On It

On the wind, that is.

Though pictures forever fail to capture the experience of being at sea, here is a brief photo album of our day spent sailing into the wind to get to the reef-encircled island of Makongai.

Queasy three-year-old tries, and presumably fails, to get comfortable on the high side.  

Mom smiles at it all.  

Soaked after a stint on the bow, conning us through the pass under sail.

Mom and son vs. tuna. 

It was a dinner to remember.

~~

Those pictures were taken a few days ago.  Today, we've had a surprisingly tiring time navigating through the reefs to get up to the north side of Viti Levu.  

The most remarkable event of the day was the pig we came across about two miles offshore, swimming along bravely, but not towards land.  I was at the mast, looking out for uncharted reefs, and so saw the pig first.  Funny how quickly you do the parental calculus that adds up to "don't say anything".

But Elias spotted the pig as well, snorting and blowing bubbles with his snout as he paddled along with his trotters.

Eric instantly displayed the expected reaction.  "Can we save him?" he asked.  

Alisa and I looked at each other.  

This pig wasn't anything out of E.B. White.  It was a big, feral-looking pig out of the Melanesian bush.  Every scenario that we might imagine for a rescue had a variety of poor endings.

I didn't think of it at the time, but this might have been the only time in our six years on board that a gun would have been useful, as one reasonable thing to do would have been to drive right up to the pig, shoot it, haul the carcass on board with a halyard, proceed to a village, and make lots of new friends.

As it was, we left the pig to his fate.

Lord knows how he got there.