There's a JackAss on every corner...

So it was bound to happen….I just thought I would see it coming.  You hear of arguments among anchorages…people mad about this and that…neighbors not being very neighborly.  Andy and I are the epitomy of friendly.  We talk to everyone.  We’re not intrusive (truth be known, we prefer our privacy).  But we’re friendly enough to not be considered aloof.  So imagine our surprise tonight when we were sitting in the cabin, about 9:30, watching Top Chef Deserts for about the third time, and we got a loud knock on our hull.  We paused our show, went outside only to meet a guy on a boat next to us very upset.  We have spoken to him before…friendly conversations I thought.  He informed us we were “disturbing the peace” with our generator.  We were too loud and he was tired of it.  His tone was angry, argumentative and he definitely had his cackles up.  Andy, normally the calm one among us, immediately went primitive and gave him his two cents.  Curse words were exchanged and to everyone’s shock, I intervened with calm words.  I know, you might have to read that again.  Andy was upset, Monica was calm.

The problem was, this man is insane.  He not only called us names, he told us we needed to go back to America where we would be happy and he said if he was in America, he would call the police on us (I would call the police on his ugly boat too….if I hadn’t seen him get on and off, I would swear it was abandoned).  He said all this with a very Midwestern accent, mind you.  I’ll skip the details (which are the best part) and say that I finally told him to just leave.  The whole point we were trying to make was that a little friendly “hey, your generator is pretty loud” would have done just fine. 

In the end, Andy went back to the guy’s boat (after a bit of calming down) and smoothed things over.  In reality, I hate that he had to do that.  But we’re leaving our boat in three days and sometimes the people you need to fear the most are your own kind.  This man lives on little more than a raft and is obviously a purest.  We, on the other hand are not.  In fact, he probably hates the fact that we have all the creature comforts and we’re still living the dream.  So, clearing the air and making sure he’s not going to do something stupid while we’re gone is worthwhile.

But before I close, I have to make a few points….

We spent lots of money to make sure we have the quietest generator on the block.  Honda 2000…it’s worth its weight in gold.  In two years, no one has ever peeped a word to us about our noise level.

Andy and I are normal people.  I don’t mean this in a cruiser way.  I mean this in an every day sort of way.  When we go home, we’ll blend right back in.  We’re not out to become ex-pats and make statements against our country.  We don’t think everyone that eats McDonald’s is going to die of heart attacks.  And we don’t think if you use a plastic bag to bring your groceries home that you’re contributing to the demise of our people.  We’re just normal people doing and abnormal thing.

Lastly, we’re nice people.  I can only think of one or two times in my life where ANYONE has ever talked to me like that before.  It hits me in my core.  It hurts my feelings to attack our way of life like that.  You may think I’m being dramatic, but this guy didn’t just come after our generator, he came after us.  It’s absolutely insane and I find myself unable to get over it.

It’s not a good way to leave your boat for a long period of time.  I have to believe that we have enough people looking after us that we’ll be fine.  But you can bet your ass as soon as Jake and I get back, I’m firing up that thing and having a total movie marathon.  There comes a time when you just have to get over yourself.  The pigs squealing here are mind boggling.  I’m woken up every morning by those darn roosters and any given night between Thursday and Monday you can hear some ear splitting Karaoke coming from the villages on either side of the bay.  We are not he problem here.

So, my message to you, my fellow boaters… It’s ok if you have a problem with your neighbor…just don’t forget that you’re still human beings.  One of the shockers of being out here is all the assholes we’ve met disguised as friendly cruisers.  Because we are a unique group of people who have been blessed with the ability to follow our dreams, many of us feel that as soon as we leave the boundries of our blessed country, we have the right to lose our manners as well.  I challenge that.  It’s more important now than ever.

Change of Plans

I let the cat out of the bag on Facebook, so I guess I’ll go ahead and give the whole story here.  Plans have changed…again.  We’ve been out two years now and have done pretty good on our funds.  But as anyone who lives off of a finite amount of money can attest to, watching your savings dwindle away with little to nothing coming in is an unnerving thing.  As we’ve replaced our computers, stocked up on groceries and fuel and now, look to need a new mainsail, we’ve started to think more and more of how to step up the cruising kitty.  Andy was offered a few jobs in the Marshall Islands, none of them really lucrative and/or fitting our needs.  Until now…

Andy has accepted a short term (3-6 months?) gig with the gov’t shooting training videos in Afhganistan.  It’s supposedly in the “safe” zone so worries should be kept to a minimum.  He’s worked with almost all of the people before so it’s almost like a reunion for him.  We don’t know too much more than that as far as details go…just that it was too good to pass up.  And truth be told, Andy kind of misses things in the military.  Not often, but enough to make this interesting.  While my sugar daddy goes off to play with his old friends, Jake and I have decided to come home and tour the US for the summer!

Given all of that, we have been running around like chickens with our heads cut off here as they want Andy to leave fairly soon… First things first, getting the boat secured.  Andy has gained permission from one of the chief’s here to use a mooring outside of his village.  He put our own gear on it and now we are snug as a bug in a rug.  We decided to leave the boat here in Pohnpei as very few weather systems actually hit here.  They develop here, but don’t actually come through.  We’ve got some other people watching out for her as well, so we feel relatively safe.  All of the expensive stuff is being taken off and you can bet those new computers are coming home with us.

Second on the list of to-do’s is paperwork.  Have you ever worked for the government?  We thought there was a lot of paperwork in Kwajalein…a walk in the park compared to what was sent to Andy last week.  I would say we’re about half way through.  And I say “we” because I am Andy’s official secretary and have been the one printing, completing and scanning most of the forms…keeps me off the streets.

Another big project is getting Andy’s medical evaluations taken care of.  At least we thought this was going to be a big deal.  He went up to the private hospital last Thursday with all of the forms that needed to be filled out and tests done (blood work, xrays, shots, etc.) and was given an appointment for the next morning at 8:00.  He showed up a little early, paid $120, was seen right away and was back on the boat by 8:15 for biscuits.  He’s gone back this morning to get his tests read and to do the actual physical.  This afternoon, he’ll go into dental and take a number.  In about an hour  and $11 he’ll have a full exam and x-rays.  Amazing, right?  This kind of stuff would take weeks just to get an appointment at home.  Now, let’s just hope no one has a problem with Pohnpei doctors.

The last must do is to get our Micronesian Cruising Permit extended.  We put the request in last week and hopefully it will be done in the next day or so.  Ours was only through July as we hadn’t planned on staying here too long.  No big deal, just paperwork.

Everything else is just as you could imagine…getting rid of food in the fridge/freezer, cleaning (why, I don’t know…it’s going to be a mess when we get back with mold), packing stuff up and storing away.

Jake and I have our tickets.  Andy is waiting on his as they’re being purchased through the company, so we’re not sure yet if we’re traveling together or not.  Our first stop is Oklahoma to see Andy’s family.  Second stop is California to see my mom and dad.  Then we’ll go to Georgia to see my brother, his family and lots of friends, and head to Virginia (I’m really excited about this one as it’s never on the itinerary when we go home) and see all of my old friends and Jake’s too!  We have a lot of wiggle room and I intend on going with the flow so hopefully we’ll be able to visit everyone we want in the amount of time we have. 

So that’s it…come November, we’ll be pulling up Savannah’s mooring and heading further west.  This is by no means an end, just a little stopover to help fund the future.

Hiking in Pohnpei

Jake wanted to play on the "playground" at the internet
cafe.

Today was our last day of having our rental car.  The first day we had it, we forgot our camera and the second day was used for running errands, so today we decided to do something fun AND bring the camera.  We had been invited by some friends to do a waterfall hike, but due to having the car and having some things on our agenda undone, we declined.  The plan was to see an eel pond, eat lunch, see some petroglyphs, then a waterfall.  Incidentally, there are waterfalls all over this island, it’s just a matter of how far you want to hike and pay to see one.  The one we had planned was fairly easy.

So off we went.  We searched and searched for the eel pond.  We never actually found it as there are very little signs around here.  I’m pretty sure it was just a creek where we saw some women washing their clothes.  So I looked on the map and saw another waterfall nearby….let’s go there. 

Through turning around over and over and asking directions, we finally found the road that supposedly leads to the trail.  The guy at the end of the road gave me directions….go to the double thatched roof, go down a few minutes, then turn left.  Ok, got it.

As we drove up the road past the pavement (think dirt road with grass growing in between the tire tracks…kind of country like back at home), we saw a truck stuck in the mud.  We parked our car and got out.  He asked us to help him push his truck out.  Through a little back and forth, we realized he was the driver for our friends and he offered to take us to the waterfall…cool.

Up the road we went.  We got to a house and he immediately turned right.  Andy and I both said to each other at the same time “Would’ve missed that one.”  We walked on an overgrown trail, literally through a jungle for about  half an hour only to come out a lovely little babbling brook.

“I went the wrong way,” the guy said.  “I think it’s the other way.  I haven’t been out here since I was a kid.”

Ha.  OK.  So we went back.

We got a little bit further and he said, “We could just follow the river up?”

“uh, no,” was Andy’s reply.

This is when I told him the directions the guy gave to me down at the end of the road.  So we decided to give that a try.  After another half hour back to the road and another half hour up the road, we finally found the double thatched roof.  We went down and then sure enough, there was a trail to the left.  It was kind of a trail…we went a little ways and by this time, Andy was losing his patience.  The guy obviously didn’t know where we were.  But in my mind, this is where we would have ended up if we hadn’t have listened to him in the first place (and I could hear running water).  We made it another 10 minutes down the trail and Andy called it off.  The guy kept going and as we started to go back, Jake got upset.  He really wanted to see the waterfall and I thought, since we’ve gone this far…  So we kept going.  There came a fork in the trail…my very own “Bear Gryll” led us to the path with the fresh machede clippings and in about 10 minutes we had caught up with our friends and were making our way down to a huge swimming hole at the bottom of a waterfall.  Guess who wasn’t there?  Yep, the driver.  He must have taken the other fork.

Anywhoo…to make a long story longer, we swam a while, took pictures, had a nice time and then discovered we were starving and thirsty.  I didn’t plan on a 2 hour hike so I didn’t bring anything with us.  The plan was to eat at a restaurant, remember?  So, we decided to leave a little early.  As we were walking back to our car, the driver was there and tried to act like he had gone looking for us and that’s why he never made it to the waterfall.  Whatever, dude…even the guide that was with our friends was pretty sure he didn’t know where it was and thought it was funny that we followed him.

It just reinforces a theory we have about polynesians/micronesians/melaneisans after being led astray by more than one… they weren’t the master navigators we all think they were.  They set out one day on a nice paddle and got lost.  Two months later, they found land and just stayed there.  That’s why they’re spread all over the pacific!  They couldn’t find their way home.  

It turned out to be a very nice day, even if our lunch did end up being a box of Pringles and onion rings from the local gas station.   Jake was a real trouper and is beginning to be quite the hiker!

The Village Hotel and Restaurant, where we had lunch on one of our outings.

Pohnpei

Jake, swimming in the mangroves in the rain.

We've been here almost a week now and are starting to get our bearings.  We have a few friends here that we thought were long gone, so it's been nice to catch up with them over the last few days.

We've gone diving, snorkeling and toured around the mangroves in the dinghy a bit.  We searched for a waterfall we heard about but didn't find it.  We have new directions now so hopefully next time.

Today we rented a car and drove around the island but I forgot the camera.  We'll do it again in a few days and we'll have pictures from there.  Overall, it's a very nice place.  I don't have much to write about as we haven't done a whole lot more than socialize.  And sadly, my pictures reflect that.  But we are having fun and will have lots more to tell in the upcoming week or so.  We hope you enjoy the few pictures we do have...

The view of the anchorage.

Sitting at the Rusty Anchor with our friends Lee and
Richard from s/v Before and John from s/v Hawkeye.

I think maybe we spent a bit too much time in the
Rusty Anchor.

Searching for the elusive waterfall...

A day at sea

Apologies up front...I actually did take pictures for this post and that's why I waited to post it.  But my camera is on the fritz and I keep losing pictures... Sorry for the long read, hopefully it will keep your attention.

The most frequent questions we get from friends, family and strangers, by far, is “How does Jake do on the boat?” and “What does he do while you’re underway?”

Since we’re underway now, I decided to just go ahead and give you a day in the life of the crew, focusing on Jake of course. J  It’s really not all that exciting, but our families are enjoying stories about Jake so this is for them.  It might get a bit boring, but to be fair…you asked.

My last “official” watch of the night starts at 5:00am.  Jake has decided he likes sunrises and has taken to waking up very early to share this time with me.  He’s even asked me to wake him up if he doesn’t get up on his own.  So we start our day sitting in the cockpit waiting on the sun to come up.  Sometimes we tell stories; sometimes we just cuddle, other times we talk about our dreams or whatnot.  This morning, he reminded me of a story we read about a rabbit shooting the sun because he was so thirsty and dry from the sun continuously shining.  The sun then shot out fire and the rabbit hid under a bush for cover.  That’s why the rabbit hides when the sun shines and the sun rises slowly instead of popping up (like it used to, according to our little tale)…to make sure the rabbit isn’t waiting there to shoot him.

We put the fishing lines out and following the sunrise, depending on what time it is (we keep changing time zones so sunrise changes too), Jake plays a little bit before time for breakfast and school.  When I say “play” throughout this post, you can bet I usually mean some sort of war game.  He loves war games…partly because he’s a Navy kid, and partly because he loves history and well, that’s all we read about really.  Think about it…most history is just war.  I can’t say that I’m thrilled about this, but I can at least say that he uses his imagination like nothing I’ve ever seen before.  I find him pretending to be kings, emperors, generals, and any kind of leader you can imagine.  Today he had me tell our friends and family in the United States that they needed to move to Australia (particularly our friends in VA) because he had quite the battle going on the coast of Norfolk and they needed to be safe.  But not to worry because he was in charge and he hasn’t lost a war yet.  Sometimes he even mixes it up by fighting pirates with space weapons and using his Zillo Beast armor (from the Clone Wars cartoons) to keep from getting killed by the bow and arrows of the Celts. 

Usually, Andy gets up around 7:30, I make breakfast and we all eat together.  If we haven’t already started school, we get it going after I do the dishes.  School usually takes about an hour and a half when we’re underway.  If the conditions are rough…we take a “teacher workday” as both Jake and I get seasick, especially if we read.  But this trip, the seas are good, so we do a full day of school.

By 9:00, I’m tired so off to bed I go.  If any school is not finished, Andy supervises the rest of it.  I really don’t know what they do while I nap, but judging by what’s happening when I get up, I think they either watch a movie, play on the iPad, or Jake plays while Andy tinkers with the sails and checks our position.

I wake up around 11:30 – 12:00 and make lunch (sometimes Andy makes his own if he doesn’t like what I’m having).  Jake is usually asking to play on the iPad about every 10 minutes at this point (damn that thing…I never should have bought it).  We try to hold out until after lunch…usually.  After lunch, I do dishes and Jake asks again if he can play on the iPad.  At this point, we usually give in (assuming he had a good day at school).  He plays a variety of games ranging from shooting tanks to feeding a dragon...he even plays some math and spelling games every once in a while.  I sit outside and read a book or just chat with Andy.  Sometime around 1:00 – 1:30, Andy goes to take a nap.  I either continue to read a book or I try to do something with Jake…read one of his books, do a science experiment, play with Lego’s, art, etc.  Other things I try to encourage Jake to do (usually unsuccessfully):  puzzles, hero factory toys, draw, trace pictures, read (whatever).  Andy gets up and we usually let Jake watch a movie while we fiddle around.  I might get the mail and some updated weather off the SSB.  We might have a snack… Today we did something we don’t normally do and watched a grown up show!! We watched Top Chef ( a dvd from the food network) and afterwards Jake wanted to play “chef” so we had to pretend we cooked a desert and rate each others desert based on taste.  Jake made a cupcake with the center filled with jellybeans, nuts and rum (don’t ask me!).  Andy made a chocolate molten lava cake with amaretto topping and I made a pumpkin cheesecake with maple syrup topping.  Jake won the most stars as Andy and I sabotaged each other in our scoring.  His didn’t get cooked enough and ran off my plate.  According to him, mine made him sick.

About 5:00 rolls around and its time for me to make dinner.  After dinner, I do dishes and Andy and Jake usually start their “man movie.”  At 6:00, our official night watches start and I go to take a nap while Andy takes watch (both movie and boat).  He puts Jake to bed and at 9:00 wakes me up for my watch.  On watch I usually listen to music, write, play on the iPad (yes, I do get some time on the thing occasionally), and watch a movie…peaking around every 10 minutes or so to make sure we’re not running into anything.  I wake Andy up at 1:00 and presumably, he does the same for the next 4 hours.  Then it starts all over.

It’s not fascinating, but that’s what we do.  With the advent of GPS and all these fancy electronics, there’s not a lot of actual “sailing” stuff we need to do – given our style of cruising.  There are some die hards out there who study up on celestial navigation and give that a poke.  They don’t believe in watching movies on watch (or maybe they don’t have electricity).  Many folks don’t have kids so find other things to fill their days.  Most people I’ve talked to read an awful lot under way and I met one lady who even did laundry on her night watch.  If it sounds like we watch a lot of movies, it's because we do.  Life "at sea" is very different than life at anchor...not a lot of places to run around and conditions usually dictate how much "play" can actually happen as well.  We try not to "plug" Jake in too much, but well, life gets in the way of being mommy of the year sometimes.

So there you have it…a day in the life.  We’re on day 2 now…1 more to go and we’ll be in Pohnpei.  We’ve learned some of our acquaintances that left Majuro a good bit before us are still there so we’ll have some catching up to do.

4/14/2012 - Leaving Kosrae

Our friends Sarah and Craig swam out to the
boat and brought us two huge mangrove crabs.
Delicious!

It’s been two weeks and I guess we’re ready to leave…maybe.  This is on my list of top places we’ve visited and we’ve met a lot of people here…it’s kind of hard to leave.  But we know from experience, it’s best to leave while you’re still having fun. 

Ken, Emily and Sammy

We’ve met a lot of Americans (and a few Aussies).  We didn’t make any special efforts, it just seemed to happen that way.  The newest of our new friends is the local dentist.  It was that time for us…to get our teeth cleaned…and we heard there was an American dentist here.  So we went to the hospital, paid our $5 each (yes, I said $5), and got our teeth cleaned.  It turns out Ken (the dentist), is really into sailing as well.  So we invited him to see the boat (incidentally, our boat has stayed pretty darn clean here as we seem to have an enormous amount of visitors!).  He brought his two kids with him this morning and while Ken and Andy discussed boats, Jake had some additional, much needed, play time with other kids.

But as I said, it’s time to move on.  We’re heading to Pohnpei in the morning.  It’s 350 miles give or take so we should be there late this week.  The winds have been pretty variable lately but the forecast calls for them to pick up just a bit, so hopefully it holds out for us.  For any of our new friends reading this…thank you for making our stay so welcoming and fun.  We’ll miss you and hope our paths cross again someday soon.

Jake driving us back to our boat after
a nice sunset cruise with the folks from
Bully's Restaurant.

Hiking the Olum Waterfalls

While this wasn't taken on our waterfall hike,
we found it to be neat anyway...it's the
Rainbow Tree...a type of Eucalyptus.

Yesterday we were picked up by a man named Hamilson and he gave us a ride to the restaurant we were going to for lunch. We found out Hamilson is a guide here in Kosrae.  We knew he was legitimate as we had seen his brochures in several of the hotels.  So we decided to take him up on his offer to guide us to the Olum Waterfalls (for a not so small fee).

We met him this morning at the hardware store where he picked us up and drove us to his house in Malem, where the trail starts.  We met his wife, Esther who is originally from the Marshall Islands but has lived here for 35 years.

Before I get too into this, I’ll have to admit that I screwed up with the camera.  I took it…but I forgot the memory card.  I had taken it out and forgotten to put it back in.  (no way the photographer of the family could have brought his camera though, huh?) 

It started out straight up a flight of stairs naturally carved into the hill.  Then it went straight up a flight of stairs made out of roots and mud.  Then it just went straight up.  I found out exactly how out of shape I am in.  It wasn’t my legs that were hurting, it was my heart!  I was so out of breath.  But Jake wasn’t complaining and if his little legs could do it, then I could too.  We learned about many trees and nuts along the way and what their uses are…most of which I promptly forgot.  One was kind of neat though…the nut is cut open and the inside is used to patch up cracks in wooden canoes.  If you work it long enough, it gets kind of sticky and you just stick it in the cracks.  Jake wanted to collect enough of these nuts to ensure we could fix Savannah should we spring a leak.  He’s got a little of the planning gene from his mom, I can tell.

After 45 min or so, Hamilson showed us some old Japanese tunnels that were built back in WWII.  The Japanese used them for hiding out as well as storage.  He took us through a few of them and it was one of the highlights for both Jake and Andy.  I have to say I was a little creeped out.  Following the caves, we went straight to the waterfalls.  Jake swam around a good bit at the pools and eventually, I got in with him.  It was COLD…but perfect since we literally had sweat dripping off of us.  I use the term waterfall loosely here…it’s not Marquesas waterfalls, or Victoria falls…it’s more like a really nice hotel swimming pool waterfall…but beautiful just the same.

The rest of the hike was beautiful, but uneventful except for the lack of my son’s ability to stay on his feet.  I think he did a quarter of the hike on his bum.

At the bottom we were met by Esther with oranges, bananas, papaya, tangerines and drinking coconuts.  Not a bad ending to a beautiful morning. 

Hamilson and his wife have a pretty good set up going.  He does the tours while she does the hospitality.  He seems to have fun and make money at the same time.  That’s what we all wish for, right?  Anyone in Kosrae should definitely take him up on his tours.  We thought it was worth the money.