April 12 – May 5, 2025

How do you become #1?

Well if you’re SV Exit, it’s certainly not by entering a race. Speed is definitely not one of our distinguishing qualities; nor something we particularly give a shit about. In fact, the whole concept of mashing in amongst a massive horde of sailboats struggling desperately to get past everyone else to reach the front of the pack has never held much appeal to us. Much appeal…who am I kidding? The idea ranks right up there with volunteering to be a proctology exam training model.

The path less traveled…the one where you don’t see anyone either in front of or behind you. Now that’s more up our alley.

As it turns out, if you depart the Kingdom of Tonga heading in exactly the opposite direction of mostly every other sailboat in the South Pacific…spend four and half months as pretty much the only sailboat in the tiny country of Tuvalu…and then sail back south nearly five hundred nautical miles before the cyclone season officially ends…there’s an excellent chance that you will be the first boat of the year to clear into Wallis and Futuna. And that’s exactly what happened. Exit…#1.

But that’s jumping a bit ahead in the story.

In some circumstances, threatening gray skies facing us and a distinct lack of wind, as was the case departing from Tuvalu, could be due cause for concern. But we were ready to go, regardless of the situation. If we were fortunate enough that the weather forecasts we had carefully studied were correct, the rains would be minimal and short lived, and we would find good wind for sailing a bit to the east.

Exit’s trajectory would carry us between four and five hundred nautical miles back to Wallis and Futuna, the country we had briefly passed through on our way to Tuvalu in November.

A forecasted north wind that was supposed to materialize a bit east of Tuvalu sent us initially heading in what appeared to be an odd direction. The plan of action – motor east for a short period instead taking a more direct route that would force us to motor for even longer in the long run. After nine hours, that strategy paid off as a north wind actually came to fruition. We finally were able to shut off the diesel engine and sail through the night under the brilliant visibility of a full moon.

Just as we were crossing the International Date Line at 180° Longitude, a big squall passed over us, unleashing a torrent of rain and forcing us to sail under a double reefed main with only a scrap of our solent sail unfurled.

After a wet night, we were treated to a calm day of respectable boat speed and very little motoring.

The choice to leave Tuvalu two weeks before the official end of cyclone season had not been a haphazard, reckless, or senseless decision. It had, however, been quite impulsive and spontaneous. We never regretted our choice to spend the cyclone season in Tuvalu. For the most part, everyone we encountered had been very good to us and our experiences had been positive. We very much appreciated being allowed to extend our stay. And yet, it was time to go.

After four and a half months, we had simply reached our limit.

It was questionable if our propane would last much longer. Our provisions were still holding up but we were having to get much more selective and our choices were diminishing. Our dive compressor was suddenly out of commission. Our wind sensor was dead. Our fresh water pumps were on their last legs. We were tired of drinking shitty boxed wine (back in Panama during the COVID lockdown, we had gotten used to drinking a marginal boxed wine called “Clos“. We would joke that it wasn’t even good wine but it was “Clos”. Now the joke was not only was this boxed wine not good…it wasn’t even “Clos”).

Even more maddening was Funafuti’s Town Council, whose permission we now needed in order to move due of the misbehavior of one boat prior to our arrival, which had now completely ghosted us. This was undoubtably the most frustrating part of our current situation. In the end, those jerks on that catamoron, as well as the Town Council, turned out to be the only ones that we really felt deserved to be archived in the asshole column.

The list of grievances really wasn’t that long. But, if we stuck around, we’d just start to wallow in self-pity.

Our utter and complete failure to have our dive compressor parts, masthead wind indicator sensor, and replacement freshwater pumps successfully shipped to us in Tuvalu had proven to be the proverbial final nail in the coffin. Though we had already paid over US$350 in shipping costs, the levels of frustration we experienced after learning DHL couldn’t get the package any closer than Fiji for the next month was calamitous. Nothing could be more annoying, vexing, irritating, exasperating, infuriating…all of the above.

Oh…wait. It turns out I’m completely wrong on that.

Before clearing out of Tuvalu, we had been assured by DHL that our package – the one that had already been sitting on a pallet in Fiji for three weeks – would remain in Fiji so we could pick it up there once we had arrived. Then, a mere twenty four hours after we had cleared out and departed Tuvalu, we received a subsequent email from DHL. It stated, “We are happy to inform you that your package has just been delivered to Tuvalu!” Oh, those fuckers. I thought Kris was going to have a stroke right there in the cockpit.

Fortunately, instead of throwing her iPhone overboard, she contacted DHL once again, for what must have been the thirty eighth time, and avoided directly calling them the dumbasses that they were; instead, managing to maintain enough composure to arrange the logistics of having the damn box returned BACK to Fiji. Holy shit!

It was water under the bridge. Now we were underway. Tuvalu was behind us and the situation with DHL was out of our hands. The only thing that mattered was keeping Exit sailing in the right direction…and enjoying the freedom of being sailors on the open sea.

Kris drew the short straw on the second evening when relentless rains coincided with her overnight watch in the cockpit. However, the beautiful conditions which accompanied the following day more than made up for the previous night.

Even better, midway through the following afternoon, Kris suddenly jumped up and enthusiastically called out, “FRIENDS!” A pod of dolphins had found us and, until they decided we were simply not moving fast enough, seemed content to dart back and forth playing just in front of our bow wake.

A person would be quite hard pressed to find a better way to occupy one’s day.

An extraordinary day nestled between bright blue skies and an intense shade of indigo seas in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean, with nothing more than the wind filling our mainsail and dual headsails to move us along at five to seven knots of speed, complete with a lengthy visit from dolphins…how do you top that?

Why, of course…with a barbecue on deck in fifteen thousand feet of water!

The fading light ushering in an Oceania sunset only seemed to put an exclamation mark at the end of a near perfect day.

The following morning was equally stunning as the dawn of a new day arrived. It had been our first dry night of the passage. Still, we were treated to an early morning rainbow, compliments of a squall we had apparently miraculously avoided.

By afternoon of our third day underway, it had been twenty four hours since we had seen any rain. Though at times we could still see the ominous cloud banks of squalls stacked up on the horizon in various directions, it appeared we were now successfully threading the needle between them.

Our progress, slow but steady, was actually much faster than we had expected. We had expected the passage to take at least four days, possibly as many as six.

Now after seventy two hours, having just completed three days at sea, we only had ninety nine nautical miles remaining to reach Wallis. Even creeping along, we would make it before sunset the following day…the best case scenario we could have hoped for.

Unfortunately, just before midnight the wind died completely and the engine had to be fired up.

As the sands of the previous day’s hourglass ran out, I watched as the screen of our depth meter suddenly began registering numbers again instead of the dashed lines we had been seeing for days (our depth sensor display reads “—” once we are over depths of anywhere from four to seven hundred feet, depending on the water clarity and possible influence of thermoclines).

This change in depth was due to the fact that we were just passing over the Waterwitch Bank. For two hours I watched the display on our depth sensor fluctuate between one hundred sixty and as little as ninety feet. A bit disconcerting, knowing the depths under Exit’s hull had been between ten and fifteen thousand feet only a short time ago.

Less than a mile away, our chart indicated that the Waterwitch Bank, literally a three thousand foot tall stone needle of a pinnacle atop a ten thousand foot underwater peak, reached up to within sixty five feet of the surface! A depth suitable even for beginning scuba divers to reach.

Had the sun been up, with no wind and Exit sitting calmly adrift, we could have had one of those ultra rare chances to done our scuba gear and see what exactly was hidden just below the surface hundreds of miles from land. After all…incredible mysteries abound in the vast ocean just waiting to be discovered.

A hidden coral oasis? A secret cleaning station for mantas or thresher sharks or oceanic white tips? A mound of empty sand?

Alas…another one of Neptune’s secrets would remain intact. In the middle of the ocean, in the middle of the night, even with a nearly full moon above us, we would not be attempting a dive. Instead, with a slight sense of melancholy, we motored on. Wallis was now only about fifty miles in front of us.

The nearly full moon far outshone any potential glow from lights that normally would have revealed Wallis in the night’s darkness. However, as the eastern horizon began to redden with the coming of the rising sun, through binoculars we could barely start to make out the outline of Wallis’ lights on the horizon as we approached within twenty miles.

By 6am, the dark shadow of Wallis was looming just over the horizon line, right in front of us. Land ho!

The only channel into the atoll large enough for Exit to safely pass through lies on the south side, which meant we had to sail the length of Wallis from north to south just outside the reef before navigating through the channel. Once inside the atoll we had to wind our way back north past reefs and bommies for nearly ten miles, along the main island of Uvéa, until reaching the main town of Matā’utu, where we could anchor in front of the nearby island of Íle Fungalei to clear in. A bit of a roundabout, but what can you do?

We had returned. And this time, we were the first sailboat of 2025 to arrive in Wallis and Futuna…Boat #1!

Even though our grasp of the French language was still limited to merely a handful of words, this time around we knew the procedures, which made clearing in a breeze.

While at the Gendarmerie (French police station), we also learned that the Wallis and Futuna military, as well as local police, were coordinating week long exercises that would commence in a couple of days. The country’s two naval warships, as well as military planes, and some visiting vessels would be present and busy over the following week. Various scenarios, including natural disasters and other undisclosed simulations, would be run for training purposes.

Our previous visit had been too brief to sort out a car rental in order to explore the island, but this time we were motivated to make it happen. We got a recommendation from the immigration officer of where to go and went there straight away after clearing in. Our timing was impeccable. We were informed that come Friday, every rental vehicle had already been reserved for the upcoming military training exercises and would be unavailable for a week. Today was Wednesday. Which left tomorrow wide open for rentals…perfect.

The car rental adventure took us past stunning architectural examples of Wallis and Futuna’s obvious dedication to their churches as well as beautiful scenery which stretched alongside the handful of paved roads connecting Uvéa’s individual communities together. Over the course of the day, we found many more back roads…

…and eventually even outback trails.

Without managing to completely lose our way, become the victims of a flat tire, or experience a mechanical failure, we eventually stumbled across something we had truly been missing out on for the better part of the last five months…pampered civilization.

Between the rental car and spoiling ourselves at the restaurant/bar, the day had been an unequivocal success. Worth every penny…or more accurately, every franc.

Many more francs were then spent over the course of the next few days as we restocked our lockers with the decadent supplies we had depleted since our last visit to Wallis.

Finally, after trips to the fuel station, hardware store, and multiple grocery stores, our fuel jerry cans were topped up and Exit’s lockers were back to brimming.

As the day wound down, we found time to enjoy one of Wallis’ stunning and serene sunsets.

The culmination of our days of hard work included a return into town to reward ourselves for another successfully completed mission of reprovisioning…with a pizza to go. On the way back to the causeway we happened across an outside evening celebration and Easter service at the church which delayed us long enough to result in a dinghy trip back to Exit in total darkness.

The following day, the bay became abuzz with activities as the military training exercises commenced which included fly-bys, paratroopers leaping out of planes, and apparently even plane crash simulations ashore.

We found ourselves even being buzzed directly overhead multiple times by one of the military’s planes.

At the moment, we were anchored just off of the pair of islands called Fungalei and Luaniva, about a mile away from the main town of Matā’utu. Despite having been assured by the very helpful and friendly officers at the Gendarmerie that we would be okay anchoring at our current location, we weren’t exactly sure how busy things would get once the two navy warships currently tied off on the commercial dock started moving about.

The following day, both navy ships motored away to the south. They ended up spending most of the time at the south end of the atoll, where we had considered moving to in order to avoid all the action. It turned out we had chosen well to stay put.

While talking to the officers at the Gendarmerie during the process of clearing in, we had half joked that we would be happy to hail the military via our VHF radio with a simulated mayday distress call if they wanted to add that “surprise exercise” into the itinerary. At the time, they had laughed at the idea, but not taken us up on the offer.

Which is why we were quite flabbergasted when a “Sécurité, sécurité, sécurité” hail came out over the VHF the evening that the navy ships had headed south.

“Sécurité” is the lowest priority of three main international maritime safety calls, generally considered a communication used to announce potential dangers to other vessels regarding navigational hazards or weather warnings. The other two,”Mayday” and “Pan-Pan”, are requests for assistance, largely differentiated by their degree of urgency. “Mayday” is a distress call for immediate help indicating an imminent danger or a life-threatening emergency situation versus “Pan-Pan”, which is a less urgent distress call indicating that help is requested but the situation is not immediately life threatening nor is the vessel sinking.

The “Sécurité” had been issued by a group of Australians aboard a sport fishing power trawler that had arrived at Wallis a couple of days before. We listened as one of the navy ships answered, asking if the vessel required assistance. Apparently this was no simulation. The Australians indicated they had actually run aground on the reef just inside the atoll’s entrance pass. Eventually, they were able to get off the reef later that night without assistance once the tide had risen. No life threatening emergency but definitely some evening drama. Sometimes the VHF radio provides more entertainment than any television could.

We later learned they had run aground simply because the helmsman had been focused entirely on watching the chart plotter instead of looking out the window at what the boat was actually doing. Currents inside the pass had spun them around a bit in the narrow channel, and before anyone realized what was happening, the helmsman had motored straight onto the reef…the price they paid was a bent prop shaft. Duh.

The following day we took the dinghy to an area we had never explored, located behind Íle Fungalei and Íle Luaniva where we were currently anchored. The small blue hole we found provided the best snorkeling we had experienced in half a year. Actual live coral again. Woohoo!

Considering all the military activity in the main bay, as well as the great snorkeling and fabulous above water views in the new location we had just stumbled across, we were instantly sold on moving Exit. We anchored near a tiny island called Nukuhifala…

…where we found ourselves enjoying a postcard perfect view at anchor.

During a trip ashore to Nukuhifala, we discovered that the island was completely uninhabited. The only structure was an open air church of some sort. Immaculately clean, it was obviously visited regularly, but was simply a large area for occasional gatherings without any additional rooms or facilities.

It would be a week before we picked up anchor again.

Finally, we decided it was time. Not only to raise anchor at our current location, but to move on in general. There were only two days remaining in the month of April. We had spent two weeks in Wallis without even a raised eyebrow regarding potential bad weather. Cyclone season was at the brink of ending and we had been looking forward to reaching Fiji for over a year.

We returned to anchor at Íle Fungalei, where we were only a mile from the town and could finish any last minute provisioning before setting out. We had hoped it might be possible to fill our three propane tanks in Wallis, one which was completely empty and two which were down to fumes. However, just as in Tuvalu, the fittings that connect to the tank for filling were not compatible with our tanks. Even our attempt to gravity fill the tank in Tuvalu had not worked. We then learned that there was a larger industrial propane facility at the south end of the island that could possibly help us out.

Thankfully, the immigrations and customs officials were more than happy to allow us to go through our clearing out process a few days in advance with the understanding that we would be stopping down there before actually departing Wallis. This is not typical, as often times a boat is expected to depart immediately after the clearing out process has been completed. Even a twenty-four hour grace period is unusual.

We finished our final preparations and prepared to clear out.

During some last minute provisioning, I discovered a magical sandwich in one of the grocery stores, loaded with French fries. I had first gotten hooked on fish sandwiches laced with French fries in Moorea, French Polynesia over twenty years ago. This one was chicken, but the memory still got me salivating.

There was no way this sandwich was ever going to make it back to the boat. I proceeded to scarf half of it next to the Wallis post office. The other half only made it a couple hundred yards further. As good as it was, I couldn’t resist the pleading eyes of a very friendly dog who also seemed to find the sandwich irresistible. We finished the other half just off the causeway before returning to our dinghy with our last load of provisions. Mmmmmm.

Aside from our quick detour to Halalo with the hopes of getting either propane or butane into our tanks, we had only to clear out officially with the authorities.

The customs office right there at the end of the causeway was easy enough to deal with; the immigration officials arrived in a vehicle, saving us an extended walk, and stamped our passports right on the bench outside the customs office. Easy enough.

Regrettably, the propane/butane fill turned out not nearly so simple. We struck out again at the Halalo facility. Shit outta luck. No compatible fittings. All we could do was hope we had another few days worth of cooking gas left in the tank.

There was close to four hundred nautical miles separating us from Savusavu, Fiji where we would need to clear in. About three days time, if all went well.

We expected mostly fifteen to twenty knot winds with some potential squalls but nothing too nasty. A bit sporty maybe. And there would be no full moon as we had seen between Tuvalu and Wallis. In fact, only a sliver of a crescent moon, so we’d either get a great show of stars or disconcerting blackness.

If you’re Steve…how do you celebrate the finale of a brilliant return visit to Wallis? But of course – a bacon sandwich to build up strength for the process of getting underway…

…followed by BBQ ribs at sea. We had never hauled out the barbecue while actually underway before our passage from Tuvalu to Wallis. Now it seemed as though it may be turning into a bit of ritual or tradition. Oh dear…

That evening, a calm sunset under sail seemed to reflect a good omen of a smooth passage to come. Hopefully, both Neptune and Poseidon would be in agreement.

As it turned out…maybe not entirely.

Our first night turned out bouncy and uncomfortable. Not too wet but constantly threatening squalls loomed all around us. As well, the sea state had not been unreasonable, with only about six or seven foot swells; but the short interval between waves, directly on our beam, had made things much less pleasant. Throughout a pitch black night, we had been sailing with a double reefed main and only a scrap of solent sail unfurled. We welcomed the first light of the coming morning.

However, the dawn also revealed a rather foreboding cloud bank on the horizon, so dark it seemed to actually create a barrier between the morning sun and the water beneath it.

Though the sun’s golden glow slowly forced its way underneath the harsh line of the cloud’s black underbelly, the cloud itself remained an ominous gray as it quickly bore down on us from behind.

Within fifteen minutes, the cloud bank passed directly overhead, and a vicious squall dumped what seemed like wheelbarrow loads of rain on top of us. Our boat speed, which had been a meager three knots at the time, instantly jumped to over nine knots as forty knot winds whipped up. Thankfully, we had seen the menacing clouds in the distance, and had not put up more sails at first light. We altered course so we were running dead downwind with the squall. For a time, it was a hell of a ride. Still, fortunately no damage was incurred.

Twelve hours later, we reflected back on a day that had started with absolute chaos but eventually settled into a rolly though chilled out day without additional drama.

The second evening, by comparison, was a brilliant night of sailing: consistent winds, good conditions, no squalls, magnificent starry skies, and no motoring. To top it off, we each got a comfortable and sound six hours of sleep.

Depending on conditions, circumstances and sometimes events, our night watches are typically four hours on, four hours off. A short watch (say, only two hours) is nice for the person on watch, but unfortunately means a meager rest for the person who is off. A couple of hours of sleep is rarely satisfying or rejuvenating, especially while on passage. It’s always a trade off.

In great conditions, the long watch doesn’t seem so significant and the other person gets a solid rest…the best situation you can hope for.

Midafternoon on May 4 we had been underway for forty-eight hours. With less than one hundred nautical miles remaining before arriving at Savusavu, Fiji, where we would clear in, we sailed past our first Fijian island. Fiji is ultra strict regarding boats not visiting an island or even anchoring in a bay before completing the official clearing in process. Violating this restriction is basically begging for a lot of grief, or even grounds for being either refused entry or immediately deported. We were content to only take photo as we passed by from a distance and keep sailing on.

As night approached, we began constantly calculating our speed against the distance remaining, hoping to time our arrival at Savusavu to coincide with the light of day.

At exactly 21:12 we crossed 17°S latitude / 180° longitude. Though the actual calendar date adjustment for the international date line in this area occurs east of 180° and we were already a day ahead of those on the other side, it was still noteworthy that we were, at that moment, on exactly the opposite side of the Earth from the prime meridian and 0° longitude in Greenwich, England.

By 9:30pm, we were coming around the southern tip of Taveuni, approximately fifty nautical miles out from the marina. With about eight hours until sunrise, our timing would be perfect if we kept under six knots of speed. Since our average speed is typically closer to five knots, it seemed like a done deal.

The reality was, I don’t think we have ever had so much difficulty maintaining less than six knots. In fact, it seemed, even with the main sail still double reefed and the solent sail nearly entirely furled in, we were having trouble staying under even seven knots of speed. Inconveniently efficient, I guess. Go figure.

Our speed eventually slowed overnight and, by 6:00am, we were approaching the final point separating us from Savusavu Bay. Behind us, the skies above Taveuni Island looked as though they were on fire as the sun rose above the horizon line.

Two hours later we dropped the main sail and motored into Nakama Creek, just off of Savusavu.

A short time after that we were tied up on the clearance dock of Nawi Marina, where we were visited by a continually shifting entourage of smiling immigration, customs, and bio-security officials.

After a four hour process of waiting, then filling out various documents, then waiting for the next group of officials to arrive with more documents, the task of clearing in was complete.

Thirty minutes later Exit was secure in slip #16 and the end of pier #2. And while she may not have been as happy tethered to the dock cleats by a half dozen lines, we were ecstatic.

It had been exactly one year and four days since we had raised anchor and departed from Mexico…8,084 nautical miles travelled, stopping in 83 different locations across five countries. Nine and a half weeks (over 1600 hours) of that spent with the anchor up. A total of nearly 25,000 nautical miles over almost eight years aboard Exit.

And now, we had made it to Fiji.

December 5, 2024 – April 12, 2025

In spite of some of the grim realities we saw facing Tuvalu, both below water in the present tense and above water in the not-so-distant future tense, we had no regrets concerning the decision had made heading north to Tuvalu instead of south to New Zealand or Australia for the cyclone season.

Within a week of our arrival to Tuvalu, we found ourselves sitting at anchor between the motus Fualifeke & Pa‘ava – two tiny islands at the northern edge of Funafuti’s lagoon. Only a few built structures could be seen along the shoreline and, as far as we could tell, the combined population of both motus didn’t appear to exceed even ten people.

Merely a scattering of very benign looking white, puffy clouds separated the stunning blue skies from the equally stunning blue water, which currently was only slightly rougher than glassy calm.

Just to our west was the Funafuti Conservation Area. We were prohibited from anchoring the mothership in the area, but one day, we decided to make a long distance dinghy excursion to visit the postcard perfect island of Tengako, four nautical miles from where we were anchored.

Ominous clouds building in the distance forced us to cut our visit short, considering the distance we had traveled by dinghy. We returned to Exit under still friendly conditions and still found time to read on deck while monitoring the storm clouds in the distance.

Though the squall was short lived, it was still a shrewd reminder that sailors who live to a ripe old age do so only by constantly keeping an eye on the horizon. However, for the time being, even brief durations of grey skies and showers were rewarded with full water catch jugs and double rainbows.

Fualifeke & Pa‘ava turned out to be a spectacular area to anchor at. We had found a perfect sandy spot with great holding, didn’t feel like we were intruding on anyone else, and felt well protected both from most of the winds we were experiencing as well as the prevailing swell (except during the highest tides). Whether diving, snorkeling, or taking out the dinghy, there seemed to be lots of places to explore. And we could jump in the water at any time, without even considering the need for wetsuits.

When we had arrived in Wallis and Futuna, we were flabbergasted to learn we were only boat #35 (of 2024) to visit the country. In Tuvalu, they estimated we were maybe the fifteenth private vessel, and the year was almost over. Crazy.

During our first month in Tuvalu we found ourselves briefly having to share the country with two other sailboats. We had to laugh. Three sailboats in the entire country…it was starting to get a bit crowded. And yet, one of them still had to follow us up to Fualifeke & Pa‘ava and anchor right next to us. It never ceases to amaze us.

The week before Christmas we decided that it was time to move. Once the newest arrival, a catamoron, rolled in right next to the monohull that had already taken up residence beside us, we decided it was too damn crowded. It was one thing to have three boats in the country with us…but all in the same anchorage? Bullshit.

Since our arrival in Funafuti, we had only been north of the town of Vaiaku. It seemed a rather obvious choice that it was time to explore the southern reaches of the lagoon. We quietly picked up anchor and snuck away, keeping an eye behind us while hoping the current trajectory of Exit’s gray hull would be adequately camouflaged from prying eyes by the day’s gray skies.

We made a stopover in Vaiaku for some additional holiday provisions.

After a few days, we headed south and anchored just off the tiny uninhabited island of Funafara. There was a little village to the south of us (Funamoana Takutai), so we saw a fair amount of local small boat traffic going back and forth. But, aside from a friendly wave and smile as locals occasionally passed by, once again we found ourselves all alone.

During the previous months, we had noticed that Kris’ oh-so-precious SUP had developed a slow air leak. It was the primary means, without having to either burn petrol or get wet, by which Kris could get off the boat daily to stretch, get a bit of exercise, appreciate the lovely scenery, or simply enjoy the pleasure of being out of hearing range of me, so it was crucial that the SUP be healthy, operational, and available.

I could tell, when the air leak reached a point of severity where the SUP was floppy every morning and in need of a pump up before it could be put in the water, Kris was becoming VERY concerned. The level of distress that would result from an inability to distance herself from my presence at her discretion would not be tenable.

Though the potential risks of a fatality on the operating table were real, Kris agreed that a slow inevitable death was currently playing out, and an early surgery to try to save her beloved SUP was more likely to be successful than waiting until a catastrophic failure occurred.

Identifying the leaking area was not so difficult with a spray bottle of soapy water. Bubbles emanating out from under the foam in a few locations immediately gave away the locations of the problem spots. Getting under the foam without destroying it to facilitate a repair on the seams that were failing was a much less simple endeavor.

I undertook the task with the careful and delicate touch of a surgeon.

With every seam that was re-sealed, another leak revealed itself at a different location. Eventually, I had lifted the foam around the entire circumference of the seam, exposing everything which led to re-sealing it entirely.

What started as a minor repair turned into multiple major surgeries. The project had started during the first week of December. My hopes of having the SUP completely restored for Kris by Christmas were dashed when, by the 26th, the patient remained on the operating table still undergoing endless procedures.

While Christmas Eve at Tuvalu did not include making angels in the snow, decorating an evergreen tree, or a paddle on the SUP, we still managed to have an exceptionally happy holiday.

The day after Christmas we lifted anchor once again. This time we moved less than a mile to the north. Far enough to be next to a different tiny uninhabited island called Mateiko. This got us away from a shallow area of rock we had been anchored near that was a bit too close for our comfort, and closer to an area we had discovered that quickly became our favorite dive site. It was home to not only a few healthy bits of coral (which we learned, to make a drastic understatement, were far and few in between); but even more amazingly, apparently the only resident manta ray. To our delight, it seemed to seek us out every time we went for a dive there…fucking awesome.

Then, on January 3 of the new year, Kris’ cherished SUP arose from the salon operating table, alive. With assistance, it was slowly taken up on deck, pumped up with air, and lowered into the water.

Lo and behold, it floated!!!

For the first time in over a month, Kris went paddling away with an ear to ear grin on her face.

Sadly, the SUP’s duration of miraculous remission was short lived. Within a few days and a handful of paddle excursions, the telltale hissing and bubbles as the SUP was pulled out of the water returned…a relapse had occurred.

There was nothing that could be done. With very heavy hearts, we accepted the inevitable. Our next trip to the States would require the logistical nightmare of transporting a SUP as luggage during the return flight.

Until that time, I would have to be very careful of what political and social commentary I allowed to pass through my lips. I don’t sleep with one eye open and we were very isolated anyway. If I crossed Kris’ threshold of patience and tolerance, no one would ever hear me scream anyway.

We had been in Tuvalu just over one month. For us, both Christmas and New Years had been spent in isolated bliss. We were more than happy where we were. However, Mother Nature had other plans. The immediate weather forecasts warned that less than benign north and northwestern winds were on the way, carrying with them a likelihood of some pretty substantial rain.

Even though we were inside the lagoon, considering there was over ten miles of open water separating us from the north side of the atoll, once the winds picked up there was a very high likelihood that a shitload of fetch would build up. We did not want to be sitting down south on the receiving end of one to three foot waves when we had other options.

We headed back north to Fualifeke & Pa‘ava.

After a week of north winds with Exit nestled between Fualifeke & Pa‘ava, the winds shifted to northwest. We decided to move to the northwest corner of the lagoon, just outside the Conservation Area, trying to get better protection from the fetch which we expected to build with the change in wind direction.

It was a challenge to anchor in nearly eighty feet of water with the remnants of coral structures scattered everywhere, but we eventually were happy with the decision.

While we were hunkered down for the winds, additional disaster struck. This time it was mixer disaster…bad news for the bar.

As part of our “prepare for the Apocalypse provisioning” in Tonga, knowing we were headed for the edge of the world, we had stocked up on nearly two cases of tonic water. Upon reaching Tuvalu, we were happy for this moment of forethought. Apparently Tuvaluans don’t drink gin and tonics because there wasn’t a single can of tonic water for sale in any of the stores.

While gin and tonics may not be our absolute favorite go-to drink of choice, it certainly ranks among one of the five we’ll drink on any given night – yes, both one of the five we’ll choose from as well as one of the five cocktails we might choose to drink…hmmm.

And though we try to keep a healthy (or unhealthy) stock of tonic water within our mixer inventory, they seem to be the most at risk…not only of being consumed first, but also of leaking. Or worse yet…exploding.

I recall an ongoing mystery over a decade ago when we worked at Scuba Junkie on the tiny island of Mabul in Borneo, Malaysia. Unopened crates of mixer (usually tonic water) would occasionally be discovered in the store room with anywhere between a few and half of the cans partially to completely empty. We would have blamed the staff, except for the fact that the damn pull tabs were still completely intact. No holes could be found on any of the cans. It became an ongoing “What the fuck?” riddle that vexed us.

Years later, aboard Exit, the truth was finally revealed.

Aluminium cans do not like salt water environments at all. For some reason, if the cans come into contact with ANY salt water, they seem to be very susceptible to developing tiny pinholes which, obviously, is a calamity for said can’s contents. This can happen while en route to the grocery store (very hard to control or be aware of), between the store and our boat, or while being stored aboard the boat. These pinholes can be absolutely minute. So small that, in some cases, we have discovered a can of tonic that was only half full of liquid but still had retained its carbonation…go figure that one out. It seems to be a combination of the pathetically thin walls of cans (obviously a profit margin concern of beverage companies) and any salt water exposure.

For this reason, we wipe every aluminium can that we bring aboard the boat with a damp sponge. It seems to help immensely, but is by no means foolproof. If you’re smart, the cans are stored inside a plastic box, just in case. If you’re lucky a few end up with pinholes. If you’re less lucky, they spring a leak when you bump them against something, unleashing panic and chaos as you desperately try to control the fine stream of spray that is covering everything in the salon. If the gods are particularly cross with you, the degradation results in full structural failure, and the whole damn can explodes.

Discovering standing liquid at the bottom of a plastic bin storing cans, always makes one’s day shittier. But it’s well better than discovering a mess all over the bottom of a locker under the floorboards, especially if it’s not discovered until after the contents have been sitting long enough to begin molding.

So, as I was saying earlier, anticipating our five month existence at the edge of the world, we had stocked as many cans of tonic as we could. And yet, knowing their unstable nature, we had to limit that number and accept the fact that, if we couldn’t find more, gin and tonics would just become more of a special occasion cocktail.

Which is why, when we lifted the floor boards that covered one of our stashes of tonic water, I screamed like a little girl upon discovering the tragedy that had befallen us. Not one, not two, not a few, not even a handful of cans of tonic water…it was no less than fifteen fucking cans that had succumbed to the dastardly exposure of the salt water environment that we call home.

And not just succumbed. Not just leaked. Rather, they had full on exploded. Absolutely fucking detonated.

In one moment we had lost over twenty five percent of our tonic water inventory. It was a devastating day aboard Exit.

Fortunately, we are fairly un-picky alcoholics. While Tuvalu didn’t have tonic water, they did manage to fill the gap with various other less glorious substitute mixers. We were bummed, but we sure as hell weren’t about to stop drinking our gin. We aren’t fools. Sailors got to be improvisors…no doubt about that.

As the last week of January set in upon us, it was approaching two months since our arrival in Tuvalu. We had already made the return rounds through all of our other previous anchorages and, once again, found ourselves back at our favorite…Mateiko Island.

By this time, both the monohull and the catamoron had cleared out of the country and were probably hundreds of miles to the north in Kiribati or the Marshall Islands. For a fleeting moment, once again we were the only sailboat in the entire country. And then…dèjá vu. Another catamoron. Amazingly, they passed by us only once while we were at anchor and, with a wave, continued on to a different spot. We never spoke to them. One week later, they too were gone. It would be the last sailboat we would see during our entire stay in Tuvalu. Once again, Tuvalu had a sailboat population of one…us.

During the week we managed a dinghy excursion towards the southern tip of Funafuti where we found a stunning range of picturesque shades of blue, resulting from the variations in water depth throughout the area. The tide was far too low to visit the tiny nearby village of Funamoana Takutai (funny – almost a higher number of letters in the village’s name than people living in the village). However, wandering about in the dinghy, we discovered what looked to be the decrepit remains of some random unidentified vessel or diesel machinery, sitting partially out of the water.

After a brief exploration ashore at Mateiko one day, we enjoyed fresh coconut meat and tropical rum beverages served in a coconut shell – an atypical treat as far as Exit’s sundowners usually go. My bartending menus/skills tend to be much simpler and less ambitious than that.

Kris, on the other hand, is always far more diligent, creative, dedicated, and talented than myself when it comes to cooking, despite her absolute disdain for the task. Her imagination never ceases to amaze me, not to mention, keeps my belly full of the best boat cuisine imaginable. I often joke that she needs to author a sailor’s cookbook. My suggested title…Unforgettable Cuisine Recipes For The Sailor Who Despises Cooking.

Unanticipated mixed messages…

We were still anchored just off of the tiny uninhabited island of Mateiko, our favorite anchorage. We had already done a number of dives nearby and found the area to be one of the only with any healthy coral at all. Even better, we had stumbled across a lone manta ray that seemed to be a resident there and appeared to enjoy seeking us out time and time again when we were diving in that same area. So cool.

Every few days, or even a couple of times a day, local boats would pass by. Sometimes just a single person, sometimes a family, or a group of people – either heading from the small village at the southeast corner of the lagoon towards the main town of Vaiaku, or vise versa. Regularly, a fisherman or two in a small boat would pass by us with a friendly wave, obviously heading for or returning from a day (or night) of fishing outside the lagoon in the open water.

Though accompanied by some rather perplexed looks from people, obviously trying to wrap their heads around exactly what in the hell a couple of people on a sailboat were doing just sitting there for days on end, they always had smiles on their faces and offered enthusiastic waves to us.

We got used to, though never tired of, the friendly exchanges every passing boat seemed to offer up.

We were quite surprised when, one day, a small boat carrying what must have been ten or so people slowly approached us and stopped just off Exit’s transom. We greeted them with a smile and a “hello”. Everyone smiled back except maybe the guy driving the boat, who seemed to be much less amused at our presence.

Speaking in very broken English, he identified himself as Mr. Osa, with the Marine Police. It appeared he was questioning why we were anchored at that location. We tried to explain that we had cleared in with the Tuvalu authorities months ago and had already visited the Town Council, where we had been told after paying the anchoring fee that we were free to travel anywhere inside the lagoon as long as we didn’t anchor in the Conservation Area.

We apologized if there had been some sort of misunderstanding on our part, but expressed that we thought we were okay to be in this location. It was, after all, on the opposite side of the lagoon from the Conservation Area. He seemed to mull this over momentarily, and then shrugged and we got the impression he had accepted our explanation.

A few days later, two fishermen approached our transom slowly and stopped. They threw us a dilapidated line and tentatively said hello. We offered two big smiles and two friendly hellos in return. The pile of fish in the bottom of their small boat testified to a rather successful day of fishing that they must have just completed. After a brief exchange, they picked up what must have a ten pound or so tuna and held it out towards us.

While I thought they were offering to sell us some of their bounty, they quickly indicated I was mistaken. They expected nothing from us other than to fry it up and enjoy it for dinner. A gift. Though Kris is vegetarian, we were struck by their kind gesture and eagerly accepted. They motored away both waving and smiling. It seemed we were back in the good graces of the locals.

Which is why we were even more surprised when a few days later, another boat loaded with people pulled up to our transom with none other than Mr. Osa once again manning the outboard engine. This time, his demeanor seemed even more dour than before. He simply indicated we needed to go visit the Town Council. It was Friday afternoon. They would already be closed by the time we got there. He told us we could remain at anchor through the weekend, but Monday we needed to go speak with them.

Hmmmm…this sounded ominous.

On Monday, we picked up anchor and returned to the town of Vaiaku and headed straight to the Town Council. This was when we learned first hand how profoundly the behavior of a few assholes could directly and adversely affect us. One of the people in the Town Council office informed us that there had been a change of policy for visiting sailboats at the start of the new year.

It was because of the fucking cata-moron that was already at anchor when we first arrived to Tuvalu. They had told us themselves before leaving that they had gotten in quite a bit of trouble for sailing to the only other atoll in Tuvalu that sailboats were allowed to visit – only they hadn’t received permission to do so prior to their visit. Idiots.

Now we were informed that the Town Council had learned not only had these dipshits committed that offense…in addition they had anchored their cat inside the Funafuti Conservation Area and proceeded to go fishing (all strictly prohibited). If that wasn’t bad enough, some of the crew had gone ashore to one of the islands where they had camped for days and build bonfires. Fuckers!

As a direct response to the behavior of these numbnuts, the Town Council had decided that all visiting sailboats would be prohibited from any movement within the lagoon area of Funafuti. The only location currently permitted as an anchorage was just off of the town of Vaiaku itself!

We expressed how incredulous we were at the jack-offs responsible, and that we certainly couldn’t fault the decision that had been made. A lack of respect from one boat can single-handedly fuck things up for every subsequent boat in its wake. Still, we carefully and diplomatically tried to explain that we had now been in Tuvalu for two months, trying to show the utmost of respect in our behavior, following the rules and guidelines given to us, being diligent in our caution to avoid causing damage where we anchored, and were highly appreciative that Tuvaluans had been so friendly, hospitable, and accommodating so far.

We still planned to be here for another two to three months until cyclone season was over, and were relieved when the people we were speaking with acquiesced to the idea of us being allowed to still move about the lagoon, especially when changing wind directions and weather dictated that necessity, as long as we first contacted the Town Council and received permission to do so.

By this time, we had also already made contact with the Funafuti Fisheries, happily offering to volunteer our time to assist in any conservation efforts they might have underway. The director’s decision to take advantage of our scuba resources and experience to survey potential locations that giant clams might still be found in order to help stock their newly built holding facilities in an attempt to rehabilitate and repopulate the dwindling location population required that we be able to dive in various locations around the lagoon. Anchoring Exit in different places would give us the opportunity to do just that, but we needed to be able to move about.

It turned out that Mr. Osa’s marine police responsibilities largely revolved around his stewardship of the Conservation Area. When Mrs. Bruce, the assistant secretary of the Town Council informed Mr. Osa that we would be allowed to move about a bit as well as dive on behalf of the Fisheries Department, the look we got made clear that #1 – he was not happy at all with the decision, and #2 – we would not be receiving any help or cooperation from him. It was the first time we had ever gotten the stink eye from anyone in Tuvalu and it sure carried a lot of animosity.

By this time our immigration status had become somewhat of a concern and began looming in the back of our minds. We had burned through about half of our four month visa limit and in two more months we would still have another month left before the cyclone season ended.

We only had four real options we could think of. We could leave Tuvalu at the end of March and take our chances inside the cyclone box for the final month of cyclone season. Or we could sail four hundred nautical miles to Wallis and Futuna (the nearest country), get our passports stamped, then sail four hundred miles back to Tuvalu and reset our immigration clock. Or we could fly from Tuvalu to another country while we left Exit at anchor in Funafuti. All three of these options held very little appeal to us. Rolling the dice…sailing eight hundred miles to get back to the same place…or pay thousands of dollars for airplane tickets while leaving our home exposed and unsecured at anchor.

We opted for curtain number four. Beg and plead with the powers that be.

We knew our status with the Town Council was, politely stated, strained. However, every time we had interacted with the immigration officials, they had always been incredibly friendly, helpful, and polite – when we had first cleared in, as well as the two times we had already extended our visas. We had a single one month extension remaining; but we surmised that if we were going to attempt to persuade them to make an exception it was better sooner than later. If they denied us, we’d still have some time to make an alternate plan. And though we didn’t think there was probably a lot of communication between the Immigration Office and the Town Council (the Town Council seemed to be on the shit list of just about every local we talked to), it made sense to try to get a green light before word potentially got back to them about how the Town Council felt about things.

So we composed a lengthy email requesting…no, begging that they grant us an additional immigration visa extension which would allow us to stay through our fifth month. A lone sailboat with two humble sea gypsies aboard hoping to maintain safe harbor and protected anchorage from potentially deadly cyclones here in the magnificent country of Tuvalu…a country that had shown nothing but hospitality, kindness and generosity since our arrival. It was a praise-gushing, ass-kissing, treatise in all-out brown nose negotiation.

And it worked! Damned if they didn’t reply within a few days, expressing how pleased they were that we had enjoyed ourselves so much here. Yes, they would be more than happy to grant us a (one time only) visa extension of one month beyond the official time legally allowed here.

Woohoo! It had worked. With certainty, we now knew we had a place to sit out the entire cyclone season and we immediately felt an huge weight lift from our shoulders. Now, if only we could keep the Town Council happy…

Back in December, across the airport runway just beyond the Funafuti Bank, we had discovered a small farming operation that had been set up by the Taiwanese government to assist Tuvalu in increasing access to fresh vegetables.

Oddly enough, almost every time we went there there, the front gate was either locked and chained or, if they were open, they had almost nothing available for sale. Cabbage…maybe cucumbers that had been grown elsewhere. The rows and rows of tomatoes always remained on the vines. Odd.

Finally, in February we hit pay dirt. Veggies, eggs, and fresh fruit. But not from the farm. We found them at the grocery stores. Around Christmas we had discovered potatoes, nearly the size of coconuts…but only once. Eggs appeared sporadically with the arrival of random cargo ships. Apples and onions were consistent. But this one time…almost everything. It had been almost three months and we wouldn’t see it again.

Though our largely unquenched appetite for fresh fruits and vegetables may have led to a differing opinion, from a weather perspective, we were repeatedly reminded of having zero regrets regarding our decision to be north of Tonga and Fiji for the cyclone season.

Despite New Zealand being south of any real cyclone danger, again and again we watched the Kiwis get pummeled by inhospitable weather which had sauntered up from Antarctica just looking for trouble.

Then, in late February, we watched what looked like a parade of potential cyclones marching from through the South Pacific, from just south of French Polynesia all the way to Australia.

One of these was Tropical Cyclone Rae. Reaching Category 2 status as it passed over Fiji, Rae kicked out winds as high as 60 knots (70 mph). Not a whopper, but not something to ignore, either.

Despite the cyclone itself being hundreds of miles to the south of us, as it progressed we watched the forecasts for Tuvalu grow more and more sinister. Wallis was expecting winds that could reach into the fifties. We were glad we had chosen not to take our chances south of Latitude 10°S. Tuvalu was forecasted to reach into the thirties. However, the wind direction was expected to come from the northwest.

Fualifeke & Pa’ava, on the north side of Funafuti, had proven to be the perfect anchorage last time things kicked up from that direction. It seemed like the go to place once again.

However, this time we couldn’t simply lift anchor and head there. A visit to the Town Council was now required…

Sigh.

The frown we got from Mr. Osa as we arrived at the Town Council building was adequate proof that he both recognized us, and still harbored some strong opinions against yachties. Fortunately, we could just smile and walk past him straight to the office. He wasn’t the one we had to talk to.

Even more fortunately, after a brief explanation of the situation, the woman at the desk seemed sympathetic to our situation. Not only did she give us permission to move Exit, she indicated we could email the assistant secretary Mrs. Bruce directly with future requests. Considering this was the person who had seemed appreciative of our assisting the Fisheries Department, we took that as a good omen.

It sounded easy enough. In reality, it worked…for less than a month.

We moved to Fualifeke & Pa’ava and settled in. Within a day, the skies around us began to darken with the ominous look of incoming potential chaos.

We kept a close eye regarding our own anchor holding on multiple iPads as the weather around us deteriorated, watching the winds which had kicked up from the cyclone that nearly smashed Fiji. Fortunately, we never saw wind speeds that reached higher than the low to mid thirties.

Though no cyclone ever materialized over Tuvalu, we still felt of the ripples from Rae’s outer bands. And when the skies finally cut loose, they did so with a vengeance…for two days straight.

We were grateful that we had excellent holding and no other boats were in the area to add to the stress.

Less than a week later, Cyclone Alfred blasted through the South Pacific. Once again, we were grateful for our decision to spend the cyclone season in Tuvalu. After denying us any coverage whatsoever in Fiji (unless we were hauled out and placed in a cyclone pit), five months ago our insurance company had assured us that, in addition to New Zealand, it would be acceptable if we spent the cyclone season in Brisbane, Australia (or south of there). After achieving 90+ knot winds (105mph) as a Category 4 cyclone, Alfred reached Australia on March 8, 2025. It was the first cyclone to hit Brisbane in something like over fifty years!

Whew. That would have sucked. And it would have blown…

Always keeping one eye (or four) on the horizon as potential storm clouds form.

As instructed by the Town Council, we had returned to Vaiaku after the winds had settled. Once again, we reached out to the assistant secretary of the Town Council, this time requesting permission to move back to Mateiko to do some additional dives as requested by the director of the Funafuti Fisheries Department, who had asked us to assist with surveying potential locations of giant clams for their ongoing conservation project.

Grudgingly, it seemed, permission was granted.

This was already becoming arduous. We had already been here three months. We still had two to go.

After a few dives with no sign of any giant clams, without warning, things started going south with our dive compressor. First a broken weld on one of the filter brackets.

Without any welding equipment, much less any welding skills, I was forced to bolt the bracket back together. Inconvenient…certainly, a ball ache to sort out…but not that big of a deal.

However, soon after we were mortified to discover a leak in one of the cooling pipes of the dive compressor. We were suddenly incapable of filling tanks. Shit. It turned out excessive vibrations from the broken bracket had caused the compressor to develop a leak in one of the stainless steel cooling pipes.

We were also running out of time before the Town Council wanted us back at Vaiaku.

For a bit of stress relief, we took a brief afternoon swim off the transom to go ashore on the small island of Mateiko on a calm day. Short lived but undeniably therapeutic.

We returned to Vaiaku with the hope of finding a mechanic that could possibly help with the compressor.

We were also starting to have real concerns regarding our propane status, which was a necessity for our stove. One 20lb. tank was already empty, our backup 20lb. tank was getting critically low as was the smaller 10lb. tank we use for the barbecue. We had already determined Tuvalu had no propane. Only butane, which was okay. Except no one had the fitting connection we needed. We had already spent a month unsuccessfully trying to find someone that could fill the tanks.

Back in Vaiaku, a brief moment of comic relief while trying to locate the last possible option for propane fills…the realization that a massive fuel tanker that was in the process of offloading its cargo had tied to a tiny tree ashore to help stabilize itself…

Unfortunately, despite all of our persistence and the efforts of one of the locals, we were unable to successfully refill our propane bottle. We’d just have to hope our dwindling supply held out.

That night a lightning storm passed overhead. The wind wasn’t bad but, when we turned on the electronics…aaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrgh! Once again, another wind indicator had succumbed to lightning. Not a direct hit, but just like in Wallis four months ago to the day, failure due to a static halo of some sort…electricity proximity…electro-magnetic interference…call it what you will. Fucking electrical voodoo!

Undoubtedly, our luck was beginning to falter.

No luck on the compressor either.

After loading up the compressor in the dinghy and bringing it ashore, we hauled it through town alongside the road in our little blue wagon until we found the mechanic who had been recommended to us.

Despite his kindness and efforts, we were gutted to learn there was nothing that could be done locally. The fitting wasn’t what was leaking. The stainless steel pipe had actually developed a crack…in a spot under the collar that was impossible to weld. Shit.

Without parts, our compressor was dead in the water.

This all led to a cascade of frustrating escapades (of comedic proportion) trying to get packages delivered from both New Zealand and Australia.

We were still going to be in Tuvalu for six weeks. There were flights from Fiji almost every day. No problem we thought.

From New Zealand we ordered the replacement stainless steel compressor cooling pipe we needed. From Australia we were in the process of ordering a new wind indicator sensor.

And then, both of our fresh water pumps began leaking. Both. The primary and the backup. Weird enough; but I simply pulled out the spare new pump from one of the spares lockers. It had been sitting in its box for seven years. We had purchased it before splashing after we first purchased Exit. Smart, eh? Except when I pulled it out of the box, I discovered it had a crack in the diaphragm housing – damage that had occurred when it was being assembled at the factory. We had been carrying around a new defective pump for seven years. Son of a bitch!

Undoubtedly, our luck wasn’t just beginning to falter. Bad luck was suddenly shitting all over us. I wouldn’t have walked under a ladder even if there was a hundred dollar bill sitting under it.

I quickly added a fresh water pump to the Australia order. Sorted…or so we believed.

The wind indicator and pump shipped immediately from Australia. It arrived in Fiji after only a few days and then proceeded to sit, going absolutely nowhere. After two weeks and over thirty emails back and forth with DHL, they finally confessed that the package wasn’t actually awaiting the next Fiji Airways flight to Tuvalu…duh(!)…we had watched ten flights from Fiji already land in Tuvalu. In fact, they were trying to sort out a shipping embargo Fiji Airways currently had in place which prioritized customer luggage over DHL cargo. They expected to have things sorted out within the next thirty days, allowing them to deliver the pallet sitting at the Fiji airport which, at the moment, held a thousand pounds of backlogged shipments. For fuck sake…really? By this time, we only had thirty days left on our visa. There was no way they would have their shit sorted by then. We relayed to three different people in the DHL hierarchy that we needed our package to simply be held in Fiji. We would be there shortly and could just pick it up there. They acknowledged the situation and assured us that what we were requesting would not be a problem. Ya, I would think not. Easy enough for the package to keep doing what it had been doing for the past two weeks…sitting doing absolutely nothing.

Our compressor part had never shipped out from New Zealand. It was backordered. This turned out to be a good thing. Instead of paying US$300 to ship a box that wouldn’t have gotten here anyway, we told the dive shop it would be picked up by someone. Our old friend aboard SV Russula had been in New Zealand for the cyclone season. It just so happened he would be passing by the dive shop’s location just before he sailed to Fiji. We could meet up there.

For the time being we’d simply have to use our foot pumps to deliver fresh water…hold up a finger to confirm wind direction…and put our compressor into hibernation.

Suddenly, it was almost April. We had been at what seemed like the edge of the world for four months. Ok…maybe “the edge of the world” was a bit of an exaggeration; but certainly a frontier outpost at the edge of civilization. Regardless, it was a long time to sit in such a small location. Once our scuba tanks were empty now, our diving was done. For the most part, our supplies were holding out and it seemed as though, with a little luck, we’d last another month before our propane ran out. However, if we couldn’t cook, things would start getting serious…downright grim, in fact. It also seemed as though our back stocks of good luck had pretty much run out. In fact, it felt like things were starting to unravel a bit.

I began to feel as though, one of these nights while I was on deck checking the snubber, I would hear someone say, “Relax”…only to turn around and have the night man step out of the dark and proclaim, “We are programmed to receive. You can clear out any time to like, but you can never leave.”

Eeek!

We needed to get away from Vaiaku and find a Zen equilibrium again. Except for one thing. The Town Council had now completely ghosted us. We had already made multiple attempts get permission to move. The last time Mrs. Bruce (the person we had to correspond with) had replied, she stated that she was traveling on a business trip and would contact us when she arrived at her destination. That never happened. After that…nothing but radio silence. That was the last time we heard from her. Fortunately, dangerous winds hadn’t been an issue; but still…

Without explicit permission, we couldn’t move anywhere outside the main island that Vaiaku was stretched out along. Outside the center of town, that gave us a spot about four miles to the north and three miles to the southwest.

For a couple of weeks, we bounced between those locations, growing more and more frustrated that the Town Council had turned out to be such dicks; they wouldn’t even give us the courtesy of an email reply. Yes, we understood the progression of circumstances that had occurred to arrive at that situation but we were still pissed. Fucking catamoron.

Still, every single other person we had interacted with in Tuvalu had been so friendly. Outside of our experience with the handful of people in the Town Council, we had nothing but stellar things to say about Tuvalu. It was remote and anything but posh; but still, it had treated us well.

And we would certainly miss those Tuvalu sunsets.

Not that Matafanua (at the south edge of Vaiaku) wasn’t nice. Certainly better than sitting just off the main part of town, where we had, not once but two separate times, watched pig intestines and lungs float past us while we sat at anchor, obviously the remnant entrails of pigs that had been slaughtered near the shore. Kris loved that…

But with most of April still ahead of us, we started discussing alternatives.

We immediately decided we could take our chances leaving two weeks before cyclone season officially ended. Wallis lies right at the edge of Latitude 10°S and, for the most part, hadn’t seen weather that different from Tuvalu. Yes, it would be a small roll of the dice, but it was only two weeks. We were in one hundred percent agreement. The decision took even less time than it had to originally decide we were coming to Tuvalu.

Four to five hundred nautical miles to Wallis, depending on the winds. Previously, we had been forced to cut our stay short there; but now it would be the perfect place to sit out the remainder of April. Then another four hundred nautical miles to Fiji in May. With the insurance company, no claim would mean no problem. No blood…no foul. We had fallen into a morale crater here in Tuvalu, but we could instantly feel the tide turning.

In four and a half months we had criss-crossed back and forth across the Funafuti lagoon numerous times.

Not since we had spent over a year in Bocas del Toro, Panama during COVID had we seen such a Spiro-graph design on the map from the tracks Exit had made.

But now it was finally time to go.

There were only handful of things to be done first.

Going up the mast…again…to inspect the rigging before departing Tuvalu. In the background, you can see the old Simrad wind indicator sensor, held together by white electrical tape. When the wind indicator, newly installed in Mexico before crossing the Pacific, died in a Wallis lightning storm we had to pull this one back out of retirement. Now, it too was dead. We would have to go old school for the four or five hundred mile sail to Wallis and subsequent four hundred mile sail to Fiji…ribbons tied to the shrouds!

For a brief moment, I had the best view in Tuvalu from the highest point in the country…the top of our mast.

We had to make one final visit to our favorite Chinese restaurant we had frequented more than a dozen times. Everything plate on the menu: $5. My massive plate of chicken and chips never disappointed. However, Kris’ five egg (!) vegetarian omelet (“no meat” we repeated) came with chopped ham during our second and fourth visit. Then we got smart. After showing him a Google Translate message from Kris’ phone that said “没有肉” (no meat) a few times, we would walk in the restaurant and he would bellow, “Ya, ya, ya…no meat!” Occasionally he could be seen in the kitchen, cooking with a lit cigarette hanging from his lips. He would then walk to the table with our plates and bark, “To-ma-TOÉ!”, handing us a partially opened can of tomato sauce…ketchup for the chips. Classic.

After a last trip to the fuel station to top up our diesel and petrol jerry cans (among the cleanest fuel we have ever gotten), and one more trip to the grocery store to nearly clean them out of the best canned hummus (!) we had ever tasted, we were left with only the authorities to visit in order to clear out.

Our sixth and final trip to the Immigration Office. Just like every previous visit, they were all smiles. After indicating how pleased they were we had enjoyed our stay here, they placed one last stamp in our passports and waved goodbye to us. Obviously, they had never had a conversation with the Town Council…or if so, ignored everything they said, as everyone else in Tuvalu seemed to do.

At long last, at 4:20pm on April 12, 2025, as we lifted anchor and Exit headed towards the pass, the gray skies and lack of wind did nothing to dampen our spirits.

It had been four and a half months since our arrival in Tuvalu. Despite all of our dramas, we still had no regrets about our decision to come here. And yet, we were equally adamant that it was time to go.

The stereo was fired up and there was no fucking “Hotel California” playing. Rather, it was our go-to favorite tune after clearing out as we were getting underway. The band was Triumph… and the song was “Movin’ On”.

Our problems have disappeared
Vanished one by one
We've got to keep on movin'
Until we're done 

We've been through so many changes
All along the way
Maybe that's the reason we're here today

Movin' on, movin' on
Movin' on, everyday
Movin' on, keep on movin'
Movin' on, tomorrow is another day

-Excerpt from "Movin' On" by Triumph, 1979

December 5, 2024 – April 12, 2025

North of latitude 10°S – outside the “danger box” and into the “safe zone”. We now had five months of Pacific cyclone season to kill at what seemed like the world’s edge. What to do?

We were immediately grateful that we still had our the anchor chain floats we had acquired in the Tuamotus Archipelago of French Polynesia. Time and time again in Tonga, despite the fact that delicate coral and potential obstructions covered the anchorages, we had heard other yachties talk about how they had gotten rid of theirs the moment they had left French Polynesia. Rather than recognizing the ongoing value of floating one’s anchor chain, it seemed they had used them only after hearing that other people did so in that specific area. We couldn’t wrap our head around that particular mindset. How could it make sense there and nowhere else?

From the deck of Exit, as we now tried to anchor in Funafuti, we could see coral and potential obstructions all around. As had been the case in French Polynesia, Tonga, and Wallis, floating the anchor chain would remain our standard practice. It had seemed like an epiphany since our first moment of enlightenment.

We were more than happy to put forth the bit of extra effort required, especially when we found ourselves swinging three hundred sixty degrees over the course of a couple of days!

With the shadows of coral structures underwater in every direction, the building excitement of getting in the water was inevitable. And considering we had nothing but time on our hands, it immediately became apparent that diving was back on the itinerary. Even snorkeling would be a welcome way to help stave off the heat of a Tuvalu day, which we quickly learned typically ran into the 80’s before breakfast and upwards of 100°F by lunch on a sunny day.

In fact, the water temperature was so warm that wet suits were not even a consideration. Over the next few months we would experience water temperatures ranging from 85-95°F (29-35°C). At times, the water at the surface felt like you were swimming in pee. Ewwwww.

However, though the bath water temperatures provided us a wetsuit free swimming environment, we would soon learn that it may have come bearing a high price for the local marine life.

We had briefly jumped in the water while anchored right next to town, and noticed the coral bommies didn’t seem very healthy. Not uncommon, given nearby development, boat traffic, etc. However, when we dropped anchor about four nautical miles north of the main part of town, the coral also seemed nearly completely dead. We were surprised, to say the least. These were not isolated bommies; rather, large stretches near shore or large rounded mounts that rose twenty or forty feet from the bottom to within ten or twenty feet of the surface. All covered with dead coral. Almost no fish life. Puzzled, we supposed it could have been the result of storms, or some of the dredging that was happening in the town…still, it seemed really strange.

Yet, when we moved another four miles to the northernmost side of the atoll, between two tiny motus called Fualifeke & Pa‘ava, we were shocked to find exactly the same thing. We were now almost ten miles from the town, near significant amounts of water exchange from the north pass, just off two tiny islands that had less than ten people occupying a few small structures. WTF?

Location after location, and as it would turn out month after month, miles and miles of dead coral stretching as far as the eye could see. Some fish life…but not much. Almost no large reef fish. No invertebrates. Only an occasional small black tip reef shark (with the exception of a very few grey reef sharks, white tips, and a lemon shark we saw near the north pass).

In thousands of dives, we had never seen an area so extensively covered with so many coral structures and yet so devoid of life.

Almost impossible both to capture photographically, as well as incredibly difficult to try to describe, was the immensity of the coral coverage, the age and maturity and size of the coral structures and fields and, of course, the absolute scope of lifelessness everywhere. Again and again, it occurred to us that the closest thing we could think of by comparison, the only way to describe what we were seeing, was a vast underwater petrified forest of coral.

And yet, this wasn’t death and destruction resulting from an industrial accident, or building developments, or invasive tourism, or boat anchoring, or poor diver/snorkeler buoyancy, or storms, or urban/agricultural pollution, or war… or anything else we could think of. It seemed more like the depressing result of a cancer spreading within that part of the planet.

Brief videos of what we witnessed underwater in February 2025:

More dead coral and sparse marine life as far as the eye could see in April 2025:

Regardless of where we went, we found the same thing. Endless graveyards of some of the most staggering and extensive growths of coral we had ever seen. A few fish. A bit of live coral here and there. But largely a marine necropolis.

We suspected that the incredibly warm water temperatures had caused a profound impact, as well as some sort of a catastrophic bleaching event that must have recently occurred. Environmental impact from a town of only eight thousand people couldn’t have caused it. The land reclamation projects and ongoing dredging couldn’t have been the primary culprit.

A few of the areas we visited could exhibit a stunning difference in visibility within a one hundred foot distance during tidal shifts. The distinction of a cold incoming tide washing through a shallow pass and clearing up the water versus just inside where the visibility was almost zero was unbelievable.

While some locations with significant tidal water exchange, undoubtedly lower water temperatures, and better water clarity had slightly better coral condition and marine life diversity as well as numbers, they fared only slightly better, still suffering from what consistently must have been almost ninety percent mortality (compared to the ninety nine percent elsewhere).

Barely better, at best.

Despite the depressing lack of healthy coral, we were bound and determined to continue diving and blow some bubbles. There had to be something down there for us to find.

Possibly the most impressive, and unfortunately one of the few, live structures we came across during all of our dives were near one of the anchorages we discovered towards the south side of Funafuti just off the island of Mateiko. They were a pair of massive round growths of plate coral, the larger of the two must have been at least twenty feet tall. Nearly perfect spheres. Both were almost one hundred percent alive and in pristine condition…a truly stunning exception to the fields and fields of dead coral surrounding them. We had never seen plate coral grow in such a unique shape and size. It gave a rare insight into what the entire atoll must have looked like in the not so distant past. Even better was the fact that a single manta ray, the only one we ever saw there, seemed to like hanging around right in that area. Because we didn’t have an underwater housing, we could only capture a marginal and unflattering GoPro photo of the plate coral structures from near the surface, but we were flabbergasted every time we swam by.

That one manta ray provided us immense excitement, satisfaction and enthusiasm. To have a magical encounter with such a creature, not just once, but multiple times, fueled in us a hope that all was not lost for Tuvalu’s underwater community.

Occasional locations that contained a small oasis of life here or there did appear every now and then.

Thousands of what appear to be juvenile golden trevally were one of the few real schools of fish we spotted in the course of five months:

In another instance, we stumbled across an area no larger than thirty feet by thirty feet that was home to a dozen or more anemone, all inhabited by families of anemone fish. They were scattered about in an endless field of almost entirely dead coral. This was another one of those high water exchange areas; but, other than that, we couldn’t figure out how the anemone (and only the anemone) managed to survive there. It was our only encounter with anemone during our entire stay in Tuvalu.

It’s not as if Tuvalu doesn’t already have a full plate of environmental concerns to deal with currently. Still, it seemed like quite a few of the people we spoke with were unaware of the extent of the damage inside Funafuti’s lagoon. Of those who were aware, most believed it was something that had happened in the not so distant past. Posts online from only a few years back raved about the healthy and impressive coral, which would support that hypothesis.

We reached out to the Funafuti Fisheries Department hoping we might be able to contribute by donating some of the extensive free time at our disposal, offering to help gather data or survey areas we were diving at. The director, a friendly and conscientious Englishman focused on both protection and restoration of Funafuti’s marine life, graciously accepted. He asked us while diving to be on the lookout for any of the two species of Tridacna (giant clams) that were native to the area.

The Fisheries Department had undertaken a project aimed to rehabilitate the Tridacna population of Funafuti, which had sadly been decimated both by environmental changes as well as uncontrolled over-harvesting by locals. They had recently completed construction on a number of tanks and holding areas intending to collect some of the few remaining giant clams in the lagoon. Once in a protected environment, they could be raised and bred specifically with the objective of eventually being released back into the wild in an attempt to restore the dwindling population.

Though there are many species of giant clam, with the largest reaching as large as three to four feet across, the two species native to Funafuti, Tridacna maxima and Tridacna squamosa, are a bit smaller. The T. maxima, typically six to nine inches across, are usually found embedded among the coral and rock structures. The larger T. squamosa can grow to twice that size, and can be found sitting in the sand or rubble on the sea floor. The mantles of Tridacna, which protrude from the openings of their fluted shells looking like giant fleshy lips, can be found in an unbelievable variety of stunning and contrasting colors, often making them stand out distinctly from their surroundings.

We diligently kept an eye out for both Tridacna maxima (the smaller of the two species) as well as Tridacna squamosa every time we were in the water.

Sadly, during five months of snorkeling and diving, we managed to see only one very young giant clam (T. Maxima), embedded in a endless stretch of dead hard coral. Unfortunately, we had seen it within the first month of our arrival, well before we had made contact with the fisheries department. We never found it a second time.

Even more sad, was the evidence we repeatedly came across…testimony to the over harvesting of giant clams that had undoubtedly contributed to the current situation. In one location alone, not more than twenty feet square, we found the empty shells of more than a dozen of the larger Tridacna squamosa. All mature. All over a foot across in size. All dead.

A graveyard for a nearly extinct species of Tuvalu native. It appeared to us that, barring the introduction of giant clams brought in from outside the area, it was already too late for the Tridacna.

Ironically, this seemed to vividly represent a dystopian vision of the entire country’s future. It was both a depressing and sobering realization.

As the most advanced species and supposed stewards of the planet we live on, it is entirely up to humans to stop the ongoing destruction of Earth, especially the devastation we are causing directly. If we continue on our current path, failing to take drastic and decisive immediate action, Tuvalu represents but a microcosm of what is to come for us all. The oceans are our planet’s heart and lungs; it may already be too late to prevent the global extinction that is well underway. Though lies are told every day by people on both sides of the aisle and unscrupulous assholes will always cash in on opportunities to profit, global warming is real. Climate change is no hoax. Science is not bullshit, no matter how little you want to hear it.

Author’s note: Months after departing Tuvalu, while in Fiji, we spoke to a local dive guide, Leone, who had recently been helping aboard “Argo”, a globally traveling National Geographic research vessel equipped with extensive scuba facilities as well as a three person submarine. He was acting as a guide/consultant while the team gathered marine conservation data in Fiji. “Argo” had been in Tuvalu at the same time we had been there. Leone relayed to us how stunned the crew aboard “Argo” had been upon witnessing the underwater devastation around Tuvalu, even outside the lagoon. At appeared they concurred with the conclusion we had reached – Tuvalu’s current situation was almost certainly due to increasing water temperatures which had either caused a catastrophic bleaching event or longer term mortality of nearly all the coral life.

November 29, 2024 – December 5, 2024

Coming from Wallis and Futuna, we thought we had already experienced small and off the beaten path.

Tuvalu…even further off the beaten path…even smaller.

Yet, for being so tiny, Tuvalu holds a lot of records…

…least visited country on the planet (3,700 visitors annually)…

…the worlds smallest economy ($79 million)…

…the second least populous sovereign nation at less than 10,000 people. Only Vatican City (with 500 citizens) comes in lower. The other six locations with populations less than Tuvalu are territories…

Half way between Australia and Hawaii. Half way between Fiji and the Marshall Islands. Literally, the middle of nowhere.

A country less than fifty years old in its independence. “Tuvalu” means “eight standing together” – though it is comprised of nine tiny islands stretched across three hundred sixty miles (three coral reef islands and six coral atolls), one was formerly uninhabited.

Less than three thousand people live on the atoll of Funafuti, where we had just arrived.

After crossing Funafuti’s inner lagoon, as we approached the anchorage indicated on our charts just off the main town of Vaiaku, we were stunned to see another sailboat already at anchor.  WTF?  We assumed that, as far as sailboats go, we would likely be the only one there.

As it turned out, the sailboat currently next to us, a catamaran (or more accurately, “cata-moron” as our dear friends and sailing inspirations aboard S/V Cetacea not so jokingly refer) with a crew of ten (!), all under the age of twenty one (!!), would thankfully only grace our presence for a day before departing Tuvalu bound for the Marshall Islands.  Before leaving, the captain of this barely post-pubescent boat full of monkeys admitted they had gotten in pretty serious trouble with the Tuvalu authorities for visiting one of the other atolls without first receiving official  permission.    

We would eventually also learn that, despite the brief time the cata-moron’s presence coincided with ours, it would actually have a much more long lasting and profound effect on our entire stay in Tuvalu.  Fuckers.  But that would not come to light until later. 

For one day, less than a thousand feet separated us.

Twenty four hours later, the other boat had cleared out, picked up anchor, and departed. We suddenly found ourselves the only sailboat in not only Funafuti, but in the entire country of Tuvalu…a phenomenon we had never before experienced.

As ridiculous as this sounded considering the hundreds of sailboats simultaneously in French Polynesia or even dozens and dozens of boats in just one anchorage in Tonga, in Tuvalu we would actually find ourselves to be the only sailboat in the whole country for weeks, even months, at a time.

After dropping our dinghy and re-mounting the outboard engine, which had been stowed for the three day passage from Wallis, we left Exit flying our yellow “Q” flag and went ashore to officially clear into the country.  Fortunately, all of the offices that we had to visit, which included Immigration, Customs, as well as Bio-Security, were all conveniently located in the government building – easy to locate as it was the only three story building to be found in the country.  The process was amazingly easy, smooth, and friendly.

In Wallis, we had been blown away by the fact that we were only the thirty-fifth private vessel of the season to have cleared in. Though we weren’t actually assigned a number in Tuvalu during our clearing in process, we were even more stunned to learn from the Customs officials that Funafuti had seen less than half that number. They estimated we were the fifteenth boat, and it was late enough in the season that they reckoned we could be one of the last…wow.

Regarding our ability to spend the entire cyclone season in Tuvalu, we were able to shed some light on a few things.  From an immigration and customs standpoint things were pretty straightforward.  It would be no problem for Exit to be in the country for five months, but for us things were not so easy.  Our immigration stamp, valid for only thirty days, could be extended a maximum of three times at a cost of about US$60 per person, after which we would have to leave the country and could not return until we could show a stamp in our passports from another country.  Without sailing back to Wallis or flying somewhere, we would be one month short of reaching the end of cyclone season. 

We also learned we were permitted to visit only one other atoll in Tuvalu outside of Funafuti which appeared even less equipped to deal with visitors.  Taking into account Funafuti’s tiny size and exceptionally limited facilities and supplies, we could foresee an extended stay turning out quite challenging.  With no tourist infrastructure of any sort, for non-residents Funafuti appeared to possess more of a short visit or stop-over appeal rather than being geared towards a long term stay.

Whether or not Tuvalu would actually prove to be a viable location for us to spend the entire cyclone season remained to be seen.  It was obviously a question to be answered at a future time.

This left only the Town Council to visit.  Our pre-arrival research had revealed this necessity was required in order to pay a nominal one time fee of about US$40 for anchoring in the lagoon, as well as providing an opportunity to learn about any expected sailboat etiquette or procedures.

The Town Council, though a bit aloof, initially seemed friendly enough. They informed us that access was permitted anywhere within the lagoon with the exception of an area on the west side that had been designated as the “Funafuti Conservation Area”, where both anchoring and fishing were strictly forbidden.  Fair enough.

Having successfully cleared in, we wandered around town for a bit, trying to get our bearings as well as suss out what was available and where it could be found.

We quickly learned just how limited supplies and provisions in such a remote location could be. Most of the businesses were tiny entities, nestled in nondescript buildings not much bigger than the houses around them.

One of the convenience stores along the main road would occasionally have ice cream cones for sale to help stave off the heat, which reached into the nineties (or higher) during the day. Best we could tell, availability relied on a staff being willing to take one of the ice cream boxes that were for sale out of the freezer. Flavor option…whatever box they had pulled out. Brilliant.

Honestly, we found ourselves more drawn to (and entertained by) the questionable and often hilarious Chinese to English translations on the product boxes than the store’s actual inventory.

What????? How the hell did that even end up on the outside of a box?

The town’s liquor store, which doubled as one of the local bars, stocked with just enough gin, rum, tequila, beer, and boxed wine to keep our alcohol stocks aboard Exit from drying out. Funny thing was they rarely seem to have customers besides ourselves.

Apparently Tuvalu has quite a global reputation among stamp collectors in the know. The post office, which houses a veritable museum of unbelievable stamps and first day of issue collections released by Tuvalu over the past few decades (covering every topic from space exploration, U.S. presidents, marine life, Elvis, Lady Diana, and almost any other pop culture, scientific, or historical event you could imagine) provided us with the first postcards we had purchased in over twenty years. The time required for post card delivery to the United States…? Right about six weeks.

One couldn’t help but smile upon seeing the “fleet” of postal delivery vehicles sitting outside.

Just behind the post office, running parallel to a small paved road and a narrow meridian of grass, stretches the single asphalt air strip that fields all of the plane traffic in and out of the tiny Funafuti International Airport. Considering how few visitors there are, Tuvalu has a remarkable amount of airport activity with flights in and out nearly every other day.

However, to be fair, a great deal of the activity at the airport does not necessarily involve planes.

Funafuti’s airport has the distinction of not only being the hub for all flights, but also an area for community gathering.  Locals can be found playing soccer or flying kites on the runway, which effectively serves as a playground between Fiji Airways arrivals and departures.  It is one of the few international runways we have been able to walk across without raising an eyebrow.  In fact, there is a nearly non-stop line of cars and scooters on the road to Funafuti’s town bank, which crosses directly across the middle of the pristinely maintained runway.  The blaring siren of a fire truck is the obvious heads up for people to get the hell off the runway, as a plane is about to land or take off…classic.

Every new location we arrive at offers its share of comforts and simplicities, oftentimes balanced by an equal number of challenges and frustrations.  Discovering those is all part of the adventure.

Tuvalu proved to be a wide swinging pendulum in that regard.  

An example of one of the comforts that became immediately evident to us was regarding language. The primary spoken and written language in Tuvalu is English which simplified our existence immensely. During our previous stop in Wallis, Google Translate was required for almost all interactions as barely anyone there spoke English and the number of words in our entire French vocabulary could be counted on our fingers.

The international currency of any country takes a bit of getting used to, regardless of where you find yourself. Oddly enough, Tuvalu uses the Australian dollar, whose denominations of both bills and coins are quite easy to recognize as well as the conversion rate to the US dollar being rather simple to calculate. On the other hand, ironically, it turned out there was not a single cash machine located anywhere in the entire country and Tuvalu does 100% of its business with cash.  No businesses in the entire country accept credit cards.  This added an undeniable complexity to our existence.  

Initially, the local bank had no problem exchanging the limited emergency U.S. cash we carry aboard, but as we don’t sail with a treasure chest full of pirate booty, we eventually had to figure out a long term solution.  Thank you Western Union.  We ended up doing more business with Western Union in four months than we had during our previous twenty five years of international travel combined…more than we had during our entire lifetimes combined for that matter.  And, while this situation thankfully brought our monthly credit card balance to nearly zero, on the down side, our Alaska Airlines mileage accumulation suffered a major decline during our time in Tuvalu.

When the Western Union window at the airport was occupied, obtaining money was a rather simple process. When that was closed, finding the main Western Union office proved much more challenging. Our initial inquiries were met with a large number of confused looks and shrugged shoulders by locals, but eventually we found the main office at the end of a primitive road that looked more like it led to a construction area.

The office itself looked as equally nondescript as the road leading to it.

Nonetheless, they had Australian money (the currency of Tuvalu) and were more than happy to take money from our U.S. bank account. Another adventure for the records.

Much later, a month or so after leaving Tuvalu, we would have a big laugh after reading online that Tuvalu was finally in the process of installing their first cash machine. It’s all about timing…

In addition to the social distinctions, it didn’t take long to became apparent just how stark the geographical differences between Tuvalu and Wallis were as well.

Though they are neighbors with only four hundred nautical miles separating them, geologically, the two atolls could hardly be more dissimilar. They have nearly the same outer reef dimensions – about thirteen miles long by ten miles wide.  And yet, that is where their similarities end.   The main island of Wallis, also called Uvea, is an oval shape nearly eight miles long by almost four miles wide, which sits dead center in the lagoon and occupies a large part of the entire lagoon.  Multiple peaks across the island’s interior reach an elevation of nearly five hundred feet, giving Wallis more of the impression of a mountain peak jutting out of the South Pacific Ocean.

In contrast, Funafuti seems to be barely keeping itself above the surface of the ocean waves.  It has no dry islands inside the lagoon itself; only reefs, bommies, and sea mounts that are exposed only during low tides.  All of Funafuti’s dry land is part of the atoll’s outer reef.  

And while the main island on Funafuti is also nearly eight miles long, rather than occupying the center of the lagoon, it lies along the eastern edge of the atoll, in more of an “L” shape.  In contrast to Wallis, Funafuti’s main island is less than half a mile wide at its widest point, right in the corner of the dogleg where the bulk of the town exists, extending in both directions, never more than a couple hundred feet wide and narrowing to less than a hundred feet at its narrowest point.  This tiny strip of land is where almost all of Funafuti’s inhabitants live.

Unless you include the coconut trees, or the government building which is the only building more than two stories tall, the maximum elevation of the entire country of Tuvalu is supposedly only about fifty feet, although on Funafuti we never saw any land that seemed even twenty feet above the water’s edge.  Stunningly, the average elevation of Funafuti is only about seven feet!

And herein lies the ultimate desperation and uncertainty of Tuvalu’s future.

Despite the fact that one month prior, Tuvalu was a name we had never heard of, much less a country we were aware of, Tuvalu has recently been receiving more and more global recognition, and for all the wrong reasons.  Growing understanding and concerns (at least within the circle of human beings with an even semi-functioning brain) of the dangers and ramifications of global warming and climate change has resulted in a spotlight of attention being thrust directly on Tuvalu.  

While rising sea levels will undoubtedly have a growing impact on virtually every person on the planet in some way or another, Tuvalu has been identified as the first country that will cease to exist entirely as a result.  It’s limited elevation make it all but certain that, well before the end of the century, the ocean will have completely swallowed the last pinch of land that makes up the country of Tuvalu – a real life Atlantis.  And it will become completely uninhabitable long before then.

Increased flooding.  Changing coastlines.  Melting polar ice.  All sobering hard core global realities. Yes…Tuvaluans may be re-located; but the obliteration of their entire country? Really? Is that something most of the rest of the world can just dismiss? Ignore? Question as a falsehood? SIMPLY NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT? Apparently…

Land reclamation projects involving the dredging of sand in limited areas to build up the shoreline on Funafuti combined with construction projects to actually reinforce the existing shoreline with massive sandbags covering shipping containers also filled with sand are among desperate attempts to both reverse the current damage and reduce additional damage.

However, these monumental efforts amount to little more than a potential slowing of the unstoppable clock that ticks down towards the country’s seeming inevitable extinction.  Tuvaluans have only minuscule control over their own fate.  They are the unavoidable collateral damage of an entire species’ slow response, or in some cases, actual inability to recognize its own destruction.

This battle for survival has begun to attract more and more attention from the outside world –  people and countries coming from outside to offer actual assistance and real aid; people wanting to tell the remarkable story of Tuvalu, both to circulate the dire situation these specific people face as well as provide a real life dynamic and poster photo for global conversations regarding the crisis of climate change; people wanting to know what they can do.  And now, of course, tourists just wanting to come and tick Tuvalu off the bucket list of places they’ve visited before it’s too late.

And yet, amongst all the unfolding drama surrounding Tuvalu, this population of ten thousand or so people manage to try to carry on their day to day existence not unlike any other person on the planet.  They are not, by any measure, complacent regarding their plight.  Quite the contrary, Tuvaluans seem incredibly proud as a people, willing to fight tooth and nail to protect their future.  However, like many patients having been diagnosed with a terminal condition, they also appear unwilling to either be viewed as helpless, pitiful victims or content to spend the remainder of their existence dwelling on the inevitable final destination the path they walk is leading to.

This was where we found ourselves. Our temporary new community.  A truly unique location with truly unique circumstances.  However, we quickly learned that, as far as visitors to Tuvalu go, we too were quite unique.

Not a corporation with money to donate; not experts wanting to step in with self-proclaimed superior ideas and solutions to save the islands; not YouTube influencers looking to simply gain followers by hyping some marginal drama; not vacationers looking to see what all the hullabaloo was about…not with all the background information and certainly not with ulterior motives.  

Rather, two gypsies on a sailboat with the intention of simply finding safe harbor for ourselves and Exit to sit out the cyclone season.

Now that we were finally outside the “cyclone box” designated by our insurance company, we could breathe a sigh of relief both in the fact that we were highly unlikely to be affected by any potential cyclone activity of the season, not to mention that we would actually be covered by our insurance company for any other potential calamities Exit could possibly experience.

The town was exceptionally friendly and, as we would learn over time, a source of many unique and memorable experiences. But, that having been said, it was certainly not a bustling beehive of activity to keep us entertained for extended periods.

Once we’d been around town a handful of times and got a feel for things, we opted to pick up anchor and explore some of the other potential anchorages in the lagoon. 

For our first excursion with the Mothership, we didn’t get too far. Only about four nautical miles to the north, near the tip of the main island. Right at the edge of the town of Vaiaku, where we had cleared in. As it turned out, we had anchored just off the town dump. We could see the massive pile of rubbish slightly back from the edge of the shoreline.

Oh well…zero fucks given. With lots of other anchorage options, at least four months to kill and, for the moment, no chance of being snuggled by another boat, life was good.

November 25 – 29, 2024

Three to four days was what we anticipated the four hundred nautical mile passage to Tuvalu would take us. The forecast wasn’t great, nine to twelve knot winds from the east, but it seemed about as good as we could hope for given what we had been seeing for the previous weeks.

In actuality, it ended up being more like four to six knots…and from the south. So much for accurate forecasts. It took almost nine hours before we were finally able to shut off the Perkins, and even then we had to be satisfied with merely crawling along at a snail’s pace, not much faster than if we were swimming alongside the boat. Oh well.

A 1:00am squall that finally brought fifteen knot winds also made for a rough night, but finally we were making good progress hauling ass at between six and seven and a half knots.

By sunrise we were passing by Isabella Bank – a massive underwater mountain whose base rests at a depth 12,000 feet. Less than two nautical miles to port of our location, it comes within sixty feet of the surface; just ten miles further west it is less than twenty five feet under water. Unbelievable.

Passing over areas like this only happens every so often.

I always envision them as holding some exotic dive secret that just begs to be discovered, like the sea mounts at Malapascua in the Philippines – one of the few places on Earth that deep-sea dwelling Thresher sharks consistently congregate at depths scuba divers can visit. Cleaning stations, mating grounds, navigational references…who knows? But it’s these underwater mountaintops, pinnacles, and sea mounts that seem to attract pelagic marine life and action.

Which is why, every time I see them on our charts, I hope circumstances allow us to stop, at least briefly.

Sometimes they turn out to be areas that create exceptionally volatile and rough surface conditions which prevent even getting in the water to take a look. Other times they prove to be a magnet for fishing boats navigating erratically as they string out nets, long lines and other implements of death – a place best avoided entirely. Sometimes it turns out they don’t even seem to exist…we actually do pass over the top and manage to jump in the water only to find nothing but blue water underneath us. Possibly real, but certainly not where the chart indicates. Or we never find out because we pass by in the dead of night.

As is often the case, multiple contributing factors would dictate whether or not we decided to stop and have a look. In this instance, we reached the Isabella Bank area just after sunrise, and Kris was still enjoying her hard earned sleep time after a rolling night of squalls and rough seas. If we were going to stop, it would only happen if I woke up Kris. Also, after struggling with uncooperative winds the day before, we were finally scooting along at seven and a half knots, an admirable speed for us. Diverting course to reach the nearby area indicated on our charts, dousing the sails, stopping Exit, and digging out our snorkeling equipment would entirely kill the momentum we had finally built up.

With a twinge of disappointment, I quickly realized that whatever secrets King Neptune potentially had hidden away under the surface were not going to be revealed to us today.

As Exit continued zipping along with full sails, our depth display never registered anything but “—“, indicating there was over five hundred feet of water beneath us though, in reality, it was probably closer to five thousand feet.

In short order, Isabelle Bank was behind us and any secrets it held remained intact.

Our first two days largely ended up being an experiment in sailing adjustments.

Sometimes settling to be content with only the solent sail deployed and a book in hand. Other times trying to harness more power from the wind by putting out both the solent and genoa, either wing and wing or trying to get them to work together in tandem stacked on one side.

The winds ranged between four and seventeen knots, the swell was on our beam, and the true wind direction wandered in almost a ninety degree arc over time. It seemed like we were continuously making endless adjustments to try to keep the sail filled.

As we were preparing for our second night underway, about thirty hours and one hundred seventy nautical miles into our passage, we passed the magic number of Latitude 10°S.

Nothing obvious appeared to change; no dramatic shift occurred. However, both our insurance company and, just as importantly, history were of the opinion that we had just crossed an invisible line that meant our risk of encountering a cyclone had decreased dramatically. It hadn’t disappeared entirely, but close.

North of 10°S before December 1st. An arbitrary location by an arbitrary deadline that had loomed in the back of our minds for months like the black clouds on a temporal horizon. We had finally made it out of the dreaded cyclone box.

We both could breathe a bit easier…it was only November 26. We were actually ahead of schedule.

Still, erratic wind direction and wind speeds continued to plague us for the next thirty six hours. Our progress was good – in three days we had managed to make good on about 360nm – however, so far we had also added about eighteen hours of run time to our Perkins diesel engine.

As the sun rose. preparing to usher in the beginning of our fourth day at sea, we passed another significant milestone…crossing Longitude 180°.

180°…the International Date Line, the meridian opposite the prime meridian which together create the circle that divides the Earth into Eastern and Western Hemispheres.

Our Longitude West instantly became Longitude East.

Oddly enough, we had already been a day ahead of those occupying the Eastern Hemisphere for weeks. Tonga, though east of 180°, chose to artificially shift the International Date Line to run east of their international borders, effectively placing themselves on the same calendar day as the Western Hemisphere (and those that they have more day to day interactions with).

So, despite not experiencing a shift in the date, nor having the pomp and circumstance of an official mariner’s achievement – unlike our Equatorial crossing which resulted in our ascension from lowly Pollywogs to Shellbacks, crossing the International Date Line apparently carries no recognized maritime distinction – it still seemed rather significant to us.

Despite our progress, with almost ninety nautical miles remaining, it became apparent that we would not make it to Tuvalu until after sundown. It was also apparent that, at our current pace, we would arrive before the following day’s sunrise, an equally unappealing option.

Even motorsailing for twelve hours straight, it was still highly unlikely that we would beat the sunset. Thus, a twenty-four hour slow sail became our new strategy – a pace slow enough to assure we would have the light of a new day to guide us through the winding pass.

Just before midnight, three and a half days into our passage, we began to see a glow on the horizon…the lights of the atoll Funafuti. We were almost at the doorstep of Tuvalu.

Six hours later, the dark silhouette of Funafuti lay directly in front of us, barely left of the new day’s sun, which had just cleared the horizon line.

Amazingly, as we approached the channel, a pod of pilot whales as well as a pod of dolphins swam past us! It appeared Tuvalu took the responsibility of welcoming new guests quite seriously.

Though the mile and a half long channel looked rather intimidating on our Navionics charts, it was over a hundred thirty feet deep in places and more than four hundred feet wide.

After about fifteen minutes of high alert navigating, we found ourselves inside the main lagoon. Safe harbor North of Latitude 10°S.

It remained to be seen whether we would be able to ride out the entire five month cyclone season here…but that was a detail to be addressed at a later time.

We had arrived at Tuvalu, the least visited country on the planet.

November 6 – 25, 2024

From a latitude of 19°S in Vava’u, Tonga to 13°S.  We had travelled roughly 370 nautical miles.  To a tiny oval shaped atoll, only about 13nm long from top to bottom with an 8nm long island inside.

It provided our first refuge for Exit while sailing towards our latitude 10°N “safe zone” outside the cyclone box designated by our insurance company.

Wallis and Futuna, a country made up of two island groups (oddly enough, one atoll Wallis and the other Futuna, which is actually comprised of two islands) which lie approximately one hundred twenty nautical miles apart.  Its truly Polynesian heritage has ancestry tying back to both Tonga and Samoa, though it was briefly occupied by US troops during WWII and officially became an overseas territory of France in 1959.  The entire country’s population numbers only about 12,000, approximately two-thirds of which live on Wallis.  

Regarding the location of Wallis and Futuna, off the beaten path would be a comical understatement. Though there is an airstrip on Wallis, visitors number only about 3,700 annually, and I would imagine a significant portion of those must be relatives of some sort.  Very few sailboats pass by and even fewer stop.  Unlike other Pacific islands that see hundreds or even thousands of sailboats a year, Wallis and Futuna count visiting yachts only in the dozens.

Speaking neither Polynesian nor French, the two primary spoken languages on the island, we knew communication could be a bit of an issue for us.  We had already learned this in French Polynesia.  A great deal of the population speaks no English at all, and even those that do sometimes don’t let on until the last sentence or two of an exchange. 

For us, the process of clearing out in Tonga had turned out to be far more stressful than the passage that followed.

In order to clear out, it had been necessary to bring Exit to the main dock in Vava’u. Our approach to the intimidating cement dock (with its submerged wreck at one end, rusty rebar sticking out, and nasty overhang that tried to suck our toe rail underneath it when we cleared in) was made even more ominous by fifteen knot winds that pushed right at the dock. Moreover, the dock was already stuffed full of sailboats, already rafted two-deep in a couple of spots.

As we passed slowly by, trying to assess the situation, an older guy on the only sailboat that didn’t already have another boat rafted to it, yelled over that we could raft up to him if we wanted. Normally, this would be something we would try to avoid in any way possible, but we didn’t see much of an alternative. We had no idea how long everyone was going to be, so we yelled back that we’d come around a second time to try. At least this would put a bumper between us and the cement dock.

We circled around, allowing Kris to bring us in close enough to throw a line but not so close that we would end up side-swiping the guy. It was perfect. We had about ten feet between us when I got our bow line in the guys hands. Except with fifteen knots of wind, as soon as we stopped moving forward the bow started drifting towards the boat. Fast. The stern was barely moving which meant suddenly our anchor, jutting out from the bow roller, was going to make contact far before the fenders that were hanging off the port side.

It looked like a disaster was imminent. I was already envisioning our seventy three pound Rocna anchor gouging a deep line into the fiberglass hull of the sailboat we now were only about two feet away from. The guy on the other boat had already moved astern to try to grab a line from Kris, so I was the only person nearby.

There was no way Kris could power away from the boat; gunning the engine would have just rammed us into the side of the guy. There wasn’t time to reposition the fenders. There was only about three seconds left before our anchor was going to start deconstructing his hull. Seeing no alternative, I jumped over our lifeline and put myself between the two boats, hoping I could push off, and stop the bow from drifting closer without becoming a fender myself. It was one of those moments – push with everything you’ve got plus a little bit more, or have something crushed between two gigantic objects each weighing multiple tons.

Somehow…the anchor stopped with only about three inches separating it from the other sailboat, and I managed to avoid being in between the two. As the stern slowly drifted in, the fenders hanging alongside our hull were the only things that made contact.

I could feel my heart start beating again as I breathed out. I was pretty sure I hadn’t actually shit myself, but I wasn’t absolutely certain for a minute or two. Jesus Christ! That was close.

Soon after we were adequately tied to S/V Shandon, the sailboat we had nearly given a face lift to, we learned that the Customs Officer was off island.

Shit.

And he had the required customs stamp in his possession.

Seriously?

However, he was about to land at the airport and would be here before long.

Okay. Not a fiasco.

As it turned out, when a white pickup with ‘CUSTOMS‘ in big green letters on the door of the truck pulled up and stopped at the edge of the dock, we learned it wasn’t just the customs officer who had been returning on the plane. He opened his door, stepped out, walked around to the back of the truck, dropped the tailgate, and opened the wire door of a plastic kennel sitting in back. Out jumped Tonga’s new canine customs agent.

Once the customs officer concluded we were not smuggling drugs, weapons, or any other contraband, the remainder of the clearing out process went rather smoothly. Eventually, we had our paperwork and passport stamps in hand.

Getting back off the dock was another matter entirely. Only after lowering our dinghy into the water, with the assistance of our friends aboard S/V Solstice Tide and their dinghy as well, were we finally managed to get clear of the sailboat we had been rafted up to. It required a simultaneous push off by both dinghies at both Exit’s bow and stern.

Having successfully cleared out of Tonga, Exit departed Vava’u late in the afternoon on November 6. Perfect timing considering we were one day ahead of the U.S. which made it Election Day there. A good day to not be online.

Only twenty nautical miles north of Tonga we passed within five miles of the location a 2000 foot deep undersea volcano which had erupted in 2019. A bit scary to think about what would happen if history repeated itself here, but still not nearly as scary as the history that was about to repeat itself in the States.

Turning on Starlink to get a weather update turned out to be a big mistake when we glanced at the news and found out that the Trump Shitshow 2.0 and MAGA Zombie Parade was about to officially be scheduled for another four year season…great.

The sixty-seven hour passage from Tonga was a bit sporty at times but nothing dramatic. All the ominous forecasts that predicted huge deluges of rain dumping upon us turned out to be false alarms. To the contrary, we witnessed a stunning sunrise and enjoyed some bright blue skies and fantastic sailing.

Even our arrival to Wallis, which had threatened to be quite wet that morning, turned out to only be gray with a few drops. The crappy weather had very politely skirted around us, for which we were very grateful.

Despite having to acknowledge we had been pretty damn fortunate while underway, we couldn’t argue with the perspective our anchor beers relayed…

We had set anchor inside the atoll of Wallis on a Saturday just before noon. That evening we ended up enjoying a magical sunset at anchor just off a small uninhabited island named Île Faïoa in the southeast corner of the atoll while we awaited the arrival of Monday, when we thought we could clear in.

As it turned out, S/V Kuaka (who had departed Tonga a few days ahead of us) was already in Wallis and had cleared out the day before our arrival. They had left town the morning after we had come through the pass and ended up anchoring at Île Faïoa right next to us, awaiting better weather at the end of the weekend as they continued north to Kiribati.

It gave us an opportunity to see them once again, thank them again for first planting the idea of heading this way, as well as get timely and current information about the area we had just arrived at.

First thing Monday morning, we raised anchor and headed seven miles north to Mata-Utu, the main town and capital of about 8,000 people, where we would officially clear into Wallis and Futuna.

Clearing into the country, we had to delicately tiptoe our way through an interaction with a quite irritated police officer who would serve as our Immigration official.  While we waited outside the port authority office, he had very aggressively pulled up in front of us in his marked police car and stepped out with his partner beside him.  In full uniform, he was short and stocky with a tiny tuft of hair at the front of an otherwise shaved head.  He spoke English very well.  He was not happy.  Today was Monday.  We had arrived on Saturday.  Why had we not already visited them?

We politely explained to him that, after attempting to hail the port control authorities on our VHF radio and getting no response two days prior as we were passing through the entrance channel, we had concluded that they were closed for the weekend (not an uncommon situation in some places).  We had then dropped anchor just off a nearby island, raised our yellow “Q” flag (an indication that we had not yet cleared into the country), and remained on the boat for the weekend.  First thing Monday, we sailed the nine miles to town and came directly to the port authority office where we had been awaiting his arrival for three hours.  We profusely apologized for anything improper we had done and expressed that we were trying our best to follow the correct protocol.

After sternly reprimanding us for not coming directly to the town and visiting the police station immediately – an offense we were informed could result in us being told to leave immediately – he ended up stamping our passports, shaking our hands, and smiling.  Whew!  

Subsequently, when we preemptively apologized to the Customs Officer inside the nearby office, he gave a bit of a smirk and said something along the lines of, “that’s just him.”  Filling out the customs paperwork, I misinterpreted one of the blank spaces at the top of the document.  When I handed it back to the customs official, he looked it over and promptly said, “Oh…no, no…”, while crossing out the date I had written in the blank. Still gunshy from the Immigration official, I immediately grimaced, wondering what we’d done wrong now.  He walked across the room, checked a big three-ring binder, walked back over and wrote something above the date that he had just crossed out.  I looked and it was the number “35”.  

He looked at us, smiled, and told us we were the thirty-fifth sailboat to visit during 2024.  We returned the smile and started breathing again.

Once we had cleared in, even with the language barrier we found people unbelievably friendly.  Walking along the roadside, almost everyone waved and smiled at us as they passed by.  We laughed at how ridiculous you would be received in the U.S. waving at every passing car…oh ya, you’d be ignored or looked at as the homeless person seeking a handout.

We learned quickly that weather conditions here could shift very rapidly. A brutally hot day with nothing but sunshine and puffy clouds was apt to be offset by a downpour at any time.

Just standing on the causeway, we could experience the gamut of changing weather.

A deceptively fast moving squall drifting toward us turned out to be a nearly daily occurrence, oftentimes multiple times in a day.

This one turned out to be a pretty modest amount of rain. Not always the case though.

We soon learned it could be a bit challenging to coordinate our time in town. Winds and/or ran might make for a difficult trip in to town or back to the boat; or the incessant heat of a relentless sun beating down could make walking around an exhausting affair. Even if the weather cooperated, we often found we had arrived in town before anything was open, or during the afternoon when things seemed to close as well, or it was too late for us to risk having to make our dinghy commute after dark.

We couldn’t tell if this time of the year was outside of any kind of a tourist season…or whether that even existed here.

After having a bit of a wander about the town, we decided to head back south to the small island of Nukuatea, on the opposite side of the pass that the island we had anchored at upon first arriving at Wallis was.

Once we had settled in at Nukuatea and appeared to have a fair weather window of opportunity with no squalls or deluges emanate, we decided on a trip up the mast.

Not an emergency; just necessary for an inspection of everything – both to check on any potential issues that had developed during the previous passage as well as for peace of mind before commencing on our next passage. As is usually the case, it provided a great vantage point.

Fortunately, it turned out one didn’t need to be at the top of the mast for an excellent view. Whether it be an afternoon rainbow…

Or another brilliant sunset…

As Polynesians Islanders, the inhabitants of Wallis have an obvious historical tie to the ocean with an incredible lineage of nautical navigation and mariner skill.  During our stay, we had the pleasure of witnessing their fascinating traditional sailing outriggers gracefully plying about the lagoon inside the atoll.

Soon after, we learned there was a dive shop on the island.  It was owned and run by a French expat named Pascal who had moved to Wallis twenty three years ago.  We stopped by his tiny shop – more of a hut, complete with equipment hangers made literally from sticks – and signed up to join a dive already scheduled for the following day in one of the passes.  

When we arrived the following morning three other divers, very chatty and friendly French expats who spoke perfect English were there also.  Because they were quite inexperienced, the plan had been for Pascal to take the three while we accompanied another dive instructor who was familiar with the pass.  Unfortunately, the instructor was sick and wouldn’t be coming along.          

No worries.  We were used to diving alone; and after a thorough briefing felt completely comfortable with the situation.  As it turned out, when the dive boat arrived at the pass, the current was outgoing and it was absolutely ripping. The call was quickly made to alter the plan, and we all headed outside the pass in the dive boat to a spot on the outer side of the atoll.  Pascal said we were still free to go on our own.  Despite having very little information about where we were going, we hopped in the water and had a great dive wandering randomly amongst underwater canyons.  We had a surface marker to deploy at the end of the dive so, without meandering too far or doing anything silly, we were confident knowing there was a boat to pick us up when we surfaced.  It wouldn’t make the list of best dives ever; regardless, we had an awesome time doing our first solo dive on the outside of a remote atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Among the many things we have learned living aboard Exit for the past eight years, one of those is the fact that everything takes about five times longer to do on a boat than it would otherwise.  Another is that we have friends all over the world; we just haven’t met them all yet.  Case in point…

Our next mission was to secure diesel and gasoline for Exit’s reserve jerry cans.  Ironically, this turned out much more challenging than our earlier dive had been.  

The typical procedure is to go ashore in our dinghy, walk to the nearest gas station with empty five-gallon jerry cans, fill them with either diesel or petrol, then haul them back to the dinghy in our wagon, repeating the process as many times as is needed to fill tanks or top up our reserves.

It’s no red metal toy wagon. Rather, more of a utility cart – blue canvas covering a metal frame that folds up for storage with swiveling front wheels and a 150 pound load capacity… maybe we should call it the “Bluetooth Hauler” as a tip of the hat to the old classic “Radio Flyer”…hmmmm.

Anyhoo…

Google Maps had identified a “gas depot” just over a mile from the dive shop.  We tied up the dinghy at the dock next to the dive shop and proceeded to walk casually down the road toward the gas station, immediately realizing we had opted to undertake this task in the excruciating heat of a relentless midday sun. After walking for what seemed like more than the anticipated distance without seeing a filling station, we decided to check GoogleMaps on Kris’ iPhone, only to discover it was now behind us!

Confused, we turned around and started backtracking, this time paying much closer attention to GoogleMaps. When we arrived at the supposed location, we looked around quite perplexed and were quickly dismayed to see off the road, tucked away behind a fence, a small yard that contained dozens and dozens of stacked portable propane tanks.  We had obviously misunderstood the nature of the business identified as a “gas depot”.   Cooking gas…not engine fuel.

Fuck.

Amazingly, we were only a hundred or so yards from a small brewery we had walked past earlier.  We were hot, frustrated, and still without fuel.  Sweating buckets and completely parched, we immediately decided to drown our misfortunes in a couple of bottles of locally brewed beer.

Inside we met Serge, the French proprietor who spoke absolutely zero English.  After we had two glasses of semi-cool beer in hand (the brewery didn’t officially start serving for three more hours), a great deal of gesturing, attempted use of Spanish as a somewhat intermediary language, and references to the props we carried in the wagon (fuel jerry cans) allowed us to convey the essence of our situation to him.  While Serge relayed vast amounts of information back to us, all of which we had absolutely no idea what he was saying, he managed to communicate that the gas station we were seeking was actually a number of miles further up the road. 

After finishing our beers and buying a variety pack of twelve more, Serge provided us a solution… a sheet of paper with a handwritten message in French:  “Gas station please”.  He pointed to the road out front, held up the sheet of paper, and stuck out a thumb.  Brilliant. 

After three or four cars drove by, the occupants all with confused looks, a scooter with two boys, maybe fifteen years old stopped next to us.  They read the sheet a number of times and spoke to each other back and forth.  Eventually they nodded their heads, only we couldn’t figure out what they were saying.  We weren’t sure if they wanted us to give them money (which we didn’t know how much or whether they would even return), or how this could even work with four people and a wagon carrying jerry cans given they were on a scooter.  After a lengthy back and forth exchange of words, gestures, and expressions that generated more confused looks on both sides, we were able to establish that they were going to go round up a car.  We waited for about five minutes before they returned as passengers in a pickup that contained three of their friends and a driver who looked to be in his twenties.  The driver signaled for us to hop in the back of the pickup.  We did, and they proceeded to drive us to the gas station.  All the while the three other kids sitting in the back with us asked questions in very broken English, smiled, and chuckled amongst themselves. 

A few minutes later we were standing at the pumps getting our jerry cans filled.  Afterwards they proceeded to give us a ride all the way back to our dinghy at the dive shop. What was nearly a maddening fiasco and afternoon of unproductive frustrating misery turned into an opportunity to meet new friends and experience the kindness and generosity of Wallis.

The episodic rains, which seem to be nearly a daily event, are the one thing that breaks up the withering tropical heat which also seems to be a staple of the island.  Some momentary drizzles come and go quickly – “all seventeen drops” as we would refer to them.  Others fall more under the category our friends on S/V Solstice Tide refer to as “biblical rains”.  

Trying to keep an optimistic outlook, we had celebrated the fact that our rain catch was the best it had been for about as long as we could remember.  Well, years for sure.  The twenty two gallons of water jerry cans were completely full for laundry and even both of Exit’s one-hundred gallon water tanks had been pretty much topped up.  

So far, throughout our explorations into the Pacific Ocean, we have had the good fortune of largely avoiding the electrical activity that often accompanies these wet occurrences.  However, during one of these overnight biblical rain events, our luck ran out.

Early in the morning (after all, 2-4am is the typical time the shit hits the fan), as one particular deluge continued unabated, lightning flashes began bursting around us.  The wind wasn’t unreasonable, and we were anchored in a hundred feet of water all by ourselves in a protected bay on the leeward side of a small island that had to be a couple hundred feet taller than our mast, so we weren’t exceptionally concerned or nervous.  Any lightning is always disconcerting, but the thunder wasn’t exploding like bombs all around us in ways we had experienced in places like Panama, so we knew it wasn’t right on top of us. However, at one point, a pretty big blast kicked off.  

When I turned on the navigation electronics the following morning, a groan emanated from my mouth that was probably immediately chased after by a string of expletives.  All of the data that would normally pop up on the displays as numbers came up as only dashes.

“- – – ” 

Nothing more.

Shit.

No depth.  No true wind speed or direction.  No apparent wind speed or direction.  No boat speed.  No magnetic heading.  Not on any of the six displays.

Furthermore, when we turned on the autopilot, the ominous message came up, “No Autopilot Detected”.  Both displays (one at the nav table below decks and one at the helm) concurred.

Double shit.

We were still getting power to all of the navigation electronics, but no data readings.  Starlink still powered up, and thankfully worked fine.  The watermaker was still powered up with the display indicating all was good.    The VHF, radar, and AIS systems were all good.

We came to the conclusion that there was no way we had received a direct lightning strike.  There would have been much more catastrophic damage to the electrical systems.  Our running theory was that some sort of an electrical static or electro-magnetic halo from close proximity lightning had done some serious voodoo shit to our systems, and one or more components in that network had either failed or been affected.  

The reality was it was pretty academic.  Didn’t really matter.  At this point, it was about troubleshooting things and finding the source of the current issue, not the cause.

After day one, ten hours of tracking wiring routes, testing components, bypassing things, and attempting various options and possibilities got us nowhere. We were mentally exhausted, flummoxed, and no closer to a solution.  No answers, no successes and lots of additional questions.  We resolved ourselves to a morose happy hour and called it a day.

The following day, the black tunnel we found ourselves in began to reveal a dim light in the distance.  We first got the magnetic compass reading to appear on one display.  Success; tiny but undeniable.  Additional troubleshooting began to eventually reveal other answers and slowly the complete fog of confusion began to dissipate.  Other data began to appear on various displays at certain times under certain conditions.  The autopilot began to see itself.  

Without going into a long and boring breakdown of system details as well as the step by step drama which included endless re-routing, network isolating, and component testing, suffice to say we finally had almost everything back online by the end of the day.  FUCK YA!  By sundown we had determined that our wind sensor at the top of the mast was fried, as was an older electronic converter box that was no longer a necessity but had stuffed up the data communications by still being in the chain of things that were hooked together.  The dead converter was bypassed and removed.  An older wind sensor we still had as a backup could go back on the top of the mast.

That night, our happy hour was truly happy; victory tasted almost as sweet as the gin and tonics!  Success had only followed in the wake of a long stretch of angst and frustration, but the confidence it built in our ultimate self-sufficiency and resourcefulness was palpable.  

Two days later, we were rewarded for all our efforts with the realization we had both come down with some sort of nasty bug, probably during our human interactions on the day of diving, and found ourselves completely knocked out of commission for a handful of days.  Victory celebrations are often fleeting.

This completely eliminated any motivation to get out and about for some well deserved exploration and play.  Unfortunately, we had some hard decisions to make that couldn’t wait.

With only a week left of November, we knew we should be moving on.  Yet Wallis was a fabulous place and we had only scratched the surface; we were seriously contemplating accepting to push our boundaries of good fortune by remaining a while longer.  Except we’d been warned by another sailboat (S/V Queen Jane, who had been in this area twice before) that we needed to get going as favorable winds (or any winds at all) would soon become more and more scarce and turn more predominantly north.  

If we could just make it to Tuvalu, a tiny cluster of nine islands four hundred nautical miles further northeast, we would be above ten degrees latitude, the threshold for still having a valid insurance policy.  We could potentially wait out the cyclone season there and still have an option for returning to, not only Wallis, but also Tonga as well as Fiji.  Tuvalu would be a primitive location regarding supplies; but if we pushed a thousand nautical miles further all the way to the Marshall Islands, a more tangible option for supplies and civilization in general, we would realistically be too far to consider returning.  Tuvalu might keep all options still on the table.

It also wasn’t simply cyclone risks we needed to be aware of.  The areas that can produce cyclones are just as likely to produce slightly less extinction level weather that can still be exceptionally problematic.  Our recent electrical drama could be interpreted not only as an example, but also a bit of a warning omen.

We finally decided that if an apparent weather window opened up which afforded us the probability of sailing the entire way to Tuvalu, we would take it.

As an opportunity appeared on the forecast horizon and we decided departure was eminent, we picked up anchor and headed back to the main town to prepare for clearing out with the authorities, as well as provisioning at the supermarket – as much cheese, gin, tonic water, and wine (as well as less exotic priorities) that would fit in our lockers. If we were going to the edge of the world, we wanted to bring as much civilization as possible with us.

During our second day ashore, a barrage of rain began pounding down while we were in the supermarket.  As we stood beside our “Bluetooth Hauler” wagon piled high with groceries under the supermarket’s awning awaiting a lull, we were approached by a couple with a young child. Though they spoke no English, they were able to convey an offer for a ride.  We graciously accepted. 

And, though we had avoided getting thoroughly drenched on the way back to the dinghy due to the kindness of locals, there was no getting around the one mile dinghy ride back to Exit. 

It was though Mother Nature laughed and said, “Hah…do you really think you can out-maneuver me?”  As we guided the dinghy away from the ship dock, another biblical rain commenced with twenty knot winds that pitched us all around.  The ensuing waves and spray tossed what seemed like buckets of salt water on us.  We arrived back at Exit looking like a couple of drowned cats, but with an another dinghy full of provisions that had amazingly remained mostly dry wrapped under a tarp.

The following day during our final journey to the supermarket, instead of rain we were assaulted by the oppressive heat of a brutal sun that had our clothes almost equally soaked, with sweat this time.  Along the way, a man driving by veered to the side of the road, stopped, and started speaking to us in French.  When we indicated we spoke no French, he repeatedly motioned for us to get in his car, which we did.  As he fired up the car’s air conditioning, we learned his name was Olivier (as in Lawrence…).  When we arrived at the supermarket, in true “Wallis form”, he gestured that he would do some quick shopping, meet us back at the car, and give a ride back to the dock.  He even left the car running with the air-con on, in case we got back first!  

We were so touched by his kindness, we bought him a box of fresh chocolate chip cookies and handed them to him after he helped unload the groceries from the back of his car at the dock.  Briefly, he tried to refuse them.  But when we insisted, he smiled, momentarily returned to his car, and climbed back out holding a gift of his own…a beautiful handwoven fan!

As Olivier drove away, we stepped into the Customs office, filled out our clearing out documents and received the official stamp.  While we waited  for the Immigration officer to drive down from the police station, the Customs officer, Bosco, made a truly valiant effort to fill what could otherwise have been awkward silence, with a barrage of friendly questions, struggling to communicate to us in broken English, supplementing his limited vocabulary with a flurry of finger tapping on his phone.  No doubt, thanks Google Translate! 

To our relief, the Immigration officer that arrived in short order was not the same person we cleared in with.  This time the exchange was as pleasant as we could ask for and, moments later, we were returning to Exit with completed official paperwork in hand and a dinghy full of the final provisions we had collected.

It was crazy to think that, thirty days ago, we had never even heard of the country of Wallis and Futuna.  Now, after sailing over six thousand six hundred nautical miles in the Pacific Ocean since departing Mexico seven months ago, it had taken only fourteen days here to conclude we had truly discovered a gem in the middle of nowhere.  If possible, we fully intend to return. 

But for now, it is time to continue onward.  

If all goes according to plan, the next time we drop anchor will be above the latitude of ten degrees south on the other side of the International Date Line, which lies at 180 degrees, where our longitude will change from west to east. Our destination is a cluster of nine tiny atolls that make up Tuvalu, which has the unique title of being the least visited country on the planet.  

It is not goodbye we say to Wallis; rather, until next time.

November 3 – 6, 2024

After nearly seven months we had run out of time. Over six thousand nautical miles and three countries, but this time it wasn’t immigration expiration deadlines…cyclone season was now upon us.

We had long been lamenting the fact that we seemed to have been pulled into the gravitational pull of New Zealand like hundreds of other sailors.  Following the herd was never our way, yet we had simply accepted heading there to escape the cyclone season as “the practical thing to do”.

New Zealand certainly has its appeal as a prospect to visit.  However, it seemed more realistic for us to visit by plane than boat.  The reality was that our true goal to was to eventually reach SE Asia, and that lie in the exact opposite direction.  Sailing nearly three thousand nautical miles round trip to spend six months in anchorages with water too cold to swim in without wetsuits, under the constant threat of hostile weather (after all, almost every bit of scary weather we had been monitoring for months had come from that area), quite expensive living conditions, and hundreds of other boats simply seemed like a pill we were forcing ourselves to swallow.  Most of the other sailors whose opinions we valued had ended up storing their boats to rent camper vans – something we did in Australia fifteen years earlier but not something we wanted to do now.

Up to this point two things had molded our thinking and dictated our options regarding our immediate future: a common sense realization that staying where we were during the cyclone season would be a pretty fucking stupid display of faith in sheer luck; as well as a exceptionally unambiguous geographical box that had been provided to us by our insurance company with an ultimatum.  “Come December 1, if you are inside this box, Exit has ZERO insurance coverage of any sort…period.”

We had already tried to appeal with an option to potentially stay in Fiji, which would have been acceptable to the insurance company only if we paid $5000 for a cyclone pit in a marina that Exit would have to physically be sitting in for the entire cyclone season…expensive, hot, uncomfortable.  It sounded like a miserable way to spend $5000. And even more expensive if we didn’t stay aboard the boat.  We took the idea off the table.

Time had all but run out on us.  We shared a generally ominous feeling about the premise of making a passage to New Zealand.  Reports had trickled back to us of other sailors who had made the journey.  Some had benign experiences.  Some had gotten the shit kicked out them.  One sailboat was dis-masted.  One had their prop shaft seize up and, for reasons that we never fully comprehended, the people aboard actually ended up scuttling their boat!!!  The New Zealand reality hung over us like a dark, gloomy storm cloud. 

We had been listening to too many other people for too long.  Herd mentalities.  Horror stories.  Damn.

There had to be another option; but to untangle it from all the confusion and uncertainty would require us to stop listening to what nearly everyone else was saying.  Separating from the masses and taking path least travelled had worked for us repeatedly in the past. 

But we had to nut up and return to literally thinking outside the box…outside the cyclone box, that is.

And then we spoke to Ben and Sophie on S/V Kuaka, a custom built expedition capable aluminum sailboat.  We had first met them a number of months prior in French Polynesia and immediately got along really well with them. Not only was Kuaka remarkably similar to Exit in its construction, their situation was also very similar to ours. Ben and Sophie were currently facing the same ticking clock as us. They too had to be out of the exact same cyclone box as us to satisfy insurance requirements, and their deadline was even sooner than ours. But they had come up with a different plan. They were headed north…

Wait.

What the fuck? North instead of south?

They were the first people we had spoken to who had even thrown that idea out. They were now only days away from departing.

Headed for Wallis and Futuna.

Where? Never heard of it…

Then past Tuvalu.

Huh? Never heard of that either.

They planned on not stopping at Tuvalu in favor of pressing on to Kiribati.

Kiribati? It’s actually pronounced “Kir-a-bas”. Okay…but neither of those sounded remotely familiar.

Ben and Sophie invited us over to Kuaka – to look at a guide they had, entitled Landfalls of Paradise, and talk things over. Copy that…we’re on our way!

It appeared that almost no one passes through the area we were discussing. A few dozen sailboats a year, maybe. Mostly on the way to the Marshall Islands which, in this direction, represents the first really recognizable destination to the north to steer towards outside of the cyclone belt. About the same distance away as New Zealand, but a more reasonable path if your intended destination is Palau, Micronesia, the Philippines, Japan, or any number of other appetizing possibilities.

Palau, Micronesia, and SE Asia in general were all along the trajectory we really wanted to be going in the long term. However, what was already very apparent to us was that, coming all the way from Mexico, the six month window outside of the cyclone season had undoubtedly been an insufficient amount of time to properly experience French Polynesia, Tonga, Fiji, and any detours in between. We had not even gotten to Fiji this season.

For us, the real appeal of sailing to New Zealand was the option of returning to Tonga and Fiji to pick up where we left off after the cyclone season had passed. It was feasible to sail in both directions. And while getting to the Marshall Islands was not that much different than New Zealand in distance, the prevailing wind and currents would mean that a round trip by sailboat was a much more difficult, if not unrealistic, prospect.

For Ben and Sophie, this was not an issue. They intended on pressing onward from Kiribati to the Marshall Islands, followed by Japan and eventually…Alaska. Wow! Ambitious, but not appealing to us.

For us, the idea of heading north was like a light bulb turning on…ding! But we really wanted the option of turning around. And so we had to take the seed they had just planted, and carefully nurture our own plan.

Repeated exchanges with our insurance agent, who at this point seemed rather perplexed and a bit flummoxed at our theoretical about face in direction, especially in this eleventh hour (and fifty minutes), eventually illuminated a bit better understanding. In one month’s time – outside of arriving at New Zealand, or Australia (only south of Brisbane), or having Exit actually sitting in an approved cyclone pit in Fiji, or sailing all the way back east of French Polynesia – we would have zero insurance coverage…with one exception…

We would be okay if we were north of the latitude 10°S.

To us, the northern edge of the cyclone box provided by our insurance agent looked more like 5°, but we weren’t going to argue the official answer from the insurance company against an illustration we were looking at.

Hmmm. Latitude 10°S.

This meant we had to at least make it as far as Tuvalu…about eight hundred nautical miles north of Tonga. Half the distance it would be to get to New Zealand.

We calculated that Wallis and Futuna would be a bit less than four hundred nautical miles away. Almost half way.

Instead of an imminent departure with fifteen hundred brutal miles to New Zealand, we could saunter to Wallis and Futuna and relax there for a short while, knowing that we were only an additional three day sail away from Tuvalu. Once there, all the pressure of the December 1 cyclone season deadline would be lifted.

Technically, Tuvalu is not completely out of the theoretical realm of possibility for cyclone activity. But it offered enough security for our comfort level as well as satisfying the damn insurance stipulations. If, after arriving in Tuvalu, it turned out to be an unrealistic stop for six months, we would have to reconsider our anticipated return south to Tonga, as well as visiting Fiji.

As remote and off the beaten path as it seemed, we immediately understood it would not be a hub of civilization for consumption and available resources. But we were good with that. They would have the sheer necessities of fuel and basic food stocks. Given a boat full of provisions, a functional dive compressor and gear, and a tropical location near the Equator, we felt confident that we could rough it for half a year.

We still had a lot to learn about places we had never heard of only days before and only a short time before we needed to leave…but suddenly we felt good.

This was doable.

Normally, planetary polarity shifts happen somewhere between every ten thousand and fifty million years. Apparently, the actual process theoretically takes approximately a thousand years to occur. Ironically, for us, a polarity reversal had required only a few days.

No fucking around.

September 21 – November 6, 2024

Six weeks simply wasn’t going to be enough time.

Excluding our previous stop at American Samoa, which had been a weather diversion, it had been over five years since we had spent so little time in a country we had sailed to.  And yet, only two weeks after arriving in Tonga, it was already into November with cyclone season technically underway.

Nine months earlier, while still in the Sea of Cortez, after reading something online Kris had stated flatly, “I want to swim with whales in Tonga on my birthday.”

As it turned out, by October 26 this year the whales had already left Tonga, beckoned south towards Antarctica by an early cooling of the surrounding waters.  It was our good fortune that, by that time, we had already sailed over six thousand nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean, arrived in Tonga, and dived with whales just three weeks earlier, not once, but twice.  

Not quite perfect timing…but close.  We couldn’t hold it against the whales.

It was late in the season.  Still we had made it.  

To be sure, getting to Tonga from French Polynesia had been an epic, at times harrowing, and certainly exciting journey. We had experienced both some of the most thrilling and nerve-wracking moments in the entirety of our sailing experiences.

The massive arc from French Polynesia to American Samoa, though nothing close to our 3000+ mile passage that initially got us to French Polynesia from Mexico, still represented only the second time we had ever travelled more than one thousand nautical miles in one go. And, though the American Samoa to Tonga leg was not nearly as dramatic as the Mexico to French Polynesia passage had been, it remained no small feat.

One thousand three hundred sixty six nautical miles from French Polynesia to American Samoa in just over ten and a half days. Followed by another three hundred fifty seven miles to the Kingdom of Tonga in just over two and a half additional days.

In retrospect, we had spent too much time in French Polynesia awaiting that optimal yet elusive weather window.  Still, in the end, our choice to opt for a route that had ended up being over one thousand seven hundred nautical miles – four hundred miles farther than the actual distance separating the Society Islands of French Polynesia from the Kingdom of Tonga – had turned out to be a prudent tactic.

Ironically, arriving at the customs dock at Neiafu to clear into the Kingdom of Tonga on the island of Vava’u proved to be far more adrenaline inducing and nerve wracking than anything during the three hundred sixty nautical mile passage we had just completed.  We managed to tie up to the vicious looking cement dock with its rusty rebar poking out, thirty feet directly behind us the definitive outline of a small sunken boat which jutted barely above the surface (obviously sunk while at the dock) and a local fishing boat tied to dock just in front of us.  As the tide started dropping and we found ourselves struggling to keep the toe rail of Exit from slipping under the overhanging cement lip of the boat-killer dock we were secured to, we really began to sweat.

However, a short time later the authorities returned with all of our paperwork stamped and in order. We were officially cleared into Tonga. Gleefully, we untied Exit and, thanks to the absolutely benign conditions, separated ourselves from the ominous cement structure without incident.

Immediately afterward we were reminded why we so often lament having to be amongst a slew of other boats. Even though there must be at least fifty moorings installed in the bay just off Neiafu, we couldn’t find a single open mooring. Shit.

A handful of scattered mooring balls, obviously reserved only for small local boats based upon how close they were to shore, were the only ones that were unoccupied. Except for one single other mooring ball that had a small inflatable dinghy tied to it. Strange, we thought. But we passed by and continued on.

As we reached the outer edge of the mooring field, we still had found nothing.

The mooring field, large as it is, takes up only a fraction of the entire bay. One problem with anchoring is it would put the boat at least a half mile away from most of the town. Even more challenging is the fact that just off the shoreline, the shelf is very narrow. To be a reasonable distance from shore (at least by our standards) you find yourself having to anchor in a hundred feet of water.

For us, a ten to thirty foot depth is ideal for anchoring. Forty to sixty, though not a problem, starts putting the boat on a pretty damn large diameter to potentially swing if you have a reasonable amount of scope out for the chain. One hundred feet is getting pretty ridiculous. Doable. But with all of our 350′ of chain out in a hundred feet of water, we are still at less than a 4:1 scope; and now have the potential of swinging in an arc larger than a football field if the wind were to reverse 180°. That’s fine when we’re the only boat and we have the space. But, really? Here we knew we would be lucky if a boat that chose to drop anchor next to us allowed even a hundred feet of space between us.

And yet, we were pretty limited on options for the moment. We decided to drop anchor in deep water, hoping that someone else would choose to abandon their mooring in favor of heading out to one of over forty charted anchorages in the area.

We crept as close to shore as we dared, trying to get slightly shallower than a hundred feet, and dropped anchor in eighty five feet of water. Initially we couldn’t get the anchor to set. Then, after a couple of tries, we both concurred that we were simply too close to shore for comfort…especially if we were finding the holding marginal, as seemed to be the case. Having just arrived, we really didn’t know how breezes would play out in the bay, nor how consistent the wind direction would be. It wasn’t worth the risk.

As we started pulling up the chain, it stopped dead with over a hundred fifty feet still out.

Damn. We were fouled on something. Not a big deal.

But after a few minutes it became clear that it wasn’t just a snag. We were really stuck…again. We had just gone through this in American Samoa – probably our worst experience ever with a fouled anchor chain…until now. Fuck.

Once again, we found ourselves wrestling for over an hour struggling to free the chain. Once again, we found ourselves almost deciding to don scuba gear to sort it out. Double fuck.

Then, once again, as we neared the tipping point of frustration becoming rage, the damn thing came free. Arggggggh!

Five minutes later, as we motored back through the mooring field making one last search for what we hoped was an empty mooring ball we had missed earlier, the point from frustration to rage didn’t just tip – it was smashed.

The mooring ball we had passed by earlier with the dinghy tied to it now had a sailboat flying a yellow ‘Q” flag pulling up to it, with two people at the bow holding a boathook and lines to tie off with. Triple fuck.

Some asshole had used their own dinghy to reserve the last mooring right next to their boat for a bunch of jerkoffs that were arriving after us. Perfect. Thanks S/V Faraway. Another awkward reminder as to why I hate most people…especially those that own boats. At least I got to smile a few days later when I heard that they had blown out their spinnaker…ain’t Karma a bitch?

Kris scowled at me as I held up my middle finger while we passed by. I was furious, venting how we should have just pushed the dinghy aside and tied up to the mooring ball earlier. Fortunately, Kris’ cooler head prevailed and we said screw the mooring field, opting to anchor just off a small island a couple miles outside of town.

It had been two and a half hours since we had left the cement government dock. The engine had been running the whole time. Almost the same amount of time we had run the engine over two and half days getting here all the way from American Samoa. Only this time, we had travelled a whopping four and a half miles instead of nearly three hundred sixty…quadruple fuck.

These were some hard earned anchor beers we were gonna enjoy.

The following day we returned to the town. There were half a dozen unoccupied moorings…of course.

Unbeknown to us, we had arrived just as the week long 2024 Vava’u Sailing Festival was commencing.  It offered us great insight into our new location, multiple presentations about potential future destinations in New Zealand, a number of opportunities to meet some locals, ex-pats, and other sailors, a fascinating and entertaining day trip to a cultural event, and some free meals.  All in all, a win.

We were also introduced to The Kraken bar, where we spent a number of evenings enjoying food, conversation, and of course our favorite Kraken rum.  It even had an actual sailboat, complete with Kraken graphics, integrated into the bar’s interior decor. As it turned out, they served a variation on the famous sailors’ drink of choice – “Dark and Stormy” (made from Pusser’s Spiced Rum and Goslings ginger beer).  Mixed with Kraken spiced rum and Bunderberg ginger beer, “The Kraken”, as they called it, was the exact same drink we thought we had invented and named “Perfect Storm” years before!  

By the end of the first week we felt well informed, privileged to be amongst such a hospitable group of  Pacific Islanders (it immediately became apparent why the the Kingdom of Tonga is referred to as “the Friendly Islands”), as well as exhausted from all the social interactions.  Having talked to more people on boats in five days than we had in the previous five months, we decided to restock some of our provisions and get the hell out of town.

We just had one task to accomplish beforehand.

During our arrival to Tonga we had already experienced an amazing though brief whale encounter.  Just as we were sailing into the channel entrance, we were greeted by a mother humpback whale and her calf.  They were about five hundred feet away, but it was unbelievable…who could ask for a better welcome?

Every year, Tonga acts as a brief rest stop for humpback whales and their calves migrating to Antarctica.  This certainty has provided Tongans with the opportunity to build a very respectful and conscientious tourism industry around seasonal whale watching encounters.  It is also one of the only places on the planet where you can actually swim with these stunning creatures.

During the sailing festival we had learned that the numerous whales in the area, mostly mothers with their young calves and an occasional escort, had already begun departing, cued by the cooling of the surrounding waters.  While these whales could often be spotted until the beginning of November, this year an early temperature drop in the water had triggered an early exodus.  The locals believed that by the second half of October, the whales would all have already moved on.  

The locals were also abuzz with reports of an albino baby humpback who had been seen recently this season.  It was the first time in Tongan history that an entirely white albino calf had been seen, and as such, also spurred quite a lot of conjecture as to its mystical significance. 

We held no expectations of a White Whale encounter (the albino calf’s wary mother had already understandably grown tired of all the excess attention they had received and likely moved on), but we had every intention of seizing the dwindling opportunity to swim with these magnificent mammals before the last ones departed.

Those in the tourism industry must walk a thin tightrope when balancing between tourist experiences and what is best for nature.  Oftentimes the result is a shit show.  In this case, it seems to be done admirably.  In Tonga, whale interactions can only legally occur under the presence of a guide, limited to snorkeling at the surface, with only one boat in proximity and no more than four people (plus the guide) in the water at once.  Boats aren’t permitted to chase whales and the guide must assess the demeanor of the mother and her calf before anyone is even permitted in the water.

The company that took us out was very professional, courteous, and conscientious.  However, as is always the case, Mother Nature can be very fickle and the luck of the draw inevitably comes into play with the day’s outcome.  A two hour mechanical setback on a boat that was slow to begin with, dwindling numbers of whales in the area, rough conditions that limited where we could go (especially with two young children aboard) all made for a challenging day.  Furthermore, eight people aboard the boat meant any time in the water had to be split between two groups.

Eventually, we did see whales.  Our group of four (myself, Kris and another couple) got in the water with a mother humpback, her calf, and a third escort.  The moment was fleeting…seconds instead of minutes.  Still, it was magical.  And then they dove and were gone. When we came across another mother humpback and her calf a bit later, one of the two children in the family of four decided he didn’t want to get in the water, allowing Kris a second opportunity to enthusiastically jump in the water for an additional breathtaking, though brief, encounter.   

We returned to Exit at the end of the day feeling simultaneously giddy with excitement and slightly guilty for a sense that things had fallen a bit short.  After a great deal of discussion we decided to set aside our trepidations, ante up and roll the dice again, with a different company this time.  

We weren’t disappointed…a faster boat with no mechanical issues, only four of us this time, a fantastic guide, and sympathetic Mother Nature.  Jackpot!  Our patience and persistence was rewarded with an absolutely brilliant day.

I think it would be fair to say Kris was more than a little stoked about the whole affair. But who’s kidding who, so was I.

Afterwards, we took a brief detour to a submerged cave known as Mariners Cave before returning to town.

The phenomenal whale interactions had far surpassed our wildest expectations, not to mention our budget. Sometimes life altering experiences like those can’t be judged on cost. They are too far and few in between; and, as such, need to simply be taken in for the magic they create.

Still, when money is not an infinite commodity in one’s possession, there has to be a balance. The pendulum needed to swing back in the direction of zero expenditures for a while, so we set out to explore some of the anchorages scattered throughout the network of islands around Vava’u.  With over forty charted anchorages, we had plenty to choose from.  We also learned long ago that noted anchorages represent only a fraction of the actual possibilities.

During a stretch of particularly calm weather we took advantage of the opportunity to sail to one of the outermost islands in the Vava’u chain, an island named Kenutu (#30 on the map of charted anchorages), where we found ourselves completely alone in an unbelievable and picturesque setting.

A hike to the far side of the island provided a fantastic view of the open ocean side.

Given our isolation and the stunning view, we decided this was a perfect location to launch Space Exit. The perspective offered by a drone a couple of hundred feet in the air is so completely different from our typical orientation that it never ceases to amaze us.

During a different excursion to another anchorage we found ourselves within range of a dinghy ride to a popular spot called Swallows Cave. Though that cave was hopelessly overrun by other tour boats and sightseers when we arrived, we found the smaller cave right next to it to be well worth the journey.

We had been made aware of the fact that a dive shop in town run by a German named Axel had built a great reputation taking divers to what was reported as a spectacular wreck just off the mooring field in town, as well as a night time “disco dive” utilizing UV, or black-light, dive torches to illuminate coral and other marine creatures in a completely unique way.  And while I had experienced one of these  “glow-in-the-dark” dives once before with a customer I took diving while working at Scuba Junkie which turned out both surreal and stunning, Kris and I were initially content to just do some exploratory dives on our own near the places we had anchored.  As it turned out, whether right off of Exit’s transom or via short dinghy rides, we stumbled across some of the best dive sites we had experienced since the Cayman Islands.  

Unfortunately, though we had managed to replace our GoPro that had been lost months prior at the end of a dive at Rangaroia in the Tuamotos during which we had seen our first tiger shark (!!!), we had not yet been able to secure an underwater housing, so we were unable to capture any photos or videos during any of the dives… oh well.  Back to old school “just having to remember things”.

In Tonga, it seemed we had finally found the elusive paradise that had been hiding from us since commencing on our Pacific Ocean crossing six months prior. Plenty of anchorages; generally, not too many other boats around us; great diving; reasonably calm weather; decent provisioning and supply options; water temperature that didn’t keep us out of the water; and a handful of other sailors whose company we enjoyed.

As it turned out, the couple and crew aboard the sailboat S/V Kahina, who we had gotten to know in French Polynesia after giving them a tow when their dinghy engine was on the fritz (they were also the other two people on our second whale watching tour) had quite a stash of instruments on their boat. One afternoon we had an epic three person jam session while enjoying drinks on a floating bar at the edge of the mooring field in Neiafu.

And then, in the blink of an eye, five weeks had passed and November was upon us.

Tick…tock…tick…tock…

The clock was ticking and we knew it.

We had to finalize our next destination, and soon. New Zealand had been the default choice for months, with Australia being a potential fallback. Unless we could come up with a viable alternative, it looked like we would be endeavoring to sail over fifteen hundred nautical miles with the rest of the herd for cyclone season. Six months. And, to be honest, in the wrong direction. Towards cold water…towards the source of most of the scary weather we had been watching since crossing the Equator…towards all the other boats that made the same herd decision.

Away from SE Asia, which was where we really wanted to be headed. We’d have to make the return trip after cyclone season ended as well.

What were we thinking? There had to be a better option…

And then we spoke to Ben and Sophia aboard S/V Kuaka. They told us they were heading north…

August 24 – September 21, 2024

We had already completed clearing out of French Polynesia, gotten our passport stamps, and picked up all of our paperwork from the authorities in Huahine. We had three days remaining to depart French Polynesia.

This was one of the few places we had visited that would allow you to stay more than twenty four hours after clearing out. Some countries expected you to return to your boat, lift anchor, and be gone. Here we were allowed to take care of all the paperwork a few days in advance and get the passports stamped with a future date.

Because there were limited locations that even were possible to clear out from, it was not uncommon here in French Polynesia for boats to stop at one of the outlying islands after clearing out and end up exceeding their allowed time. Cheeky, to say the least. Completely intentional. Another example of assholes willing to disregard the law, willing to push the boundaries for their own convenience and personal schedule, and give everyone a bad reputation.

On more than one occasion, we had heard of boats doing this with the backup plan of pleading that they had some sort of mechanical problem if they were actually caught. Our own perspective was that sailors who lied about engine failure or some kind of serious boat problem as an excuse to break the immigration laws and overstay their visas were begging Fate to step in and actually impose that very problem upon them at some time in the not so distant future. The well-deserved justice of self-imposed Karma…

We had no desire to engage in such fuckery.

Despite our disappointment, we had no intention of stopping on the sly at Bora-Bora, or further along at Maupiti as was even more common, to discreetly and illegally hang out as we passed by.

However, weather was not being very cooperative with our best laid plans to leave within three days time. We had been watching the weather forecast models already for quite some time. There was currently a massive zone of absolutely zero wind between us and Tonga, which was where we were trying to get to, and it didn’t look like there was any chance of it filling in before our deadline to be out of the country. By massive zone, I mean over a thousand miles – a distance that would take us over a week to motor through and would consume nearly the entire capacity of our two hundred gallon diesel tank…almost twice the amount we had used since departing Mexico four months ago.

There were other boats that had already decided they were headed for Bora-Bora or Maupiti. They planned on just trying to hide out until the winds finally picked up.

An additional problem was the longer term projected forecast. By the evening of September 1, stronger winds that were currently arcing to the south, just under the present dead zone that represented our needed trajectory, were expected to not just fill in to the north, but actually kick up to pretty damn obnoxious levels. These could be winds reaching the thirties with seas building up to ten feet or higher…something we were not prepared to sail through.

If we didn’t leave soon, we wouldn’t for quite some time…

We hatched a plan that seemed far more prudent than what amounted to the general consensus and groupthink among many of the other sailboats. It would mean we would be completely on our own, without the comfort or backup of nearby buddy boats, but we had never favored that strategy anyway.

Instead of attempting a straight shot involving potentially motoring for the better part of a week, or hiding in Bora-Bora or Maupiti hoping we wouldn’t get caught, we decided to head north. We calculated a broad arc in that direction, skirting along the edge of the dead zone would add potentially three hundred extra miles (maybe three days) to the projected thirteen hundred nautical mile, eleven day passage to Tonga, but should allow us the ability to sail instead of motor.

If the winds filled back in, we could cut back on a straighter course, possibly even stopping at Alofi on the tiny remote island of Niue (about two hundred miles short of Tonga) – an idea that intrigued us greatly. If things went completely to shit with that plan, American Samoa would be the bailout option at around eleven hundred miles, or nine days.

We set out on our own path, and for two days we enjoyed brilliant sailing conditions. Thirteen to eighteen knots in comfortable seas on a broad reach. Then the winds dropped to less than ten knots and we found ourselves motoring for half of the next forty-eight hours.

Once we got underway, the forecast models began to revise. The upside looked promising – though still covering a vast area of ocean, the zero wind area looked like it might shrink somewhat, potentially permitting us to avoid having to push as high northward as we originally anticipated. However, the downside looked slightly ominous – winds on the south side of the dead zone were probably going to be strengthening much more than originally forecasted. Niue would more than likely be too rough to stop at.

By our fifth day underway the winds had consistently returned. Nothing less than low teens and nothing more than low twenties. The skies were clear and we were smiling. It seemed our strategy had been a solid choice and we were making excellent progress.

We were growing a bit concerned with shifts in the forecast models that were still over five days away – far enough ahead to likely change again but close enough that we would still be underway.

The projections were now looking at a major disturbance beginning to materialize stretching from Tonga all the way up to Samoa and nearly two hundred miles east of Niue.

We had all but removed Niue from the potential list of potential targets; it looked like it was going to be a mess. Instead, the tiny island of Suwarrow (technically part of the Cook Islands), east and slightly north of American Samoa, had now become our bailout option in case the original fallback option of American Samoa became untenable. It looked like the shit could hit the fan even as far north as Samoa. This was one of those times when our ability to connect to Starlink and get weather updates while more than five hundred miles from the nearest land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean was worth every penny we had to fork out to a prick like Elon Musk.

By sunset on day six, you wouldn’t have guessed what winds were in store for the near future. They had dropped back down to below ten knots and we would see as low as five. We had managed to sail for one hundred ten of the past hundred fifty hours underway – not perfect but our “northern arc strategy” had largely been paying off. Still, it became excruciating having to run the engine for a number of eight to fifteen hour stretches.

On day seven we scrapped our improvised tentative stop at Surarrow. We had made good on about seven hundred thirty miles and actually came within less than thirty miles of the island. The forecast was still ambiguous as to whether things were really going to get nasty and we had American Samoa 450nm ahead of us that we would pass in about three days. If we were able to press on to Tonga we had closer to 700nm ahead of us, meaning we had just passed the halfway point.

Meanwhile, we had been hearing reports from the armada of twelve or so sailboats three to four hundred miles to the south of us. This was the group that had hidden out in Bora Bora or Maupiti and made a run for Niue just ahead of the front that we had tried to get well north of. They were now being pummeled by brutal winds and high seas, still trying to make it to Niue before conditions deteriorated enough to make entering the pass into the atoll impossible, forcing them to continue all the way to Tonga. From the AIS positions that we were seeing on our PredictWind weather updates, it looked to us like very few of those boats would make that window.

That afternoon we celebrated having surpassed 22,000 nautical miles travelled aboard Exit. It was a welcome momentary distraction from worrying about weather forecasts. We were glad to have taken our own path and followed our own instincts.

Two days later we had to laugh. We were now making around one hundred fifty miles a day, averaging almost six and a half knots of speed – which for us is screaming along. Entering day nine of our passage, we had traveled more than one thousand nautical miles and were still yet to lock in a destination. Currently we were splitting the difference between Tonga and American Samoa, pointing right between the two of them. It was messy as hell all around us with seven to ten foot seas and winds averaging in the low twenties, but we were hauling ass on a broad reach, sailing in waters that would reach over 16,000 feet deep as we prepared to pass over the the Samoa Basin. Having to make almost no sail adjustments whatsoever, we were content to keep going.

The following morning we realized we had travelled five thousand six hundred nautical miles since departing Mexico. Today we would pass twelve hundred miles on this passage and had made a definitive turn southward from American Samoa. Our sights were set on Tonga. The shifting weather forecasts were so schizophrenic they were making us dizzy, but we thought we had a narrow passage that would avoid the worst looking stuff that was threatening forty or so knot gusts. We had about 350nm to reach central Tonga; north Tonga was about one hundred miles closer.

Over the course of the next twelve to eighteen hours things would change drastically.

By midnight we were already more than one hundred nautical miles south of American Samoa. We had started experiencing squalls with wind gusts punching up to thirty knots.

That wasn’t pleasant at all.

But what began to grow scary very quickly was the rapidly changing forecast models which indicated a much worse deterioration of conditions and strengthening winds than we had previously seen indicated at all, up to this point.

When we briefly turned on Starlink at midnight we were shocked by the newest updated forecasts we had just downloaded.

The edge of the front had hardened up substantially and it no longer looked like a brief time period with gusts of thirty and some areas possibly reaching a bit higher. We were now seeing projections of much larger area that would be affected by longer lasting and much more substantial winds.

Now, in less than twenty-four hours, directly in the path of our current trajectory, we could expect to experience sustained winds into the forties with gusts ranging from the forties all the way up as high as the sixties for half the night! The models indicated fourteen foot seas could be anticipated!

Shit.

We immediately decided to abort, do an about face, and make a run for American Samoa. At about one hundred fifteen nautical miles away, we weren’t confident, even if we motor-sailed the entire way, that we would arrive in the harbor of Pago Pago before 9pm, when the shit was projected to hit the fan, much less getting there before dark.

Still, we had no choice.

Between midnight and dawn we tried to make as much progress towards American Samoa as we could; however we had to run with the wind and waves as squalls passed. Outside of the squalls, winds between eleven and fifteen knots from behind us limited our speed but we had to maintain pretty conservative sail configurations considering the number of squalls that were materializing around us and their intensity. By sunrise, we were motor-sailing to try to eke out every knot of speed we could squeeze.

At noon, we were less than fifty miles from Pago Pago and at 4:20pm the log noted we were twenty three nautical miles from the harbor. This meant we would arrive after eight…no chance of making it in before dark.

At least conditions had settled drastically as we approached the island. We knew this was deceiving; but it would certainly be in our favor to help us get into the harbor and try and find a safe place before all hell potentially broke loose.

Our no entering an unfamiliar anchorage after dark rule was sound practice but in this case we were going to have to say fuck it. There was no way we were going to risk sitting out for the entire night in potential fourteen foot seas with wind gusts possibly reaching fifty or sixty knots, and once things became untenable it would be even worse trying to get in.

We decided, especially if the current conditions maintained during our arrival, we could creep in slowly, hoping the lights of Pago Pago might help us to decipher things, and we would be taking the lesser risk. The maelstrom that was chasing us down from behind was now forecasted to hit American Samoa at 10:00pm. We estimated this would give us at least an hour to get our anchor set but certainly not more than two.

Pago Pago’s harbor opened out to the south; unfortunately, the direction the winds would be coming from. However, we knew that the anchorage itself was in the very back corner of the bay, which was tucked around a ninety degree corner to the west. Of course, it was impossible to know what we would find once inside the harbor and exactly where we would end up anchored, nor how the winds would funnel through.

Not ideal, but we felt it was undoubtedly our best option.

Though absolutely nerve-wracking and incredibly stressful, our entrance into Pago Pago Harbor was as smooth and uneventful as we could have hoped for. Lights from ashore both illuminated the bay to a certain degree but also made it very difficult to discern what it was we were seeing in front of us. A number of huge barges secured to massive industrial moorings with multiple derelict boats rafted up to them were nearly all but invisible to us, even with me at the bow with a handheld spotlight.

Regardless, after motoring amongst the barges and the handful of other sailboats at anchor, we managed to locate a spot that seemed to provide adequate room around us. We dropped anchor and got the snubber set just as the clock shown 10:00pm.

After ten and a half days at sea and one thousand three hundred sixty six miles, we had reached our detour stop of American Samoa.

That night, when the winds began to pick up around midnight, the land mass we were now surrounded by did indeed offer us immense amounts of protection from the wind. The orientation of the harbor also ended up sheltering us from any waves and, indeed, most of the swell.

We had made the right choice.

In hindsight, we were a bit irritated at ourselves for not having made the call earlier to divert to American Samoa. It would have been much easier. But, hey…in the end, boom. It had only taken us two hundred twenty five hours and over twelve hundred nautical miles, but we had finally made a decision.

A couple of days later, we would learn from a sailboat that had to be towed in by the Pago Pago police patrol boat, just how bad things were on the open ocean that night. They had lost all engine power and were forced to sail through everything, too far away to make it into the harbor until after things had settled down. They experienced fifteen foot waves and upwards of fifty knot winds. The two short-term crew members said they actually began to fear for their lives and now were hoping the captain couldn’t sort out the engine issues in Pago Pago so they would have an excuse to find another way off the island.

We had definitely made the right choice, even if a bit late.

It turned out our biggest mistake was the precise location we chose to drop anchor the night we had arrived at Pago Pago. Not that we had a lot of options in the dark, nor specific local knowledge to guide us (aside from the general understanding that the bottom of the bay was potentially littered with a lot of shit and debris). As we started to raise anchor so we could move to the government dock to clear in, we quickly found the chain hung up on something. There was no indication on the charts, but there was no doubt whatsoever we were seriously wrapped around something. We tried everything we could think of – moving forward and backwards, letting out chain and bringing it in, different angles, over and over again. Nothing. We were getting close to reaching the frustration threshold of having to don scuba gear to jump in the near zero visibility water and try to sort things out fifty feet below. Finally, well after an hour of frustration and desperation, we somehow managed to free ourselves. Whew.

We were told a short time later that the massive barge that had been on our port side, which at the time we set anchor appeared to be plenty of distance away from us, once had a seventy foot sailboat rafted up on its starboard side just prior the last cyclone that had hit American Samoa. By the time that cyclone had passed, the sailboat was gone. It had broken free of the barge and immediately sank. Currently, it lay on its side in over fifty feet of water with its over hundred foot mast pointing straight towards where we were anchored.

We had most certainly gotten tangled up on its mast and or rigging. Major pain in the ass, no doubt. Close to a disaster.

But, now that we were here and cleared in and anchored in a slightly different location, we figured we might as well spend a bit of time enjoying things.

A number of times we found ourselves the recipients of the extra large hospitality and friendly nature of the extra large Samoan people. A few times, working our WSU Cougar Alumni status into conversations seemed to gain us even more traction – the historical list of Samoan Cougar football players is extensive, indeed. Confessing that I had watched the “Throwin’ Samoan” Jack Thompson quarterback for WSU all the way back in the 70’s when I was only ten years old got me instant cred with a guy who said he’d actually played high school football with NFL powerhouse linebacker Frankie Luvu. He shouted out “Go Cougs!” as he walked away, after offering to do anything he could to help us out while we were visiting.

One of the bonuses of a new country is being introduced to its local beer. Of course, with the local beer Vailima, the Samoans boast not only extra big cans but also extra big alcohol content. Woohoo!

We spent ten days in American Samoa. If you could ignore the imposing presence and especially imposing smell of the massive Starkist tuna cannery right along the nearby shoreline (a nearly impossible task when it was directly upwind), the scenery was rather breathtaking.

There was no way we weren’t taking advantage of the incredible provisioning options which Pago Pago offered. An actual Costco in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? Are you shitting me? But, of course…the American contribution to American Samoa.

We also opted for yet another car rental. Damn…between Mexico, Moorea, and Pago Pago, aside from our visits back to Washington state, we had driven more in 2024 than we had for the previous ten years combined.

In the end, we had thoroughly enjoyed our unexpected detour to American Samoa. But after ten days, ironically enough this was almost the exact same amount of time it took us to get here, it was time to pick up anchor and complete our passage to Tonga.

Prior to departing, we had been forewarned by a salty Kiwi who had spent years delivering charter boats between Tonga and New Zealand that the 300nm two to three day passage from American Samoa to Tonga could be bouncy and unpredictable.

Great.

After our meandering, indecisive, and dramatic last journey, that was just exactly what we didn’t need, thank you very much.

Nonetheless, we remained optimistic. As we picked up anchor and motored toward the opening of Pago Pago Harbor, a bright blue sky filled with puffy, white clouds floating above an equally bright blue and perfectly calm sea state seemed to reflect that optimism.

Likewise, Kris’ calm state and smile also seemed to reflect that optimism.

As we cleared past the outer the edge of the harbor, the water’s depth under Exit plummeted almost instantly to 10,000 feet. Within a mere additional two miles, that depth had doubled to 20,000 feet.

In fact, during the next two days 20,000 feet would be the average ocean depth under us as we crossed the Tonga Trench. Though we didn’t actually pass over Horizon Deep, which at 35,702 feet is the deepest point in the Southern Hemisphere (and second deepest on our planet after Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench), the incredible indigo blue water surrounding Exit hinted at what seemed like infinity stretching out underneath us.

The first night sucked. Big winds that approached thirty knots; big waves eight to ten feet tall; big rain – water everywhere inside and outside the cockpit. More than once, we began to start questioning our choices. Exit’s log entry reads simply: What a fucking mess…not found anywhere in the brochure.

Just after midnight, a brief reprieve in the rain treated me to an amazing phenomenon I had never before seen.  Against the overcast blackness of the night, a light blue haze began to materialize into a definitive arc that rose from the dark seas, bending upward and then returning to the currently invisible horizon line.  As is often the case with nighttime lights underway, I spent a few confused seconds processing what I was looking at before smiling and saying out loud to myself – I was the only person in the cockpit during my turn at the night watch – “Holy shit, a midnight rainbow.”  I later learned of the term nightbow.

Day two was about five knots calmer in wind. Sporty, to say the least. But we were hauling ass, averaging a speed of between six and seven knots.

The second night was what sailing is all about. No rain with no winds over twenty knots. We were zooming steadily along at between five and seven knots.

By 10:00am, the morning after our second night, we could see Tonga clearly on the horizon…land ho!

Ninety minutes later, it seemed fitting as we passed over a canyon 23,000 feet deep to make a toast to our own achievement of having just surpassed 23,000 nautical miles traveled aboard S/V Exit in just over seven years. That included 6121nm since departing Mexico less than five months ago. Cheers!

We had been sailing non-stop without needing the engine for propulsion since two hours into the passage. Over three hundred nautical miles without having to adjust our heading by more than ten degrees. Nearly a straight line. You can’t ask for more. Well…you can, but now you’re being greedy dick.

By that afternoon we were inside the protection of the Vava’u island group. A mother whale and its baby had even briefly greeted us as we passed by.

With an hour to spare before sunset, we found ourselves toasting each other for the second time in one day. This time, anchor beers just off Mala Island.

Amazingly, we had averaged nearly one hundred sixty nautical miles for two consecutive twenty four hour periods. We had only surpassed one hundred sixty miles in twenty four hours once, that was four and a half years ago when Covid 19 was chasing us like a Hellhound on our trail, all the way from Grand Cayman to Bocas del Toro, Panama, just before the world shut down.

We had just sailed three hundred fifty seven nautical miles in under fifty six hours. That too, was a record for us.

We had made it to the Kingdom of Tonga.

August 5 – 26, 2024

We had arrived at Moorea to calm waters, lush green foliage covering the rugged peaks jutting up from the shoreline, and an electric blue sky almost devoid of even a single cloud. As had been the case twenty one years ago, the setting seemed magical.

Moorea and Huahine- The Society Islands, French Polynesia

However, this time our perspective, in the center of Cooks Bay, seemed quite different. Ironically, we found ourselves at anchor not more than a quarter-mile from the hotel we had stayed in over two decades ago. It was clearly visible from where we sat in Exit’s cockpit…it also appeared clearly to be no longer open (we later learned it was the victim of a land lease the local owners had refused to renew).

Very shortly thereafter were reminded that the conditions we had enjoyed upon our arrival were not necessarily the norm. Clouds, daily rain, wind shifts…much more typical.

Within twenty-four hours we had declared Cooks Bay as the trophy holder for #1 Location of Shitty Wind Gusts. Four knots of winds to thirty-four knots of wind. Boom…just like that.

Regardless, we were ecstatic that we were back in Moorea. The location was still stunning; just as we remembered it.

And we couldn’t wait to arrange a day of diving.

Twenty-one years ago, scuba diving was still quite new to us. During our time here we saw massive lemon sharks, endless numbers of black tip reef sharks, huge Napoleon Wrasse, and stunning fields of plate coral at a dive site called The Roses. It was where we first really began to appreciate the incredible bond you can develop and life altering experiences you can have when you encounter a dive shop that has such amazing people. Hanging out with the dive staff ended up being as magical as the dives themselves.

We truly hoped that Bathy’s Dive Shop was still in business. A reunion with our dive guides Guillaume and Laurent would have been fantastic. Alas, Bathy’s was no more; Guillaume and Laurent had obviously moved on long ago.

The dive shop we hooked up with was friendly enough, just not the same. We still wanted to return to The Roses, but even that was not to be. When we told the dive shop we had been there twenty years ago their response was, “Oh, we’re sorry.” We were stunned. They then explained that coral bleaching had wiped out almost everything there, and recommended we not return. Sadly, we took their advice. We did do one day’s diving with them, and saw massive lemon sharks again. But the lesson was unmistakable. Returning to Moorea by sailboat was truly a new experience to be savored, but trying to capture the magic of our first visit was an exercise in disappointment.

We also found that the people of Moorea, indeed the Society Islands in general, had a rather profound disdain for people who came visiting them on boats. There were too many of us. We invaded their paradise like locusts, acted rude, felt entitled to depleting their already very limited resources, and had a propensity to anchor just off of their front yards. We did our best to not be anything close to those people; however, being aboard a sailboat, we could understand why we would be grouped into that same general hoard.

Instead of dozens of boats experiencing friendly and hospitable receptions from locals like we saw in the Marquesas and Tuamotus, it was hundreds of boats being tolerated at best by people who would rather not interact with cruisers at all. We found the Society Islands also seemed inundated with French expat sailors, who we guessed probably also really contributed to this animosity.

Though it never happened to us, we witnessed other boats trying to anchor who were yelled at and given the middle finger by locals ashore. The hostility was palpable, but at times, understandable. We very conscientiously tried to avoid dropping anchor right in front of someone’s house. It didn’t even seem to occur to some people that might be frowned upon. They might bring their dinghy full of loud kids or pets to shore and expect to use someone’s front yard as a landing point. Some wouldn’t give a second thought about throwing food scraps or lime rinds overboard from their cockpit, which would inevitably end up floating ashore. Some would simply be loud in general with their conversations, music, and behavior. Mega-twats as we call them, the huge mega-yachts that are the worst of the worst, would drop their marine playgrounds into the water and, before you know it, would be zipping around the bays at breakneck speed on their stupid twat-skis (jet-skis to the less offended).

In the Tuamotus we had been surrounded by atolls. Here we felt surrounded by assholes.

We tried our best to not to be the shitty sailors and piss people off…tried our best to enjoy the beautiful surroundings we remembered from over two decades ago.

A day with a rental car was just what we needed to get off the boat and make exploring the island beyond the very limited range of foot travel possible.

Te Fare Natura – L’écomusée, a nature and conservation museum, provided some fascinating insight to understanding the geological and social history of Moorea. Our guide was actually one of the children of the island’s royal family.

Information regarding the Polynesians’ history of maritime exploration, nautical skill, and navigational expertise was both fascinating and inspiring.

Unexpectedly, we got a room full of sharks compliments of some pretty hip media technology they had installed that allowed a 360° panoramic view of underwater:

Later, the 360° panoramic view above water from a higher elevation provided an equally breathtaking sight for us.

That night, with our added mobility, we were able to take in a cultural show. Ironically, it was at the exact same cultural center we had attended the same show twenty one years prior, but it was still worth a second visit. Opting out of the buffet dinner this time made it that much more affordable.

After only one week, even though we had avoided incurring the direct wrath of any locals, we felt it was time to move on. We had done some diving, seen some sights, and eaten some incredible food.

Combining French Polyneisa’s global reputation for black pearls with our first ever tiger shark sighting in the Tuamotus, we couldn’t resist purchasing a black pearl / tiger shark tooth pendant we stumbled across. What made it so cool was the fact that the tiger shark tooth was actually carved out of bone…no shark had given its life for the jewelry, which sadly is typically the case.

Our lockers were once again full of provisions, our stores of fruits and veggies had been adequately re-stocked, and what had been days of high winds keeping us hunkered down uncomfortably at anchor, were finally giving way to sunshine and more pleasant breezes.

With a couple of days break before the next round of high winds were forecasted, we decided to make the eighty nautical mile overnight run to Huahine.

While we had really wanted to visit Bora-Bora, our experience in Moorea had made us re-think that idea. Bora-Bora, we felt, would be a picture perfect setting with all of the obnoxious people and bad vibes multiplied times ten. A perfect equation for experiencing a disappointing finale to French Polynesia.

We only had ten days remaining on our visa. The much lower key island of Huahine seemed like a much better bet for leaving the Society Islands with a pleasant taste in our mouths.

The overnight passage was calm as could be. Not more than two to three foot waves. No rain. Unfortunately, almost no wind as well. We never saw more than nine knots of wind, and much of it was more like six.

Even content with creeping along, we still had to run the engine for half the passage. That was okay though…along the way we had been visited by multiple whales and dolphins. By early morning we were nearing Huahine. The island provided a spectacular foreground for the striking colors of the rising sun.

Once inside the cut, as we passed by a fully restored three masted tall ship sitting at anchor, it felt as though we had gone back in time:

It had taken us a full twenty four hours to travel what ended up being ninety six nautical miles. But now we were enjoying ice-cold breakfast anchor beers on a mooring ball at Avea Bay with eagle rays swimming past us.

We were glad we had chosen Huahine over Bora-Bora. Not as sexy but also not as frantically crowded. Not empty but close enough for the world class view we were enjoying.

A day later we moved to the village of Fare to drop off our paperwork and start the process of clearing out.

The final ten days we spent in French Polynesia was a mixed bag. Thirty knot squalls both while we were at anchor and moving between anchorages. Difficult anchoring in water as deep as ninety five feet. Two separate visits by the police boat informing us once that we couldn’t stay where we were anchored and another time telling us we had to move within three days. We were struggling between weather forecasts to try to depart and finding places to stay until we actually could depart.

We had sailed three thousand one hundred twenty six nautical miles in twenty nine days to get to French Polynesia and then, during the subsequent three months, sailed another one thousand three hundred nautical miles visiting seven different islands stretched between three of French Polynesia’s island groups. Nearly four thousand five hundred nautical miles.

It was finally time to move on. A new country awaited us.

Only one problem…we weren’t sure where we were going to end up.

We knew we were headed west. Regardless of where we chose, it was going to be over a thousand miles before we reached land. American Samoa…eleven hundred miles and at least ten days? Tonga…fourteen hundred miles and thirteen or so days? Niue…twelve hundred miles in eleven days?

All options.

As is so often the case on a sailboat, multiple factors, many outside of our control or even awareness, would contribute to a final outcome. It turned out, this time it would largely be weather that would make the final decision for us.