"Nana" Alaska..."ia ora na" South Pacific !!

That title is not a typo or some kind of baby talk.

It is Tahitian.

"Goodbye" Alaska..."Hello" South Pacific !!

What it really means is that we are off on what we like to call a

"Super Dave Bucket List Adventure"

We are off to the South Pacific to crew on a 65' sailing catamaran for 42 days as she makes her way 2,000 miles through some of the most beautiful islands on the planet.

Dragonfly

You might be saying ??? 

So let me try to explain. 

We all know the internet can be a dangerous place where you can get into trouble and that is how this came to be. You see, there is this website called "floatplan" where people post "crew wanted" ads. 

BEWARE...look at your own risk or else you may get sucked in like we did, reply to an ad and then, next thing you know...

Al and Jill are the owners of Dragonfly, the beauty you see pictured here. 

They are moving their home/yacht from Florida to Tonga where they will spend the next few years in the service of a nonprofit organization called "Sea Mercy" (more on that later). They have accepted us as volunteer crew for the last leg of their long transit so...pinch me, here we go!!

As I've said before, life's adventures are best when shared with family and friends.

So if you want to come along with us - keep reading - we would love to share this adventure with you and....you won't even get seasick or sunburned.

Just like many great adventures, this took a lot of planning which we began in mid December of last year.

We all know the internet can be a fantastic place where you can get invaluable help and that is how this planning started. You see, there are websites where people post "everything you could need" ads.

After doing some initial research on the travel logistics, cost, the proposed route, the boat, and checking with my boss about the consequences of being gone for 2 months - we committed and started making solid plans.

My first plan was to lose about 20 pounds I had gained during the holidays. Let's hope the rest of the plans go MUCH better or we're in serious trouble.

The rest of the plan goes like this:

We will be leaving Haines April 29th and after traveling a mere 34 hours we will arrive in Pape'ete on the island of Tahiti, the capital of French Polynesia. The country consists of around 130 islands lumped into 5 main groups scattered over almost 2,000,000 square miles. Yes, you read that right, two million square miles. After a couple of days exploring Tahiti, we will fly 800 miles to Nuku Hiva which is a small island in the Marquesas group. We plan to spend a couple of days seeing this island which is home to one of the highest waterfalls in the world at 1,159 feet! This is also where we will meet and join Dragonfly.

Tahiti is about as close to the middle of the Pacific Ocean as you can get.

From there, the dream begins! We will sail through the atolls of the Tuamotu group which have fascinated me for most of my life.

Atolls begin life as a sea volcano with a fringing coral reef around it. Over eons, the cone sinks into the ocean thrusting the reef above the surface where sand and plants get deposited into little islets called "motus" surrounding a lagoon where the volcanic cone used to be. The highest ground is only a few feet above sea level.

See, fascinating right?!?

Rangiroa is the second largest atoll in the world and home to one of the most exciting scuba dives on the planet in the Tiputa pass. You drop in and "fly along" as the tides rush through the pass to empty or fill the lagoon. There can be as many as 200 sharks at the entrance waiting for the flood of food. We heard they don't like the taste of divers so if we are fortunate enough to get to dive here we should be alright (besides, I swim faster than Lori).  

Next will most likely be Bora Bora. Simply said, Bora Bora is the most beautiful island in the world. Looking at this picture it would be hard to argue otherwise.

My hero Capt. James Cook put this piece of paradise on the map when he visited it in 1770 although it has been inhabited by Polynesians since the 4th century AD.

If we don't come back home in 2 months, this would be a good guess as to where we might be.

And all of that was only the first half of this adventure! We still have the Cook Islands to sail through and the Kingdom of Tonga to explore! 

The downside of all of this (as if there is one) is that we will be part of the crew and not the king and queen on a luxury cruise. All that really means is that we will help with everything on board - sailing, anchoring, eating, snorkeling, amusing the captain, night watches, cooking, cleaning, annoying the captain, making cocktails, catching fish, disposing of beer and napping but hopefully NOT walking the plank.

One of the coolest parts of all this is that Al & Jill, the owners of Dragonfly, left their successful charter business behind and have already sailed halfway around the world to spend the next few years serving Sea Mercy, a non profit group whose mission is to bring health care to remote island villages. After we leave them in Tonga, they will begin carrying skilled medical and dental professionals and supplies to people who currently have no access to such things. I wish we could stay and help with that but apparently the islanders don't need a land surveyor and a retired bartender/traffic control flagger.

So if you still want to come along on this "Super Dave Bucket List Adventure Tour" we will do our best to share it with you. We will obviously not have constant internet access and posting photos might be difficult but we will try and post to our blog as often as we can. There are some other ways (links) I have listed below that will help you share a ride with us all.

Be sure to bring your DEET, I hear the sand fleas can be ferocious on those deserted beaches! 

Don't forget to bookmark these links in your favorites when you open them.   

http://saildragonfly.wordpress.com/ 

This is Jill's blog site and probably the best way to get the most frequent updates. She has the connection to post even when she is thousands of miles from land. The best way to make sure you get every new post is to sign up to "follow". There should be a tab in the bottom right corner to click on and enter your email address. 

http://www.pangolin.co.nz/xtras/yotreps/tracker.php?ident=wda3831a

Be sure to bookmark this one. It is a cool site that tracks the location of Dragonfly using GPS and displays her track and most current location.

http://lordaveus.blogspot.com/

You probably recognize this as our blog site but don't forget to bookmark it. Just like with Jill's, the best way to make sure you get every new post is to sign up to follow. Look for the box on the right side labeled "followers" and sign up. Don't worry...it's FREE!

Those are the essential links you will need to come along with us.

These are some fun links you might also enjoy.

(c'mon...you know it's better than whats on TV right now) 

http://www.seamercy.org/
Please check this one out. It is a great mission they are accomplishing. FYI...In January of this year, Tonga was hit by a Force 5 cyclone and destroyed 80% of the homes on some islands. 

http://saildragonfly.org/index.htm
Dragonfly charters site. Check out the "Specs & Equipment" page for details on the boat.

http://www.tahiti-tourisme.com/discover/introduction.asp
Check out "the islands" drop down menu for details about all the main islands.

http://www.pacificpuddlejump.com/about.html
A fun site with lots of info for and about all the crazy cruisers who are sailing across the Pacific.

http://lil-explorers.blogspot.com/ 
A family of those crazy cruisers I just mentioned - 7 kids, 6 of them younger than 6 years old sailing the world. How crazy cool is that!

http://www.yachtseagoon.bravehost.com/ 
Another crazy cruiser (and the first boat we crewed on) doing some cool stuff in Papua New Guinea.

PLUS...you can find links in words highlighted throughout this post you just read as well as in the box on the right side labeled "Links you might Like".

We're ready to set sail...you coming??

FINE PRINT - Publisher of this blog cannot be held responsible if you learn something from clicking on any of the links above or develop sudden and uncontrollable urges to chuck everything and sail away somewhere. 

        

We're still here...we wish you were too!

Wow...time sure flies when you're having fun...or working...or...I guess time just flies no matter what. It seems to be the one and only thing there is NEVER enough of in life.

Rainbow Glacier

I can't believe it has been more than a year since the last post. Maybe it's because sometimes I feel like we haven't done anything cool or fun enough to share...but then, shouldn't we want to share every day we are still breathing with our family and friends? Let me make the time to share our last year with you all now.

Sea lions hanging out on Seal Rock.

The beauty of Alaska still has the power to stop you in your tracks and make you take the time to stop what you are doing and just soak it all in. 

In fact, now might be the best time for any of you to take the time to come soak it in for yourselves.

Any time is a great time to come, winter, spring, summer or fall.

We have plenty of room now. We are blessed with a great house that has a spare bedroom or you can book a stay in the MLS which is parked in our driveway. 

Rates are VERY cheap, maybe water Lori's garden or pull weeds, sit in a lawn chair and be a scarecrow or perhaps fish all day to provide meals.

  

You could even earn your keep by filling the bird feeder that hangs on the window. Yes, I know that's not a bird in there. It's "Todd the squirrel", Lori's new best friend who apparently either thinks he's a bird or he just really likes bird seed. He usually shows up every morning to have coffee with Lori and chase the birds away from the squirrel feeder.

One night we were awakened when we heard a loud crash against the house. I got out of bed to investigate but saw nothing in the black of night. We woke to find the squirrel feeder on the ground, broken. We also found these tracks in the yard and are pretty sure they were NOT made by Todd. There were also claw marks on the broken feeder. It seems that even grizzly bears might like bird seed...eh...I mean squirrel seed.

This might have been about the time we decided we should invest in an Alaskan security system and learn how to use it. You can watch this video of Lori using it for the first time.  

If you do decide to come up and visit, we will even let you use our new boat. But you will have to buy your own gas and fishing bait.

Actually, the way true Alaskans fish is the way I did with my buddy Sean who was raised here and lives 30 miles from town.

First we launch his skiff into the Chilkat River. As we drift down river with the current, we set out the gill net and try to keep it spread out which takes constant attention. When the net floats start bobbing, you most likely have caught fish, or some sunken tree which is bad and not good to eat.

But if all goes well, or at least you don't shred your net, swamp your skiff or fall overboard, you can end up with some nice sockeye salmon like these. 

This is more salmon than I've caught with rod and reel since we've been in Alaska and we caught these in about one hour (and I didn't lose any lures at the cost of $6 each).

OK...the truth is, that's not really our new boat and helicopter...SURPRISE! 

But this IS really our new 4 wheeler. They don't have a dealer here in Haines so we bought it online and over the phone. They put it on the ferry from Juneau and when it got here, we walked on board, drove it off and loaded it on a borrowed trailer to take it home. Only in Alaska right!?!

Anyway...you all should come on up and let the good times roll.

Up on Flower Mountain

We did let the good times roll when my sister Kim and her husband Jade took the time to come up and visit this past summer.

Sean and Margaret teach greenhorns Kim, Lori & Jade to pan gold

After a great ride up to the Alpine tundra, we stopped at the Big Nugget mine to try and strike it rich panning for gold.

The Big Nugget mine is owned by my bosses family, the Schnabels. You might recognize it from the Discovery channels TV show Gold Rush. 

Turns out, my pan was the only one of the bunch to strike it rich as you can see in this photo.

NO...not the quarter!

I just put that there to emphasize the sheer volume of all the gold I found.

Maybe now I WILL buy that new boat and helicopter after all. 

This is why it is called "Glacier Bay National Park" 

That is the peak of 15,300 Mount Fairweather in the background 

We also had a spectacular time on a "flightseeing" trip over Glacier Bay National Park. We flew in the most iconic of Alaskan Bush planes - a superbly restored 1947 de Havilland Beaver.

The highlight may have been a beach landing on a remote spot along the Pacific coastline. We saw Grizzly bears run for cover in the brush as we scouted a spot for landing.

  
Our pilot and friend Paul has years of flying this area and in winter lands his plane with skis on the glaciers for all types of adventurers and expeditions.

Check out his company website Mountain Flying Service  for more incredible pictures.

Glacier Bay National Park is a step back in time that covers 3.3 million acres! The only to get to the park is by air or water, there are NO roads.

It boosts some of the steepest geography on the planet with elevations from sea level to 15,000 feet in only a few miles.

At last count there are 1,045 glaciers within the park's boundary.

Soon enough it was about the time of year that the fruits (or vegetables) of Lori's labor were ripe for the picking and eating.

The 20 hours of daylight we get in the Alaskan summer help make up for the short growing season and gives you plenty of time to work in the garden.

I think Lori has hopes for next year of expanding her garden into a farm.

Jenny, Chad and the grandkids - Ethan, Cody and baby Tessa

Traveling to and from Haines is never exactly easy. Everything and everyone has to go through Juneau. The connection to Haines, only 80 miles away, is sometimes not very easy to make. Like the time our daughter Jenny and her family came this summer. Their plane to Juneau was delayed causing them to miss the last connection of the day to Haines. 

We told them try not to worry, we will find a way. It seems you always have to be ready to improvise up here one way or another. 

Maybe you recognize the plane by now.

We called Paul at Mountain Flying and surprised them by picking them up in Juneau in the Beaver. 

Those faces say it all "PRICELESS".

Family time is somehow always the MOST priceless and cherished time

and getting the chance to help your grandsons catch their first fish ever halibut fishing in Alaska on a perfect summer day will surely be at the top of my list of great times.

Cody

Ethan

Which do you think is bigger...their fish or their smiles?

Another great thing about the looooong daylight hours of summer

is being able to spend lots of time out in the yard roasting 

weenies and marshmellows.

Nature always has a way of telling us what time it is...nighttime, daytime, springtime...even if you don't ask or want to know.

Soon enough, winter is here. But that doesn't mean the fun time is over in Alaska. There is always a way and a time for fun.

Whether time flies or time stands still, one thing is for sure...

there is NEVER enough of it.

OK...two things are for sure,

we're still here and we wish you were too!

Monkey Forests, MUCK diving and the Bunaken Cha Cha

 

Contradictions...life is full of them.

For example, how can the world be sooo BIG yet seem so small. That one has been on my mind a lot since we left Alaska four months ago. In that four months we have been from Alaska to California to New York, halfway around the earth to Indonesia and back, and are now traveling back to Alaska.

Amazing...only 100 years ago it would have taken at least that long just to go from New York to Alaska (which is also a contradiction because 100 years ago does not sound like a long time ago but must be considering how much has changed since then). You might be wondering by now what all that has to do with monkeys, muck and the cha cha, and if you read on, you will find out.

A quick note: I can't seem to post my videos on this blog but if you click on any of the colored text, it will let you watch them. 

Lori socking away nuts for winter ?!?

But first, let me offer thanks to all of you who have encouraged me to keep posting about our lives on this blog. Sorry it has been so long since the last post but I have excuses...uh...reasons. Mostly it's because I was working so much this summer and fall that all I did was work and sleep...BORING!! What a contradiction, came to Alaska to goof off working in an RV park and wound up as superintendent/surveyor/SWPPP manager working 70 hour weeks for a roadbuilding company. The construction season (summer) is short up here so you work like a squirrel socking away all your nuts so you can take the winter off, which is exactly what we did.      

View from the back deck of the AMHS ferry at sunset 

We started our "snowbird season" - which apparently is the same as being a "winter chicken" to some - by loading our truck on the AMHS (Alaska Marine Highway System) ferry for the four day trip to Washington. If you want to see what that voyage was like, click on Our ferry tale and watch it on youtube. It was a spectacular trip down the famed Inside Passge that we had always wanted to make.

When we decided to be snow birds for winter our minds went to traveling and diving somewhere with warm, clear water. We had been saving our credit card rewards for 5 years and now had enough for 2 round trip tickets to Indonesia and one of our "bucket list places to dive". Indonesia is an island nation made up of over 17,500 islands divided into 34 provinces. We arrived in Bali, one of the main provinces after 36 hours of travel from Los Angeles.

This is Gunung Kawi Temple, built in the 11th century in the bottom of a river valley.
It was 280 steps to get down here and which seemed like 280,000 going back up. 

 

Bali is a beautiful and amazing place. Most residents are Hindu and therefore show tremendous respect to every living thing. Every village has at least 3 temples with the main one built around the largest and oldest tree in the area. They have very strong family bonds and most live together in “family compounds” comprised of a huge, walled lot with many 20’x20’ houses for each member’s separate family.

 

 

All over the island, every morning people made offerings with flowers, incense and other small gifts (money, cigarettes, candy)  to put out front of their homes and businesses to bless them with good luck and keep bad spirits away.
 

 

 

 

The four days we had on Bali we stayed in Ubud - a town considered the cultural center of the island - at the incredible Hotel Tjampuhan Spa built in 1928 . We spent one afternoon at the spa where you can get a one hour massage by the edge of the jungle river for 200,000 "rupiahs", about $20.



This is the hot & cold jacuzzi surrounded by carved stone



 

Now...back to our title and one of the subjects of this post...Money Forests!

The monkey forest sits on the edge of town and is actually the Hindu temple Wenara Wana - built in the 14th century - that is literally run by monkeys. We bought a bunch of small bananas and quickly had monkeys jumping all over us, which is quite startling the first time as you can see in this video of monkeys in the forest temple.
 

We got to visit this monkey forest on Bali in Indosnesia.



No, that's NOT the Gieco pig on a motor scooter

The first thing you notice on the roads in Indonesia is the traffic…trucks, cars, ox carts, bicycles, tricycles, and zillions of motor scooters…some carrying families of 5 and 6! The second thing you notice is the constant use of what must be the most important operating part of all Indonesian vehicles…the HORN ! To us foreigners, the honks all sound the same…annoying.

But to Indonesians, it is like another part of their language. One or two taps on the horn seem to mean everything to them - it’s not OK to cut me off…it’s OK to cut me off…I’m going to pass you…don’t pass me, you can pass me…you go first…no, I go first...I almost hit your scooter…I’m going to hit your scooter…walk…don’t walk – and they all seem to understand the difference of each honk.

Lucky for us (and everyone else on the roads) there was no need for me to try and learn that language as we hired a car with a driver for our sightseeing. For $40 Mr. Goodday drove us all over Bali for 10 hours while we visited ancient temples, volcanoes and the famed rice terraces at Tegalalang.

The rice terraces of Bali are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and date back hundreds of years. They are irrigated by a system of canals known as subak and are controlled through each areas local temples by a cooperative of the villages. We took the opportunity to trek through the best of them as you can see in our video on YouTube.



The temple pictured below is the Supreme Water Temple of Pura Ulun Danu Batur on the edge of Lake Batur whose crater lake is regarded as the ultimate origin of every spring and river used to irrigate the main food source of Bali.

 

Supreme Water Temple of Pura Ulun Danu Batur

  Bali is also the home of Kopi Luwak, a very expensive coffee made famous in the movie “the Bucket List” with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.

I thought it tasted kind of crappy.

The coffee is made by feeding the coffee beans to mongoose, waiting until they crap them back out, washing them, drying them and then roasting them. Supposedly the animals stomach enzymes “enhance” the beans before they are ejected almost intact. It makes it either the best coffee in the world or one of the best con jobs ever on tourists by a bunch of laughing Indonesians.

 

MUCK diving ?!?!

After 4 days of sightseeing on Bali, we were ready and anxious to get on to the heart of our trip, the main reason we had flown so far around the world…MUCK diving in Lembeh Strait. After a 4 hour flight to Manado - the second largest city on the island of Sulawesi – and a 2 hour car ride, we were finally at Black Sand Dive Retreat where we would spend the next week diving…MUCK diving…3 times a day.

That's a Giant Frogfish staring at you

At this point, let me attempt to explain what MUCK diving is and try to convince you we are not crazy to have dreamed for years about coming this far to MUCK dive. Most people think of scuba diving in clear water with beautiful coral reefs and lots of colorful fish. MUCK diving is a contradiction to all that. We dove in areas with black sand/mud bottoms with scattered piles of various debris (iron scraps, coral heads, tires, logs, garbage, etc.) in visibility that was usually 20 feet or less…you know…MUCK!

Now  you might be asking…???...which is what we both were asking ourselves a few minutes into the first dive. Soon we had our answer and were seeing all the creatures that made us dream of MUCK diving this place – the Mimic octopus, Ambon scorpion fish, Hairy octopus, Frog fish of all sizes and dozens of different kinds of spectacular Nudibrachs - many of which are found no place else on earth, and here they were on every dive!

 

 

 

 

 

 



Nudibranchs come in many brilliant colors



 

 

Many are quite small with fantastic camouflage making them hard to spot and even harder to get good photos of them. We used our magnifying glasses all the time to get a good look - like a scuba version of Sherlock Holmes and Watson – and by weeks end we had seen all the creatures we had dreamed of seeing and were hooked on MUCK diving.

 

 

 

 

Now if you want to try MUCK diving without getting wet you can watch our mucky video by clicking on this link http://www.youtube.com/watch mucky

 

And now...the Bunaken Cha Cha !!

With the week of MUCK diving behind us we were ready for part 2 of our dive trip - a week of diving the coral reefs of Bunaken - a small island off the northern tip of Sulawesi that sits in the middle of the Bunaken Marine Preserve which was established in 1989.

Lori flies off the wall over the 1000' deep blue ocean

The diving here is quite different – clear 84 degree water and very healthy coral reefs. The entire island is fringed with reefs that have vertical walls, some plunging over 1,000 feet deep only a few hundred yards from shore. Check out our video by clicking on this Cha Cha diving. 

North Sulawesi can almost seem like a separate country from Bali – a much poorer country. Hundreds of years ago it was known as the “Spice Islands” – one of the only places for Europe to get Nutmeg, cinnamon and clove. Most of the population is Christian and most seem to survive from their own farms and livestock.

Flying dogs or dinner??

The local markets are outdoors, where you can find anything you might want and also some things you don’t even want to see. They think of most plants and animals as food…including dogs…which is a contradiction for me because I think of them as friends. So it is gut wrenching (literally) to see a friend roasting on a spit while the other friends are in cages nearby waiting to be bought and roasted. Makes you re-think the whole hot dog thing.

 

Sulawesi is mostly Christian which is very obvious in every village.

Tourism is still fairly new to this island – less than 20 years – and therefore very undeveloped. The local people work very hard just to survive and jobs would be very few

 

While planning our trip we had heard through email from the Cha Cha resort that they and the village had built a new children’s library and would be grateful for anything to help stock it since the government does not fund any of it. With help from our grandchildren we were able to bring a duffle bag full of books, pencils, crayons and candy to donate.

The muddy trek in the rain through the jungle from the resort to the village felt like another Super Dave Adventure Tour. After mud gushing for 30 minutes, we popped out into "downtown" with it's concrete "road". We had fun playing a kind of “reverse trick or treat” handing out “gula gula” (candy) to anyone we saw.

 

It’s always an adventure to get to these remote places and this was no exception. The two resorts were going to arrange all the transfer details and assured us in their broken English “not to worry”. But when it involves 2 boats, a car with a driver that speaks no English and unknown connections…you worry anyway.

After the 2 hour ride back to Manado, we were dropped off at the smelliest, dirtiest, crowded little boat harbor we had ever seen by a boat with some guys who did not speak English. See if you can smell it in this stinky video.

They only phrases we all seemed to understand were “Cha Cha” (the resort’s name) and “20 minutes” (when they said we would leave). After a nervous two and a half hour “20 minutes” wait we were underway for the hour and a half boat trip to Bunaken Cha Cha Nature Resort…we hoped.




 

We had one last night back in Bali where we lived it up like rock stars with our own private villa.



Our villa even had it's own private pool

OK, maybe not rock stars since it only cost about as much as a "Motel 6" back in the good ole USA but that's what it felt like to us. We even got another hour massage (in our villa) for $20 to ease all the old muscles from 2 weeks of floating in the warm ocean. To take a tour of the room with us, check out our video with this link Rock Star living in Bali

 

Now you know what monkeys, muck and the cha cha all have in common...US!

 

The saddest part of this whole story is that it is over for us and now we are headed back to Alaska, reality and that four letter word (I don't even want to say it)...you know...the one that gives us money so we can do things like the monkey muck cha cha.