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Editor's Note: We received the following log and pictures from Cabot and Heidi on their second circumnavigation around the world aboard CHEWINK, their Seguin 49 which Cabot built in 1987 and has sailed 52,000 miles. Starting from Maine in the summer of 1999, the current segment depicts their voyage through the South Pacific from the Society Islands to Fiji. If you have questions for Cabot and Heidi about their voyage, or would like to share similar experiences, just click Cabot's Link. |
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CLICK PICTURE TO ENLARGE |
SOCIETY ISLANDS |
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July 7, 2001 |
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| WESTERN SAMOA | |
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August 26 As we picked up our anchor, Frankie a local pearl farmer, delivered a bucketful of lobsters. Lobster salad, lobster Newburg, and lobster pasta are all great food to Western Samoa. Don’t confuse Western Samoa with Pago Pago of American Samoa, a polluted disaster in a tragically beautiful harbor. Enjoy your next can of tuna. These tuna companies make the oil companies look like environmental angels. The seven-day trip to Western Samoa (1040 miles) was a mixed bag with four days of great sailing and three days of motoring. Full moon and starry nights. Not bad!! CHEWINK was running really well after all these miles. |
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September 3 This is the start of the Teuila Festival and we have arrived just in time to see the beginning. The town of Apia is an old colonial town with many of the original buildings still being used. Being the crossroads of the Pacific, Samoa has a colorful history, but best of all is the adherence to their traditional customs. We had a great week seeing them celebrate their traditional dances, music, and competitions. Every day we woke up to seven 50-man canoes rowing to a war drum in the stern of each boat. Shortly after they finished, the police band would march along the waterfront to raise the Samoan flag. We had a front row seat. Apia is a good anchorage and the town has good facilities for our dinghies. After Papeete it was nice to be welcomed. What great luck to be here this week with the festival. But the Robert Louis Stevenson house, Vailima, was the most interesting with its great museum of old pictures. Samoa is a beautiful Pacific Island with lush, high hills, and great beaches. The houses they live in (Bures) are completely open, no sides, just pandanas shades to pull down if it rains. As you walk or drive through a village you can see everything that is going on inside. They pile up their bedding (mostly just mats) in one corner with a bureau or two and leave the floor completely free of anything except the straw mats they sit and rest on -- very simple and attractive. For such a well-known place, there are not a lot of tourists. |
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| TONGA | |
| SEPTEMBER 11!!!! | |
| We awoke to a message on our Iridium phone from our oldest son, Zach saying they were all OK. As we began to realize what had happened, he called to tell us he was with his two brothers in San Francisco having left NYC two days earlier. To hear their voices as it dawned on us what was occurring has made this new phone invaluable. In a state of shock, we lifted our anchor and sailed off to Niuatoputapu in northern Tonga 160 miles to the south. A beautiful night and almost perfect sail with a 12 knot breeze just forward of the beam listening to the radio all night not bothering to sleep. We arrived feeling very displaced and removed wanting to give support, and get some, and be home. We really missed everyone. Our friends on RENEGADE, Paul and Natalie, have been with us off and on since Panama. They finally got their long waterline working for them and sailed faster than we did. My excuse was that I was listening to the radio too much, but in actuality, Paul has his boat sailing well. It was nice to have some company that night. | |
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September 12 |
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| FIJI |
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September 25, 2001 We have tired in the last seven months and the events of Sept 11th have changed us all. We realized that this leg of our journey was over and it was time to go home. We simply were not giving our best effort. So off to Fiji (425 miles) on our fastest sail in the Pacific so far. With 25-30 knot winds on our stern for some very good sailing. We made our landfall at Savu Savu in Northeastern Fiji on the island of Vanua Levu. I broke all the rules and made a night entrance after we heard the light marking the reef entrance was indeed working (they often are not). Radar, GPS, and a new chart program on the computer makes this sound easy, but in the Pacific the charts all date back to Capt. Cook and can be inaccurate. The GPS is correct, but the land is not quite where the chart says it is. A night landing with 30 knots of wind driving into the entrance is not the smartest thing to do, but as usual, radar proved to be the most valuable tool and we had no problems. Rounding up inside the reef and sailing into a flat calm under the hills with the smells of the flowers and trees we realized we had found a special area. A very well protected harbor next to a nice town that has all the cruiser needs. What a treat when you are a bit tired. I slept there better than anywhere in the Pacific. We were now away from the "herd". Only five cruisers here beginning and finishing voyages from all directions in contrast to 87 boats in Neiafu, the main town of the Vavau group in Tonga. Fiji has two ethnic groups that rarely mix -- the East Indians, brought here by the English as indentured servants to harvest sugar cane, and the native Fijians. The Indians control a good part of the economy and the Fijians own most of the land. With an even split in population and a military that is completely controlled by the Fijians, there are a lot of injustices and political problems. The effect it had on us was nil, as both cultures are very friendly. The Fijians are naturally friendly and the Indians realize we are a source of business. In many ways Fiji is an easier place to visit than French Polynesia because they are not living on a subsidized economy. Businesses have to survive in the real world and people live on a more realistic basis. There are some world-class dive sites here so we hooked up with a professional dive operation at the Cousteau Resort and took the twenty-mile ride to the most spectacular dive I have been on. Incredible soft coral in vivid colors. October 7 Rob on CAVIAR (we have seen these Australian circumnavigators off and on since Maine) warned me about Savu Savu saying it was too easy for cruisers and some get stuck here too long. So we decided to leave and head toward Malolo Lailai to give us time to get the boat ready to sail to New Zealand and do some maintenance in preparation for leaving her in New Zealand when we go home. From now on we have only day sails to western Fiji so we dropped down to an old leper colony called Makogai pronounced Makongai (Fijians always sound "N" before the "G"). We had heard one cruiser stayed here for six weeks, a lovely harbor with an aquaculture research station growing clams and turtles. An interesting place that is losing its funding and falling into disrepair. There are two settlements here with all the abandoned buildings and interesting history of the leper colony for a good part of the Pacific. It closed in 1969. October 11 Ovalau on Levuka, 15 miles from Makogai, has been declared a historical district being the original capital with a beautiful collection of brightly painted buildings. The town is well worth a longer visit with its history as the center for colonial plantation owners, but we had good weather and wanted to cross the fifty miles of reefs and shoals in good light. The northern shores of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu have extensive reef systems with inside passages which are unexpectedly quite well marked. Over we went to the northeastern corner motoring through the reefs and into a nice anchorage at Nananu-I Ra near several backpacker resorts. October 15 After several days of diving and hiking, we continued behind the reefs and motored to the west end of Viti Levu with a lot of wind behind us all day. Not finding an acceptable anchorage near Lautoka, the second largest city in Fiji, we stopped into our first marina since Panama, Vuda (pronounced Vunda) Point Marina. We had heard about this new facility, but were pleasantly surprised to find a clean pleasant basin that is becoming a crossroads for a lot of voyagers. Two travel lifts and a good town to get work done, this is the starting and ending point for cruisers going and coming from north or south of the equator, west to Australia and Vanuatu, or south to New Zealand -- an independent group with a lot of interesting voyages. November 17 We caught the plane from Nadi in Fiji for a direct flight to LA -- a change of plans! We found we could be home a month earlier by storing the boat on the hard in Vuda Point Marina so when our friend Chuck ended up under his horse and could not join us for the trip to New Zealand, we decided to stay in Fiji. CHEWINK is now stored on-the-hard in a pit with tires all around her to hold her up. We are looking forward next season in Fiji and will drop down to NZ in November 2002, a year later than planned. |
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