Tuesday 19 October 2010

Picton Castle at anchor at Asanvari, Maewo, Vanuatu; Tuesday 19 October 2010 בס"ד

I stood anchor watch at 0100 with nothing of note occurring. Woke up at 0800 feeling a bit fatigued. I went ashore at 0900 with a load of schoolbooks, which we took to the local school after stopping at the “Yacht Club.” All the schoolchildren sang us a welcome song and then after that we got to check out the schools. This school, though structurally modest, had quite an up-to-date educational curriculum it seemed by glancing at the projects the kids had around the classrooms. It was a nice school, I thought. We then were led on a walk by Nixon, who I think was the son of Chief Nelson. He took us to the end of the point by the “submarine rocks,” which are two rocks that were bombed by US airplanes during WWII that the legend says were confused for Japanese submarines. I find this improbable, since they're right next to shore, surfaced in obviously shallow coral reef, and they were probably used as target practice, but who knows? We returned to the yacht club, where I chilled for an hour with a few others of us who were feeling that same fatigue I was... and we were starting to think maybe it wasn't just exhaustion but some sort of bug. Went back to the ship on the 1130 skiff, had lunch, and came back with some others who wanted to snorkel around submarine rocks. I just took advantage of the beach for some good old fashioned beach narcolepsy that seems to strike me whenever I lay down on sand. Woke up a few hours later and went to the yacht club at 0330. The Captain showed me a local guy who was grinding kava using a meat grinder and told me I should do it for my forearm workout. I gave it a try, and it was difficult but fun and I started feeling better again. Here they don't filter their kava with water through a cheese cloth like everywhere else; they just use the natural water from it (since kava is a ground root) and it's therefore much stronger. I had paid Bronwen earlier the required 800vt for the Kastoms Dans here, and after we ground up the kava, the dance began. It was pretty cool and the guys had some cool moves. I ran out of vatu to pay for the following kava ceremony and dinner, and so after the dance I went to return to the ship. The Captain saw me, insisted I stay and that the ship would spot me. So I stayed, had some kava, which was quite tasty and noticeably stronger, and had dinner, sitting at the Captain's table. Stayed til 2000, and caught the skiff back, when we were struck by a rain squall that only lasted the duration of the skiff run. Dried off, went to bed.