SIGHTINGS dreamkeeper — cont’d When we left, Gar was 35 and Nicole was 32, and we found that our relatively young age influenced our journey both positively and negatively. On the plus side, we had a lot of energy for boat projects — lugging heavy diesel jugs around random towns, free-diving to clean the boat’s bottom, and so on — as well as for off-boat adventures — hiking, spearfishing, scuba diving and kitesurfing being just a few. Other cruisers would often ask, “Don’t you guys ever relax?” We’d just laugh. They should have seen us when we lived on land! The difficult part of being a younger cruiser is having few connections with folks our own age. We made many good friends in the cruising community who were 30 years our senior, but there was usually a noticeable difference in interests, energy, and generational topics of conversation. At the beginning of our journey, down Gar and Nicole made many new friends during into Mexico and heading through their circumnavigation, many of them locals. the Coconut Milk Run, this wasn’t so much of an issue as we’d met a few adventurous younger sailors. But after our committing to the global loop and moving more ‘off the grid’ to places like the Solomon Islands, Palau, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and onward across the Indian Ocean and Red Sea, younger cruisers were pretty much non-existent. After the novelty of evening sundowners and cruiser beach potlucks hosted by retirement-aged sailors wore off, we craved more stimulation and shared adventures. For many of them, the most exciting aspects of cruising were the calm anchorages, cocktails, and sunsets. We noticed some didn’t even get off their boats for days at a time as we zipped back and forth in our dinghy, went on adventurous hikes, long swims and free-diving and spear-fishing outings, and befriended the locals. As time went on, we realized we just didn’t really fit in with most of the sailing community and we missed having friends we could really connect with. That said, our first year across the South Pacific and to New Zealand was jam-packed with exciting sailing, beautiful cruising grounds, and great new friends. But it was the next year-and-a-half that really pushed us into a new place as adventurous cruisers. Heading north from New Zealand, we first crossed to beautiful Fiji, up to tribal Vanuatu, then onward to the Solomon Islands, the islands of Papua New Guinea, and back north across the equator to Palau, Micronesia. After four months in Palau, we sailed south and entered through the ‘back door’ of eastern Indonesia into Raja Ampat, the most diverse marine ecosystem in the world. We spent five months in Indonesia, most of it on our own, exploring Raja Ampat to the Spice Islands then onward toward the more-traveled areas of Flores, Komodo, Lombok, Bali and Kalimantan, before heading up to Singapore and Thailand. Cruising in most of these areas was both amazing and difficult. Not only were our experiences rich in interaction with local people, but we often found ourselves in gorgeous natural world splendors that one sees in one’s dreams. We peered into live volcanoes, drank kava with local friends, free-dived with hundreds of sharks, bought fresh fruit and orchids from kids in dugout canoes, bartered for carvings and lobster, and tied up in limestone nooks as cockatoos and hornbills did flybys. We always went out of our way to connect with village chiefs and ask permission to anchor by their village. We’d extend extra warmth to our local guests by offering snacks or a cold soda, and tried to just be kind and friendly. We were always amazed by how many cruisers were unfriendly to local people. They never smiled or tried to speak a few words of the local language, let alone move away from the comfort continued on outside column of next sightings page Page 88 •
Latitude 38
• August, 2011
shorts age caught by Mill Valley resident Leif Christiansen. In fact, we’d be surprised if you missed it, but just in case, you can find it at www.youtube.com/user/ leifhoja#p/a/u/2/UIHmrEZ-3rg. So the next time you think about doing something stupid, remember that nearly every cellphone out there is also a video camera and you might just become the nation’s next unwilling media darling. SAN DIEGO — Boaters in San Diego’s Shelter Island Yacht Basin have been offered financial assistance to switch from copper bottom paint to a “non-biocide hull
Closing the loop — clockwise from above, boatwork kept the pair busy; Nicole and Gar mug on a passage; closing the loop; mast diving, hiking and snorkeling kept them in shape; what a blast; a rare moment of rest.