Pctober 19, 2004
Although we’re working to build up our cruising kitty again and our lives have settled into a routine of working 40 hours a week and catching up with chores and errands on the weekends as many of you are doing, we still are living differently than we did working in Seattle. For starters we feel like we are on a college campus, where we know everyone everywhere we go and nothing is more than a few blocks away. We awake in the morning and see palm trees swaying outside our window. Our time here has flown by.
I’ve really been enjoying my job and am learning lots of new web development skills. Garth is less challenged at the office, but has put his creativity to work designing a solution for hauling out all sorts of keelboats with a trailer so boat owners can avoid the hassle and expense of hiring a crane which is often unavailable due to high demand or disrepair. He’s also kept busy designing another cruising boat.
Since Garth and I work regular kinds of jobs with regular folks, we often forget that we are on a special military base that conducts missile research since we have little involvement with activity in “secure areas”. During a “Mission”, those of us not actually working on the mission go out to watch the incoming ballistic warheads like we are being treated to some special fireworks show. In fact, that’s what it looks like. We’ve witnessed several of these tests so far and it never ceases to amaze us that within 20 minutes of launching from the Continental USA, Peacekeeper MX missiles appear like a star on the horizon, then streak across the sky and drop into the lagoon. That’s 5000 miles in 20 minutes! Really puts our 18,000 miles in 4 years into perspective!
During unusual circumstances, Garth was called upon to save the day as the only available Mechanical Engineer to diagnose an urgent problem with the world’s largest, fastest moving radar. He got a call requesting him to go to the airport immediately. Upon his arrival he was escorted onto a Huey helicopter which immediately lifted off. He flew directly over a crater created by an incoming missile only the evening before. He stepped out of the helicopter, was escorted to a waiting van that took him to the largest radar that most of us have ever seen. As part of his diagnosis, Garth had the unique opportunity to ride around inside of the radar as it moved 20 degrees per second so he could determine what was causing an unusual level of wear. After successfully identifying the cause and initiating corrective action, Garth was rushed back to the airport where the last plane of the day, full of passengers, had been waiting for 20 minutes for him. What a whirlwind of a day!
We’ve had a steady stream of yachts visiting us here in Kwajalein, some we know or have heard about and some we’ve never come across before. Friends we haven’t seen since New Zealand or Fiji or parted company with back in French Polynesia, have come here to enjoy the delights of civilization in this group of remote atolls. They have been pretty impressed at the country club they’ve found in the middle of the Pacific ocean, thousands of miles from any major city. They’ve often found this oasis hard to leave after quickly growing used to all the amenities that they had finally learned to live without in the outer lying islands where they’ve been cruising. I still laugh as I copy down recipes that specify items I haven’t seen in years and remember Garth’s quips while we were cruising that it didn’t matter what the recipe had called for because, by the time I had finished making all the substitutions for lack of ingredients, most of the recipes turned out pretty much the same!
We’ve certainly been enjoying having 3 tasty meals a day prepared for us on our meal plan. Though we had access to a full kitchen of fancy kitchen gadgets and lots of space in a 3 BR house where we looked after a kitty while her family vacations on the “mainland”, we haven’t developed a strong urge to cook like we’d have imagined by this point. There is so much else to do here that cooking doesn’t strike me as very interesting at the moment. We have weeks of activities planned every night, between movies, dinner parties, yacht club events, classes and sailing, we’ve kept very busy.
We had the opportunity to see Marshallese Stick Dancing in a rare performance by the national dance troop as they prepared for a Pacific wide competition in Palau later this month. The Marshallese community hosted a cultural festival, featuring the dancing, basket weaving demonstrations, and rides on traditional outrigger sailing canoes. The all male dance troop in a well coordinated motion tapped sticks in sync to a nasal style female chanting accompanied by a stark drum beat. The dancing and costumes reminded us a little of the dances we saw in Vanuatu, and, while interesting, we found them somewhat repetitive and not nearly as engaging nor the music nearly as melodic. We got a chance to reminisce about our Pacific Island travels during a Polynesian Dance Review that visited from Honolulu. The Tahitian style still ranks as our favorite for both music, drum beats, costumes and motion.
We sailed 50 miles up the lagoon (this is the largest atoll in the world) to nearby Roi-Namur, the site of heavy fighting in WWII. The island, once 2 separate islands, was joined by land fill during the war, so that a runway could be built. We had the most delightful sail up with a full crew excited about a day out on the water. Upon our arrival some of our crew met up with their families that had flown up for free. We had the usual cocktail parties, pool party and volleyball and other games making for a fun weekend. But most interesting was an extended tour we took of the war ruins around the island. We saw an underground Japanese hospital dug into the earth at the site of a small hill, the old Japanese headquarters for the central Pacific, the old jail, the Japanese cemetery, gun emplacements, and countless bunkers in various states of destruction. Bullets and shrapnel impregnated into the concrete bunker walls dribble rust in the salt air. Remnants of the war have been found for years by people diving and walking around the island and are visible. On display around the island, we’ve seen numerous sake bottles, silverware, water bottles, gas masks, coins and other metal items with bullet holes, as well as propellers, wing tips and other larger items sitting in the grass next to the scuba club. Unexploded ordnance is still found frequently on the island, and 2 sets of unexploded bombs have been identified just in the last few weeks. We’ve been warned not to pick up old things that we don’t recognize, since unexploded ordinance becomes more unstable over time.
After touring the war ruins, we were very intrigued to learn more about the battles here and the history of Kwajalein. A friend lent us a great book called “Kwajalein Remembered”, which not only outlines war history, but also features fascinating photos and stories of how this island has evolved over the years. To see photos of the carnage following the war, taken from what is now the intersection 6th street and Lagoon where we live is dumbfounding. And even to see how the buildings have changed over the years since is interesting. One landmark has remained constant in all these years, the Richardson (outdoor) Theater where Bob Hope performed nearly 60 years ago. A number of videos are available at the library on WWII history and Kwajalein battles, wrecks.
On July 4, we had the most incredible celebration of U.S. Independence Day in many years. Here in Kwaj, holidays are a big deal and are celebrated in style. We spent the entire day up at the beach, where there was a kids bike parade in full costume, a cook out, banana boat rides, mini car races, carnival games, a bounce house, a crafts fair, speeches and live music. Only the way Americans can celebrate . . . We floated in the gentle waves off the beach in the heat of the day, listening to music: some recorded, some incredibly talented locals and, following the fireworks, danced until midnight to a USO band on tour. For a place that is home to only 2,000 people, we had one of the most impressive displays of fireworks we’ve seen. Set from a barge only 100 yards off the beach, we could feel each explosion distinctly from our beach chairs.
We’ve gotten certified to dive. We’ve never had such a great opportunity to learn to dive in such inviting circumstances for such an attractive price before so have never been very interested in venturing down that path. Numerous wrecks lie in the lagoon here from WWII and rest too deep to see snorkeling. Seeing a film about the history and wrecks from the battles of Kwajalein whet our appetites in addition to the arrival of the doldrums and its accompanying hot still air. The scuba club here is incredibly active and we can get free tanks and borrow gear or purchase it more inexpensively than anywhere since most of the dive instructors are also dealers. We dove on the wreck of the Prince Eugen, a famous ship actively used through WWII. When it was retired, it was blown up twice in the blasts at Bikini atoll and then towed to Kwaj for research where it finally sank from its wounds just inside the lagoon. We had a nice cruise to uninhabited islands nearby where we enjoyed a glorious 4 days of diving and fishing.
Do we miss cruising? You bet! But our bank account is much happier and getting better all the time. Our time here has been flying and we are nearly halfway though our contracts. It won’t be long before we’re off again.
More peculiarities of Kwaj:
Once you know about Kwaj, you run into all kinds of people who’ve spent time here or know of friends or family who have.
To coincide with CONUS (continental USA) workweek, we work from Tuesday to Saturday. Our weekends are on Sunday and Monday (when the U.S. celebrates Saturday and Sunday.)
No matter how far we ride our bikes, we’re never more than 3 miles from where we started.
There are basically only 3 models of bikes on island (the green huffy; the pink, light blue or yellow ladies Sun; or the red and black men’s Sun), but the imagination of people has created more variety than we could believe. Between paint, various basket and handlebar options, the combinations are endless. We see lots of bikes with the handlebars raised to a height where one can basically bike standing up. Another group of bike frames have been cut and rewelded in an elongated form so that the owners can bicycle in a reclined position. Another style emulates a Harley. The variety is comical. We see bikes covered in flowered leis or sprinkled with glitter and flags. We are continually amused when we spot the Kwaj sports utility vehicle which crowd the marina each weekend: A sporty frame painted black or red with racks behind the seat and a trailer outfitted with built in cooler stowage and frames for the rod and reel or scuba tanks. The Kwaj station wagon features an abundance of baskets and child seats.
While some people on single contracts fight to get housed in decaying trailers from the 60’s with kitchens, we are very content in our clean, new brightly lit BQ (Bacheler’s Quarters) room. It seems like acres of room to us compared to our tiny boat. We laugh at the “Kwaj Trailer Trash” t-shirts that we’ve seen people wearing around. The aluminum trailers have begun to succumb to the corrosive salt environment and building maintenance can no longer keep up with them. They are trying to phase out the trailers and replace them with dome homes made of fiberglass. They are extremely odd looking, resembling big white igloos with window cut outs, but they are popular.
After housesitting in a dark, poorly built 3 BR house, we long to return to our comfortable BQ room, not jealous of the spacious family quarters in the slightest. While we’ve been assigned a second room (one for each single contract), we’re not sure it’ll get much use, though our visitors will love it. We imagine it’ll be a good place to repack our life raft, do canvas or small bits of varnish work and store items from the boat.
Visit our photos of Kwajalein, Kiribati and the Solomon Islands at: http://www.photos.yahoo.com/yachtvelella We’ve added more photos of Kwajalein.
Visit the rest of the photos of our trip at: http://www.photos.yahoo.com/atomicsalsa
Cheers,
Wendy Hinman and Garth Wilcox
S/V Velella (Wylie 31)