Updated Pictures from Pulawat (and a few more from Lukenor)

As you can guess, we've arrived in Yap.  We've been here a few days and so far, we're really enjoying ourselves.  Check in was a breeze (less than 1 hour) and the people are extremely friendly.  I've already had an old guy stop me in the middle of the grocery store and tell me if we need any bananas or coconuts, to let him know....just let John know.

The weather is acting funky though.  Today, we've had winds up to 40 knots and lots of rain.  Not sure how long it's going to last, but at least we know our anchor is secure.  We haven't moved an inch.  And good thing too...we have a reef directly behind us and a giant mega-yacht (actually, two) on our port side.  It's a tight anchorage when you're next to million dollar boats and you have no insurance!

I've updated the pictures for Pulawat...hopefully you like them.  Click on the posts below to see the latest...

Anchored in Pulawat
More on Pulawat
The Other Village
Coconuts, Bananas, and Typhoons
Underway for Lamotrek

We also found a few pictures we forgot from Lukenor, so I'm posting them here.  If you wonder why we have so many pictures of Mariel, besides the fact that we love her, we told her to tell her mom to check in on the blog so she could see how she was doing....hopefully the message got there! Enjoy!

Mariel with one of the many little ones.

The night time celebration for the Bishop.

Simon's grandsons

Jake playing with the kids after they paddled to the boat.

Jake in his swimming pool (Andy was shark fishing....hehehe).

Updating pictures from Lukenor/Lekinioch

We have a ton of pictures and I've finally started loading them.  I've decided to go back and load them on the pages with the stories as I thought they would be more interesting that way.  Internet here is extremely slow so I'm only able to do one island at a time....this free internet here at the restaurant has cost us 3-4 beers a piece...expensive password.

Check these links out for the latest...

Underway day 1 and 2
Land Ho!
Leaving Lekinioch

And here are some of our other favorites...everyone had to have a coconut tree shot....

Leaving Lekinioch

One of Andy's favorite pictures...Savannah, the supply ship,
and a dog.

First things first...apologies for the long delay in writing. We were having trouble getting out on our SSB and after a bit of trouble shooting, realized it was user error...mine. Oops. We're back up and running now so our updates should be a little more timely. We won't be able to post pictures until Yap, but we have some great ones...be patient.

Sunset in Lukenor

As we prepare to leave Lekinioch after almost a week here, I think we'll remember it in our mind by two events or categories, for lack of a better word. The first is that the Bishop of Chuuk came for a visit here to do a Confirmation as well as to celebrate his 25 years of being a Bishop. The villages here all spent time practicing their singing and performances for the Bishop. There were two ceremonies on Saturday, a welcoming ceremony right before lunch and a more formal ceremony that evening. They hooked up a keyboard to accompany their singing (not only was it not necessary, it probably should have been banned). It was powered by a series of car batteries. When one went out, they would keep on singing while they quickly changed the power source and fired up the keyboard again. It was comical, but also a show of how resourceful they can be. Andy and I were surprised when we showed up for the evening ceremony and there were two seats for us up front, facing the audience, like we were part of the ceremony. It was a little embarrassing but made for a great view of the festivities. We were even invited to eat with the Bishop, which was quite an honor. There was taro (which the ladies spent days preparing), breadfruit, octopus, fish, bananas and large glasses of coconut water. I can't say I'll be converting to their ways any time soon, but I will say it was a lot of fun and we were touched by how welcoming everyone was.

Andy went to Mass the next morning and met the priest. I opted out of Mass this time...it was at 7:00 and well, not being Catholic, I wasn't very motivated. I'm sure it was beautiful, but the confirmation was at 6:00 and that's really what I would have wanted to see anyway and that wasn't happening! Despite my not wanting to get up early, I did rise at 5:30. A young girl paddled her canoe out to the boat to give us some fish and taro. She had told me the day before that she would come before church...she sure did. Anywhooo... I still couldn't make it out. I spent the morning making banana bread and cookies and doing laundry.

 The second item that will always be in our memories is the people. I know we say this everywhere we go (well, most places), but the people here were so welcoming and genuine that they really made an impression on us. Between Simon and Mariel (Peace Corp), we were insured an introduction and translation with almost everything we did. Simon supplied us with limes and coconuts (we're sitting with two dozen on our stern right now), and Mariel supplied us with great company and a great insight into the culture. We questioned whether it would be better to come in by ourselves with no other American around to help us out and in the end, we decided we would miss out on so much without it. She opened the doors for us to talk and joke around with people and really get to know their personalities. No doubt if she wasn't there, they would have been much more shy. Between Mariel and Simon, we were able to observe everyday activities like, going into their Cooking houses as well as watch numerous women prepare the taro for the Bishop. This village is a strange little mix of traditional living with a tad of western ways thrown in. For example, the young women can't walk by themselves or it's seen as "inviting" a man to come with them. They must always be accompanied by someone. One of the kids had to ask us what was hanging in our basket, an onion, yet when we turned on our iPods, they danced in the hip hop ways and there's not a girl here who doesn't know who Justin Beber is. Star Wars was the most requested movie.

Sitting in the cooking house...

Mariel and Jake goofing off.

Jake playing basketball with the local kids... don't tell my
brother that he kicked it first :).

Laundry day for the ladies...

Playing bingo...

Cutting taro...

Pounding taro...

We tried to reciprocate as much as possible. We left Simon with some books and movies and we tried to help with Mariel's need for a little bit of "normal." We cooked her some spaghetti on the boat one night and took her out to one of the other islands for some "alone time." She explained to us that the concept of "alone time" is very foreign to the people here (as we've seen on most of the islands we've been to). All property is community property as is all space. We discovered that as I tried to shoo off a gaggle of kids after playing on the boat all day (or staring at us...whatever you want to call it). It took me no less than 20 minutes to get them all gone and not before one of them was able to try out their colorful English skills on me. I'm sure he didn't know the meaning of what he said but he had the pronunciation down great! We also gave the principle some school supplies as well as offloading our 3 grades of Hooked on Phonics to Mariel.

This morning we went in to say our goodbyes and then we motored away. We were going to stage ourselves beside the pass for the day but it was way too deep (98 feet as opposed to the 28 written on the chart). So we motored over to the little island we've been using as a refuge and anchored there. We had some work to do that would have been impossible to do with the kids all around in the village. They swim out to the boat as soon as they can and then there's nothing getting done. So Andy checked all the engines and went to shore to burn our trash. I finished laundry and baked a few loaves of banana bread (we have more bananas than we do coconuts)for our passage. Now we're relaxing and getting ready for one last trip to the beach.

Tomorrow we'll head out for Pulawat, about 280 miles from here. The winds are looking good and coming from the right direction so we have our hopes set high on a nice, comfortable passage. We had hoped to be there by Thanksgiving, but it looks like we may not make it. We've got a "Thankful" tree going so this year we may be giving thanks a little differently than usual. Not the big feast but no doubt more heartfelt. May all of you at home have a wonderful Thanksgiving and remember what it's all really about.

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Land ho! Lukanor Atoll - the Lower Morlock Islands

We were about 13 miles out from Lukanor Atoll and Andy came to wake me from my nap. There was something on the horizon to the east of us. He couldn't tell what it was, but it looked like we might want to check it out. It could be a buoy, it could be a raft. After looking through the binoculars and thinking that it could be a raft, I agreed. What if someone was out there floating around? I turned the boat (careful not to tangle our fishing lines...I've done that before) and off we went. It was only about 1/2 mile out of our way. As we got closer, it looked more and more like a buoy. Until finally, we were almost right on it, and sure enough, it was a raft lying ahull. It used to have a roof on it, but no more. There were many 1 gallon jugs tied to it, floating, but no people. We looked around (just to make sure), took a few pictures and then headed on. We spent the next half our speculating. I like to think the folks on that raft were already rescued. Andy decided it just broke free from something and never had anyone on it anyway. Either way, I don't think we could have just drove on by. Can you imagine how we would feel if we pulled up into the atoll only to find out that there were people missing? The detour turned out to be productive. We ended up catching two more Mahi Mahi! One was pretty large, the other was well, not large.


The closer we got to the pass, we decided to shower up and make some last minute navigational plans (where are those bommies, where to anchor, etc.). No amount of planning could have prepared us for our welcome. We crossed the lagoon pretty much unnoticed, I think. But as we pulled up closer to the "town," large crowds of people began to gather. We anchored in front of what we would later find out to be the municipal building and local elementary/junior high school. A perfect place for all of the kids to spot a new sailboat. By the time we got the hook down and let the dinghy out of the davits, there were cheers and whistles and waves all up and down the shoreline. It really was a sight to see and there was no way you couldn't smile about it.

Local courtesy says you need to go in and offer a gift to the chief (mayor in this case) and ask permission to anchor. Despite being tired, we got in the dinghy and started towards shore. As we pulled up we counted no less than 25 people waiting for us. The local police welcomed us and helped us tie our dinghy to the tree. Apparently the mayor was in class (he's a teacher at the school) so we would need to wait. As we waited, the local "yacht greeter" introduced himself as Simon and sent some guys out to find us some drinking coconuts. He was prepared with some paperwork for us to fill out as well as a logbook where all the yachties sign in (all 26 of them since 2002) and a brochure about Chuuk (the Mortlocks are part of the state of Chuuk).

The mayor was going to be awhile (turns out we never saw him, he was sick as well), so we went on a tour with Simon (and about 10 kids). Simon is a 76 year old man who served as a contractor to the US Navy in Chuuk, where he learned excellent english, and eventually became a judge there. He recently retired back to his island of Lukanor (now called Lukinioch) where he has 11 kids and 26 grandchildren! He showed us through the Catholic church as well as some other buildings that used to be churches. He gave us the low down on local crops (bananas, coconuts, taro, tapioca, limes, mangoes, papaya) and the three villages on the island. They're named for their location (North, Middle, South - all in the local language though, of which I couldn't decipher). We stopped to rest at the only remaining traditional men's house. They serve two purposes, 1) For men's gathering (drinking mostly) and 2) for the single men to sleep in. There are lots around the island, this was just the only one made from traditional materials.

Notice the small naked kid with the butcher knife...

While we were waiting we met the only American on the island, Mariel from the Peace Corp. She is a teacher here and seemed pleasantly surprised to find us pull up!


Eventually, it was time to go - word came that the Mayor wouldn't be available today - so we headed back to the dinghy. On our way, I saw that this island has come up with a more discrete way to poop on the reef than their neighbors. They've built outhouses over the water. Pretty neat, huh? (pictures to follow, you can bet!) With no running water - each house has their own rain collection device - and electricity only from solar panels, they have to be creative.

A few hours after getting back to the boat, Simon and a few of his grandkids rowed out in their canoe to give us some coconuts and limes. We shared a cold beer with Simon while the kids waved to their envious friends onshore. They stayed on board until a rain shower started to come our way and then they headed back with our gift of a big mahi mahi fillet. We had canoe after canoe all afternoon coming by to check us out. One group got so bold as to yell "CANDY" as they were paddling by. I've decided that's the only way I'm going to be able to hand out this candy I bought. We bought a box of 100 blowpops ($20 by the way) and there are WAY more kids here than that. The box was supposed to last us until Yap. I don't see that happening.

Andy and Simon

We didn't go to shore today as there is a ton of rain just pouring down (much needed here from what we heard). There's a Confirmation happening here on Saturday with a visiting Bishop so we plan on staying for that...should be interesting. Weather permitting, we'll move on Monday.



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