Ships that pass in the night… The words, originally penned by Longfellow, ran through my head the other night while motoring up Chesapeake Bay, as there were plenty of ships doing the same. Sometimes on night watches, particularly offshore, if there’s a ship in the distance, I like to let my mind wander about what’s aboard the ship, and where it might be going. At these times, it’s easy to get the full meaning of this phrase, which has come to refer to strangers who make a brief, meaningful connection and then continue on their separate ways. Though, in the case of actual ships passing in the night, the connection is merely that we’re occupying the same stretch of water at the same time.

Back to that night on the Chesapeake — I wasn’t actually pondering the phrase in the vaguely romantic sense, but in the way that actually passing a ship at night has completely changed. About 20 or so years ago, when I was new to the sailing life and standing my first night watches, a ship on the horizon would cause me a bit of panic. What do those lights mean? Are we going to get too close? Over the years, the panic thankfully faded, but there was always that bit of uncertainty. These days, however, with AIS technology, there is really no doubt (of course I still keep an eye on the ships and track their bearings).

With a few taps on the chart plotter, I can see what ships are in my vicinity, what their names are, their origins and destinations, and (most importantly) what our closest point of approach is, among other info. If I’m bored or just curious and within cell range, I can log onto the MarineTraffic app and usually even see a photo of the vessel in question. All of this of course only works with boats equipped with AIS, but with each nighttime stint at the helm I do, it seems like the info is there for more and more boats. And when you’re in a busy place like the Chesapeake, having this info and knowing that I can easily contact or be contacted by any of the vessels in question makes for a much less stressful night. Indeed, with each crossing I do, passing a ship at night has become much less like ships that pass in the night.

The post Ships Passing appeared first on Cruising World.

I’ve dabbled in photography for years as a hobby, and I have found that life aboard provides plenty of beautiful subject material. Look through my photo files, and you’ll find shots of boats and sailing, seaside towns, picturesque harbors and more sunsets than I care to admit to (I’m a sucker for a good sunset). But on a particularly lovely night watch recently, I found myself musing about all the things that I can’t seem to get a photo of. Or if I do, the shots just don’t do the scene justice.

There is nothing like being on watch on boat under sail on a clear night, under a sky with the Milky Way splashed across . It’s easy (and a little unnerving) to feel like the whole display is just for you when the only indication of mankind visible is the occasional satellite steadily moving along the starry dome. Shooting stars, glowing plankton, a red moon rising on the horizon — magic, all of it. And it’s all equally impossible to photograph. Due to the darkness requiring a long exposure, the motion of the boat pretty much ensures that all I will get from my efforts is a blurry smudge, if anything. But that hasn’t stopped me from trying (or taking a ton of sunrise photos to make up for it).

Timing is everything when it comes to shooting dolphins, and how cool would it be to manage a shot of a leaping eagle ray (which I think would be pure luck)? While I’ve seen some incredible pics of dolphins riding the bow wake, my shots are usually a second too late. But I’ve managed to at least catch a dorsal fin or two. I have a few goals for this winter’s cruise south: one of them being to capture a star-trail photo. I won’t be able to get it from the boat of course (I really should just give up taking night photos aboard), but given the clear nights and abundant beaches here in the Bahamas, I’m sure I can find a place to pitch a tripod for a while. Now if I can just figure out how to make the dolphins go just a little bit slower…

CW senior editor Jen Brett, along with her husband, Green, and two daughters, is on a winter cruising sabbatical aboard their Reliance 44 ketch, Lyra.

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February 14 I surprised all three of my Valentines with a trip to Mexico for dinner.

I think I’ve mentioned this here before, but our Ajo sojourn is intended to accomplish two goals: create another income stream for cruising and test the waters for a future life whereby we split our time between land and sea. Ajo offers a home base only two hours from the Sea of Cortez.

Of course, that puts us only 35 minutes from the Mexican border. Yet surprisingly—or not surprisingly—we’ve been so far too busy to make this short trip—until the other night.

We cleaned up, piled into the truck, and headed south on I-85. Ten minutes later we passed through Why, Arizona, which locals refer to as The Why, because the tiny hamlet is apparently named for the Y in the road where the 86 to Tucson branches off the 85 to Phoenix. Another few minutes and we were in the thick of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Then, Mexico.

Sonoyta is the town across the border. It’s small and tidy, not a tourist destination.

“It smells like Mexico.” One of the girls said smiling.

There is something comforting about being in Mexico for all of us. I can’t really say what it is. The place just feels like a second home.

Being a border town, Sonoyta is a supply depot and jumping off point for undocumented migrants headed north into the States. Driving around town, even just hundreds of yards from the U.S. border crossing, we saw a dozen sidewalk vendors selling camouflaged backpacks and canteens and all the survival equipment someone would want to have before starting a treacherous journey across the Southern Arizona desert.

That’s a weird juxtaposition against our family of four, dressed up for Dia del Amor, who drove freely south across the border, only pausing to say we’re going to have dinner and not being asked to show any form of I.D. or anything.

The one restaurant we wanted to eat at was closed and our second choice was packed with 3 dozen Federales who arrived just before we pulled up. Ten or so of their trucks were lined up outside, one unlucky soldier stuck waiting in the bed of each, standing vigilant behind the vehicle-mounted machine gun.

“No, no, lo siento mucho,” said the waitress, motioning to all the Federales and explaining why she couldn’t serve us.

Crap. But to make something of our trip, we pulled up the nearest OXXO, bought two 18-packs of Tecate, a handful of avocados, and about 20 limes. Because the peso/dollar exchange rate is a crazy 20:1 right now, the savings on just this stuff more than paid for the fuel we burned to drive down.

Crossing the border back into the States just meant getting our passports scanned, then we continued on home, where we enjoyed Valentines dinner out at our favorite Ajo craft brew pub, 100 Estrella.

*In our twenties, we traded our boat for a house and our freedom for careers. In our thirties, we lived the American dream. In our forties, we woke and traded our house for a boat and our careers for freedom. And here we are. Follow along with the Roberston’s onboard Del Viento on their blog at www.logofdelviento.blogspot.com. *

The post Cruising the Mainland appeared first on Cruising World.

I’ve seen the green flash so many times, I forget there was a time when it was a mystery to me. Before ever seeing it, I’d heard references to it and I wondered exactly what it was and whether it was real.

It is real. But it’s also a bit of a misnomer because it’s not a flash in the sense of bright light, it’s a flash in the sense that it’s over in a flash. It makes more sense to describe it as, “a green smear that you’ll miss if you blink.”

There are precise atmospheric conditions necessary to produce this phenomenon, and I’m not sure what they are, but I know that when I’m someplace with no mountains or clouds or too much haze obscuring the horizon and the setting sun, it’s likely I’ll see a green flash. To be clear, the sky can be solid overcast, but as long as there is a clear band at the horizon, conditions may be right.

Especially for folks living on the East Coast or the interior of the U.S., seeing the green flash is not easy. An ocean horizon to the west offers the best hope. Cruising in the Pacific offers plenty of open horizon opportunities. On the contrary, here in Ajo, we’ve got too much terrain to get a clear shot of the sun setting behind the horizon.

I saw a green flash soon before we left Fiji, while photographing the sunset, and decided to share exactly when it’s visible and what it looks like.

In our twenties, we traded our boat for a house and our freedom for careers. In our thirties, we lived the American dream. In our forties, we woke and traded our house for a boat and our careers for freedom. And here we are. Follow along with the Roberston’s onboard Del Viento on their blog at www.logofdelviento.blogspot.com.

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“It smells like poop.” One of the girls said this. These were among the first words uttered when we entered our 1931-built Ajo house. And it did, it smelled like poop. After tracing the smell to the ill-fitting toilet in the front bathroom, it was an easy fix. Nothing since has been easy.

Our house is a little gem that’s been neglected and futzed with. For decades nobody positively addressed exterior drainage issues and leaking roof issues, nor the resulting mold and termite issues. We’ve been gutting and gutting until we’re down to studs and siding and foundation.

And that’s where her gem-like qualities become apparent. The house has a nice layout and said studs and siding are (mostly) solid redwood. Because we’re nearly gutting the place, we feel free to move walls and relocate whole bathrooms to make the space work really well. It’s going to be a nice home, someday.

But there is so much still to do before we get on a plane and return to Del Viento, still afloat in Fiji. We’ve been tackling the back of the house and evidence points to a more challenging job when we get to the front. The slab foundation is only underneath the back half, probably added on in the 1950s. In the front half, we’re still walking on tile floors that feel spongy and think that the foundation is wood-on-dirt, we’ll see, we’ve been afraid to discover too much in that realm just yet. After all, we’re living (camping, really, camp stove and everything) in this place while we de-construct and construct, so there is a necessity to isolate the work areas (best we can) and eat this elephant in chunks.

It’s an adventure, and what we bargained for, and what we paid for. The biggest question when buying this house sight-unseen in a place we’d never been wasn’t whether we’d like the house, but whether we’d like this little community out in the middle of nowhere.

We like Ajo very much. It’s a charming oasis in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. It’s filled with interesting people and stepping outside our yard we always find a welcome respite from the drudgery of home renovation. I’ll write more about Ajo in my next post.

In our twenties, we traded our boat for a house and our freedom for careers. In our thirties, we lived the American dream. In our forties, we woke and traded our house for a boat and our careers for freedom. And here we are. Follow along with the Roberston’s onboard Del Viento on their blog at www.logofdelviento.blogspot.com.

The post Making Home in Ajo appeared first on Cruising World.

It was twenty years ago today. St. Pepper may have been busy somewhere teaching musicians, but Windy and I were nowhere near that scene. Earlier that December we’d cast off the dock lines in Ventura, California, and turned left. It was just the two of us—both in our 20s—aboard my little Newport 27, that was also named Del Viento. We barely knew each other, but before our 8-month voyage from Southern California to Southern Florida was over, I knew I wanted to marry her.

Last week, as we prepared for bed in this little house in Ajo—the one we’re camping in because, as of now, it has no appliances, no heat, no hot water, few doors, non-functional windows that are spray-painted over, and a broken cement swan fountain in the front yard—I thought to ask Windy what she’d have done on that crisp Friday morning 20 years ago if she could have seen the future.

“Not how the future played out from then to now, just a snapshot of this moment. You’d get to see the mattress on the floor we sleep on, this truck we’re driving that was already 8 years old way back then, and the gaping holes in the ceilings and walls.”

“I’d have run like hell.”

“Yeah, me too.”

More Photos:

In our twenties, we traded our boat for a house and our freedom for careers. In our thirties, we lived the American dream. In our forties, we woke and traded our house for a boat and our careers for freedom. And here we are. Follow along with the Roberston’s onboard Del Viento on their blog at www.logofdelviento.blogspot.com.

The post Two Decades of Cruising appeared first on Cruising World.

As I write this my hands are covered in oil and grime. Nikki still has some oil on her face making her look more like a coal miner than a sailor. We hardly notice after everything else we have been though.

Since my last blog we had a good weather window and spent 10 days straight working around the clock surveying Inglefield fjord for NASA’s OMG program. We were running out of time and we desperately needed a long spell of good weather to complete our survey. Especially in areas of heavy ice where you can only enter if it’s flat calm.

Considering all the bad weather and issues with our scientific equipment, we did a good job completing the survey. It was a lot of work and it will provide NASA with important information about how ocean currents influence climate change that region of Northwest Greenland.

Etah or bust has been our motto since the boatyard in Sisimiut. Etah is a fjord in the far north of Greenland roughly 700 miles from the North Pole that was used by various explorers during the great age of exploration. It’s a beautiful area, very green, which is abnormal that far north.

Going to Etah was the prize for completing the survey on time. If we didn’t complete the survey or if we didn’t get it done early enough we wouldn’t go. “Etah or Bust” was our rally cry, our motivation; it’s what we all looked forward to.

Etah is only 80 miles north of Qaanaaq and Inglefield fjord so it wasn’t that much further north than we already were. It only took us 24 hours to get there. Unfortunately our timing coincided with an adventure tourist cruise ship. I hate adventure tourism.

Imagine you were climbing a tall remote mountain and for two months you worked hard to reach the summit. You dealt with hunger, sleep deprivation and daily hardships. Finally the day you reach the top of the mountain as you climb the last crest you see a luxurious mega passenger helicopter sitting on the summit (mega passenger helicopters don’t exist so bear with me, it’s just an analogy). You see around this helicopter (cruise ship) hundreds of adventure tourists all dressed in spotless matching red jackets with clean pressed pants walking around taking pictures of anything and everything. You on the other hand haven’t had a decent shower in two months; your clothes are dirty, your hair is a mess and you haven’t shaven in weeks. As you get closer to the summit the happy adventure tourists notice you and start taking pictures of you like you’re some kind of mountain Neanderthal. They approach you in groups asking silly questions like, “where do you do laundry?”, “how do you go to the bathroom”? The glorious moment you have pictured in your mind for the last two months, summiting the mountain, has been completely dashed to pieces. You slump down on a rock trying to get away from the hundreds of adventure tourists who are sharing the summit with you, but they are everywhere. You overhear one of them, an older woman with big diamond earrings tell a man in perfectly pressed slacks, “we must be getting back on board, we don’t want to miss our champagne dinner” and the happy tourists start boarding the mega helicopter. In a whirlwind dust and noise the helicopter takes off. You sit there for a moment trying to find the glorious victory you had imagined for the last two months but the moment has been ruined. You feel your stomach growl, time for another freeze dried meal and two more months of hiking back down the mountain.

That’s what it’s like to come across a group of adventure tourists at the ends of the earth.

We were only in Etah for 24 hours before heading back south to Qaanaaq. We only stayed in Qaanaaq long enough to get the fuel, food and water we would need for our push south back down to Upernavik some 350 miles away. We were in a hurry because there was another gale coming and we wanted to get to a protected area and drop anchor before the strong winds came. When paying for the fuel I looked over a Danish weather forecast with the manager of the fuel depot. It didn’t look that bad, he said “not much wind just rain”. I figured it would be a gale but nothing worse, so off we went to drop anchor.

The winds picked up through the night and by morning they were a good 50kts. We were anchored in a good location and the anchor was holding so all seemed ok. This was our fourth storm on anchor and we were used to the situation. You could say I was caught with my pants down as I was on the toilet when I heard Nikki yell “the anchor is dragging”!

This has happened before so at first it didn’t seem to be a big deal. Then the winds quickly increased to hurricane strength and the anchor line snapped twenty feet down from the bow. Things were changing for the worse very quickly.

The winds and rain were so strong that we were in white out conditions, much like a blizzard. The winds were pushing the boat over so far that water was pouring into our pilot house. Then we felt a strong bang. As luck had it we had found a group of uncharted rocks and we were now banging up against them. We were healed so far over and the waves were large enough that we were able to bounce our way over the rocks. Once over the rocks I decided we should deploy the parachute sea. Before we could get it deployed we must have drifted over an unmarked shoal because a large wave hit us knocking the boat down and putting its masts in the water.

Once the parachute sea anchor (Para anchor) was deployed our boat slowed down and put its bow back up into the wind and waves. For a moment things were much better. I still had to use the engine to slowly push the boat and Para anchor one direction or another to avoid large icebergs. Problem is icebergs don’t drift at the same rate as you do on a parachute sea anchor, you could drift right down on one.

There was some excess line that didn’t get deployed properly when the Para anchor was deployed. I had to stay at the helm during the deployment so I didn’t see what happened to it. Twenty minutes later I looked down and I see a line under our boat. I yelled to the mate “there is a line under our boat, we need to bring it up right now or it could wrap around the propeller”! The winds we too strong to just walk up to the bow, you would have put on a harness and tether and crawl on your hands and knees with icy waves crashing over your head. My Mate had reached his limit, I couldn’t get him to go outside and bring in the line. I would have done it myself but I was trying to maneuver the boat slowly between some uncharted rocks and an iceberg. A few minutes later what I feared would happen happened, the line wrapped in our prop and the engine died. Our situation went from bad yet under control to downright dangerous. I decided then to make a distress call.

The Danish Navy keeps a boat at Thule air base about 100 miles from Qaanaaq. Their boats are fast enough that it only takes them 6 hours to cover that distance. While we were waiting for the navy ship to arrive we put on immersion suits and prepared the life raft. The winds were still blowing hurricane force and we were getting knocked around quite a bit. Alexander and Dana were both puking, the floor of the boat was covered with random stuff and everything was wet. The biggest threat was that we would be slowly pushed into an iceberg; the boat would be dashed upon it like a cliff in a storm. With the Para anchor in place the waves and wind were no longer a threat but icebergs were a different story. We passed by one just a few hundred feet away. It was still white out conditions, hard to see an iceberg, even our radar was struggling. We still had one more trick up our sleeves, if we had to I could cut the Para anchor free and we could out maneuver an iceberg under minimal sail. That would also have been bad as we would have no good way to stabilize Ault against the unrelenting wind and seas, but it’s better than being dashed up against an iceberg.

The Danish Navy arrived before we drifted near another iceberg. As they arrived the winds started to ease up. They tossed us a tow line and proceeded to tow us behind an island to get protection from the waves. The next day they helped us cut the lines off the propeller and gave us a hot meal on their ship. They also let us borrow an additional anchor to couple with our spare anchor which we will leave for them in Upernavik, where we can buy another spare. The Danish Naval officers and crew were all very friendly and helpful.

Once we were all sorted out we dropped anchor behind an island as another storm was coming. This storm only blew 40-50kts. We drug anchor a good half mile but there was no emergency.

We had a good weather window to go south and we were all ready to get the hell out of northern Greenland and back down where the storms are not nearly as bad. The engine sounded fine at first but then the RPM’s became erratic. We limped our way into a cove surrounded by icebergs and strong currents. Before we left this year I bought a spare injector pump for our engine. It cost $1,500 which was a hard pill to swallow for a spare but I was glad I did it. It took twelve hours to replace the injector pump while on anchor in the middle of nowhere. I’ve become a good enough mechanic that I was able to do the job although I lost a very important specialized injector screw and for two hours we searched for it and all got covered with oil. Alexander was the one who found it, by then we thought we would never find it.

As I write this we are underway heading south. The engine is running well, hopefully it remains that way. I have a lot of spare parts and the skills to replace and repair many aspects of the engine but I hope I don’t have to work on it again.

We look forward to reaching Upernavik and tying off to a seawall for the first time in nearly two months.

*Fortitudine Vincinimus.

–Matt Rutherford*

The post NASA, Etah and the Danish Navy appeared first on Cruising World.

The weather has been crazy this year. Normally Northwest Greenland has very little wind in the summer months. If there is strong wind it’s out of the north, but usually it doesn’t blow hard for long. This year its been one storm after another, with all of the winds out of the south. We have had three storms in two weeks that all blew at least 45-50kts. The last storm was so bad it washed away the road in Qaanaaq that leads to the airport; well airstrip is probably a better way to describe it. You know the weather has been bad when roads get washed away. We were only able to collect data for 10 of the first 24 days of our survey for NASA’s OMG program. If that wasn’t bad enough we have also had issues with our survey equipment.

Airmar is one of the largest transducer manufacturers in the world. A transducer is the part of a sonar system that is mounted to the hull that sends and receives the sonars pings. We got a bad transducer from Airmar that is operating at 3.6 ohms when it’s supposed to operate at 10 ohms. What this means is when the sonar tries to push its strong low frequency single through the transducer its motherboard overheats and burns out, killing the sonar in the process. We had $13,000 invested in a sonar system that we can’t use due to this bad transducer. Luckily we do have a backup sonar system. It’s not nearly as good and the data is much more difficult to process afterword but it will map the fjord and get the job done. The whole situation has been very stressful. This region would be difficult enough to map out in prefect conditions, instead we have had storm after storm and faulty survey equipment. Oh well, it wouldn’t be an adventure if everything went as planned.

Our survey isn’t just about mapping the seafloor; it’s really more about finding the warmer Atlantic water that is eating away the edges of Greenland. NASA’s OMG (Ocean Melting Greenland) program is a five year program that is collecting a huge amount of data about the health of the Greenland icecap and its surrounding glaciers. There is a warmer saltier water column, deep in the water, some 200-300 meters down that is coming up from the Atlantic and eating Greenland’s glaciers from underneath. Our job is to map the seafloor so we can find the places where this warmer water might be, then drop a CTD probe to verify it’s there. The CTD can detect t the change of temperature and salinity as it descends towards the bottom. There is a line attached to the CTD, 3,300 feet of line to be exact, that we use to bring the CTD back to the boat. It can take an hour to do one CTD cast; we are doing 130 CTD casts over the course of the survey. The job is made easier by a watermen’s pot puller I mounted to the back of the boat. Usually a pot puller is used to bring crab and lobster pots up from the bottom, but it serves our purpose well.

I get so wrapped up in our issues and our research that I don’t always take the time to appreciate the beauty around me. We were on anchor last week waiting for a storm to begin. We had been there for several hours, I was busy stressing out over the weather and broken equipment when I looked up and realized how beautiful it was. We were anchored at the base of a 3,000 foot cliff with a glacier coming down its side. The cliff itself looked like the view you have looking up at the island in the sky district of Canyonlands National Park (one of my favorite places in the United States). I realized I need to stop stressing out so much and enjoy the scenery.

We have finally gotten a break in the weather a few days ago so we were able to get back to work. We wanted to take full advantage of the light winds so we headed to the iciest part of our survey. A place you can only enter in absolutely calm conditions.

There are many glaciers that feed into Inglefield fjord but many of the largest and most active glaciers are located at the end of the fjord, with the majority of those on the northern side. To make things icier there is an island that is located near the northern side of the end of Inglefield fjord that prevents much of the ice from escaping exacerbating the already icy waters. It’s an iceberg traffic jam mix up, giant bergs, bergy bits, brash ice, you name it, if its ice, it’s there in force. This island I speak of isn’t even supposed to be an island; our charts show that it’s a peninsula. Goes to show how accurate the charts are; it’s definitely an island with at least 1,000 feet of water on all sides of it. In some places you can weave through the ice, in other places there is so much ice that all you can do is push through it. Sometimes the ice is so heavy even pushing through it isn’t an option so you have to turn back unable to map that area.

We operate around the clock and don’t always get much sleep which doesn’t make things any easier. It’s very slow going as we can hardly go faster than 1mph. Since we are constantly pushing ice out of our way with our boat if we go too fast the ice could poke a hole in our steel hull, damage our rudder or break our underwater sensors. Poor Alexander sleeps forward in the V-berth; he can both hear and feel every piece of ice that we hit as we push along through the jumble. Sometimes when we hit a large piece of ice the whole boat jerks hard to one side or the other which can make you lose your balance if you’re not careful. All of this sounds quite dangerous but at 1mph in flat calm conditions it’s no real threat. Just keep an eye on the glaciers so if they calve a large iceberg you’re ready for the ensuing wave and try not to get too close to any giant icebergs that look rotten and ready to roll over.

The worst of that northern area is now mapped out and behind us. We have many other glaciers and sub-fjords to map and will be hard at work for the next two or three weeks. On September 22nd the sun will set for the first time and we need to have the project wrapped up before that happens. Nature has given us a deadline and we still have a lot of work to do.

Fortitudine Vincimous

–Matt Rutherford

The post Ocean Research Project: NASA Survey appeared first on Cruising World.

Are you up for an adventure? The Norwegian sailing yacht Barba is once again getting ready to set sail, this time to spend the winter north of the Arctic Circle documenting whales.

The expedition is organized by me, Andreas B. Heide, Barba’s owner, and fellow Norwegian adventurer, Kari Scibevåg. I’m a marine biologist and ocean enthusiast who has lead numerous expeditions to the arctic, including sailing Barba to 81 degrees north, into the pack ice surrounding the North Pole. Scibevåg is second in command. She has dominated the sports of skiing and kite surfing for a decade, and is a world champion at both.

The trip will be an extended version of the previous season’s, when three weeks were spent documenting whales in Northern Norway. Barba will depart in October, transiting a greater part of the spectacular Norwegian coast. Once in Northern Norway, we plan on studying whales from November to February. March and April will be spent sailing, skiing and exploring the remote northern wilderness.

Team Barba is currently reaching out to get volunteer crew to join us for both short and longer legs of the trip. Competent sailors and videographers are of special interest. Needless to say, you’ll need to be rather adventurous to join our ranks. Additionally, any other supporters and sponsors wanting to help tell the story of the whales would be welcomed onboard. Additional information, including details on how to join us can be found at barba.no.

Check out photos from their past adventures!

The post Crew wanted for a Whale of a Time appeared first on Cruising World.

So Fijian society is much like Samoan society, in that outside the cities, communities are structured around autonomous villages on communal land. Even today, the villagers’ relationship to the land is best expressed in this paragraph I pulled from Wikipedia:

“The living soul or human manifestation of the physical environment which the members have since claimed to belong to them and to which they also belong. The land is the physical or geographical entity of the people, upon which their survival…as a group depends. Land is thus an extension of the self. Likewise the people are an extension of the land. Land becomes lifeless and useless without the people, and likewise the people are helpless and insecure without land to thrive upon.”

There is a chief of every village. This elder man has considerable power and influence. He is judge and jury in criminal matters, deciding who gets punished and how. He controls distribution of land assets and the manner in which people work and live among those assets.

Because there is no public space as we know it, entering a Fijian village (and this includes anchoring in the waters off a village) as an outsider—whether Fijian or not—demands adherence to protocols that have been a part of this culture for millennia. The first thing a visitor must do is to seek out the chief to present a sevusevu. This is a Fijian term for token of respect. As far as I know, the only acceptable token is kava, in its un-ground form. From what I’ve heard, it’s never difficult to find the chief to present sevusevu, anyone who sees you will recognize you as a stranger and take you to the chief. When you meet the chief, you don’t shake his hand or touch him, you sit before him and place your sevusevu in front of him. You politely state your business in the village and wait. When he picks up your sevusevu, you are golden. You may be asked to join the chief and others in drinking kava and it’s incumbent on you to accept that invitation.

“Over there, in the market, you can buy kava for your sevusevu before we leave.” Windy heeded our cab driver’s advice and walked across the busy bus terminal to buy a handful of dried sticks wrapped in newspaper like a bouquet.

Seriously? We just want to go to the waterfall to relax and cool off.

Arriving in the larger city of Savusavu, the village culture didn’t apply. This would be our first time venturing outside of Fijian city life. This would apparently be our first opportunity to present sevusevu. I wasn’t eager for this; I sensed touristy artifice.

Twenty minutes later, we left the main road and bounced along a pocked dirt road in a lush, steep-walled valley.

“We’re almost to the Vuadomo village. The waterfall is back that way,” our driver said pointing over his shoulder. “Once you present your sevusevu, I’ll bring you to the trailhead.”

“Everyone take off your hat and sunglasses,” Windy announced from the back seat. I looked over at our Indian driver, my eyebrows raised in a question. He nodded at me.

“Are we going to sit in a kava circle?” I asked him.

“No, you’ll just present your sevusevu and ask permission to visit the falls.”

“Might he say no?” I asked.

“No. And when you’re done, you’ll need to pay a fee to use the fall; it’s eight dollars per person.”

Hmmm.

The fall guy. The old Toyota sedan stopped and I squinted into the sunlight. Several women sat in the shade, each before a pile of touristy trinkets, ashtrays and shot glasses with “Bula!” printed in bold letters, for sale among shell necklaces and other things I was pretty sure nobody in this village produced.

“Bula!” we called out warmly. They motioned us over to survey their wares. We all decided on the most practical thing we could buy: an 8-ounce plastic bottle of coconut oil that was pressed locally. Then Eleanor bought a pair of earrings. Then someone said the chief was coming and told us to sit on a nearby bench. A woman took our kava bouquet from Windy.

The chief was small, old, dark-skinned, and wrinkled. He sat quietly on a mat about 10 feet from us and nobody made a peep. The woman who’d taken our kava placed it gently before him and backed away. He didn’t pick up our sevusevu. He didn’t look at us. He sat quietly for a minute. Then he started talking in Fijian, eyes closed. The seated women nodded. At some point he picked up our sevusevu and regarded it carefully, like it was something he’d not seen before, all the while talking to himself in Fijian. During this, the half-dozen women periodically clapped in unison, obviously in response to the chief. Then, he set the kava back down, stood, and walked, stooping heavily, back to the village house he’d come from. One of the women picked up the kava and followed him.

“Are we good?”

“All good.” One of the women said.

Then we paid the fee, got back into the cab, and drove to the trailhead.

“I’ll be back to pick you up at 3:00 p.m.” Our cab driver said.

Our first sevusevu presentation was probably different from what Captain Cook likely experienced. Seeing as how hundreds and hundreds of tourists visit this particular waterfall every year, it was probably nothing like what we would have experienced in communities a bit farther off the beaten path. But neither did I get the impression these folks were doing a song and dance for the tourists before retreating to their homes, pulling the iPhone 6 out of a hidden pocket, and resuming a Facebook dialog. Fiji is among the most affluent and developed of the Pacific Island nations—in comparison, way beyond Tonga by these measures—but the traditional culture is by no means completely diffused.

We’ve not yet experienced the outer island culture, but where we’ve been, it feels like we’re in a country with a healthy social dynamic. The vibe here is good. People seem content. I’m sure it’s not nirvana, and we’ve been here only just over a month, but there’s a warmth and genuineness and kindness that we get from nearly every interaction with a Fijian (and this from an eternal skeptic). It’s an easygoing politeness that strikes us.

Bulla

Damn, I thought to myself when we first arrived in Fiji, how do all these people get stuck wearing the wrong size flip-flops? Men, women, and children alike all wear flip-flops, always the cheapest thinnest-soled kind—the ones they sell in the drug store for $1.99. But on Fijian feet—and I remember seeing the same thing in the Samoas—every pair is just way too small. The tips of toes hang over the flip-flop fronts and soles disappear under bare heels. A size 7 shoe is the same price as a size 9, so it can’t be a money thing.

The other day, walking down Savusavu’s waterfront street in the rain, wearing my generous-sized Tahitian flip-flops, I felt the little water droplets filled with street grime flicking up onto the backs of my calves with every step. My questions disappeared. All the calves of the Fijians around me were clean. Damn, I gotta trim my flip flops.

Fiji is turning out to be an interesting place (for more reasons than the flip-flop conundrum). We’re rather enjoying it. The population seems to be an equal mix of afro-haired Melanesians and Indians. But they’re all Fijian. The Indians arrived generations ago and one man I spoke with said he is no more familiar with India then I am with Ireland/Sweden. But the difference between the Fijian Indians and melting-pot Americans like me, is that the Indian culture is preserved here among Fijian Indians who have never been to India and have no plans to go. Religion, language, and dress are all unmistakably Indian. I can choose from several brands and sizes of ghee in every store and turmeric and masala is sold by the kilo. We ride on buses owned by a company called Vishnu and the pirated-DVD stores are filled with Bollywood titles.

I asked the same Indian gentleman about relations between the Indians and native Fijians. Contrary to my limited understanding of politics here, he said there are no problems. He said that inter-racial relationships are not unheard of, but that they aren’t common. I asked if either group is relegated to a lower class. He said no. Then he said that native Fijians don’t keep their houses clean like the Indians keep their houses.

Fiji is inexpensive for cruising sailors, and not just compared to the rest of the South Pacific. We’re currently sitting on a mooring in front of a plush resort. The mooring is free and we have full access to all of the resort amenities. We got our 10-gallon propane tank filled in Savusavu for US$6.50. There were a dozen Indian food restaurants around Savusavu and the plates are a great value. The four of us enjoyed one excellent sit-down Indian dinner with rice, curries, roti, and drinks for US$15–total. At the awesome Waitui Marina in Savusavu, we twice stuffed ourselves on the all-you-can-eat Indian buffet for US$7.50 per person (cheaper for the girls). The pumpkin curry and dahl and roti were out of this world.

Remarkably, I can say that every person we’ve met in three weeks in Fiji has been genuinely friendly and welcoming and accommodating. Parts of this country were devastated by Cyclone Winston this past season, and the effects are still evident, all around. Rebuilding is in full swing and from an arriving visitor’s perspective, among a people of an economy that depends on tourism, I have the sense everyone is sincerely pleased that we are here, that they recognize the import of ensuring the few visitors who are here, return home with positive reports from Fiji.

So what’s bad about this place? Well, it’s the dead of winter and we’ve had very few clear, sunny days since we arrived. (I feel badly for the few fly-in tourists we’ve seen who’ve spent their 10-day resort vacations in the rain and drizzle.) But apparently, this spat of inclement weather is unusual. I can report that the check-in fees are steep (just under US$200) and the process was more demanding than most countries we’ve visited. In fact, a week before we arrived, we were required to fill out a dozen-page form and send a copy of it—along with a photo of Del Viento and a photocopy of my passport—to Fijian Customs. Then, upon arriving, we had Customs, Immigration, Health, and Bio-Security officials aboard before we could go ashore. Then we had to later rendezvous in town at the offices of all but immigration to pay. Additionally, we are technically required to report our whereabouts weekly. But we’re used to the paper chase and we take it in stride.

We’ll be here for a spell, so stay tuned for reports and photos from Fiji. It’s a good place to be.

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