Funafuti, Tuvalu
Tuvalu is apparently the world’s second smallest nation. This I discovered over afternoon beers in the hotel with a few of the local characters. Nobody could actually account for the statistic, whether it was based on land mass or population. The number one spot was also debated, with the Vatican being a top contender.
Regardless, the size of the place had nothing to do with the length of our stay. It’s a weather thing. This is cyclone breeding ground and the atoll offers little in the way of protection from the strong westerlies that come when these form nearby. The whole time we were there, the convergence zone we had sailed through to get here was active, meaning the low was forming. Some days it was almost impossible to get ashore. Checking in on Monday and out on Friday is against our norm of staying so long our visas expire (after nine years we are still in the Pacific).
Funafuti is just a strip of sand, barely wide enough for a house on one side of the road. The largest part of the island is taken up by the airstrip, a legacy of the American occupation during WWII, when they paved the taro pits thereby eliminating the major food source for these people and immediately rendering them dependent on foreign aid. Another feature of life on Funafuti are the munitions pits also left over from the war, now festering swamps lined with pig pens that drain into them and filled with garbage. Unbelievably, houses are perched right on the edges of these, with the inhabitants seemingly unaware of the garbage and the health risk that must be prevalent in this situation.
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Village on edge of Garbage and Swamp
We were lucky our part arrived within a few days. We had to phone Fiji to get DHL to send it, which they did on the next plane once they knew we actually wanted it at the address on the package. It seems to be standard in these islands that packages you pay exorbitant fees to have posted for delivery within three days will be held up in some transit center forever unless you request they send it on.
So with repairs completed and weather deteriorating we decided to save the best of Tuvalu for our next visit. We did not get out to the outer islands, pristine beaches and sparkling reefs that we know are on the other side of the lagoon. We had enjoyed the friendly people, the colorful weaving, and had an interesting bike ride around the main part of the island.
 Weaving Pandanus |
 Colourful Mats |
I have to ask someone – what’s up with all the shooting stars? Is the sky falling? Has some unsuspecting pacific country signed a pact to accept space junk? Are these badly aimed missiles that have missed Kwajelain? Is it Star Wars? Do fragments ever land here on earth? On our passage from Tuvalu to Kiribati I counted up to 7 of these pinpoints of light streaking across the night sky in any one hour, just in the small patch of sky visible to me as I gazed out one side of the cockpit.
On two separate occasions they were of such intensity it caused me to cry out (I think I said ‘holy cow’) – balls of fire lobbing to earth. The first was a comet like thing, fireball followed by a tail of sparks, which traveled around 35 degrees towards the horizon. The second started as a normal shooting star, but grew larger along its trajectory. After a spectacular explosion of green light (I assume this was when it hit the atmosphere), it went behind a small cloud, which lit up with a green glow around the edges, and disappeared. We have noticed an abundance of shooting stars on all our passages this year, much more than I can ever remember. I wonder if others are seeing these from around the world, and what is the reason. Another yacht had made the passage just a couple of days before us, and commented on the same phenomenon.
Another feature in the night sky was the space station, which is visible on the horizon at around 4 am, like a huge star, so bright it projects a path of light on the ocean in front of it. What do they do up there, I wondered. Do they see these fireballs from close range? Down at ocean level, we had phosphorescence on this trip too. Normally we see small globules of it, sometimes so thick it piles up in small drifts in our wake. Generally it is ‘set off’ in the foaming waves pushed up around us as we pass. Sometimes we have seen fish or dolphins, their shapes glowing green with the stuff. This trip, on two nights, we saw something different. These were large solid chunks of it, the size of a small table, and stationary. They did not ‘swim away’ as would a turtle or other creature that could have caused the glow. They were also well away from the boat, not actually in our path. We could see the patch light up ahead, and watch it as we passed it, like a window in the ocean with the light on.
And on the horizon the lightning continued to flash. One night it was all around us, and I felt sure we must have to sail through it at some time. Its intensity was frightening. But somehow we managed to remain under the stars and out of harms way.
In 5 days we were anchored at Tarawa.
