Velella Cruising Log

In Kwajalein, we felt like we’d found a comfortable way to enjoy America while still retaining the joys of cruising. Since we’d broken so much equipment recently and needed a bit of time and the resources to address these problems properly and faced an already strained budget, we toyed with the idea of staying to work if we could. We felt like we needed a short break from the challenges of cruising the third world and needed a bit more financial cushion so we could enjoy the places we visited a little more and worry about the budget a little less.

While people here work 5 days a week, they are serious about enjoying the outdoors and lead a much more balanced life than on the mainland. “If you have to work, it’s a good place to do it” is what our friends Bob and Robin, fellow cruisers, told us. On Kwajalein, there are numerous uninhabited islands to explore within a 2 hour sail and many more islands just a little further. Here lies some of the best scuba diving in the world along with a very active scuba club with low priced courses and free tanks. We fully intend to get certified and do lots of diving while we are here. We can also get our ham licenses through a very active Ham club here. We’d have great opportunities to race with the yacht club yet also enjoy the facilities that allow us to participate in activities that boating precludes. Everybody bikes to work and wears shorts in the office. If you need to work, it does sound pretty good.

When we first arrived, we mentioned that we were thinking about trying to get jobs. When we showed our resumes to people who we had gotten to know, they were very excited about our skills sets. While it is typically very difficult to get jobs here and we thought maybe all we could get would be menial jobs, we were extremely lucky that we had experience for professional positions that were just opening up. Despite that, it took a long time for all the approvals, health and background checks to come together, and we worried constantly about whether we’d be hired before our 60 day visitors pass expired. Garth had the opportunity to work on a short term project: updatinge some Autocad drawings for a rush job so was able to earn a little money quickly and delay his visitor’s pass from expiring as soon.

The fact that we had an opportunity to work in professional positions made working more appealing, and the attractive perks was what swayed us ultimately to stay. While the base salaries are lower than in the U.S., since they are not subject to federal tax, the actual take home pay is higher, along with other perks and balanced lifestyle to bring us out ahead. Benefits include free furnished housing, meal card covering all meals, health and dental care, a free ticket home after a 1 year contract is completed with $1500 spending money (if we sign on for another 90 days), plus a 401K with 50% matching. We can ship out a total of 1500 lbs of “household” goods from Washington as part of our contract (and return at the end of the contract period, provided we don’t leave before the contract period is complete). Because there’s next to nothing to spend money on here, we are able to bank money at a faster rate than at home since we’ve eliminated the housing, commuting, and food costs, plus costs for boat storage. And, of course there are all the great activities and facilities that we mentioned in the last update which make staying much more fun: free movies, crafts and woodworking center, and the myriad of clubs and events. It feels a little like we’ve returned to college with all the activities and the small campus feel, except that there are children on this campus.

Moving off of the boat into housing allows us to address a few problems that are difficult to tackle while living aboard and constantly using the boat, such as overhauling the head, addressing a drip in the fresh water pump under the sink, delamination of the Formica around the galley sink, and varnishing the interior.

What kinds of jobs we will be doing? Garth has gotten a job as a mechanical engineer working on troubleshooting facilities maintenance, not quite his line of work but at least he’s not doing construction or managing the hobby shop. I scored a little better, getting a job as a web developer for the company intranet. I basically am part of a newly formed team with 3 full time people and 2 others that will work with us as their schedule allows to develop a new Intranet site. It’s a great project and an excellent opportunity to learn and develop my skills. I honestly couldn’t have dreamed of something I’d be more interested in doing right now.

A few things peculiar to Kwaj:

A peculiarity of being on US territory and particularly a military owned base is that we are again reminded of the US strive to protect everyone from the risk of poor judgment. In the interest of safety, we all have to take a boating safety course and get tested before we can take out a boat, even the boat we sailed 17,000 miles to get here!!!! The buddy system is strong, so neither of us is allowed to move the boat alone or go for a sail on our own. Drats. But, not something we do often anyway. When we go racing we have to fill out a float plan.

Some of the down sides of being government contractors, things sometimes move very slowly around here and there are lots of rules and paperwork. There are lots of people who have been working here too long and have become dead weight, yet seem to be tolerated. We wasted several of our first days working with orientation, safety briefings and filling out paperwork. But, hey, if they want to pay us for that, I guess that’s their choice. Yet there are lots of fun, adventurous people that have come here to enjoy a different kind of lifestyle.

Acronyms are rampant here and we continually have to ask what people mean. A garage sale is called a PCS sale after the term Permanent Change of Status, which in common English means: leaving.

On TV and radio, which is satellite fed by the military, the commercials are all public safety messages. We kid that as far as TV programming we can get “ALL IRAQ WAR NEWS ALL THE TIME!” or sports, but the rest of the selection is limited. That’s fine by us since we’ve never been used to having a TV anyway and haven’t gotten one. We can see movies 4 times a week for free, so that keeps us pretty content. We still hear people talk about some sitcoms, so some must be coming through, although we understand the hours are odd because of the time difference.

We’ve enjoyed biking all over the island even though a full tour of the island can take less than an hour. The salt air is pervasive and a brand new bike will rust within 6 months. Ads for bikes in the paper describe “Kwaj condition”, which means that in the States one might think the bike was rusted out. But, in Kwaj, one needs to ignore the surface rust on the handlebars and pay careful attention to the chain and brakes. Derailers and other mildly fancy features are liability in this corrosive environment. We bought an aluminum bike that was nearly new for only $25 from someone that was breaking their contract early (and reluctant to ship anything home at their own expense). Not even the handlebars were rusty yet, but it hasn’t taken long. Garth revamped an abandoned bike: It works fine and cost nothing. With a visit to “Bicycle Heaven”, one can easily find all the parts for getting a bike back in condition. We joke that a Kwaj station wagon is a bike with front and back baskets, a child seat and a trailer. Everyone gets pretty innovative and we’ve seen some odd looking trailers. But, necessity is a mother of invention: how else does one transport scuba gear by bike? When we moved house by bike, it was pretty comical, but we borrowed a couple of funky trailers and it only took a couple of trips.

Recycling is big here since everything must be shipped in from Hawaii or the continental US otherwise. Visits to the dump are common for those household projects or hobbies. While we have several stores with decent selection (compared to the 3rd world it is phenomenal), it’s not up to Walmart standards. Online purchasing is huge and the post office here does a whopping volume of package handling as a result. We can tell when the cargo plane has arrived by the number of boxes leaving the post office from the pick up window and the selection of fresh vegetables available in the stores.

We chuckle that we live feet from the ocean yet buy frozen seafood at the supermarket flown in from Hawaii. (Ciguatera poisoning from reef fish is a concern here, although the Marshallese have no qualms about eating it and all the sports fishermen have a ready market for their catch.)

Here for a dressy occasion people will pull out new flip flops and a clean Aloha shirt. Like us, here on Kwajalein, we have finally run into others who have encountered that blank stare when they’ve shared with people from home where they’ve been spending their time. We run into everyone from work at the grocery store, at the post office, at the dining hall, on the waterfront, at the pool, so we get used to seeing our professional colleagues in bathing suits and all kinds of attire.

Sometimes while watching a movie under the stars, we have a few occasional brief showers so it helps to bring an umbrella so we don’t have to move under the production booth overhang during the movie. We watch movies at the Richardson Theatre where Bob Hope performed for the troops over 50 years ago.

We have friends that bought a stripped out Ericson 39 that came with a boat house and lots of parts and tools from someone who is leaving the island as Boeing’s portion of the contract ends. To get away from the dorm room, they spend all their time down at this boat house where they can play loud music and party late into the night and BBQ without bothering anyone and have a nice storage and work space to work on boat projects. While they could just enjoy the boat house and resell it in a few years for what they paid for it, they intended to put their outfitting and woodworking skills to work to rebuild it and make the Ericson sailable again so they can sell it for a profit. But alas, the Ericson wasn’t salvageable and now they’re selling parts and planning to sink the hull. They’ll still come out ahead.

Vegetables, fruit and mail are flown in once a week. Every once in a while when the plane is down, the produce and frozen food section in the market gets a little bare. While some people complain, we still think we are in heaven because it sure beats the selection we’ve seen over the last year!

Usually the dining hall fare is pretty decent with good variety and we have special events where we have fine cheeses, seafood and desserts that we don’t usually see. We see lots of very large people enjoying all the dining hall has to offer and we have to remind ourselves that we don’t need to sample some of everything or to have ice cream after every meal.

Don’t worry about our short stop to work; we will continue to send updates describing our visits to other islands and atolls in the Marshal Islands, as well as offer descriptions of the Marshallese people and culture, our scuba diving and snorkeling adventures. This stop delays our plans a little, but doesn’t change them significantly. After we leave the Marshalls, we plan to continue towards Japan as originally planned via the Federated States of Micronesia (Kosrae, Pohnpei) and possibly the Philippines and Guam, depending upon weather, of course.

Visit our photos of Kwajalein, Kiribati and the Solomon Islands at: http://www.photos.yahoo.com/yachtvelella

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)