Madrona at anchor in Gizo harbor

Merry Christmas again.

We had a nice Christmas day, and today - Boxing Day - has been very relaxing. We had a great morning yesterday and the kids really enjoyed themselves. Our dinner was shared with Gene and Cherie from S/V Reflections, a nice spaghetti, salad and brownies! The kids watched a pixar movie called "Brave" and enjoyed themselves. Then we all played a board game called Apples to Apples, and Griffyn won.

Today it is hot and humid, with thunder in the distance, and the hope of collected drinking water later tonight. Keep your fingers crossed for us. Just wanted to thank everyone for your holiday greetings. It is so good to hear from you all. Don't freeze. We'll write in a few days to let everyone know what's up in this neck of the woods.

Owen

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Merry Christmas and holiday season thoughts from "The Slot"

Hello everyone.

Merry Christmas! Griffyn, Tamsyn, Carrie and I want to let everyone know how often we think of you, family and friends back home. It's has been a long and eventful year. December 21st (on our side of the world) finds us motoring up a passage running NW with New Georgia Island to our west, and Santa Isabel Island to our east.

We are a day and a half out from Honiara on the Island of Guadalcanal - mostly sailing in very light winds. We are still a little gun shy of the engine after we sucked some air last week, and it took three days to sort it out. We hope to be in Gizo in about 36 hours. There we plan on spending a quiet Christmas.

Right now it s very hot aboard. The equatorial sun makes it almost painful to be out in the full sun. This morning our backup GPS bit the dust, so that caused some stress. Also the current coming down the slot is reducing our forward progress to 3.5 knots, so that's a worry too. As the kids are madly cutting out paper snow flakes, and taking care of their new pet - a Kura Kura bird (police bird) chick that fell out of its nest on Guadalcanal, I've had a chance to step back for a few moments and look at our year in perspective.

We are healthy, generally happy, and together as a family. It is this time of year that it is hardest to be away from those we love. We are thinking about Carrie's brother Tim, and wish we could be more supportive to him and his kids. We are thinking of Torrie Jane, and though we know her husband and family are around her, we wish we could be too. And we wish we could be around my father, Hinka and Lois, and see my nephew's new baby. But here we are.

Last night sailing, we left a long phosphorescent trail through a sea so still and smooth that the stars overhead cast mirror images in the water. I remember that dark night a week or so ago when we were engineless in zero wind off a lee shore while lightening played all around us - dolphins were jumping and frolicking all around the boat. I think of the mysterious Island of Tanna, with its spectacular volcano and warm people. I think of the many new friends we have made in Fiji and other places. We wonder how Sisi and Eshwini and their families are after the cyclone hit Fiji. I think of our kids making so many friends and playmates among the peoples we have visited. Tamsyn and Griffyn are still kids, each with their issues and challenges, but I watch with pleasure as they are deepening, and growing in compassion and understanding. And they are not done. Soon they be trading with peers and that will be a joy to watch.

So from ours to yours, we wish you a Merry Christmas. We will touch base when we get safely to Gizo.

Owen

8 13.110 S
158 26.250 E

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Madrona in Honiara

Hi folks. Madrona is in Honiara these last few days. We sucked some air into our engine, so have spent three very frustrating days bleeding the system, and re-bleeding the system. During this time we had to conserve power for engine starts, so that's why no messages.

We had a bit of a scare when the engine went down 20 miles north of Honiara in no wind. Swells were pushing onto a lee shore,and thunderstorms with no wind were sending lightening everywhere. But wind did re-appear and e sailed bacck to town here to sort ourselves out. This is not a god anchorage, so we are anxious to get out of here. We trashed our bow roller for the anchor, so we have to rebuild that up by Gizo. Oh well.

Time to wrap this short note up. Look forward to sending more emails and talking to folks back home. we hope o leave for Gizo in a day or so; weather dependant.

Owen

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Lazy Sunday enroute to Guadalcanal

So we are having a lazy Sunday here in the tropics. For the first time in a couple of days it isn't raining, or thundering, so we are content to sail along at a leisurely 3 knots towards the Solomon Islands. We jumped from Vanuatu on the evening of the sixth.

Our first day out we had to motor a lot, as there was No wind at all. The 550 miles to our next port stretched out like a huge gulf what with the knowledge back in your mind that all that open ocean wouldn't be a good place to get caught in during a hurricane.

The last couple of days we've sailed - yesterday with strong winds (25 knots!) and today with 5 to 8 knots. The forecast is for the wind to peter out sometime in the next 24 hours. We'll probably motor again when that happen.

so here we are, enjoying the sun and a nice little breeze. On the stereo the kids are listening to Christmas music from WWII; Dinah Shore, Judy Garland and th usual suspects. I've been reading and dozing, Carrie is doing sudoko (I know, I know), and the kids are cutting out fantastic paper snowflakes. We all got the bed late last night, as school ran late, dinner was late (rice and red lentils)and the movie we watched (the 2009 Star Trek) also ran past 9 o'Clock. Tired kids, long night of watches coming.

Then it was time to rig the lee cloths and make up the beds. While that happened I thought I'd peak at the engine fluid levels. It would only take a few minutes to do (no really - I believed that would be the case)to take raise the ladder and remove the two engine covers. Ha. Taking off the second cover I son found that on one side the insulation - which dampens sound and acts as a heat barrier, was falling off, hanging down where it come in contact with the engine. Bad.

So for the next hour out came the tools, drills, screws, washers, silver insulation tape. A proper mess. It all got sorted out better than it had been. Oh... and I checked the engine fluid levels. They're fine, thanks for asking.

So by the time it was lights out, Orion was high overhead ( upside down I might add) and the Southern Cross hung over our cockpit (that detail's for you Rob). It was a quiet evening during which we made fifty miles. More importantly there was little swell so our sleep was deep and uninterrupted.

So here we are, plugging away towards Guadalcanal, trying to conserve fuel, and keeping an eye on the weather. We are over half way on our trip, and the majority of oen water is behind us.

Owen

2:00 UTC Dec 9th (1:00 pm Solomon's time)
S 10 46.374
E 164 04.237

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Oyster Island, Santo and the Blue Holes

So we're at Peterson Bay, off Oyster Island, which is in turn off the big island of Espirito Santo here in Vanuatu. We an up here a day ago because in seems to be a good place to wait out bad weather, and it's also quite beautiful. The forecast for the past few days was for very light winds and that has mostly been true. So we decided to hang for a couple of days of R & R.

Remember that old movie from the 1950's called Creature from the Black Lagoon? Well this place reminds me of the black lagoon. We had to verify with locals that are no saltwater crocodiles here (they are up in Banks Islands a bit north of us). The birds are sounding very tropical and cicadas hum from the trees.

U.S. fighter planes used to take off from an overgrown runway not 300 meters from where we are anchored. Hard to imagine all the ships and men and conflict in this peaceful place.

Yesterday we dove on an outer reef - nice but too short as we had to go through two narrow passes through the coral and then return, all be about 4:30 pm when the light was still allowing us to see the coral heads under the water. Of course it was an opportunity for bathing too.

Today we plan on making bread in the morning, and then taking the dinghy about a mile up a river to a "Blue Hole." Basically these "holes" are freshwater artesian springs that form a deep pool. Minerals in the water give the crystal clear water a blue cast. So if the rain showers we see scattered around us today hold off we should be able to go do that this afternoon. We also have to wait for a fairly high tide to make it all the way.

With luck I'll be able to pull down some good weather info this morning, which should give us an indication of water's ahead in the next week. It's a day from here to Sola - where we check out of the country. Then four days to the Solomon's.

All are well. Tamsyn is getting excited about her birthday in a few days, but she doesn't want to celebrate on passage. A year ago we were at Minerva Reef. all is well here, and it looks to be a hot humid tropical day. Everyone says hi.

Owen

15 22.374 S
167 11.440 E

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Heading north... again, and Thanksgiving

Hey all,

Just a quick note.  We are heading out sometime today after a couple last errands in the big city (canned butter and Grib files).  It's raining here and about 80 degrees, with light winds from the east.  The Gribs show that there should be more wind once out away from the islands, so hopefully we'll have enough to get to Epi Island by tomorrow morning.

Did I mention our wet laundry?  It doesn't dry in the rain; but I suppose you all know that.  That's cruiser wisdom for ya.

Anyway.... not sure when the next decent internets will be, but we'll do some sailmail posts in the interim.  

We a terrific Thanks Giving at S/V Sea Going with our friends Bruce and Ricky. Bruce grilled marinated chicken drumsticks (a thai marinade) and we ate it a spicy peanut sauce. I made pineapple coconut rice, banana bread and pumpkin pie - from a can of pumpkin I've been saving since Mexico (almost two years ago). It tasted just like pumpkin pie back home. There were coconut green beans and a most delicious coffee with real cream (we are in French territory after all!) A lovely meal with great new friends.

Owen & Carrie

Eshwini of Savusavu - Dahl, Curried Chicken, Saris (pictures)

August 10th - mid October, 2012

I met Eshwini Ram through her husband, Rese, the taxi cab driver who drove me back to the marina after I had been baking with Sisi all day. The first time I met Eshwini, I showed her the bread and cinnamon rolls I had just baked, she liked them very much. I told her that I wanted to learn how to make roti. She said to come by Lee's Bakery - where she worked 7 days a week. Eshwini was in charge of making the bread dough, the cake batter and the cookie batter each morning when she arrived for work at 5 AM. After she mixed up the dough, 6 Fijian men baked it. She worked the front counter until 5PM. She was the only person who knew how to make up the bread dough (the Chinese owners didn't know). She made $160 Fijian for 65 hours / week - a very good paycheck in Savusavu. 

I also gave Eshwini and Rese a slice of the pumpkin pie I made with Sisi on my second ride in his taxi. I invited Eshwini and her husband over to the boat for dinner. She brought dahl (made with yellow split peas) and curried chicken. I made split pea soup (green split peas) with ham and fresh bread. We had an American version of dahl and an Indian one. The split pea soup I made can be found on the package of green split peas. Eshwini's dahl and curried chicken recipes are:

Dahl

Put into a pressure cooker:

1 cup yellow split peas, rinsed

6 cups water

1 tablespoon tumeric (Haldi powder)

Bring to pressure and cook 10 minutes, let pressure lower on it's own. Do not over cook.

While the peas are cooking: 

Put 2-3 tablespoons of ghee in a large soup pan, heat to very hot

Add: 

1 teaspoon cumin seeds (Gheera) - let them simmer, split, for 30 seconds to 1 minute then reduce heat to medium

Add:

1 onion, diced

1 small carrot, diced (optional) - cook these until soft - remove pan from heat.

When the pressure cooker has released all it's steam, open it up and empty the mixture into the large soup pan (with the onions), stir, add salt to taste and serve into small bowls.

Eshwini showed me how to make roti.

Eshwini's husband - Rese

She had been making it every day since she was a teenager, so she worked very fast. I love to mess around with flour and rolling pins. We all tried to make a couple as she baked them on the large frying pan. They were a challenge to roll out into a cirlcle. So Tamsyn decided to make the balls and while Griffyn worked the rolling pin. Rese admitted that even he had trouble making them perfectly round like Eshwini did. Griffyn's looked the most circular of the three of us. When they bake they puff up just like lefsa does (a Norwegian flat bread made with potatoes and flour). And they look just like a Mexican tortilla. Owen's favorite flat bread is the chapati which he enjoyed in Uganda. We used make crepes back home, (which are the French version enriched with butter of course). I wonder if all cultures have a flat bread?

Roti 

flour

water

oil (optional)

Use white flour, lots, in a large bowl. Add boiling water until it makes a dough, knead the dough for a bit, then make balls (1 1/2 inches in diameter). Roll the balls out very thin into circles. Bake on a very hot pan - which may be very lightly oiled, until they brown (they will puff up like lefsa), flip over and cook other side. Cook them one at a time. Despite it's simplicity, it is delicious. A word of caution about the pan you use. We used our large coated frying pan (with a very thick bottom) and because the pan had to heat up with nothing in it, the coating began to loosen a bit. Back home I'll try a well seasoned cast iron frying pan, lightly oiled (a high heat oil). I watched a woman at a fair making roti, she swiped the pan with an oiled cloth before cooking each roti.

After that evening on the boat, we became good friends, I would stop by the bakery ever time I went into town. During her lunch break, we would go to her favorite Indian cafe and have tea and pudding (cake made from coconut milk cooked with sugar until it is brown (like molasses with sweetened condensed milk) then mixed with flour, egg, leavening and baked in tin cans.) Eshwini called a number of Indian sweets 'pudding' all of which would have another name in western baking or cooking. I never did get the recipe for the tin can sweet bread, but I think it could be found. Eshwini coached me on Indian cooking as I tried new things. 

Then one day it was time to visit her at home and meet her three kids. On a Saturday afternoon in late September around 5:30PM (she left work at 3PM), Owen, Tamsyn, Griffyn and I walked the mile to her house, up and down a steep dirt road as the light faded. We were met by Rese with flashlights who was on his way to visit his father at the hospital. He was bringing dinner to his father. Eshwini's mother-in-law was staying at their house while her husband was in the hospital. She didn't speak English at all, but we managed to learn a little bit about her as Eshwinin translated. I had brought a loaf of fresh bread, a carrot and cabbage salad, Fiji Gold (beer) and a chocolate cake (with eggs, butter and milk). It was great to see another Fijian home and like the others we had visited, bright colors dominated.  

Eshwini married Rese when she was 16 and he was 26. They built their house themselves on a piece of bottom land, leased for $30/month from the Savusavu town council. [Indigenous Fijians own all the land - Indo-Fijians, whites and all others lease land from Fijians. Fijians knew about what had happened to the lands of the aborigines of Australia (it was all taken by the whites) and as a result their land laws were written to keep the land in the hands of the Indigenous people. When a Fijian couple marries, the chief gives them a plot of land, then they build a house on it. The land is then kept in the family indefinitely.]  Before Eshwini began working at the bakery (9 months ago) she raised (and sold) ducks in her yard to help support the household income. Rese has been driving a taxi for 20 years, but a recent law regulating taxi cab fees has made it difficult for him to make ends meet and school fees had quadrupled in the last year - so Eshwini went to work.

Dinner was very good, curried chicken (my favorite), roti, rice, dahl, bread, salad, cucumbers and for dessert, chocolate cake, Indian black tea with ginger and biscuits. I was eager to watch Eshwini make curried chicken, she cooks quickly, throwing things into a pan, never measuring. I felt I needed to see it for myself to really know how to do it like she did. She made the best curry I'd ever tasted. 

Curried Chicken

1- 2 lbs. chicken, chopped in pieces (Indians simply chop up a chicken, bones and all)

OIl for frying (high heat oil)

1 onion, diced

1 potato, diced

1 carrot, diced

2 to 3 heads of garlic, peeled and thoroughly crushed

Heat the oil, add everything except one third of the garlic, toss, then add:

lots of Graham Masala - about 3 heaping tablespoons

ground Coriander - about 1 tablespoon

until the color is right and it smells amazing. Don't be cautious with the graham masala. Keep stirring and cooking on high for a bit until the onions begin to wilt, then reduce the heat to medium, cover and let simmer until the liquid in the pan has been absorbed. Serve. 

I loved being in her home, her kitchen. I wanted to know where she kept everything, what ingredients she had, how she stored things. She showed me the china and ornate glass bowls she received for her wedding all displayed along a series of shelves in her small dining room. Like me, Eshwini loved cooking and kitchen things, she had a number of appliances, even a washing machine for laundry. I got the sense that Eshwini and her culture (Indo-Fijian) looked more westward in their aspirations than Fijians. Eshwini layed out a large spread on the floor of the living room. We all helped bring pots, dishes, and plates to the living room. Then we all sat down on the floor in a large circle around the food and ate. We ate mostly with our fingers, the curried chicken dripped and we licked our fingers and sucked on bones savoring every spicy morsel. Yum! Fresh roti is such a treat too. You can put anything in it, or dip it and it's great. While we ate, we shared our histories, stories of Africa, sailing adventures. As we became more satiated and relaxed the kids lounged in laps sleepily or moved to the couch to stare at the TV. Then it was time to clear the dishes and Eshwini washed while I dried the dishes. 

Eshwini was tired, so we didn't stay too long after desert and tea, but we agreed to come back tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon to visit more. On Sunday Tamsyn, Griffyn and I went back to visit while Owen stayed on the boat to replace the lights on the mast. After we had our afternoon tea and biscuits, Eshwini showed me her saris. She must have had a hundred. I had given her a dress I loved but rarely wore when she came to dinner on the boat, that Sunday she offered me a sari. I had a hard time choosing, but finally picked a color I liked and then the fashion show began. Eshwini wanted pictures of us dressed in saris and there were a number of sari's her daughter's no longer wanted (they gave Tamsyn 3). 

Sheetal

Sunday afternoon tea.

Sweeta

As a bride would...

We left in the late afternoon. Eshwini and I continued to meet for tea until the day we departed Savusavu. We talked about our lives, children, parenting, husbands (men are from Mars and women from Venus). We became quite close friends, exchanged addresses. I gave her a disk of all the digital photos I took while we were together. (I gave one to Sisi as well). I will miss her dearly.