Suva, Fiji July 1

Fiji – finally!!!
We arrived in the capital city of Suva on June 17 to warm sunshine over beautiful, rugged green mountains. The passage from Minerva was three unexpectedly nice days of sailing (we expected to motor). There was lots of fresh fish to supplement the dwindling larder (we ran out of bread and just about all of the fresh produce). Crew Chris needed to get back to commitments in NZ after the 8 day trip that lasted close to a month. The alternator, a critical part of our electric supply, stopped functioning a few hours before we arrived. We were ready to be in port.
No matter, shut up and wait. It took 26 hours before our passports were officially stamped and we were free to move around. In the meantime, the refrigerator and freezer were turned off and what was left was quickly melting in the heat. Our cruising friends on Asylum and Scholarship arrived to a big barbecue of our defrosting meat.
Suva’s a big town for the South Pacific, a major port, a bustling commercial center, and the hub of higher education, regional governance, and aid for the South Pacific. The East Indian population of Fiji is concentrated here, with restaurants, temples, mosques, sari stores, al-Jazeera TV and Bollywood movies. There are Chinese and Japanese enclaves, white expats, lots of Samoans, Tongans, Solomon Islanders. And then there are the very friendly Fijians. Formerly cannibals, they greet you with “bula”, big smiles and lasting eye contact.
While still a third world backwater, the city is remarkably tidy, quiet and well-organized. Great shopping (better than Auckland) and lots of modern air conditioned office buildings with computers on the desks and vision and mission statements posted on the walls. The public market is wonderful. However, you wouldn’t swim or fish in the harbor. Other than the day we arrived, it rains almost all the time. We are told to watch out for pickpockets and not to be on the streets at night. And a poisonous snake has decided that it likes to hang out in our dinghy motor. Now that is creepy.
Two weeks later, we are still here, still waiting for replacement parts, and no idea of when we will be able to leave. What a life.

June 13, North Minerva Reef

North Minerva Reef is a coral lagoon that is about 2/3 of the way between northern New Zealand and Fiji. The reef is a 3.5 mile diameter circle. There is one narrow pass in and out. Inside the reef the water is about 40-50 ft deep, surrounded by the Pacific Ocean. There's nothing relating to civilization on the reef except one navigational beacon.
At high tide the reef is awash and we are surrounded by breakers. At low tide, you can take the dingy to walk and wade on the magnificent coral reef and see octopus, starfish, hermit crabs, and splendid live corals at your feet. It's warm but not hot. Chris is keeping us and the three other yachts here provisioned with fresh fish which we have eaten sushied, fried, barbecued, chowdered, pated.
We arrived just after dawn on June 8, after a mostly pleasant passage of 6 days. We were shocked to see a cargo ship anchored inside the reef. On closer examination, it looked more like a pirate lair. We have since learned that the ship is a Tongan-Chinese sea cucumber harvesting operation. The crew - 9 stationed here for 6 months- walks the reef at low tide. In broken English and pantomime, they showed us how to eat raw giant clam (which turns out to be an endangered species).
This was supposed to be a quick rest stop to meet up with our friends on Asylum and Scholarship. However, we are essentially trapped here by north winds that will make continuing the passage to Fiji miserable and have made it virtually impossible to get off the boat the past two days.
You can't escape the life lessons that are helping us get by:
- Patience. Patience. Patience.
- This too will pass.
- Don't put off til tomorrow what you can do today.

Divided by a Common Tongue

Another essay, still waiting for weather out of New Zealand. We plan to leave tomorrow, June 2, in the morning. But then, we planned to leave Thursday and we planned to leave yesterday....Someday we will have a good internet connection that will allow us to post pictures, but not in this little village at the top of the North Island...

With apologies to a speaker on NZ Public Radio, we agree with the thesis that there are profound cultural differences in the modern English speaking world. The more time goes on, the more our initial impression of NZ (it’s just like home) seems misplaced.
Work. Q-“Why aren’t there any Kiwis on Star Trek?”A – “New Zealanders don’t work in the future either.” “What do sperm and Kiwis have in common?” “Only 1 in 50,000 work.”
In New Zealand, work is a means to an end. That end is lifestyle. You get enough money from work to live your lifestyle (not just own it).
Therefore, work is where you can take off for a month to sail to Fiji with your mates or two months to go visit the kids in England. A construction business where you can sit out a recession. A cafe that you open 8:30 – 4 weekdays so you can fish weekends. Complete unreality in the US. Here, it’s the expectation. The trade-off is that the standard of living is lower, and personal debt is higher.
Naturally, owning your own business is big. Not only do you get to call the shots about work hours but you also rule your own empire. Do you have complaints about the service, price or quality at my business? Get out. I don’t want to see you in here again. Take your business elsewhere. It doesn’t work and you want to return it? We don’t do returns, you need to be more careful when you shop.
Education. There is great pride and respect for the trades and working with your hands. University graduates downplay their education and often end up far from home, in London or Australia. Farming is the top of the economic ladder – not only is it a source of income but the land, when sold off, is a source of substantial wealth. The farmers we have met have been sophisticated business people in family teams, well-heeled, knowledgeable about agrarian science and the world, owners of second homes and beautiful boats.
Sex and the family. People are very matter of fact about sexuality and sexual relationships. It is odd to hear people refer to their husband or wife, partner is the term of choice for all ages and sexes. One assumes that parents of young children are not married. When they do marry and divorce, joint custody is the rule. A common custody arrangement is the family nest, where the parents move in and out of the family home according to the custody schedule.
According to several surveys, Kiwi women are the most promiscuous in the world. We have not experienced that first hand but we can say that women tell the bawdiest of jokes in mixed company and seem comfortable in pioneering and iconoclastic roles. NZ has already had two women prime ministers. One of the top films here this year is about a pair of farmgirl yodelling comedian folksinging lesbian twins who made it big in show business. Contrast that with Australia, where the dominant female icon was, to our eyes, the fashion model.

Rowing on the River

Essay from Ellen while waiting for a weather window out of NZ:

Rowing was the sunshine of my life in Tauranga. I found Bay of Plenty Coast Rowing Club online. The club was a friendly, supportive and growing group of seventeen men and women developing their sculling and occasionally, with some groans, sweep skills.
The thrice weekly drive out to the boathouse was a like a tonic to my soul – out into the country, away from the sprawl, the traffic, the gusty harbour, the endless work on the boat. We rowed up the tidal Wairoa river when the tide was coming in, and down the river when it was running out, past green hilly farms, bush-clearing fires, past herds of cows and sheep, kiwifruit groves, lifestyle estates, twittering birds, lush monstrous deep green ferns, autumn leaves, rainbows, magnificent autumn sunsets and full moon risings, watching out for other boats, logjams, flooding, sharp turns, and duck hunters.
My teammates are a hardy bunch. We went out in big rains, near gale winds, whitecaps, tipped over in floods, went out in radically new line-ups all the time. Fall in, get up and shake yourself off. Freezing cold – it’s shorts and T-shirt weather. Who needs shoes? We walk across vast parking lots of gravel in our bare feet. Warm up before a race? Dash from the finish line to the next boat, get in and go!
I participated in three regattas rowing in 8s, quads, and doubles. I even brought home a gold medal. I learned how to respond to “easy!” (instead of “weigh enough”) and to “right” and “left” instead of “port” and “starboard”. Got comfortable with sculling, learned to steer a boat with my foot, enjoyed rowing with the opposite sex, and possibly even made some progress with my technique.

May 28, Opua NZ

In case you are wondering, we are still in New Zealand. May’s been a tough month but it could have been much worse. The retrofit is complete – well, sort of – and the improvements are marvellous -but I’m not sure we will ever forget the blood, sweat, tears, time and money it took.
Or the luck we have had. On May 11, our boat was out of the water “on the hard” for last minute painting and polishing. We were preparing to move the boat back into the water that afternoon when blinding lightning struck. We scrambled off the boat – a 64 foot lightning rod - and drove through hail to the nearby Starbucks for cover.
We returned to find several workers had been shocked not 15 feet from our boat. Over 16 inches of hail fell and sat on the ground for 12 hours. The roof of the local shopping mall collapsed. In the marina, electricity had travelled up into the boats in the water and literally fried everything from depth sounders to DVD players. We were extremely fortunate to have been out of the water, our systems were not touched.
The last month was a blur of endless work in cold biting wind, tests, trials, successes, failures, setbacks, and looming doubt about whether and when it would all come together. With our friends on Asylum, we started the tradition of the “Unhappy Hour” where, on particularly bad days, of which there were many, we cried on each others’ shoulders over a stiff rum or two or.... At some point we would feel better and be able to face the next day.
On Saturday, May 23, having just completed our punchlist, we set sail for Fiji with crew Chris Shepard. Chris is a University of Arizona grad who has been living in Wellington where he makes his living playing online poker, hones his skills as a sailor and golfer and recently won the New Zealand Ultimate Frisbee team championship (he is also a national champion in Denmark). He is a fearless technophile – no fear of pressing buttons – a skill we deeply appreciate with our new electronics and our various computers and marine peripherals.
May 23 was a bright sunny day, and the southwest wind built into gale force as the day wore on. Our new sails sped us towards our destination at a magnificent 8 knots, double reefed. However, several pieces of brand new equipment were not working properly and another big storm was brewing, so we re-entered New Zealand at Opua, in the Bay of Islands, 30 hours into the trip.
We quickly set to work resolving the problems. We hunkered down for the storm that dumped 4 inches of rain in about 12 hours on Tuesday, installed a new part and did a sea trial Wednesday, and were chomping at the bit to take off Thursday, which the forecasters had been promising was going to be a good time to take off. Not to be. Late Wednesday night we got the message that a huge storm was in the offing for the weekend, delay departure plans until next Tuesday. Who knows when we will leave NZ?

Tauranga NZ, April 26

OK, blog fans, we’ve heard you. We are still in New Zealand. Still in Tauranga. Still tied up at the dock.
We have been working on the boat almost nonstop since we returned from Australia on February 16. A month later, Tom wrote his sister, “It’s been frustrating, discouraging, depressing, annoying, bitter, laughable, cryable. We hug each other and say surely we will be out of here come May. But it’s raining again.” At that point all we had to show for 30 days of work was the installation of two new reading lights.
Since that time there has been a lot of forward progress. We see the light at the end of the tunnel and should be ready to leave New Zealand in mid-May, weather permitting. What will happen if the weather doesn’t come before we are officially kicked out on May 30 when the temporary import entry for the boat expires, we don’t know, and don’t think about too much. There are so many other things to think about. Will we go to Fiji which just experienced its umpteenth coup since 1994? How do we operate all our new systems? Will we remember anything at all about sailing after 18 months in the marina? What’s our long term plan?
Not exactly paradise. We have been working as hard as we ever worked in the States with familiar patterns of stress. We have given up all reading except for electronics manuals, cruising guides and charts.
We do get a bit of entertainment. Ellen joined the local rowing club. Our cruising friends are supportive and an endless source of advice, comfort, food, and drink.
We’ve gone on two excursions. The first was The Great Walk over the Tongariro Crossing. When we arrived, hundreds of people from all over the world had been waiting four days in cold mountain rains for the trail to open for this once in a lifetime opportunity. The winds on top at 6000 feet were fierce driving knock-downs, reminding us of books we’d read about climbing the Himalayas. It rained nonstop. We couldn’t see a thing. Disappointing.
We also went to the NZ World Cup Qualifier horse cross-country event where we saw a top level thoroughbred die in front of our eyes from overstress (not nutritional supplements). Creepy. Better stick to the to-do list.

Perth, Australia, February 15

We spent 10 days in the southwestern corner of the state of Western Australia (WA). Perth, the state’s capital, has been called “the most remote city in the world”. It’s four hours, by air, to any other city in Australia or Asia. Perth didn’t seem remote. The city was full of new buildings, luxury goods, expensive cars, microbreweries and supermodel wannabees.
Our friends Steve and Jillian showed us a wonderful time. Steve emigrated to Oz 20 years ago from Seattle, and Jill came from England around the same time. They took us to see an Australian Rules football game – Jill works for the league so we sat in the commissioner’s box. They introduced us to great music and the best local libations. They arranged for an afternoon of sailing out of Royal Perth Yacht Club, proud home of Australia II, winner of the 1983 America’s Cup. Took us bike riding on the glorious Rottnest Island. And we’ve gotten to know three out of four of Steve’s wonderful daughters.
Three hours south of the Perth was Margaret River - nirvana for people who love the fine things in life. Home to 140 premium wineries, the area’s Indian Ocean beaches draw an international surfer set. Talk about beautiful people. The area is quiet and bucolic. There’s no traffic. The stars at night are something to behold. One wanders around in a haze of fine wine with galleries and food to match.
Most of Australia’s mineral wealth is found in WA and this sector has been the major driver of the country’s economy in recent years. There’s gold, nickel, iron, uranium, copper, diamonds, salt, oil and gas and more. China has been the dominant buyer as well as a major investor.
We were not out of fire danger in WA. We went for a hike in a national park just minutes from our hotel in Margaret River. We smelled smoke. We drove down the road to catch a view of a huge plume of smoke rising out of the hills. At the hotel, an evacuation was in process. We packed our bags and wondered what was next. Six hours later, the fire was under control and we got back to the hotel but the firefighters spent 48 hours mopping up. The park was lit up with flames again the next night – perhaps, it was speculated, by arsonists seeking the thrill of the Victorian bushfires.