Abiang was a restful place to spend 10 days with good anchorages everywhere. Abiang appeared to be poorer and more traditional than Butaritari, if that’s possible. No one seemed to even have a generator, so light at night was limited to kerosene lanterns or a glass jar of kerosene with a wick suspended in it by a wire. When the sun went down, it seemed the only artificial lights in Abiang were on our 2 sailboats. Very dark, except some early night fires where piles of palm branches were being burned. Rather than leaving the vegetation to deteriorate into soil, throughout the Pacific it is tradition to burn the potential compost to the bare sand or coral ground. That is tradition which cannot be changed by anyone’s logical explanation.

One day while trolling in the lagoon from the stern of Brick House, we got a bite. Change that to heavy unrelenting run and zzzzzz of the fishing reel. While Patrick fought to bring in line, I rolled up the head sail, and sailed around strategically with the stay sail to try to relieve the heavy tension on the fishing line. That fish would drag out almost all of line from the reel and then Patrick would manage to pull in 100 feet, and then back out it would zoom, over and over again the yoyo would continue. There were no coral heads around for quite a distance so we were able to play with sails and the fish for quite some time having barrels of fun. We had just put a new lure on the line, so Patrick was determined to at least get his lure back, if not a shiny trophy fish! After about 30 minutes of this playing, we got the fish alongside the boat. It was not a shark but a huge 45 pound Trevally Jack. I handed Patrick the gaff, and soon Mr Trevally was on deck having a volcanic fit that rattled the decks and sent blood flying. We poured rubbing alcohol in to his gills, and soon he settled down in to a drunken stupor. A few minutes later we sailed past Mr John who was already at anchor, while Patrick struggling to hold up his trophy fish so that John and Paula could take the picture you see on our web site. We all had a nice dinner that evening and for many evenings afterwards.

Patrick took ¼ of the fish, complete with head and carcass to a family onshore. These people have nets which they walk out on the shallows to use but they have no boat or way to catch the deep water fish. In return the family filled our plastic container with fresh made coconut cream wrung from the grated flesh of brown coconuts. They also sent back a dessert type thing made of breadfruit, sugar and flour, wrapped in popi (elephant ear, taro) leaves. Patrick ate a lot of it but none of the rest of us cared much for the flavor of the breadfruit based pudding.

I made a huge batch of fish chowder with a good part of that fish and froze several containers of it for future dinners too.

After dinner we played many games of Scrabble with John and Paula. During the day we had walks and talks ashore. It was a nice way to say goodbye to John and Paula who we had been cruising on and off with for the past year. We were about to start sailing on different schedules and to different destinations. They are headed back to Fiji, via Rotuma, and we are Vanuatu bound, after a short stop in Rotuma.. Very sad…we will miss them for sure. Its not often you find people you click easily with, and feel at ease around. But in reality we have far more friends who become family out here cruising than we would ever dream of having living in a house in Rhode Island.

After 10 days, we decided to make an overnight sail to Abemama, 110 miles to the south east of Abiang. We knew it would be a tough sail with north west currents, and south east winds all working against us. I came down with a stomach bug within a few hours after passing Tarawa, and spent a lot of time in the bathroom as we headed south. We could make no easting at all, and all of the atolls we wanted to go to lied southeasterly. Once we were south of Maina, we did manage to make a bit of southeasting, and after a few long tacks, were near the island of Kuria, about 30 miles southwest of Abemama. My stomach was happy at the idea of a rest, and we had gotten permission to visit Kuria thankfully, so we were in business.