JJEM Adventures

To Tarawa, Republic of Kirbati:
While we had really enjoyed the Marshall Islands, it was time to continue on south to Kiribati. The four hundred miles from Majuro to Tarawa would normally have been an easy reach, but, with the ITCZ directly overhead it proved to be a particularly unpleasant passage. Our first email to the grandparents went like this:

Dear Dad,
Sorry, missed an email yesterday. It's now 6:30am MHT Friday June 6th. Our posiition is Lat: 04 10.87' N Long: 172 50.33' E. 166nm to Tarawa

We had pretty good weather leaving Majuro. A light 10-15kt NE breeze and good sailing to get up to the East end of Majuro Atoll. That night it got stormy and the wind turned SE. We spent most of the time motorsailing with the main up.

Yesterday morning was ok - a bit of NE breeze. But by noon things got very frustrating. The NE breeze built up to 25+ - two reefs in the main - then flat. Glassy seas. Pouring rain ! Yuchh!!! Then a fluky 10 kt breeze anywhere from NE to SE all afternoon.

No wind overnight. Now a light SE building. We've never worked so hard for so few miles !!!! But we're all doing well. We knew it was going to be a tough passage. We should be through the ITCZ by tonight.


Tarawa:
We arrived in Tarawa almost exactly three days after leaving Majuro on June 4th.
I was warned about this harbor (Betio Harbor on Tarawa). It's filled with wrecks - I think some left from the WWII assault but others clearly much newer. With the exception of ourselves and our friends Holokai the rest of the boats in the harbor looked only a little better than the wrecks. The only real difference was they were sort-of-floating. A post from the next day:

We had a scary squall this morning at 6am. The wind only got up to 30 knots but this anchorage iis terrible. We're downwind of the whole lagoon with no wave break whatsoever. After ten minutes of squall we had three foot waves rolling past ! You can certainly see where all the wrecks come from !!!

Luckily the Rocna didn't give an inch - but, I'll be putting your Fortress out for extra insurance. The only good thing about the anchorage is the waves and wind are aligned - so we don't roll much at all.



Checking in involved the whole set of officers: Customs, Immigration, Health, and Quaranteen. We ferried each group out to Hai Yun in our small dinghy. So, when we were informed over VHF 16 that the Customs party was waiting for us, I headed for shore expecting to meet the “customs guy”. After a while waiting, two young ladies approached me and asked who I was waiting for. I said "customs" and at the same time noticed the older one was wearing an official blue uniform with a "Customs" label. It was a refreshing change. She was very nice - the other women was the apprentice for her job - I guess she didn’t rate the uniform yet.

Erik wrote a poem while we were waiting in Tarawa and unable to go ashore:

In a crevice the moray slept,
after a meal of Tang flesh.

A wrass, a cleaner, ventured
inside the hole
awaking the moray in his dreamy state
ate the fish right away

The fish's toxins killed the eel
for what cruel deed it did
It should have eaten veal
for its' meal....

Abaiang, Kiribati:

We finished checking in at Tarawa. We didn't like Tarawa - very dusty, dirty and smelly. The people were great, of course. But the anchorage at Betio was horrible.

After checking in, we sailed back north about 20 miles to the atoll of Abaiang. It was a great sail over from Tarawa – started off as a beam reach with about 20 knots wind. Hai Yun was making 9-10 knots along the reef edge - only a few hundred feet from the reef but in over 1000 feet of water. After passing the Tarawa atoll we came up to about 60 degrees apparent and put in a reef. Hai Yun was still making 7.5knots - that's the problem with the fun sailing - it's usually over too quick.

We came through the pass at Abaiang around 3pm and were anchored off the main village by 4pm. The government structure in Kiribati is different than the Marshalls. Here we needed to visit the police chief to get permission to stay. So, shortly after 4pm the whole family set off in Osprey to visit a police chief named "Corporal".

Almost immediately we ran aground on extensive sand flats and realized that visiting the village at low tide would involve a rather long slog and the chance of stranding the dinghy. So, James and Erik stayed in the dinghy in deeper water and Jingli and I slogged in to the village. By the time we got there it was past 4:15pm (government closing time in Kiribati) - so, even though we did find "Corporal" at his house, he couldn't check us in. "Come back tomorrow morning at high tide" he said.

In the morning I went in again. At high tide it was easy - also, I brought the kayak this time. But it wasn't so easy finding the police station. The first person I spoke to pointed into the village and said "police station". So I walked into the village. At the first little store I came to she pointed out of the village and said "police". Back out of the village, only to be pointed in again !!

So I went to "Corporal"'s house and asked where he would be. "Up" said his wife. By this point I was getting rather frustrated with strange directions but I looked "up" and sure enough, Corporal was up a coconut tree beside the house.

Once down, he explained that some of the villagers were correctly giving me directions to the police station inside the village whereas the others were giving me directions to the "police", namely Corporal's house, which is just outside the village !

Corporal's wife led me to the police station and we successfully checked in with the assistant.

On a more serious note, we'd heard that Kiribati was going through an outbreak of Dengue fever. A young man we met said that two cases had been confirmed in Abaiang and more were suspected. We knew very little about this disease except the following: it's transmitted by mosquitos, symptoms don't start for a week after the bite, and as Spike on Holokai said "it doesn't usually kill you but you'll wish you died".

Teireo Island, Abaiang Atoll, Republic of Kiribati:

The day after we checked in at Abaiang with “Corporal” it became flat calm and very, very hot. So we left the village and drifted straight across the lagoon to Teireo Island (on the western edge of the atoll). There is a narrow pass north of the island and we'd been told the snorkeling was fantastic.

We certainly confirmed that ! After anchoring, we headed out towards the outer pass in the dinghy. At first we anchored the dinghy part way into the lagoon near the pass edge. The current was strong except very near the edge. Erik speared a grouper (5lbs) in a hole and it took a lot of work to get him out. During the melee, my hat drifted off. So it was back to the dinghy and out to sea looking for the hat. We'd just given up when sharp eyed James spotted the hat. Erik was happy with his grouper but I was far happier to still have my hat !!! We speared a total of seven fish - five by Erik with the sling spear.

As it was still calm, we decided to do a drift dive - along the pass edge, out into the ocean and up the outer reef edge. This was the best of all. The coral was in distinct ridges heading out to sea with amazing formations and fish everywhere. As Jingli put it "in the Marshalls we saw the coral gardens, here is the coral forest".

About 3:30pm I put my head up and saw a huge dark cloud on the eastern horizon. A mad rush to get back in the dinghy and a race back to Hai Yun. The cloud beat us by a minute or so. Drenching downpour with some strong wind gusts. It was a painful but free shower !!


We stayed at Terio Island for about two weeks. Towards the end the ITCZ moved down on top of us. Here’s a post towards when we left:

We had quite a blow last night. Came in about 8pm with gusts up to 41.4 knots (James was watching the wind sensor) and lots of rain. We'd gotten a little lulled into complacency by the beautiful weather so this was a bit of a shock - we ran around like frantic mice for a while getting the decks cleared. The wind continued above 30 knots for about an hour. As it was from the NE, the waves had about 4 miles of almost uninterrupted fetch and got scary quick.

We have the Rocna and your Fortress set at about a 45 degree angle off the bow with the Rocna south of east and the Fortress north of east. The Rocna is on 200 feet of chain; the Fortress is on your 250 foot piece of 5/8's nylon with 50 feet of chain. Both are in 25 feet of water. Your piece of nylon has a fender tied to it part way down that keeps it out of the coral (It reduces the effective scope but when the wind gets up the fender sinks and we're back to the original scope.) With the wind from the NE most of the stress was on the Fortress with the nylon. This worked really well in the big waves (well - maybe 3 foot maximum - they looked very big !!) - the nylon stretched nicely and kept the overall force and pounding to a minimum. Hai Yun is surprisingly comfortable in such conditions if you can forget the fact you're on a lee shore.

After an hour, the wind dropped to 20-25 kts then gradually dropped to about 15kts at midnight.

A stressful night but we came through fine.

We heard from a cruiser (Vanessa with Tom and Julie aboard) in Betio (Tarawa). They had a very scary time as the wind gusted over 45 knots: one fishing vessel came completely loose and nearly went on the reef, the container ship directly upwind of them dragged and needed a second anchor and a freighter at the dock broke all it's lines but one !! That harbour is definitely not a good place in a storm.


A couple of days later we headed back to Tarawa.

(To be continued ….)