Tales of The South Pacific
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No Ping Pong on Sundays
A church bell at the north end of town tolls the hour. At various intervals, other church bells toll the same number of chimes. They all agree on what hour it is, but cannot quite seem to agree on exactly what point in time that hour should occur. Or perhaps, it was more important to…
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Trials and Tribulations of a Cruiser
Ah, a day in the life of a cruiser. We anchored on a mooring ball in the beautiful little cove area at the south end of Vava’u Island in the Tongan Islands. The mooring area was well protected to the east, which is the direction from which predominant trade winds blow. By evening, the dozen or so mooring…
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In The Presence of a Fire God
The glow of the lava was even more awesome in the fading light of sunset. We stood there tentatively, Kathi, Anna and I, with about a dozen other people, a few hundred yards from the edge of the molten lava crater on the edge of an active volcano, torn by the desire of wanting to…
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In a Land Where There are no Sports Stores
Fishing with Rocks and Leaves Anchored off Christmas Island, Republic of Kiribatii, about 2 degrees north of the equator, I watch with admiration every morning as the local fishermen intrepidly paddle their outrigger canoes out through the surf and off shore to fish. The outrigger canoes they paddle out into to the open…