[140115, 0555 UTC, Ant Atoll, Pohnpei, Fed.States of micronesia

06º46.4' N / 158º 01.0' E]

Dear Friends;

On Saturday January 11, 2014 at 0735 local time, we dropped our mooring lines in Sokehs harbor at Pohnpei and motored up to the commercial wharf to get clearance. We had been in Pohnpei 13 months almost to the day and nearly every day was filled with activity from the sunrise until we fell in bed with books after supper. Though the people and activities on shore lured us off Carina most days, we remained close to the cruising community by volunteering for radio nets, helping arriving cruisers to get settled and helping to organize social and educational events.

Our departure was not without its challenges. Originally we'd planned to depart for our short sea trial on Friday, January 10, a bunch of green bananas swinging from our bimini frame. For you non-sailors, setting sail on a Friday and having bananas aboard are both believed to be bad luck. The gods of the sea must have been watching over us, though, and decided to make our Friday departure impossible. On the designated Friday, as the sun was just beginning to warm the deck, Carina and crew ready, sail covers off, instruments fired up, Carina's engine starter emitted a pathetic sound when Leslie turned the key and pressed the start button. (We HAD thoroughly checked the engine and started it only two days before!) The problem was the starter and after Philip removed it and installed the spare, we found that even that failed us. Eddy of the sailboat Helena came to Carina and quickly diagnosed the problem as residing in the starter solenoid. He and Philip zipped off to shore in search of a competent mechanic, personified by Jun, a Filipino employed by Mangrove Bay Marina. Jun took the starter to his workshop. Three hours later he returned with the starter working perfectly.

The next day, engine purring, brisk tradewinds and rusty skills hampered us as we tried to maneuver Carina close enough to toss lines up to waiting Port Authority men at the dock. It was an ignoble landing as we crunched our bow and new Rocna anchor into unforgiving concrete before coming to rest. No damage, it appears, except to Philip's pride.

Customs, Immigration and, finally, (two hours late) Port Authority people visited, we paid a $10 overtime fee to the cheerful Customs woman and a $100 clearance fee to the port before being on our way to sea. While waiting for officials, we chatted with an incoming (Alaskan) boat called Toyatte and with two Yapese men from Satawal, home of many of the famous traditional ocean navigators who use celestial bodies and sea swell to cross oceans to specific Pacific Islands. One man, Gabe, supplied us with information on Yap inter-island HF radio schedules, while another, Juanito, quizzed us on servo-pendulum steering. "Would it work on an outrigger canoe?" Absolutely, we answered. So he studied our Monitor wind vane setup until he understood the concept and then smiled and nodded his head. These encounters are typical here in Pohnpei; seemingly everyone, no matter who they are, enjoys taking the time to chat and get to know you.

Once clear of the dock but while still in its lee, we put up a small piece of our new mainsail and then turned north and followed the channel out the pass, surf-able waves breaking closely to starboard. Making careful headway, we rode up large seas and in 20-25 knots of easterly tradewinds. (We left on the wrong day if we had hoped for a subdued re-introduction into blue-water sailing!) We rolled out our staysail on its new roller furling and, on a broad reach and with less than 200 square feet of sail, Carina took off like a dolphin, blazing across the sea as the waves crashed on the reef to port.

Five hours later we entered the turbulent waters at the mouth of a serpentine pass to enter the lagoon of Ant Atoll, a short 28 mile trip from our mooring. A two-knot ebb current poured out of the pass causing whirlpools and crazy chop, threatening more than once to sweep us sideways into the reef walls of the pass. We dropped our anchor off the most southeastern motu in a clear aquamarine sea with a mixture of sand and coral heads littering the bottom, about 200 meters from the wooded island and a white sandy beach. We were interested to see just how well our new anchor performed and were pleased when it set immediately on such a mixed and dubious bottom. Secure, we did little but smile for the rest of the day as fresh tradewinds and the roar of waves helped us to relax after weeks of frenzied preparation.

Now settled in Ant - a privately-owned and protected island paradise requiring a permit to enter - and adjusting to the cruising pace, we wanted to look back and reflect on our stay in Pohnpei and to catch up with our friends.

Pohnpei is a volcanic island blessed with undulating mountains blanketed in lush jungle and a large barrier reef that make its anchorages tranquil. It rarely gets typhoons, and is the center of commerce and politics of the Federated States of Micronesia, an island nation that was formerly a US Trust Territory. Snug inside its yacht harbor, our sunrise each day struck first at magnificent Sokehs Rock, a massive sheer column of basalt jutting up from sea. The rock, directly in front of the ship's pass, is like a sentinel protecting the harbor that stretches a mile deep inside the lagoon. Pohnpei's residents are a friendly potpourri; descendants of the various subcultures of Micronesian, Polynesians, Asians, and Europeans who all live together on slow-paced Micronesian time. The young people are especially attractive, with their smooth, warm copper-colored skin, magnificent thick hair and enthusiastic smiles.

Pohnpei proved to be a nearly perfect haven to park Carina for an interlude in our adventure, as it afforded us ample opportunities for work, rest, socializing and adventure. We grew to feel at home, comfortable with its Micronesian pace, and amongst family. As one of the longest visiting transient yachts, we became the "defacto" anchorage welcoming committee, and thus met and learned from sailors of the world over who passed through.

The extended respite also afforded us the opportunity to make a new mainsail and upgrade quite a number more sails, including converting our staysail to roller furling for convenience and safety. "Barney", our faithful Sailrite Sailmaker, whirred constantly under the metal-roofed shelter which our friends at Mangrove Bay so kindly allowed us to use. Wind driven rain of brief warm squalls and soft rainwater rivers running through the coral sand beneath our feet, rarely interrupted our projects.

For you cruisers out there, the facility at Mangrove Bay continues to evolve as the social center for boating in Pohnpei and we have enjoyed witnessing its blossoming and taking part as we could. We celebrated many birthdays, even more cruiser potlucks, our own 25th wedding anniversary, an SSCA gam, plus Thanksgiving and Christmas here. On an island where few facilities are built with ambience or esthetics in mind, Mangrove Bay is emerging as a facility of rugged tasteful design, perfect for its cool, breezy, oceanfront site. Not only is the site inviting, but its hosts, Kumer and Antonia Panuelo, offer warmth and hospitality, plus access to qualified technical help, and excursions such as fishing, hiking, diving and snorkeling. Antonia also swept us into her walking circle and most months we joined hundreds of other walkers at 7 am - rain deluge or not - to walk the streets of Kolonia for the benefit of some organization (and certainly our health).

On alternating days, when we weren't sewing or working on Carina, Leslie poured her energy into teaching at the college to an endearing bunch of young people, learning much herself in the process. Time and politics prevented her from doing as much for COM's labs as she'd hoped but there may be at least one more woman scientist if the subject of her mentoring continues to pursue her dream.

Researching her nutrition lessons, she quickly became aware of the link between epidemic rates of non-communicable disease - the FSM is #1 in the world for incidence of Type 2 diabetes - and the atrocious diets her students were reporting in food diaries. To be fair, some of her students were consuming the SPAM, ramen, donuts and pop at the college dining hall! Inspired to try to promote delicious healthy foods, she researched leaf taro, a nutritious delicacy we had enjoyed in the Solomon Islands. Learning it was not cultivated here, she found Ray Grogan, a taro enthusiast in Hawaii. Their collaboration, executed over many months, resulted in the importation of ten corms of a commercially-viable leaf variety of taro to Pohnpei. These tiny plants are doing well in the hands of Saimon Mix, the president of the newly-organized Pohnpei Farmers association, and we have hope that our little project will bear fruit for the health of the people who were so welcoming to us.

Thus, though we called our stay in Pohnpei a respite, we were continuously busy and enjoyed every day. Saying goodbye to people you meet cruising is always difficult, but rarely this much so. Philip had many friends all over town; many "GIRLfriends", that is. Too, Jackson of Customs, one of the first people we met in Pohnpei and who said then, "stay as long as you'd like", repeatedly wanted to take our hand and say goodbye. Philip's post office ladies insisted he keep returning despite the fact we were waiting for no additional packages. We had beers, chatter and hugs at the Mangrove Bay Marina with the yachtie crowd and found it difficult to actually say goodbye, despite darkness descending and a dinghy to stow aboard. Some of these people - yachties, fellow faculty and our Pohnpeian friends - we will never see again, but others, like Kumer and Antonia, and friends cruising on yachts we have known for years, we will definitely see again. We will make it so.

As the old camp song advises, "Make new friends but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold."

Your friends of the yacht Carina,

Philip, Leslie and fat cat, Jake

website: www.sv-carina.org