March 31, 2006
Our stay in Pohnpei was short since we were meeting people in Saipan, our next stop, and needed to leave ourselves plenty of time to sail there and get situated. We found the frequent rain in Pohnpei a bit challenging, since we often got soaked, yet could never quite catch enough to replenish our water tanks. We used up our fresh water quickly since the anchorage was so polluted we were unwilling to use saltwater for anything. Yet we saw a stingray leap out of the water and often spotted turtles in the anchorage and local kids swam every day from where we tied up our dinghy on shore.
We anchored next to a village of Polynesian people from Kapingimaringi, who were very friendly and generous, as Polynesians usually are. One of the Kapingas we came to know, Mylinn, spunky and full of zest for life, was a delight to be around. She told us of discrimination in Pohnpei and stories of how her family struggled to come of Pohnpei and make a living there. She also vastly enriched our visit with stories and myths of the Kapinga people, who sailed to settle in Kapingimaringi from Tonga. She told us of an American Christmas drop of snorkeling gear on her remote home atoll when her mother was only a child, after which the mayor showed up at the town hall meeting wearing snorkel, mask and fins! Like the movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy”, the western world suddenly appeared in the midst of a remote culture and the people were faced with strange things they’ve never seen before.
Mylinn and her husband took us by long boat around the island to see the ruins of Nan Madol and we had a great day of exploring. On the way we stopped for a snorkel. Then we hiked to an incredible waterfall where we played in the refreshing water and celebrated its cool beauty for as long as we could. When the tide was high, we ventured on to Nan Madol by boat so we could pass through its many canals. Nan Madol is an amazing stone ruin of a sophisticated ancient culture, built over the water on a series of islets. Parts of it are like a fortress of stone logs stacked on each other. Everyone marvels at how difficult it must have been to construct such a canal city of stone (like Venice) and must have been even more impressive in its heyday with all its cultural aspects than even its ruins today can suggest. We saw a number of underground rooms, believed to be for holding prisoners, as well as access sewers where the eel that the people worshipped was fed.
Mylinn told us a Kapinga story of a male baby born and lost at the waters edge. Across the water the baby was found by an older couple and reared, but forbidden to cross the canal. As he got older he burned with curiosity and snuck across the canal where he encountered his birth mother, the chief’s wife. She noticed the resemblance, but he did not understand and he slapped her, leaving a mark. The Chief found out and banished the boy to another island. Yet the eel (whom they worshipped) left as well. Once the chief discovered that the eel had gone along, he organized a raiding party to steel the eel back. The raiding party failed, losing 2 of their 5 boats. Once the chief realized his mistake he sent a party to apologize and bring back both the eel and the boy. Mylinn told us a number of other stories like this and lent us a book with even more stories.
We spent the rest of our visit to Pohnpei wandering about the fairly typical 3rd world town of Kolonia. We appreciated the decent selection of stores, offering tremendous variety of products compared to Kwaj, so we were able to fill holes in our food provisions from all over the world. We ate out several times, and found the local specialty of raw Ahi to be delicious. We shared the company of a Scottish yachtie, whose Filipina wife and their young son had just rejoined him after a number of months apart. The boy was dark like his mother but with a shock of blond hair! We even ventured over to the Village Resort, where most people from Kwaj seem to stay, to check it out. We enjoyed the lovely view and atmosphere of the resort while having a drink and checked out the bungalows before returning to the 3rd world.
Within a week, once we recovered from the check out fees, we were off to Saipan, a 6 day sail.
We have set up a blog where we can post updates without necessarily having to send out mailers. We plan to spice it up with images and updates and fix the formatting problem, but it’s a start. We will try to update it by email directly from the boat, so you can hear what we are up to more frequently than we can find land based email. Check http://yachtvelella.blogspot.com/ to see whether we've posted an update since our last email.
View our more recent photos at
http://photos.yahoo.com/yachtvelella
and our older
photos of our voyage at
http://photos.yahoo.com/atomicsalsa
Cheers,
Wendy Hinman and Garth Wilcox
S/V Velella (Wylie 31)