Off On A Lark!

So here we are back in Funafuti, Tuvalu. About 1000 miles SE of Majuro but a world away. Still hot and humid but green, tidy and full of outgoing, smiling people who still have a handle on their culture.

Our passage was a long 12 days. Since we hadn’t been out of the lagoon into open ocean, it took a few days to get our sea legs back. Brad is typically seasick for the first 3 days and this time I joined in but only for 24 hours. We crossed the equator after 5 days and celebrated with a small, perfectly round watermelon that we’d saved for the occasion. The wind was out of the East or Southeast the entire way which was exactly where we needed to go. Consequently we were unable to get much easting and when push came to shove on the last two days it was either turn on the engine and power into it or end up in Fiji!

We’d used the engine briefly in the first week and found it would run for a few hours then start bumbling. We kept our fingers crossed and fired up ‘The Green Machine’.

For the next 36+ hours we pounded, rocked, rolled and plowed through the 2 meter swells. Hell bent to be through the pass into Funafuti lagoon before dark on Monday.
It was hot and the sun was relentless. We were basically zombies taking turns on watch, talking when we were both awake about anything to distract us from the present. Thank goodness we still had prepared and packaged food on board that could be eaten without cooking.

At 10:17 Monday morning Brad shouted “Land Ho”. I’ve never been so happy to see a clump of palm trees on the horizon! After a couple hours we reached the pass which was a bit obscured by small waves. Brad climbed the ratlines and with hand signals clarified the path we needed to stay off the reef. Thinking back, it was nothing compared the entry to Kelefesia in Tonga where we went in between two sets of breaking waves. That was a heart stopper!

We retraced our path across the lagoon from our last visit and by mid day were safely anchored out from the government building in our much loved Tuvalu.