ocean passages

so we just got into cairns today - august 31st. first impressions of this place: it's wicked cool, but not really cause it's damn hot. seriously though, it's a very modern, artsy and hip town. and we are so close to the reef!

the passage from fiji to vanuatu was a mixed bag : no wind, good winds, way too much wind. it only took five days to cover the almost 600 miles though, so no real complaints. we did, however, have to deal with the tail ends of some big systems that turned some of asia into one big swimming pool. one night time squall we had winds of 42 knots, with a decent size swell coming in. during my off-shift i was trying to sleep but having no luck when crack! something big hit the boat and all this water came pouring in on top of me in bed. the big thing that hit us was a rogue wave. and it was really small as far as those things go. anyway the seas soon subsided and it was smooth sailing as they say.

the passage from vanuatu to australia was twelve days (1290 miles) and it was easy peasy. well, weather and wind wise anyway. i began to feel a little claustrophobic being cramped up in the boat for so long, but i was usually able to fight it off by escaping into the pages of a good book. i read six books in twelve days. what else happened? we caught a 30 lb. spanish mackerel, which we ate, and two barracuda-snake monster-things which we threw back in a hurry. i also hooked the biggest fish, by far, that i've ever had on a line. it took all my line out. i struggled to get half the line back over the course of two hours, and after all of that, the line snaps. i blame myself though, i became impatient and didn't let the fish run with the line so it snapped. so in the end, that monster of monster fishes - which i never even saw - returned to the depths from whence it came.

okay enough fish stories. what else? five birds commited suicide by flying into our wind generator. three of them were family, one right after the other. yes, i know, very sad stuff. sorry birds. anyways, we also saw quite a few super tankers and errol saw a submarine that was under us for a while. oh yeah, i saw a whale too! just a small one though. kind of like a really big dolphin.

and now we're in cairns and i want to get back onto a reef where i belong. good thing the reef is here.

fun on the high seas

i like to play a little game i call 'adventures in pissing' whilst sailing. the game starts when you begin pissing off the back or side of the boat. the object of the game being not to piss on yourself or the boat, and more importantly, not to fall into the ocean as you rock and roll with the swell. it's very important not to lose in this game. there are no sore losers, only wet ones!! and yes i'm aware that's not funny.

fiji time

so i know i'm a big advocate for hitching rides, but in fiji it wasn't a practical mode of travel for me. i was usually on a time budget and thus didn't have the freedom to wait for a kind hearted soul to pull over and pick up a complete stranger. that, and an overwhelming percentage of the cars in fiji are taxis and they ain't picking up nobody fo free. so that being the case, i took a few cabs when i needed to get around the island. i was soon to learn that taking a cab in fiji does not always lack the lustre. two rides were particularly interesting.

#1

i took one cab from suva to lautoka which is a long, winding 3 hour ride. (having already done the trip once i knew not to take the bus). the driver, a big fijiian man with an even bigger belly made the time fly by though. we kept passing this middle eastern guy whose license plate read "2 fast". appropriately enough, my cabbie's plate said "who cares". so naturally, we would zoom past the 2fast driver with a roar of laughter and a message: who cares. inevitably, the 2fast driver would counter and the process would begin anew. 2fast....who cares!!!! when the cabbie tired of this game he moved on to a new one. being that this guy's cousin is a cop, he knows where all of the speed blocks are. so...he would creep up right behind some slow moving tourists in a rental and make them speed up right before a trap. we never got anyone pulled over, but as the rental cars passed the cops the cabbie would yell "arrest this man!" with an eruption of deep melodious laughter. cruel? yes, but damn funny to watch this guy in action.

#2

my friend andy and i got this one taxi from lautoka back to the marina where we were staying. the cabbie was a heavy set indian man with tired eyes and a talkative tongue. we made small talk about travel, politics, and the routines of taxiing people around. what was funny about him was the way he explained where places were and what it took to get to them. "where do i live? yeah, it's like 4 dollars that way." "all the best mangos? it'll cost you ten dollars to get there." "no" we'd say "where are they?" "yeah maybe twelve dollars actually." "where is my home village? oh i'd say at least 100 dollars away" and so on...later he asks andy, "so you two live on a boat?" "yeah," says andy "you can check it out when we get there, it's only 50 cents from bow to stern." the driver releases a hearty belly laugh from the depths of his belly. but then turns serious again, "so how much does it cost to take the boat around, diesel is expensive no?" we explain that usually we just use the wind to get from place to place, and that the wind is free. "yes, yes i must get this sail for my cab..."

so tomorrow i will sign off with ferdinand and captain dave and tuesday will head to suva to sign on with zephyr and captain errol. many thanks to dave for the opportunity to sail on ferdinand over the last few months. i greatly appreciate you teaching me to sail and although there is always more to learn, i am now a tolerable sailor. and dave, please develop a little sangfroid for your own sake as well as others! i wish you all the luck in the future...

as for zephyr (a 38' sloop), i will be helping errol finish the last leg of a circumnavigation that he started all the way back in december '07. errol is a retired mechanical engineer who worked on prosthetic limb technology in south africa throughout his career. he seems a fantastic guy - very intelligent with a wicked sense of humor. it's just him and i (and zephyr and the fishes!) to australia, but once we're there we'll be looking for more crew for the indian ocean passages (so any friends of mine who'd like to do some seriously amazingly sailing you'd better get on it in a hurry and get ahold of me).

here is the updated, although still subject to change and weather depending, "flight plan" for the coming months.

august -

suva, fiji to port villa, vanuatu (590 miles)
port villa, vanuatu to cairns, australia (1290 miles)
cairns to gove harbor australia (804 miles)

september/october/november -

gove harbor australia to christmas island (1870 miles)
christmas island to cocos keeling (520 miles)
cocos keeling to seychelles (2525 miles)
seychelles to madagascar (610 miles)
madagascar to richards bay, south africa (1100 miles)

this is a dream. for the first time in my life, there is absolutely nothing i can think of that i would rather be doing. i am exactly where i need to be.

*(to matt and jus and the kids! hopefully i'll at least be on the same continent as you starting in december. i'll then make my way towards kenya! wish me luck...)*

i love you fiji. the sunset and the crop burning fires on shore were competing that night.

wahooooo!

this is everywhere we have sailed since entering fiji on june 11.

so i shot this coney (much the same as a grouper) and bam! literally 10 seconds later a white tip reef shark is on the scene. he circles me and the fish for about 20 minutes before andy finally comes to rescue me in the dinghy. for those 2o minutes i retreated a little to the shallows of the reef as i watched the shark hone in on the speared fish. he made a few very close passes but was apparently too taken aback by the spear sticking out of it to take the fish. so when andy got there, i quickly made a dive down, grabbed the spear with the fish, swam up and threw the gun to andy as i jumped aboard. we then pulled in the fish before the shark munched. so we munched instead, and ate the fish for dinner. i am proud of this one for sure.