaving a tad early for the winds, but we're about Pohnpei'd out.  We're looking forward to visiting some of the outer atolls and making our way to Yap.

Eat what the locals eat...or not.

When starting out cruising, one of the first things you worry about is food.  You always try to stock up on everything and there’s a  balance between wanting to try new food and not wanting to go hungry.  Everyone always tells you, “eat what the locals eat and you won’t have to worry about it.”

I’m here to dispute that thought process.  I’m going way against the cruising grain here, but in our case, I think I’m right.  “Eat what the locals eat” is easy to say and follow in Mexico.  I mean really, who doesn’t love Mexican food?  Fish tacos, enchiladas, home made pico de gallo (although that’s a lot harder to find than you would think).  But who thinks about going out to dinner and says, “Honey, lets have some Micronesian food tonight!”  No one.  Do you know why?  Because canned corn beef, potato chips and mechanically separated turkey doesn’t sound good does it?  I know, I know…”they eat fish and rice and breadfruit and taro and oh, Monica, you just haven’t gotten into the culture!”  Wrong again.  They USED to eat that stuff and on the outer islands, you MAY find a few that still do, but I assure you, canned corn beef IS local food and has been for the last 2,000 miles of our adventure.  I saw a 1 year old kid at the laundry mat and in the few hours is took me to finish my laundry, I saw this kid drink 2 full size sodas and eat a rice crispy treat, bag of chips and a lolly pop.  No joke.  This area of the world has the largest diabetic population known and I am not shocked in the least.

Why am I writing about this now?  Well, I just spent a few months in California (5 months total in the States) and I am having some serious vegetable withdrawls.  To make matters worse, my parents are vegetarians so I ate an abnormal amount of veggies for me and well, my body liked it.  Here, in Pohnpei, it’s feast or famine.  “Feast” means a ship just came in….from the US.  Meaning it stopped in HI, Majuro, Kosrae and then here.  By the time it got here, the broccoli is growing extra things and the red peppers have fur on their caps.  “What about local produce Monica?”….I can hear you asking that.  Well, yes…there are bananas and coconuts.  There are cucumbers (by the way, that’s the highlight of Pohnpei for me….cucumbers…I love them and they are always around).  You can get fish but more often than not, it’s very small reef fish that you just took pictures of on your last snorkeling trip.  I have bought local lettuce (available once), eggplant (I’m just making myself like eggplant) and tonight, I bought green beans (I happen to be the only one on board who likes these).  The fact is, they don’t eat veggies.  They just don’t.  Kosrae had local gardens.  Pohnpei has these, but they are REALLY hard to find.

OK…I got off track.  “Famine” means just that.  Today we went to a restaurant and the choice with my chicken sandwich was fries or green salad.  I ordered green salad.  “We don’t have salad.”  I asked the grocery store when they were expecting the next container of veggies.  She screwed her face up really funny and said “ooooooo….November 2!”  It’s October 16.  But even that varies.  You can ask 10 different people and get 10 different answers.  But today…the entire island is out of veggies.  We drove around the island today and I looked in every small roadside stand and all I saw was beetle nut (think ‘skoal” and cigarette butts and rotten teeth) and donuts. 

After all that ranting, though…..we were on our way back to the boat tonight and we ran into a local ex-pat who had been fishing on his kayak all day and he gave us a tiny little barracuda.  Andy cooked it up and I cut up some cold cucumbers and blanched green beans (with dip) and we feasted on a relatively healthy dinner.  It’s all in your perspective, I guess.  We have some friends here who are Seventh Day Adventists, traditionally vegetarian.  I’m dying to know what they’re eating.  Canned corn and spinach, I’m guessing.

Food is always going to be one of the ways we rate our adventures.  For those of you that share our love for cuisine (and cruising), just think about that, while you prepare for your next major crossing or adventure.  “Eat what the locals eat,” sounds good, but isn’t always the best plan of attack.  Unless you don’t mind carrying an extra supply of insulin and cholesterol pills on board with you…  I’m just sayin’…..

Nan Madol, Pohnpei

Nan Madol is the premier tourist activity on Pohnpei.  We decided to fork over the $150+ and see what the hubbub was about.  After a lot of advice, we took the tour out of the Village Resort, which consist of a snorkel with manta rays (allegedly), a small hike up to a waterfall, and a kayaking tour around the ancient ruins of Nan Madol.  We left our boat round 8:30 as we had to hike up a big ass hill, catch a cab, stop at an ATM and then make our way though traffic to the other side of town to the Village Resort to catch our boat.  Since it’s been raining here non-stop for days, we weren’t very optimistic, but when we arrived, the weather gods were with us and we set forth on what seemed to be a promising day. 

We loaded up the giant panga (I still don’t know what we call it here, so we’ll go with “panga”) with four kayaks, all of our snorkeling gear and us (including a really nice lady from CA that signed up as well).  We spent the first hour or so dodging bomies and waiting on high tide.  We did stop and try to swim with Mantas, but the visibility was so bad, there could have been a hundred of them and we wouldn’t have seen them.  So we traveled on and had our lunch on a little bitty island in 35-knot winds while we waited out more tide. 

Bernard, our tour guide/boat driver.  The coordination
it must take to drive two engines, two throttle, weaving through
reefs....nice to be sitting in the passenger seat.

I know its not Jaques Couestou but I tried...

I know my sarcasm makes this out to be a bad day so far, but we were having a great time.  I really just have no other tools in my brain to tell this… so sarcasm rules…. Sorry….

After leaving the tiny [trashy] island, we arrived at a makeshift dock with a few concrete stairs where we climbed up and walked a short path to the road.  From there we crossed the road and while our guide paid our small fee (I’m guessing a few bucks each), we hiked a short 10 min or so walk up to a beautiful waterfall.  I venture to say that the waterfall is not nearly as beautiful when it hasn’t rained nonstop for 100+ days.  The rain is good for something. 

I got in and it was COLD....

After a short stay and a very cold swim at the waterfall, we walked back to the boat and made our way to yet another small island to wait for the tide.  Here we saw a poor little bird that had fallen out of its nest before learning to fly.  We also became acquainted with the ivory nut that they use to carve much of the jewelry bought here.

This the is the "giant panga" I was speaking of...four kayaks and five people...

An hour or so later, we finally made our way to Nan Madol.  I tried to school up on it before I wrote this blog, but I swear everything I read contradicts itself and the tour guide we had tried as hard as he could to tell us what he knew, but when English isn’t your first language, you’re bound to screw things up.  So here is what I got out of it all….

Nan Madol is an Ancient City (or according to some, built in the sixth century, or was it the 16^th?) built on the reef in what is now Southeast Pohnpei.  It consisted of 88 man made islands (or was it 93?  Depends on what you read I guess).  The first island we came to was the main island, which was used mainly for worship.  They had three tombs there, on the left were for men, on the right were for women, and in the middle were for kings.  We kayaked our way through much of the city (through the mangroves, very cool).   The most impressive part about this city is how they built it.  It is made from these massive rocks made of basalt, said to be moved from various parts of Micronesia – two sites from Pohnpei, itself, and one from west of Yap (which sounds crazy to me).  It’s built log cabin style with some of these rocks weighing “tons”.  Keep in mind, this was way before machinery so they had come up with some funky style of moving stuff without breaking backs.  It’s said that given the population (30,000 people) compared with the amount of work, that the effort is comparable to the Egyptian Pyramids.  It took them a whole century to build the place.  If you listen to local folks talk, it was all built on magic, levitation, and a little bit of voodoo....

Anywhoo…we kayaked our way through and had a grand ole time.  We finished the day with a few beers and an appetizer at The Village.  We called our cab driver “Cilis” and he picked us up and took us back to the boat where we all promptly crashed.

Today we spent the day getting our chain off the bottom (I was going to take a picture but I thought a big picture of mud and silt and Andy cussing into a regulator wouldn’t make much sense or be even visible), fixing our jib (minor repair) and stocking up so that we can go to Ant Atoll tomorrow.  We got permission from the local owner (Willie) and should make it there shortly after lunch tomorrow.

As a side note, we were at the Rusty Anchor tonight and met a guy with a 6-year-old kid.  He’s heard about us and we’ve heard about him….so glad to see Jake might have a friend.  They might make it to Ant this week, but if not, we’ve promised to make our way up to their house next week and become best friends (the boys even pick their noses with the same fingers J ).

Stay tuned…

Back to Pohnpei

Can you see the shrimp?

It took awhile, but we finally made it.  After two flights and 13 hours, Jake and I had a long layover in Guam and were lucky enough to stay with some new friends, Louise and Ernie, overnight before our last flight out to Pohnpei.  We arrived in Pohnpei with four large suitcases, two backpacks and a tote bag full of goodies (I was all worried about the weight of our luggage and it turns out the scales were broke in LA and they really could care less in Guam).  Once we cleared customs, Jake ran out to find Andy and as he was running for him, this large lady with an equally large amount of luggage kept getting in his way.  It was kind of funny to watch.  Jake was trying to be polite but you could tell he was getting frustrated….left, right, no left again…

We quickly got acclimated back into island life, starting with the rental car Andy picked us up in.  It didn’t have any air condition, the floors were nasty with ants crawling all over it and the steering wheel was covered in duct tape and was completely absent of seat belts.  It managed to stay sunny for the first day or two, but since then it’s been raining non stop around the clock.  Ahh…..home at last.

While Andy has done a ton of cleaning (I can’t imagine what this boat looked like when he arrived back after four months of neglect), Jake and I had to find a place for all of our stuff so it required a bit more in depth cleaning and organizing.  We managed to get rid of three garbage bags of clothes and one bag of toys.  I took all of the stuff that was to remain on board and went to the laundry mat.  I only had two loads of clothes but I also had two loads of stuffed animals covered in mold!  I can’t really describe to you the looks I got as a giant lobster fell out of the dryer wearing my pink panties. 

Today we finished up the cleaning (at least all I plan to do for now) with going through the storage under the cushions.  I needed to find a place for some of the craft items that we brought home and I wanted to check on the food stored under there (something Andy had conveniently not thought about).  The first thing we found was a pretty major leak coming from somewhere in the mast.  While we knew there was a leak there, we didn’t really know the extent of its coverage.  Everything was wet under there.  It’s going to be a pretty difficult task to find it and plug it up.  We can’t even think about doing that until it stops raining (that puts us somewhere into the November/December timeframe by my calculations…).  In the meantime, we have a lot of towels soaking up water.

The last few nights, we’ve smelled ammonia while watching TV.  Andy was convinced it was our pillow we have on the sofa.  It smelled moldy but not like ammonia.  Well, we found the source today.  As I lifted up the storage lid where we keep our flour (the compartment I was dreading the most), weevels and fruit flies just swarmed out of there.  The smell had to be just the pee from all those bugs.  I knew it was going to be a disaster but I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be able to clean that stuff up without crying or puking.  So I called on my hero!  Andy got in there and double bagged everything, vacuumed and wiped it all down with vinegar.  That’s why he’s the best husband in the world.

Andy keeps telling me as we’re cleaning and going back and forth to shore getting drenched, “like we always tell people, It’s not all cocktails and palm trees.”  Yes, I’m aware of this, but it sure would be nice if I could have one cocktail under one palm tree.  Fortunately, Andy agrees, so we’re planning on checking the weather and if all is good (i.e. no more 35 knot gales like we’ve had the last few nights), we’ll head to a little atoll close to here called Ant.  It’s supposed to be uninhabited and have beautiful beaches and nice blue water for snorkeling, diving, what have you.  We stocked up on some food today – I really did forget how few veggies there can be here if you miss the ship delivery – and will get the last minute items tomorrow so we can head out Thursday morning.

We haven’t taken any pictures yet so I’ll leave you with the works of your favorite underwater photographer.  This is the result of Andy being by himself on a boat for three weeks able to go out when and where he wants…

kunie's chromodoris nudibranch

orange-finned anemonefish...yawning!

saravati anemone shrimp

pink anemone fish