Bikinis, Palm Trees, Cocktails and Coconuts...All that is Ant Atoll

Seven glorious nights at Ant Atoll!  For those coming this way, it’s  a must see.   After spending so much time in muddy waters and a “city” like atmosphere in Pohnpei, it’s a nice reprieve.  But there are a few logistics you have to take care of first to do it legally.  The atoll is owned by some locals in Pohnpei so you have to ask permission first.  We talked to a guy named Wilson who works at Port Control and he wrote us a letter in case anyone gave us a hard time.  He also asked for $25/person (Jake was free).  We’ve heard of others going there after talking to customs and/or just people around town and most never have any problems.  But if you want to do it legitimately, then getting family permission is the way to go.  We were never asked for our letter, but I’m pretty sure word got around that we were “ok” to be there.

Day 1

We motored 25 miles into fairly light winds (10 knots or so) but the waves were coming in all different directions making our first voyage out after a while kind of rough.  The pass into the atoll looks pretty tricky but when you get up to it, you see that it’s actually marked pretty well.  There is one bommie (coral reef sticking up out of nowhere) at the end of the channel that’s not marked so you have to keep a good eye out for that.  We didn’t have very good light (lots of cloud cover, imagine that) but saw a flat spot in the water and sure enough, that was the reef.

After dropping our hook, the clouds just unloaded on us.  It rained for a good hour or so and then appeared to clear up.  So we took our opportunity and went to shore to explore.  No sooner than we had gotten down the beach, it started to pour again.  We waited 15 minutes or so and ended up making a run for it back to the dinghy….jogging down the beach in flip flops and a bikini while holding a beer in the pouring rain wasn’t the way I had pictured ending out my day.

Day 2

There are a few outfits in Pohnpei that charter small boats to bring tourists out to Ant.  We got wind of one coming our way on Monday that MIGHT have some kids on it.  Jake and I started school early so we could finish up in time for the boat to arrive.  Around 10:30, sure enough, two kids come bouncing off a panga from The Surf Club.  Jackson and Indy are two little Australian kids that we met briefly before leaving for the states.  We thought they had left by now, so it was a nice surprise having them roll up on the beach.  They played all day exploring the jungle and catching hermit crabs, while Andy and I enjoyed the grown ups on the beach.

Day 3

We woke up to beautiful weather.  I mean the best we’ve seen yet.  So nice that I actually swam to the beach, jogged a little and swam back…inspired!  We decided to not chance missing our weather window and put school off until later in the day.  We jumped in the dinghy and went snorkeling.  We managed to fit in some exploring, playing on the beach and coconut gathering as well.  After supper, Andy and Jake decided they were going to go coconut crab hunting.  And that’s when the fun started….

They got all geared up and were gone about an hour.  Evidently, Jake was quite the help chasing the big ones out of their holes and holding the light yelling encouragement to Andy(“get em daddy! Get em!).  There were a lot of little ones running around so they made a rule to only get the big ones so as to leave the little ones to grow up (and most likely be eaten by someone else).  When they got back to the boat, we kept them in the mesh dive bag and put it in a five gallon bucket.  Everyone high fived each other, planned for the feast the next night and went to bed.  If this were a movie, this is where the camera would zoom into the bucket and eerie music would play in the background.  You see, the weather was so good that Andy decided to sleep in the net, therefore we left the cabin door open (it locks from the inside so we left it open in case it rained and he needed to get in).  About 3:30 in the morning, I hear a bump/small crash in the galley.  I thought it was Andy but when he didn’t come in the room, I got up and turned on our little red light.  No dishes on the floor, nothing out of place….wait, I see the toothpaste and Jake’s electric tooth brush knocked off of the counter.  How did that happen?  What’s that on the galley stairs?  It’s black and big….oh crap.  It’s a coconut crab!  That critter was coming to get me!  It had me cornered.  I kid you not, this thing had evil written all over it.  I contemplated how to get around it.  I don’t know what I thought it was going to do, but eventually I gathered enough courage to jump over it and went out to get Andy.  He came in and looked in the bucket and all four crabs were gone.  We spent the next 30 minutes with flashlights looking for those little hoodinis.  We found one in our shoe locker and two behind the propane tanks.  It took me an hour to even think about going back to sleep.

The next morning when Andy went to put them in the pot, two had been mangled so bad, it was hard to tell if they were still alive.  When he went to put the big one in the sink to wash, the darned thing clamped down on our faucet and punctured a hole in it!  I’m not kidding…  If you question how strong those things are, think about that.

That night we had coconut crab and it never tasted so good (nothing like a little revenge).  It may be our last.  Our learning curve is pretty steep on this one.  The next time (if there is one), they go straight in the pot.

After that, we had a grand ole time.  We snorkled the pass and saw two sea turtles and a few gray sharks.  We found a huge tree to hang out under (i.e. float around and drink beer), and basically made ourselves at home.  I will say, for an uninhabited island, there’s a lot of firelights and flashlights around this atoll….  We just ignored them.   Apparently, there are some folks who stay here (we saw their cabin by the pass), but we haven’t met them.  In fact, it’s so uninhabited that we had a giant naked party off the back of the boat and as far as we know, there were no witnesses.

We left with light winds this morning and made it out the pass fairly easily.  No matter how many times you do something like this though (and even though you have your trail on the GPS), it still makes the rear-end pucker a little as you navigate through the reefs.  As we got out of the pass, we were met with about 40 or 50 spinner dolphins.  Always a good sign…

We made our way into the wind (always…around here you have no idea which way the wind is going to come from, but you can pretty much guess it’s going to be on your nose) and are now safe and sound back in the harbor.  We had a little hiccup getting past the commercial dock as about 6 japanese fishing boats decided to all move at the same time.  Aside from being annoying and slightly amusing, it was not much of a problem. 

Now it’s time to shower and get ready to have dinner at the Rusty Anchor.  We need some internet to post all this stuff and we’re pretty much out of food anyway. 

It was hard to come back after such a nice week (I did get my palm tree and cocktail), but as we keep telling Jake, that’s what makes it special.  It’s not something you actually do every day.

Here are some teasers for the grandparents...stay tuned for instructions on how to get the much awaited "Jake" pictures...

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

All good things must end...

Jake picked Sushi for his birthday lunch.

As we’re wrapping up our stay, I thought I would do a little recap of our prolonged visit here in the states.  We’ve actually been here almost 5 months!  That seems crazy to me.  Here are the stats…

• 4 States, 10 cities
• Approximately 46 hours of flight (56 for me) – after we arrive back in Pohnpei, you can bump that up to about 80.
• 26 hours of car travel (not including regular every day driving) in 4 different rental cars.
• 1 wreck (oops)
• 2 Aquariums
• 5 nautical museums to include 3 warships
• 6 “other” museums
• 4 Imax movies
• 1 Amusement Park
• Hours and hours of swimming

Highlights include:

• Seeing the actual space shuttle in Washington DC.
• Actually seeing the Pegasus rocket like the one we found in Rongelap.
• Lego Land!!!!
• Crawling inside a dinosaur and watching its poop jiggle through its body.
• Playing with my (Jake’s) cousins and other kids everywhere we went.
• Seeing most of our family - all across the country.
• Getting to see actual dinosaur bones in the Natural History Museum.

(NOTE:  Jake is having a very hard time contributing as he says, “they were all good”)

• Downloading the new iPad games we didn’t know anything about.
• Buying new toys!!
• And finally….Jake turned 7 years old!

Yeah, we’ve had a really good time here.  But it is beyond time to go.  Andy has been back on the boat now for almost a month and it’s making me crazy knowing we’re just sitting here waiting to see him.  Not to mention, we’ve spent a ton of money.  Enough said about that…

I think we are fully recharged and ready to take on the rest of Micronesia.  I’m looking forward to downsizing again (gotta make room for all this crap we’re bringing back!) and getting reacquainted with our space.  I’ve found that I absolutely hate blow-drying my hair everyday, putting on make up and worrying about what I’m going to wear.  I don’t care for the enormous fees charged for everything from parking to checking a bag at the airport.  I cringed when I paid $10 to get Jake’s haircut and let’s not even talk about what I paid to get mine cut.  I am fully caught up on the current Presidential election and am scared out of my mind for our country – I think I was better in the dark.  I’m sure I can’t say what I really want to say without offending everyone, so I’ll say this…the pace of life here is crazy and the amount of things we try to squeeze into a day is mind blowing.  I know, I used to be that person, but now that I’ve seen the other side and experienced the joy that comes with just being with each other, well…I think we’re ready to go back. 

This will probably be my last post before we head out next Wednesday.  I’ll leave you with a few pictures of Jake’s birthday.  Notice, my cake decorating skills are getting better every year….yeah, right.  No, that’s not a pregnant lizard…it’s a dinosaur.  Jake insisted I make his cake instead of buying it.  

Against my better judgment, I’m putting up a picture of us sporting our dinosaur noses that Jake picked out.  It’s mid week…everyone needs a little laugh today, I’m sure.

I can't figure out of Papa is not happy or if he's really into his
dinosaur role and trying to look menacing...

Weekend with Friends

Jake and I had the rare opportunity to visit our friends Nicole and Eric here in California this past weekend.  We rented a car and headed out for the 7 hour drive on Friday morning.  Despite a rocky start - we got into a fender bender in the infamous LA traffic - we made it before dark and spent a fantastic weekend relaxing.  Eric and Andy go way back in their Navy diving days and through the years, Eric and I have also become very good friends.  His wife, Nicole is also one of our favorite people and Jake and I get very excited when we get to see them.

Since we've seen them last, they've bought a really nice house on 5 acres of land and have their own ranch...complete with horses, goats, chickens, dogs, cats and rattlesnakes.  Well, the rattlesnakes aren't exactly welcome, but they're part of the deal nonetheless.

Jake's favorite part of the weekend was definitely hanging out with Eric feeding the animals and doing boy stuff.  I've enjoyed watching him interact with the men in the houses we've visited, but I especially enjoy watching him with Eric.  He's the closest in personality to Andy so you really see Jake light up and latch on.  Jake's been a trouper through this whole trip - being apart from Andy for so long - but I know he longs for that interaction, so this time was especially great.  His absolute favorite part by far was feeding the chickens and gathering eggs.  So much so, that he's planning our chicken farm when we "come back and get a house."
"We have to have chickens, mommy.  Then we won't even have to buy eggs!"

Gathering eggs with Ms. Nicole

Mr. Til and Jake played a couple of intense games of chess.

Another bottom tooth gone!

On the way home, we had another unexpected event, only this time it was good.  Jake lost another tooth!  He was upset at first thinking it was a big tooth, but when he realized it was a baby one, he was really happy.  Not happy enough to hand it over to the tooth fairy though.  I had to save it so I can add it to the others on the boat.  Not sure what we're going to do with these things....Maybe the tooth fairy will get a discount on her bulk purchases one day...

In the meantime, Andy has been busy...scrubbing the bottom, changing oil, buying new engines (yeah!!), grocery shopping, doing laundry and helping other people fix their problems.  I'm looking forward to getting back so we can help (no, really, my fingers aren't crossed or anything).

This week we'll be celebrating a very important day...Jake's 7th birthday!  I'm busy at work trying to figure out how to make a dinosaur cake.  I know, I'm in the states, go buy one.  Well, guess who wants me to make it instead?  I may or may not be posting pictures...we'll see.  I can't believe he's already 7 but I know every mom says that (mine can't believe I'm almost 40).  He's such a funny little thing even if he is kind of strange...it's very entertaining to watch him grow up.  The apple doesn't fall far from the tree from what I hear.

I hope everyone has a great week, I know we will....only two more weeks and we'll be back to cruising and posting and hopefully more interesting stories.  Thanks for hanging in there with us... stay tuned.

We visited the town of Caloma, famous for it's start
of the Gold Rush in California.  Of course we had to
go to the river and look for gold.  Evidently, it was
VERY cold.

Looking for gold.

Savannah...safe and sound...and stinky.

After four long months, Andy finally made it back to the boat safe and sound!  Originally, I was supposed to get back first and then he would join a few weeks later.  It turns out to be a pretty good thing that Andy got back first as I’m not sure I would have known what to do (I have to say, my lady sense kind of kicked in and anticipated this). First off was the smell….it smelled like it did when we bought it.  You know what we did then?  Ripped it all out and started over!  But this was anticipated.  You can’t leave a boat closed up for four months in the middle of the wettest place on earth and expect not to have a little mold and a little stink.

 

I’m not sure the order of things, but lets imagine Andy is working hard at cleaning and scrubbing and decides he wants to go in to shore to get more paper towels, cleaning solution, whatever (cold beer?).  He pumps up the dinghy, lowers it, unlocks everything, and goes to start it.  The outboard carburetor freezes up.  Minor set back…Andy being the handy man he is, gets that fixed pretty quickly (relatively speaking) in between rain showers.  Now he’s off to shore.  Almost there and “vroommmmm….put, put, put”….nothing.  Water in the fuel tank.  I’m guessing he paddled back to the boat at this point (more than likely in the rain).  He dried out the spark plugs, carburetor and fuel tank and got her going one more time.

By this time, it’s probably time to eat and not wanting to hop right back into the rain, Andy decides to have a nice hot bowl of Ramen noodles.  He goes to light the propane and well, no good.  The solenoid is stuck closed.  You can guess my laid back husband is starting to lose his patience.  After all, he’s been traveling for four days and comes home to sleep in a stinky boat with no fan (it broke right before we left), and no ability to raise the hatches since it’s raining cats and dogs and now every attempt he makes to get things right is failing.  You know the drill….one problem leads to many.

So he does the only thing a man in his position would do…he goes to grab a cold beer.  Not happening…the fridge isn’t keeping its charge. 

I’m glad I wasn’t there. 

Lots of trips to ACE hardware later (and no doubt lots of cold beers at the Rusty Anchor), all is on the way to working the way it’s supposed to.

One thing that wasn’t nasty that I felt sure would be was the head.  Andy said it was surprisingly normal, with the exception of one poor goby that was unfortunate enough to be sucked in when Andy filled the bowl with water.  He made his way back out on the next flush, but you can imagine he wasn’t happy.

Even with all of the problems Andy had, I think we’re pretty lucky in the overall scheme of things.  It was the first time leaving Savannah for more than a week and given the things that could have gone wrong, we’re in pretty good shape.  After all, the boat is still there, right (and floating)?  And it contains all the stuff it had in it when we left J.

Just three more weeks and Jake and I will be happily reunited with Andy and we’ll all be bitching about the rain and smell together (because in reality, that boat will never get aired out if there isn’t a break in the clouds).  We’ll be sporting new sheets for Jake’s bed and new fabric for our pillows (that should take care of some of those smells).  We’re bringing a new wifi booster antenna – if the post office ever gets it here – and some cable so Andy can hook up his latest purchase, a depth sounder!  I’ll have snow pea with drawls (and all other fresh veggies while we’re talking about it) and Jake will miss Chick-fil-a, but I think we’ll adjust fine as we eat our $1/lb tuna.

Living on a boat sounds strange to some, but we’ve learned from this trip that as uncomfortable and cramped as it can be at times, it’s a small price to pay for getting to wake up every day with each other while living our dream.  We’re definitely looking forward to being a family again.

Thanks to everyone for all of your prayers and well wishes…it looks like it worked.

Which way do we go?

How do we decide where to go?
We let Jake drive, of course!

How do we decide where we are going to go?  That’s a question I’ve gotten quite often since we’ve been home.  And the answer isn’t very straightforward.  Sometimes, we go with the flow (Mexico, French Polynesia, Cooks).  Sometimes, we purposely go off the beaten path (Kiribati, Marshall Islands).  And sometimes we go with the wind (Micronesia).  We rarely research things more than a few countries ahead of time because not only might we change our mind, but the information starts getting all mixed up in our heads and the result is that we have a lot of information but can’t remember which country it goes to so we have to do it all over again…total waste of time. 

Sometimes, though, you need to at least pick your general path if for no other reason, than to have something to look forward to.  After Pohnpei we’re heading to Yap (we may stop at Chuuk but that’s still under debate) and then Palau.  From there, well, we are at a crossroads.

We originally told everyone we were going to cruise for 5 years.  We’re halfway through that timeline and nowhere near done.   The question is, do we stick to that timeline (maybe pushing it out to 6?) and get home to spend some time with the family, let Jake go to school and we get jobs (by “we” of course you know I mean Andy), then buy another boat when Jake is in college and do the other half of the world? Or…do we keep going and play it by ear, risking disappointing family and friends patiently awaiting our return?  I can hear all the diehards now screaming at us to not worry about what others think and “live out our dream!”  Well, I hear you…but…that’s easier said than done.  Andy and I are both very close to our families (and each others) and would hate to totally miss out on our parents golden years (don’t worry Papa’s…I don’t have you in your graves yet, just a figure of speech) or for them to have to watch ALL of Jake’s growing up via the internet (not to mention, we have to watch our nieces and nephews grow up the same way.

What this means for our route is that we have to decide between a few options:

1) Leave Palau and make our way back towards the Solomons fairly quickly (route to be determined), making our way through Vanuatu, New Caledonia and then ultimately Brisbane, Australia.  Take the pulse of everyone both on board and on land…sell the boat, go home.  We’re figuring this could be done in 2-3 years.

2) Leave Palau and go to the Philippines.  Explore South East Asia thoroughly, head the wrong way back through Indonesia, PNG, and the Solomons, ultimately ending in Australia.  Sell the boat, go home.  Really no idea how long this could take.  The open windows for moving from country to country shorten in this part of the world, due to unpredictable weather patterns.  But darn, it sounds fun.

3) Basically do the same as option 2, but pick a few countries in SE Asia and make them our priority.  Skip Indonesia and high tail it to Australia.  We could fit this in our 3-year plan but would miss more than we would see (and we would be acutely aware of that).

4) Throw caution to the wind, sail through SE Asia and keep on going until we hit the east coast.  Not likely, but we’ve never fully marked this off our list.

For now, we’re leaving it open.  But that decision is going to come upon us very soon as time flies when you’re having fun, right?  How will we choose?  I would like to tell you that we will consult numerous sailing books, write pro and con lists, weigh the risks vs. rewards, and make an educated decision.  That would be the prudent way.  In reality, we’ll probably have a 10 minute discussion based on emotions and gut feelings, agree fairly quickly, and point the bow in the decided direction.  That’s the Andy and Monica way.  Regardless, stay tuned…we have a lot ahead of us and regardless of the decision, it promises to be interesting.

In the meantime, I'm leaving you all with the latest pictures of Jake living it up in sunny California! Andy will be back on the boat in a couple of days with Jake and I to follow in another few weeks.

Jake and Gigi waiting for breakfast at Lake Arrowhead

Jake and mommy in the bumper cars (not a bad way
to let off a little stress if I do say so myself :).

Outside the Children's Science Museum in L.A.

Watching his hair stand up on ends.

Building a wall.