Pirate Party

Our boat, under construction in Nick's front yard.

 Last week an email came through the Dissociates mailing list saying that Saturday was a special occasion. In honor of Talk Like A Pirate Day, a Pirate Party was going to be held out on Coconut Point. This wasn't going to be a stand around and drink in costume affair, it's one where you were expected to show up and build a boat to sail around Coconut point to an island in the neighboring lagoon and back. Not to be denied the opportunity to build a watercraft and paddle it around, I showed up at my friend Nick's house early and we began constructing our vessel. We bagged two of the Coast Guard kayaks and lashed them together, we built platforms for sitting on out of surf boards and an old shipping pallet and soon were ready to roll. We hoped to have time to build a mast for a sail or a coconut launcher for boarding actions, but ran out of nails prior to either of those ideas coming to life. We did manage to construct a solid raft that eliminated the play that I worried would doom any on the water momentum.

The crew getting ready to undertake our voyage.

Next we recruited a crew. Picking up two able-bodied men, Jorge and Zach to man the paddles. With our compliment of sailors in place we set about getting our boat in the water. Carrying the boat down to the launch point we were still a little concerned about the stability, but we tightened up our lashings and got the SS Sea Bitch on the water and provisioned ourselves for the voyage. Jorge had the foresight to bring a large patio umbrella to the party. We skeptically added that to the boat's supplies. With as brezzy it was that afternoon, I didn't believe that we'd be able to open it or hold on to it when open, but we had the room, so what the hell.

Jorge paddling.

Our first leg of the voyage we were moving perpendicular to the wind heading eastward along the shore of Coconut point. The current was with us and we made good time and even managed to enjoy a beer while we made our way to the end of the Point and our turn northwards into the Pala Lagoon. The boat paddled smoothly and we ended up passing a few of the kayakers who showed up to witness the spectacle. Once we got the boat turned to the north, we decided it was time to try and use the umbrella as a sail. I stowed my paddled and pulled out the massive wooden umbrella and set about opening it up.

Our umbrella sail in action. 

With the sail unferruled we quickly caught the wind and plunged towards our next destination, Coconut Island in the Pala Lagoon. It's a tiny clump of dirt in the middle of stagnant lagoon. It's defining feature is a single palm tree that is struggling to hold onto one edge of the island. Sara's previously kayaked out to it, but made the mistake of going at low tide, so the approach to the island was through knee deep mud, dragging the kayak behind. Thankfully, this voyage was at high tide and it was smooth sailing the whole way in. Turns out our home-made catamaran was an excellent downwind sailing ship. We flew towards the island with little more than a some rudder work by Jorge in the rear of the boat.

Party on Coconut Island. 

 Once we reach out destination it was time to tie up and enjoy some grog in true pirate fashion. We passed around beers from our cooler and relaxed on the tiny piece of land in the middle of the Pala. We waited for the fleet of kayakers and aspiring pirates to float their way in to the island. Slowly, the armada started pulling up to the island and tying onto our boat. Which may not have been the best idea, as we were only tied onto an inch in diameter branch on a dessicated little shrub.

Having some refreshment on the deck of our boat.

The other pirates paddle their way in.

Nick enjoying a Corona.

The after party.

Eventually most of the other people on the water made their way to the little island. As land to stand on started to be at a premium, some of us resorted to hanging out and watching the sunset from our boats. The sun started to dip its way past the horizon, but we still had a few stragglers left to make it to the island.

The last boat in was optimistically built out of a solar panel with an electric motor attached. The cloud cover and the lateness in the day conspired to force them to paddle the whole way. They made it to the Island with the pirate flag flying and half a bottle of rum. Excellent work on their part.


















The next leg in the journey was to get back to Coconut point. We launched from Coconut Island and tried out our umbrella sail, this time running east, perpendicular to the wind. Turns out our little catamaran tracks well without a dagger board. We were able to catch the wind and track true going across the wind. This made our trip back to Coconut point an easy stroll compared to the rest of the fleet that was stuck paddling their way back through the early evening light.

Once we were back to land, we broke down our boats and carried them back to the yards we got the parts from. To finish off the evening we had Tutuila's most popular cover band, Three Leg Dog playing on a balcony and enjoyed some beers at Kelly and Alden's place at Coconut Point. Piracy won this event.

Northside Paddling Adventure

In early January, we opted to join a large group of our friends for a kayak adventure. We met up at Coconut Point, everyone was dragging ass (as usual...), but eventually we got loaded up and going.

We headed out to Fagasa, one of the few villages on

the north side of Tutuila. We pulled up to the small

boat ramp that one of the National Park marine biologists (who was leading the trip) regularly launches from. He introduced us to the matai, in Samoan chief, who lives next to the boat ramp. He was lounging in his lava lava and happy to meet us, since we are friends with the National Park guy, who he considers family. He offered to watch our cars if we parked next to his house. We moved the cars, unloaded and launched.

The paddle out was great, there were some large swells in the open water, once we got outside the mouth of Fagasa Bay. It was a beautiful way to see the island and it was great to out with a large group exploring the otherwise inaccessible North side of our island.

We paddled several coves to the west and ended up landing in Sita Bay. The route into the Bay was a little dicey.

To reach the beach, we needed to paddle in the ava, which is a narrow channel in the reef. The channel mainly serves as the drain for the basin of water that builds up behind the fringe reef as waves break over the reef. As a result, the ava has a strong outward current. This is further compounded by the waves breaking over the shallow reef. This is challenging, more so if you're not comfortable in a kayak. A number of members of our trip were rookie kayakers, so we had varying levels of panic following our paddle up the gullet of the ava.

Sita Bay was a cool place to explore. Our Samoa friend caught several coconut crabs and taught a few of us how to identify their burrows and how to grab them so as not to lose a finger to their claws that can crack coconut shells.

Sara did her usual seashell hunt and came away with some great shells, which is a great advantage to infrequently visited shores.

After a little rain, we launched back out to sea and continued west to Fagafue Bay. Most of our group landed here, but Sara and a prosecutor from our office did not want to brave another ava, so we decided to paddle back to our starting point. It was a beautiful day and stoked my fire to spend so more time kayaking while we're here.

Outrigger Regatta

After being off paddling for a few weeks for our trip back to the mainland, it was nice to get back into the routine of outrigger canoe again. Last weekend Sara and I were able to put some of that experience to work at the Moso'oi Festival Outrigger Regatta.

It was a large group of paddlers that came out for the canoe race. Between adult and youth paddlers there were easily over one-hundred participants. After registering and getting our gift bags we were randomly assigned to teams.

The weather was off and on raining, so some of the paddles were wet and some were sunny, luck of the draw. Each race consisted of four boats per heat. It was actually two races going on at once, the 2 heavier boats were facing off against each other and the two lighter boats doing the same. So in theory you could come in 3rd place out of four and still potentially win your race.

The actual racing for Sara and I was not that interesting. Neither of our teams preformed well, my team was eliminated after two rounds (of double elimination). Sara made it one round further, but were losing when one of the boats they were not racing against flipped. I hadn't yet seen a boat flip and was surprised how quickly it happened. Once the ama started lifting, the momentum quickly spun the boat over. Before you blinked the boat was over and the competitors and their paddles started bobbing to the surface around the boat. Sara's boat turned around and assisted the flipped canoe with flipping it back over and bailing the body of the canoe. The post flip mop up process took about fifteen minutes, which slowed the pace of the regatta.

With several heats still to go, Sara and I decided not to stick around until the end. We passed our raffle ticket off to a friend who was spectating and headed home and called it an afternoon. We weren't sure what to make the next day when there was a picture posted on Facebook with us tagged, talking about our new stove. Apparently the ticket we passed along won the grand prize for the raffle, a propane stove. Having a perfectly good electric range, we're not sure what we're going to do with our race day prize. My vote is having the best car camping kitchen on island.