Tinsau on the Road...

May 19 Tuesday: Today Dmitry and I cleaned up his yard, trimming a hedge, knocking down coconuts, weed whacking, cutting the seeds down from another tree, raking up leaves and bamboo detritus. He wanted to give the yard a once over since he will be gone for two months after the weekend trip to Rota, going by boat to Yap and Palau bringing medical supplies, clothes, and literature to a host of remote islands. Grace will be joining him by plane shortly after I leave for Papua New Guinea. I brought in my laundry, which had been drying on the line outside. After lunch we headed into town to pick up more material to give away on Rota and the rest of his trip. We got food that had been ordered, a lot of donated stuff at the church, more literature from a couple places. Dmitry gave me a tour of the largest SDA church on the island, the radio station the church runs: Joy 91.9, and several other SDA run offices. We met the conference treasurer and another employee who's mother comes from Arno, even though she has not been there herself due to fears of boats and an inability to swim. She was happy to know I had been in Majuro where she grew up.

We went to a fund raiser/spaghetti feed for students at Guam Adventist Academy for dinner. $7 all you can eat spaghetti/garlic bread/potato salad/cookies/juice. Then back home. Grace and Dmitry showed me a youtube video of a giant octopus capturing and eating a shark and explained that she had been a little apprehensive when we encountered the octopus last Sunday.

May 20 Wednesday: Dmitry and I went to the base to help get the boat in the water. We arrived at 7:30am just in time to find out the crane was not going to be there until later in the day. We unloaded all the material and supplies that Dmitry is taking on the second part of this trip to Yap and Palau, then he had to leave to return the van that we had borrowed. Mac and I kept working on a few odds and ends. At nearly one we had lunch at a restaurant on the base with a view of the marina and Mac's boat. At two o'clock the crane showed up, but the crew immediately left for lunch themselves. An hour later they were back and with eight guys of our own we set about the artful maneuvering of the boat to its natural habitat. Much like the cows and horses I have seen harnessed in and being helicoptered about in the Swiss alps, we ran eighteen inch straps under the front and back of the boat, got it hoisted 7 feet off the ground, did some touch up grinding and painting to the bottom of the hull, and swung the Spindrift out into the channel. Then with an improvised sling we set the main mast into place. All of this took a mere two and a half hours. Some of the guys had to take off after that, but a group of us sat around shooting the breeze. Mac was a happy man. At 7:45pm when we still had not been able to contact Dmitry, Mac offered to drive me to their place. He has never been there and I have been on the island all of 5 days, but I knew enough landmarks so that we made it there (not by the shortest route, but we made it there directly, without getting off course once). Grace and Dmitry arrived about a half an hour later.

May 21 Thursday: Again, Dmitry had to do a number of other errands, but Chris Carmen, who is going on the second leg of the trip with Dmitry, had arrived the day before, so the two of us headed for the base and more work on the boat. Deanne, who also lives at the marina gave us a team of four and together we got the rigging straightened out, attached the sails and jig, and moved the boat over to her normal berth. This necessitated hoisting me up the main and mizzen masts to attach and tighten cables and other little tasks. So I was 50 feet in the air velcroed to a chair and a winch. Good thing I'm not afraid of heights. Eventually, when Chris's wife got off work at the clinic, she picked the two of us up and they gave me a ride to Talofofo.

May 22 Friday: The boat I am on is the Spindrift, a 44 foot ketch with two sails and a jig. It is capable of running a spinnaker but the spinnaker pole is not currently on board. There are 8 rigging lines on the main mast and six on the mizzen mast. Based on it's weight distribution the boat is supposed to right itself within two minutes if a capsize situation were to occur. The sailboat weights approximately 15 tons and does have a diesel engine for times when the wind is too calm for sails alone. When the engine is running it is called motor sailing. There is an on board short wave radio for communications, it has autopilot and gps as navigation features. This particular boat has two cabins and places for two more to sleep in the galley.

We got up at 4:30am to make sure we could set sail as close to 6 as possible. We ended up leaving at nearly 7 after waiting for a couple other people to show up. I got a brief lesson on manning the helm and logged nearly three hours throughout the day steering our craft. Not particularly difficult, I just had to keep us on a single heading and aim for the western side of Rota, which was visible nearly from the start of our sail. I did manage to overtake another sailboat while at the helm and that was exciting. They had left an hour before us. I also managed to squeeze in a couple hours of sleep down in the galley. When we neared Rota, a bull mahimahi bit on one of our lines. After a brief battle to reel him in (during which I unfortunately drained my camera battery trying to get video of it jumping out of the water and made me miss some amazing shots later in the weekend), Charles, one of the crew, hauled it on board, but the feisty and absolutely gorgeous fish had enough strength left to get free of the hook and over the side rails, back to the sea. Half the crew were dismayed at that because they were looking forward to grilling on the dock at Rota, but Eli and Dmitry both had secretly wished it would get away and were quite happy. I'm glad we got to get such a close look at it, but also glad it got away. The seas were very calm, too calm for this boat. It operates most efficiently at a wind speed quite a bit higher than the 6 knots we were getting. Since we were not officially racing, we motor sailed most of the way. That means we had our sails out and the diesel engine running as well. We pulled into the Rota harbor at 5 pm and made it through immigration and customs. While that was going on we watched a local spear an octopus that was in the harbor. The octopus waited until the last minute to use his ink defense, but it was not enough. That was interesting to see. The octopus itself was quite small, especially compared to the one we saw snorkeling a few days ago.

Grace, who had flown up to Rota, picked us up and brought us to Pastor Ondap's house. We had time to shower, change and eat before evening vespers with the Rota SDA company. There are about 20 members and most were there this evening. There used to be approximately 5000 people living on Rota, but that number is down to 4000 due to the economy. Many of them have returned to homes overseas after coming to Rota to work. There are many closed businesses. The island is known as “The Home of the Hand Wavers”, because nearly everyone waves to each other as they pass on the roads.

May 23 Sabbath: I got up at 6:30 to review my lesson, since I have the privilege of teaching it this morning. We had breakfast of fresh papaya, WHOLE fried local fish (not pretty to look at, but the meat was pretty good, just not very much of it), and hot chocolate. This is a true home church. You have to walk through the Ondap's kitchen to get to the living room/chapel. The group is getting ready to celebrate their fifth year of existence at the end of June. They also have a tradition of taking a group picture at the end of the service. This ends up on a bulletin board and also in the bulletin for the next weeks service. I kept a couple copies of the bulletin since our names are in it. Originally, Chris Carmen had been planning to come with us. If that had happened I would have only done the mission story and he would have done the lesson study, but I got to do both in his absence. They also had me do prayers a number of times during Friday and Sabbath, since I was the tallest person on the island. The lesson was about Rest/Sabbath and the discussion was lively. Dmitry preached on the Ultimate Gift, Grace had special musics, and then we had a potluck. Half the dishes had fish in them. I think like most of Asia, Micronesians consider fish to be a vegetable. The pastor was planning on loaning us his car for the afternoon, but another church member borrowed it and did not return until after dark. So, eventually the pastor himself took us to visit Kristina, a German woman whom Grace and Dmitry befriended on previous trips to Rota. Kristina's husband Kurt, is currently bringing a sailboat from LA to Hawaii, and eventually out to Rota. They have carved out a beautiful homestead/oasis in the jungle. They have a large garden, chickens, solar and wind power, wonderful landscaping and views and a practical and cozy home. And it is almost all their own handiwork.She would later tell us some of the travails they have experienced getting to this point. In Rota (as with a number of other foreign countries) non locals cannot own property and that makes for very sticky negotiations, especially given the levels of corruption in the government here. Everything is stacked in the locals favor and they are looking for ways to take advantage of anyone coming to this island from businesses to individuals. They do not understand how it is ultimately shooting themselves in the foot to continue these practices, but it was wonderful to see what this couple have created there. They also are world travelers and spent a number of years doing so by boat. She was highly recommending the Mt. Hagan festivals in PNG for while I am there.

May 24 Sunday: We got up early to go to the bird sanctuary. From a vantage point high on a cliff you can see the birds in the trees below. As they woke up and started flying, we could spot terns, red-footed and brown boobys, white tail tropicbirds, and others. There are frigatebirds in the area, but we did not see any in flight or identifying themselves by puffing up the signature red airbags on their throats. We returned to the Ondap's for a breakfast of watermelon, papaya, lima beans, chard, and hot chocolate. Then Dmitry, Grace and I took the car and went to Honey Garden, another beautiful site sometimes used for weddings. It has lots of lush landscaping, a visitor center, a private beach and section of reef, some caves, etc. Just a nice place to come and relax. We had the place to ourselves and set about snorkeling. Our top sightings included a 5 ft black tip shark, two giant clams (still in the 1 – 2 ft size range, one with red colorations and one with black), an intricate red and green nudibranch (I wish I had an underwater camera right then especially), and a brilliant blue crab with internet tron guy-like patterning. We swam into a nice cool grotto and found a couple 'hot tubs', where the receding tide and the sun had made for some very warm pools. One sad thing was discovering a starving puppy in the museum/visitor center. Dmitry had told me that one of his favorite dogs in the whole world lived at that site and this was obviously one of her puppies. He had no food or water and ate five bananas when we tried to get him to eat something. Just before we left, a man came and said the dog was his daughter's, that she was away, and that he was checking in on it. But he did not bring any food with him, so I guess, checking in means letting it starve.

Near Honey Garden are several old Japanese gun installations, including one with a large cannon that still swivels to cover a large portion of the Rota Harbor and south end of the island. We returned to the Ondaps for a late lunch of fruit smoothies, mung bean sprouts, sweet potatoes, brown rice, and fried breadfruit and bananas. It was very good and I was completely stuffed. After taking a short nap, we went to a viewpoint above Songsong village and then to the TongaTonga cave, a large cave in the cliff below the Songsong village viewpoint. It has been turned into a series of Catholic shrines. On the way Dmitry gave a ride to a Filipina hitchhiker and invited her to the SDA church.Then we went to the marina to find out our schedule for Monday morning and the party for the evening. All the participants in the race get together for a celebration and we were invited. It was in the beautiful home of a couple Americans, complete with artifacts from around the world and a lush atrium in the center of the home. The glow of the lights from Guam was clearly visible and the Southern Cross stood out in the night sky. We mingled, had finger foods, and eventually more substantial food and had a pleasant evening. We left just before 10 mainly because our hosts, the Ondaps, are in their 70's and go to bed early, so we did not want to be locked out and have to wake them.

May 25 Monday Memorial Day. All the boats left the Rota harbor by 6:45 and the race was underway by 7am. But before that we were treated to a bag breakfast by the Rota islanders. This was an insane amount of food: 2 oranges, 2 bananas, 3 egg salad sandwiches, a dozen sugar cookies (minus the sugar), 8 rolls, about a dozen papaya and mango turnovers, and a half dozen hard boiled eggs. EACH. I ate the fruit, some rolls, the awesome turnovers, a couple cookies and an egg. I saved the egg salad for later. The seas were even more calm than on Friday and while we planned on truly sailing back, two hours in, our captain threw in the towel and we started motor sailing. We were in last place and over the course of the day we passed every single other boat, save two that had motor sailed right from the beginning. Two smaller boats that were running spinnakers were doing a tremendous job almost matching our pace under wind power alone. They were the only two boats that did come back under wind power. Since we are returning from a foreign port everyone has to be run through customs and if you do not make it to the customs checkpoint by 6pm you have to stay on board your vessel til the next morning. Nobody wants that, so most of the other boats eventually kicked on their motors, and the bulk of the boats came in a cluster around 5 pm.

Dmitry has been talking about divine appointments and we had several over the weekend, including the hitchhiker on Sunday. But the most interesting one was one of our crew members, Charles. He has Jewish ancestry, but was raised in a marginally Catholic household. On the sail to Rota he had asked some questions and deduced that Dmitry and I were Adventist. He has an Adventist coworker, but had always felt awkward asking this person about what we believe. So given this opportunity, he asked many questions. He said that he had had the impression that we are 'a hyper legalistic' church and that we, through our conversations on diet and other topics, did not fit that idea. He said he had through independent study come to the conclusion that Sabbath should not have been changed to Sunday and he invited Dmitry to his home for followup study.