one more thing

If you want to track Brian's progress across the Pacific, here is the link:

http://www.pangolin.co.nz/yotreps/tracker.php?ident=wdd9776

Please pray for encouragement, more fish, and winds and currents to go the right direction to help him to his destination.

Thanks

My Bonnie lies over the ocean

Well, that song used to be really irritating to me when I was learning it for piano lessons as a kid. Strangely, I find myself singing it lately. It is simple and concise. Bring back my Brian to me!!
It's been a month since I wrote. Every evening after Eloise goes to sleep, I sit down and check weather, look up things Brian might need to know on the internet and then compose an email that is informational, and yet full of tidbits of Eloise's changes and her delightful ways. So, my writing is pretty much all for Brian right now.
To summarize the last month. Brian is still sailing the boat with his friend Jeff. They are still in the Pacific Ocean heading toward Kona, Hawaii via Christmas Island (the island nation of Kiribati). They are now in the north Pacific, having crossed the equator around the 15th or 16th of Dec. It has been slow, challenging and lonely for the guys. But, they have caught one beautiful Mahi Mahi, recently sailed out of the ITCZ (a zone of weather that is full of squalls, changing winds, rain, and difficult sailing conditions).

Eloise and I have continued to slowly move things into The Dome, the house we will be renting from my mom. Eloise had lots of fun learning mischief from her 3 older cousins over Christmas. She is learning many words every week and enjoys saying silly sounds, enjoys playing with washcloths still, and is incredibly social and compassionate. She was a present-opening machine on Christmas Day. She helped her aunt Brooke open many of Brooke's presents, as well as opening her own and mine. We are impatiently waiting Brian's return and may fly out to Christmas Island to see him when he gets there.

Thanksgiving an ocean apart

Eloise and I enjoyed Thanksgiving day today in San Leandro with my mom, brother, and his family.  Lemon sage turkey, homemade wild rice bread, cashew pea salad, etc.  Brian celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday on the island of Wallis (of Wallis and Futuna) with Jeff Ault his friend and crew member.  They ate a pressure cooker meal of chicken, potatoes, carrots, onions, etc.  The recipe was taken from Michael Greenwald "The Cruising Chef" page 65. 

We are very far apart and yet I am incredibly thankful that Brian is safe and has all that he needs to make the repair to the forestay that broke while at sea a few days ago.  A broken forestay can sometimes lead to a dismasting or worse.  But all it resulted in so far was an uncomfortable motorboat ride to an unplanned stop on a tropical island in the Pacific. 

The consistent prayer I and my family have prayed for this passage is that Brian will have everything he needs for whatever he encounters.  So far that has been the case.  For example, the ship computer crashed.  That's the way he communicates.  But thanks to my mom asking me about it, while I was in New Zealand  I loaded backup software on our laptop to allow Brian to use that computer for emailing while at sea.  Without that, he would have had nothing.  As it is communication has continued uninterrupted. 

Here in Santa Cruz, Eloise is learning new words every day.  I'm working a little bit to help my mom write a curriculum she's been hired to put together.  Otherwise, Eloise and I are taking walks, re-connecting slowly with friends, and starting to get organized to move in to the dome up the hill from my mom.  Eloise misses Brian and her Kiwi Nana and Papa.  She talks about them, looks at their pictures in a flip book I put together, and watches the videos Brian made of him saying hi to her.  And it looks like another four weeks minimum until we're reunited.  This is HARD.  I don't like it at all.  I guess Brian has it harder.  At least I'm not rocking around having to repair things, AND I get to have Eloise to snuggle with.

Here's one photo.

Brought to you by the letter "b"

The last month of our lives can be outlined with words starting with "B". Incidentally these words are all the first of Eloise's word repertoire.

B is for Boat, Buoy, and Bye Bye (or "bo" "booya", and "bah bah" as Eloise says). Four weeks ago we were cleaning the boat, buying food for the boat, and doing chores and maintenance on the boat, as well as enjoying time aboard knowing that it was our last liveaboard time for a while. Musket Cove Bay and Vuda Point Marina were the key locations of these activities. Both of those were full of buoys. Every time we passed them in the dinghy, Eloise pointed and got excited. We would tell her they were buoys. Soon we heard an excited "boo ya" each time we passed one.

B is for Baa and Ball, other new words Eloise learned immediately upon arriving for a full 10 days of kiwi fun visiting John and Annette, fishing, packing, obtaining navigational charts, and playing with new toys. She learned about sheep and happily pointed and baaed at them when we passed by.

And again, B is for bye bye. It was sad to say good bye to the life of a threesome aboard. Even harder to say good bye to John and Annette (Nana and Papa -maybe the 10th and 11th words Eloise every learned) in New Zealand, and hardest of all to say good-bye to Brian at the airport when he returned to Fiji. It's been a sad separation. Every day, Eloise asks to see the videos Brian made of himself for her. she runs to the computer points and signs, "daddy". Brian is also sad without his girls and is busy busy (another B word) working with Jeff, his friend and crew member, preparing to head offshore for the month journey to Hawaii.

But luckily there are new good things on this end in Santa Cruz. Eloise is getting to sit on her Ama's lap, play with her cousin Elijah, swing on swings, slide on slides, and explore.

Eloise

Eloise's 15th month of life is in full swing. There is so much to say about her. Brian and I talk about her in the evenings even though we spent the whole day with her. She is a delight. Here are some highlights:

· Clothes pins continue to be a consistent favorite toy. She empties the whole bag and then sits surrounded by pegs which she then "sorts" into piles and readjusts and pokes into her shoes or other holes in the boat. When Leanne, a visiting YWAMer was aboard they sat for a very long time while Leanne had Eloise practice identifying the colors of the different pegs. Blue was the most successful color Eloise learned.

· Another way Eloise passes the time aboard is to sort clothes. She asks for shirts from her clothes bins. I pull out about five to ten shirts and put them in a pile for her. From there Eloise will collect the whole pile into her arms and take it to a different location, sit down and begin sifting through. She makes piles, inspects the various decorations or embellishments on the clothes, or piles them on her head. This morning, Eloise stacked three shirts on her head, stood up and started twirling around. A stack of clothes can occupy her for up to an hour.

· Eloise's sign language vocabulary is continuing to grow. She uses over 30 signs. "kitty", "poop" and "bread" are recent acquisitions. She now makes the poop sign often when she wants to be changed. She also says, "shh shh shh" when she is peeing in her diaper. Her interest and ability to communicate about this topic lead to a major milestone…..her first poop and pee in her own potty. The day before the big day she had given me the poop sign but I didn't believe her because I checked her diaper and it was clean. A minute later, it wasn't clean! I hadn't expected her to anticipate and know ahead of time. Well, on the big day, I heeded her when she told me she had to pee. I congratulated her and had the joy of seeing her be immensely proud of herself. She clapped her hands and squealed happily. Daddy showed up and she showed him and signed and squealed about her accomplishment. Only a few minutes later, I saw her "poop face" and said, "Eloise you're pooping." She got excited and I whisked her into the bathroom and we had success! More happy squeals and pointing and signing and clapping.
· OK, no more potty talk. Here's a sweet story. Yesterday Eloise and I were in a waiting room. She found some brochures and was sorting them and stacking them. As more people arrived, she started pretending to give them brochures, walking over offering them and then taking them back before the people could keep them. This is usually how Eloise "gives" things. However, a couple walked in with a tiny three year old girl that seemed to have some sort of physical disability or be in pain, a quiet unhappy girl. Eloise was her usual excited self when she saw the other "baby". She walked over and waved and smiled and tried to interact but the girl cringed away. Eloise came back to where I was sitting. I whispered to her that maybe the little girl wanted to have Eloise's flowers and she could give them to her. Eloise trotted straight over to where she was storing her plumeria blossoms and went straight over with outstretched hand to give them. But this was a real gift. She waited patiently while the girl grumbled about having her space invaded. The father of the girl received the flowers and smiled at Eloise. Elosie looked around and found a third plumeria blossom and went back to the girl and held it out again, patiently. I was very proud of her sweetness and humbled by her giving away something she really liked. It made me want to be more like Eloise, willing to give and be kind even if my offerings aren't met with thanks and appreciation.

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Goodbye Ono

Nomad and crew made the 24 hour trip back to Lautoka and arrived yesterday. The almost two months of village life was a true gift to me. When I first arrived in Ono I was put off by a lot of features of the community. There are many rules and layers of rules that direct the structure of the community, its visitors and the roles of the people that live there. For example, a village is made up of a few different clans. Each clan has a different identity such as the chiefly clan, the spokesmen clan, the landowner clan, the fishing clan, etc. Children are taught as they grown up who they are, who the other people are. I don't completely understand it all but it's an example of how village life gives people identity. People know when someone walks past who their father, grandfather, and other ancestors were. They know the stories of that person's heritage. It doesn't stop there. In a village less than half a mile long and a quarter mile deep, houses sometimes 10 feet away from each other, Family strife can't be hidden, privacy is hard to come by. While I can see drawbacks to living like this, the sense of being known and integrated into the lives of other people is very real. When we walked through the village, we were known by every single person. Even if we didn't see someone watching us, or had never met them, they knew our purpose and that we belonged on the yacht parked out front of their beach, and they all knew Eloise's name. We were accepted to walk on their paths, eat their limes, papayas, pick up their seashells and do our laundry at their spigots. By accepting us, they accepted responsibility for Eloise, in the same way that every villager demonstrated responsibility for every child in the village. Eloise, and all the other children in the village, had a village full of aunties and uncles and older brothers and sisters. Again, there were some drawbacks to this (Eloise had her cheeks pinched about 50 times per day). But the feeling of being accepted, the gift of having other people responsible to watch my child, the sound of "come in for a cup of tea?" from a door as we walked passed, those are all good things. I will miss the village community and our friends there.

We have two more weeks here in Fiji. We will spend that time taking Eloise to the beach, provisioning the boat for Brian's passage to Hawaii, doing maintenance and preparatory projects for the passage, and hopefully Brian will get in a little bit of surfing as we are near to Cloudbreak, a well known surf break.

After that, we fly to New Zealand to see Eloise's Nana and Papa, John and Annette Carr. As our original plan had been to return Nomad to New Zealand this year, we have some unfinished business such as selling the car we bought and cleaning out the items that migrated from Nomad into their storage room. But Eloise has a few new skills she wants to show off as well. After the short visit in New Zealand, Brian will return to Fiji, meet up with Jeff Ault arriving from California and set off on their trip when the weather is right. Eloise and I will fly to San Francisco and start trying to adjust to life in a house again.

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Papaya

Papaya,

It's Papaya season here on Ono Island. These papayas taste a lot more delicious than the things they call papayas in the California grocery stores. However, when it looked like we had 5 large specimens coming ripe all at once, I knew we wouldn't eat them all unless I took drastic measures. Out came the Edmond's cookbook. Two papayas made a delicious chutney (I modified the peach chutney recipe) to eat with the wahoo caught last Friday, and two more made a fairly passable jam. Suddenly however, we have three more fruits to do away with. Hmmm. Papaya bread?

It is our last week in front of Vabea village. Bubu Tara (Grandma Tara) and her daughter Vuta are teaching me to weave a mat. It takes time! Good thing it's a small one. Richard and Thelma are teaching and I'm trying to sit in on some of their classes. Brian is daily working on small projects that are preventative maintenance as he thinks ahead to the bash up to Hawaii. (Note: in my mind, a small boat project is one that takes less than a week from start to finish and doesn't require a large portion of the boat to be taken apart). Eloise is continuing to enthrall the village children. Today, Brian and Eloise were in the village playing. He heard the kids letting out from school and whisked Eloise into a house so she wouldn't get inundated by kisses and yankings.

This weekend we'll make the day trip up to the main island of Viti Levu. We'll anchor in Musket Cove (a cruiser mecca) and continue on projects, family time etc. while also putting Brian in the proximity of some surf.

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