Coconuts, Bananas, and Typhoons

You can't see the lines, but they're there.

Did I say typhoons? Yep. Thank goodness for friends who watch the weather. Our very good friends, Richard and Lee on s/v Before, are in Palau and dropped us a little note (bomb) the other day about a tropical depression (possible typhoon) heading our way. It's original path had it going right over Pulawat. We considered heading south, as typhoons don't typically travel along the equator, but in the end, decided to move the boat to the little lagoon here and hunker down. We waited until high tide, as the water gets deep enough for us to move in (about 8 foot), and we motored into the lagoon to a spot in the SE corner. We put out all four of our anchors and tied a 600 foot line to a coconut tree on shore. We alerted the locals about the coming storm and began to pull our weather twice a day. As Richard kept us informed, we slowly realized we were going to be spared (I know, I'm being dramatic)!!! The storm did a lot of weird things, like slow down, speed up, change directions, etc. but eventually, it decided to go west. It passed us about 120 miles south last night and we only got 25-30 knot winds (no different than an active day in Majuro during the northeasterlies). But the track now shows it moving more northwest and heading straight for Yap and Palau. While we're out of danger, now Richard and Lee have to take cover in the Rock Islands. So we'll be watching our for them and saying a few extra prayers. Thank goodness for friends who watch the weather.

And thank goodness for family that doesn't! We didn't want to keep the information from our family, but knowing no one at home was watching the weather out here...we opted to wait until all was good before informing them. Hopefully they'll forgive us. Both families have had enough to worry about without unnessessary worry for us.



This storm is really strange though...it's late in the season and they rarely come this low in lattitude. Kind of a fluke thing. And really hard to track. We wanted to have a typhoon party, but we were lacking in the ability to go buy a keg and watch the weather channel. So we decided to cook popcorn and watch Surf's Up instead :).

His brother was hiding in the water but it made a cute picture. 

Some kids in their canoes paddling around our boat.
Canoes here are like bikes for the kids at home...everyone has one
and knows how to paddle.

So...Andy didn't go sailing on Wednesday. But we did manage to get in a hike to a Japanese lighthouse that was put up before WWII. We had a great little walk on the beach, eventually found the path to the lighthouse and spent our afternoon exploring the jungle. A perfect day for Jake.

The actual light in the lighthouse.  I believe they
said it was working up until 10 or so years ago.  Looks pretty rusted out
to me...

Going down the stairs in the lighthouse.

We're going to pull up our hooks tomorrow and move back to our original spot, getting us ready to move out early Monday morning (weather permitting of course). Andy was going to cash in a raincheck on the sailing for tomorrow, but one look at the pass this afternoon and the small canoe they'll be going out on and he decided to hold out for Lamotrek.

So, as we sign off, we're going to go eat a few of our (20 lbs) bananas, put a dent in the 2 dozen coconuts in our cockpit (while lacing with a bit of rum) and thank the Lord for giving us another wonderful day.

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