Month: December 2003


  • The Elkins Round-the-World Voyage
    August 13, 2000

    Suwarrow

    		 ParrotFish
    Dear Friends 13.14S 163.06W we are at Suwarrow. It is kind of a Gilligan’s Island. There is a small home that was blown in and a boat on the beach that has a tarp on it and I guess it is a well boat but from a distance it looks tattered. There is a small sandy beach with a rock quarry that got destroyed by heavy seas from a hurricane. There is a reef that comes quite a ways out – only about a foot of water to get your dinghy up to shore. So you get out and pull it in. On shore there are 3 hammocks and a picnic table and a cook place for picnics. In farther is a house for the caretakers (about 3 bedrooms), a front room with books for the yachties to swap books and no furniture. There are beds – make shift foam on board frames.They have misquito netting on them. There is an outdoor toilet by the beach. Tom Neal lived here three different times. But to no avail – the things he built kept being torn down by wind and sea. There is still a building they thought to be his kitchen, out back of the house.

    We walked on some of the trails and found a little bunk by the sea with a thatched roof for shade. There was a family that lived here with kids who survived a hurricane here by tying themselves in rubber trees – very stout heavy duty trees. The Father, Robert Frisbie, wrote a book – see if you can find something by him or daughter, Johnny Frisbie.

    Dan and I went for a walk around the Motu (island), was nice.We met some people ashore. Reese and Cathy are here to count birds for a voluntary project for the Cook government. So there is no care takers here to collect money. We met Mary Francis and three boys who started from San Diego like we did who did the Baha. They went to Raratonga and brought the Bird people in here. The bird people hadn’t sailed before and got rather sick. They had 4 barrels to bring with them also. Upon getting here they had to hoveto outside because the weather was too bad to enter the pass.

    We also met another boat, Red Boomer, from Australia – 70′. This fellow and daughter, Bill and Evette, have sailed around three times. They had picked up two crew boys along the way. Quite interesting people. So we decided to have a potluck on the beach the next night. It rained on and off all day and about 6:00 that evening we proceeded with our picnic. Two of the boys had guitars and played and sang. There was ribs, coleslaw, pumpkin, potatoes, baked beans, and chicken and dumplings. It was 10:00 before we decided to go back to the boat. It only rained once while we where at the picnic.

    Today we went ashore with Tucumcarrie – we were going to walk the reef to the other island. Was too high of water and too swift – not a good time. Dan walked out on the reef and played by himself for awhile. He saw some bright green Parrot fish and watched them. Then we walked around the end of the island and back to the beach. Visited with others on the beach. Back to the boat and invited Bob & Cin from Tucumcarrie to watch a movie. Oh I had some of that Sailfish for dinner the other night – was pretty good. Our other friends Fantom, Astrolabe and Kookaburra are on their way from Bora Bora. They have 3 more days to go. Don’t know if we will be here that long though. Dan needs Coca cola so will be moving on to American Samoa. Till Later Dan and Sandy

    Article and photo from http://www.armstrongblue.com/Articles/Elkins/Elkins8-13-00.htm

     

  • Voyage Un Mer: Philippe Wohlhuter



    Mais chaque fois que je suis au bord de la mer, j’ai le sentiment d’être prisonnier de la terre. Devant moi de l’eau, qui m’attire,il y a tant d’eau, vivante, aux couleurs et formes changeantes, attirante. Et j’oublie qu’il existe derrière moi, la terre. Celle des Hommes. Je veux dire celle que des générations d’Hommes ont façonnée, construite, bâtie, cultivée. La mer n’est ni façonnée, ni construite par l’Homme, elle n’a pas de frontière.

    Elle est façonnée par les astres et le vent. Elle laisse parfois le droit à quelques Hommes, de s’en servir pour passer. Je crois que je voudrais être de ces Hommes-là.


    		 atlantictigara

    References:
    1. Photo of the Tigara on the Atlantic.

  • Tom Neale: An Island to Oneself: Six Years on a Desert Island


    This book has become a South Seas classic and although Tom Neale is long gone – he died in 1977 and is buried in the cemetery opposite Rarotonga’s airport – his memory lives on. Many Rarotongan residents have anecdotes or opinions of him and it seems that his book, which was ghost written, makes him out to be a much more reasonable fellow than he actually was. One person’s opinion was that he was so cantankerous that an uninhabited island was the only place for him!

    Thanks to Tom, the atoll is now one of the best known in the whole Cook Islands and yachties often call in to look in on Tom’s room which is still furnished just as it was when he lived there. Today the island is populated only by a caretaker and his family.

    from http://www.riverbendnelligen.com/books.html

    Excerpt:

    I chose to live in the Pacific islands because life there moves at the sort of pace which you feel God must have had in mind originally when He made the sun to keep us warm and provided the fruits of the earth for the taking; but though I came to know most of the islands, for the life of me I sometimes wonder what it was in my blood that had brought me to live among them. . . .

    I could not have known then what momentous consequences this meeting was to have. None of us suspected it then but Frisbie had only a few more years to live (he was to die of tetanus), and on that Sunday morning I saw in front of me a tall, thin man of about forty-five with an intelligent but emaciated face. He looked ill, but I remember how his eagerness and enthusiasm mounted as he started to talk about “our” islands and told me of his desire to write more books about them. We liked each other on sight, which surprised me, for I do not make friends easily; and it was after lunch – washed down with a bottle of Andy’s excellent rum – that Frisbie first mentioned Suvarov.

    from http://www.janesoceania.com/suvarov_tom_neale/

  • Oh no, Jimmy! It’s the WALL OF DEATH!


    Steve Dixon, author

    A Rapture At Sea With Steve Dixon and Friends


    Exciting Excerpts from the book

    I would sense the huge black presence of a wave at my ear just as it would break on us…A big one hit us hard and the boat spun round and round. We spun out of control, end for end. The 21-year old aluminum tiller bracket had cracked in two on the starboard side…… The motor was screaming and the boat careening up and down at full speed. I was exhilarated, manic, laughing wildly into the wind and spray….pounding adrenaline through everybody’s veins at the highest speeds possible…Jaws dropped, eyes bugged out, WHAT’S THAT? It is the WALL OF DEATH!….There is a confluence of ocean swells and winds. The waves often become very steep and ferocious…The big ones were breaking directly on top. Then the biggest one broke….One hand on the tiller and the other tightly grasping the jack line….Wide eyed looks of fear.

  • Seavessel Arabella

    This guy named Mike made this really great website which has tons of links to all sorts of sailing and cruising information as well as his wedding pictures on Catalina Island. Woo woo!


    Cabo Rocas (Los Arcos visible)

  • Bareboat Chartering

    Yeehaw! I got my study materials for my bareboat chartering certification course this winter.

    They say that sleeping on a boat gives you strange dreams. I will find out for myself.