We are in deep doo-doo.

We left Australia over a week ago.  As we left, the wind was supposed to turn more southeast, affording us a pleasant reach to Vanuatu.  Instead, it came directly from the east, the direction we were heading, and blew steadily at 20-25 knots.  We were inclined on our port side for about 7 days, getting beat up and very tired.  The boat was banging and shuddering against the water, making a horrible racket.  It was too rough and too noisy to cook, to eat, to read, to do school, to write, to sleep.  Jim and I were positively rummy from doing 3-on, 3-off watches through the nights.  

 

We heard about a little atoll, out here in the middle of the ocean, called Huon Atoll.  It is tiny, and we couldn’t imagine that it would provide any comfort or protection from the wind and the waves.  We arrived here late afternoon and snugged up as close to the low beach as we could.  What a relief to anchor and not be tilted!  I almost cried, I was so happy.  Jessie immediately made bacon and scrambled eggs, her comfort food, evidently.  Jim was asleep by 5:00 that afternoon.  The girls and I stayed up and talked and laughed like we hadn’t seen each other for weeks.

 

The good news?  It is quite protected here.  We have been sleeping well, and the anchor is firmly planted.  We went ashore and found a plethora of seabirds, nests, and baby chicks.  And shells!  We finally found a chambered nautilus shell, very rare and hard to find.  In fact, we found several.  We have two buckets full of shells in the cockpit that are soaking in Clorox water.  The water is too rough to snorkel, but it looks clear and beautiful.  We can see the anchor and the bottom.  

 

Ahhh, the bad news.  We have been here 3 days now.  The wind has not let up one bit – still 20-25, and still directly out of the east.  We are 300 miles from Vanuatu, we are running low on fuel and food, and our watermaker has been acting up.  I have imagined “them” finding us, sitting in the cockpit as skeletons, each with a precious chambered nautilus shell in our hands.  We don’t have the fuel to fight the winds and current all the way to Vanuatu.  The weather charts don’t show any change for at least the next two days.  Even after we reach Vanuatu, we still have 500 miles to go to Fiji and we need to be there by June 15th.  That’s when the crew that is going to help Jim deliver the boat to Hawaii will be arriving. Before they get there, we need to have the boat cleaned up, stocked with food, minor repairs made, and us girls packed and on the airplane to Seattle.  In short, we are out of time.  

 

There is a hint on the weather charts that the winds will die down, or change direction sometime Friday.  We will leave the minute they do.  I won’t mind 25 knots of wind, as long as it is not directly on our nose.  I’ve never seen wind blow this long at one time.  Usually, it will blow hard for a few days, then die down or change course.  This has been going steady for about 10 days straight.  It’s like the trade winds on crack.  We could change course and go to New Caledonia, but that just makes it more difficult and adds miles to the trip to Fiji.

 

In the meantime, we are sorting shells, baking bread, taking year-end school tests, and trying to catch fish.  The wind is howling like an injured wolf, but we are safe and sheltered right now.  Keep us in your prayers.   ~  Jeanna     

S’Long, Australia!

 In the next few days, we’ll check out and be on our way to Vanuatu.  The weather looks agreeable, so hopefully we’ll have a pleasant trip.  It’s about 1500 miles from here to Fiji, so a stop in Vanuatu will be a nice break.

  It seems really odd that we’re going to have to leave Dad and the boat in Fiji and try to go back to our other lives in just about a month.  Jessie and I will also be turning fourteen on June twelfth.  It seems like just a few months ago that we were sitting in a big tree outside McDonalds with our friends and slurping McFlurries (or whatever they’re called) for our thirteenth birthday in Tahiti!  I’ll be glad to see all my friends and family when we go home, but I’ll be sad to leave the boat and snorkeling and tropical animals and plants.  And of course, I’ll miss Dad, and seeing Palmyra and Hawaii with him.

When we were at Lady Musgrave Island (which is a lagoon enclosed in a reef, like Minerva Reef, except that it has an island built up on part of the reef), we saw loads of turtles!  When we were snorkeling, we saw five huge turtles, and I got really close to one!  I think that we mostly saw Green Turtles, but we also saw one or two Loggerheads.  Then, when we went walking on the beach, we found four baby turtles!  They were tiny, only about three inches around.  I thought there was something wrong with them at first, because they looked sort of odd, but then I noticed that they were turned upside down.  We think that they must have hatched the night before we found them, got turned on their backs before they could reach the water, and were stranded until we came.  We turned them right side up, of course, but we let them scramble down the beach and into the water themselves, because they imprint that particular stretch of beach in their brains, and come back to it when they are ready to lay eggs of their own.  It was sort of hard for the turtles once they got down near the water, because, even though the waves weren’t very large, they pushed the turtles back up the beach, rolling them over and over and sometimes stranding them on their backs again so that we had to flip them over.  We watched them until they had gotten safely through the small surf on the beach, and then they swam away over the reef. 

We have finally spotted the elusive platypus on the Broken River near Mackay, Queensland!  After many months of careful observation, all we had seen were the mud-coated freshwater turtles native to the area, until one day when a small, odd looking creature surfaced in the shallows near our powerful platypus-locating binoculars and quickly dove again, stirring up the muddy stream bed as it searched for food…

Not really.  It was on the Broken River near Mackay, Queensland, but it was actually only the first time we had searched for a platypus, and I’m not sure that all those muddy turtles were native to the area, although I think they might be.  Plus, we didn’t even have binoculars with us, let alone powerful platypus-locating ones.  The platypuses are extremely odd looking; in fact, when a specimen of platypus was first sent to England, it was believed the Australians had played a joke on them by sewing the bill of a duck onto a rat!  Also, they are a lot smaller than most people expect:  just a little over a foot long!  When we first saw the platypus, we thought we were looking at a baby, because we had the preconceived notion that they were nearly as big as beavers! 

After our platypus episode, we decided to try and find the much-advertised spot where there were supposedly wallabies on the beach.  When we found the spot, there weren’t any wallabies (it was afternoon, and they usually come out in the morning and evening), but there was a gray kangaroo.  Although, he wasn’t on the beach, he was in the shade on the grass of a picnic area.  We saw a sign that told us, among other things, that “Eastern gray kangaroos sometimes frequent public picnic areas.”  We thought it was very appropriate.  We walked very quietly over to the kangaroo, who didn’t seem to notice us.  We slowly went closer.  There was no sign of acknowledgement from the kangaroo.  Dad reached out his hand and scratched the roo between the ears.  It didn’t even flinch.  Well, we felt pretty silly after that, and we spent about an hour petting it and trying to find out what it ate.  We finally succeeded in getting it to take the most tender, green shoots of grass from our hands.  I think it was a gourmet. 

As for feeling silly about not knowing that the roo was tame, we just met some people who had an even funnier story.  They saw a kangaroo on the beach, and they started inching towards it, thinking that it must be wild, and not wanting to scare it away.  All of a sudden, a couple of kids came over, walked right up to the roo, and started scratching and petting it!  They said they felt pretty foolish.

There are new pictures in the media gallery – help yourselves!    ~  Molly

Article in the May 48 North

There is an interview with Jim regarding our adventure in the may issue of 48 North.   http://48north.com/may_2008/rard/rard2.htm

We are making mostly day-hops up the coast of Australia,

with a couple of over-nighters thrown in for fun.  I haven’t been sick once!  It must be because I poured my soul out to you, dear readers, which took all the angst away.  We have been pulling in to the anchorages and marinas between 3 and 5 in the morning.  It is very peaceful, dark, and a little spooky at that time of day. 

Last night, near the entrance to this marina, there were about 25 large ships lined up across the horizon, right in front of us. They were waiting for clearance, or a pilot boat or something.  It was quite an armada that we had to weave through, on a dark moonless night.  The last thing you want to see on your watch is a 400-foot ship in your path.  25 of them were almost more than I could bear.  I really wanted to wake Jim up, but I prevailed and conquered.  Jim had another set of boats to go through when he went on watch after me. 

We have discovered that it is impossible to check out of Australia, and then go to the Whitsunday Islands, then the Great Barrier Reef, legally.  They want you to check out and get out of town – immediately.  We are now in Mackay Harbour, the last stop for a customs check-out.  It looks like we will have to go to the Whitsundays, then back to Mackay, then through the GBR, without stopping to dive.  Of course, if we have to check something on the bottom of the boat, while we are near the reef, well….

Each country has its own little rules about customs check-in and out.  They are all quite different, and sometimes it seems like they make the rules up as they go.  You might get a different answer on a Friday than you would on a Monday.  This was particularly true in the South Pacific.  A bit of cash or some baked goods, or a can of corned beef, would get you what you needed from the customs agent.  They are a little more official in New Zealand and Australia; they even have printed matter with the rules on it!

We haven’t met a boat with kids on it since we left New Zealand, and Molly and Jessie are ready to mutiny.  All Mom wants to do is school, and all Dad wants to do is work on the boat. Where is the fun?  Where are the crocodiles?  Where are the koalas?  WHERE ARE THE KIDS?  Our friends on “Fafner” are in the Red Sea, just leaving Egypt.  Our friends on “Azul” are still in New Zealand, and will be in Fiji about 2 weeks after we leave there!  The kid boat, “Skedemongske” (not easy for us, either), is not too far away.  They are in Brisbane, and heading north up the coast, right behind us.  There is something to live for, after all!

Time for school!  ~  Jeanna

Bundaberg is a little town on the river,

about 4 hours by car north of Brisbane.  It is often the first Australian Port of Entry for cruisers coming from Fiji and Vanuatu.  Australia is a very, very flat country.  You can go miles and miles on the roads here, without even going up a little rise.  There are acres of sugar cane fields on each side of the roads.  Bundaberg is famous for their sugar, their rum, and their ginger beer.  We’ve not seen “hide nor hair” of a cow, sheep or pig in this area – it’s all about the sugar! 

Today we went to a huge Sunday market.  There were hundreds of stalls, with people selling everything from old books and used clothes, to fresh vegetables and fruits.  There was a guitar player, entertaining the masses with old Marty Robbins cowboy tunes.  Seedless watermelons were $2.00 each – huge and juicy.  We had rented a car for the day, to stock up on fresh goods for our trip north to the Great Barrier Reef.  Now our coffers are full; the nets in the cockpit are full of apples and oranges, and the nets inside are full of avocados, lemons, limes and tomatoes. 

We went to a bird sanctuary about 45 minutes from Bundaberg.  We always seem to gravitate toward animal exhibits.  This place was a huge area, covered with tall netting, where the birds flew around free as, well, birds.  There were lorikeets, macaws, all sorts of parrots, and plenty of finches, doves, quail and cockatiels.  It was very musical in there, and the birds seemed very happy.  Some of the parrots could talk, and Molly and Jessie spent a lot of time near one of the birds, saying “good morning”, “what happened?” and, “I love you.”  My favorite bird was a Bleeding-Heart Pigeon, who had a small circle of red feathers right in the center of his breast, that looked exactly like a gunshot wound.  I don’t know what God’s thinking was there, but it looked very authentic. We decided that we need an aviary when we get home, as well as a greenhouse full of palms, bromeliads, and tropical flowers. After watching the birds for a couple of hours, we had a picnic lunch of watermelon, fresh fruit, and avocados on fresh bread.

At the aviary, there was a nice young man working with the birds, filling their food dishes and adding gravel to their living areas.  I commented that this must be a wonderful place to hang out every day, with all the beautiful, melodic birds.  He said, “Yes, this is a great place to work.”  Then he looked at me, and I could have sworn he said, “Nice dress.”  I pondered this for a moment, since I was wearing shorts.  It wasn’t until he walked away, whistling and pushing his wheelbarrow, that I realized he had said, “No stress”, in his heavy Australian accent.  We seem to catch about half of what people are saying here…

Tomorrow we will head up toward the Whitsunday Islands, and explore the reef for a few days, then head east to Vanuatu and Fiji.  This whole coast is very shallow; there are a lot of places we can’t get in to.  Many of the anchorages are up shallow rivers and inlets.  On the other hand, the sky has been as blue as God’s own eye, and the sunsets have been a watermelon/apricot sorbet color each night. 

I am looking forward to getting back to the less civilized areas of the South Pacific.  New Zealand and Australia are so much like the United States; there are freeways and 24-hour grocery stores, Target, K-Mart and KFC.  I miss the little islands where you have to work a little harder to get your groceries, where the only way around is by foot or horse, and where everyone you meet has time to say hello.

In the May issue of 48 North, there is an interview that Rich Hazelton did with Jim back in January, when he was home for the boat show. You can access it on line at www.48north.com/may_2008/rard/rard2.htm.

There are a few new pictures in the media gallery, too.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!    ~Jeanna