Endless Summer

I had a great vacation. I didn’t do too much in the beginning of week, but I finished with several days spent almost entirely on boats. I love boats--and long days of feeling the sun and the sea. This, unfortunately, was not evident to me in my childhood. Or not yet realized. Why didn’t I pay attention in sailing school? Why did I grumble when we went for weekends out on Rosebud? I’m not quite sure. I wish there were sailboats in Pohnpei! Well, there are yachties aboard their sloops in the harbor, of course, but I wish I had access to a dingy, something sturdy; there are lots of small reefs that are just below the surface at high tide, almost invisible on a cloudy day or at dusk. Anyone want to ship me a boat? I can think of some perks to moving back to Annapolis (including loving family, free rent, boats out the wahzoos)… Well, who knows. The future is not yet upon me!

Yesterday, I went to Pakin with a group of friends and we did two dives at different spots on the long reef that spans the diameter of the atoll. On the first dive, I saw three 3-4’ black tip reef sharks swimming below us right as we got in the water. This brought my expectations way up. There weren’t quite as many fish as I had hoped, but it was beautiful. The wall is very deep and the visibility was excellent, so there was a lot to see. I saw a school of Bumphead parrotfish, some giant clams (they have such beautiful colors), and lots of clownfish. The lighting was great too, sunny all day and barely a cloud in the sky. Not a drop of rain! The second dive was even better; we swam through several caverns that channeled through the coral wall. I love looking out of the caves and seeing the ocean, vast and blue. At the very end of the last dive, as we were getting into the boat, there was a large grey reef shark (about 5’) swimming around. He was definitely checking us out. Dan says it got pretty close to my leg when I was pulling myself into the boat. Yowza! Not a huge shark, but big enough to have plenty of teeth on a ridiculously strong jaw. I love sharks, but I definitely don’t want to get bitten by a curious one, especially when I have only Pohnpei’s rather deficient healthcare facilities available to me. Medi-vaccing is expensive, man! But it would be a great story…

It only took us an hour and a half to get to Pakin, but the return journey was almost three hours—and much rougher. The boat crew trolled a bit and caught several skipjack tuna. I was exhausted when I got home last night and I actually took the day off today. I get three personal days a year, so I took one. I also have a feeling that the attendance at PICS was poor today. I’m always a little jaded about school, but I want to push through and make the last couple of weeks count (that sounds cheesy). Tomorrow I will start the week fresh and prepared. I got a lot done today.

Three days of clambering about on boats and two days of diving left me tired and sunburned, but I actually did pretty well considering how much time I spent on the water. I definitely fall into the category of “less burned than most.” That’s what happens to mehnwai here in Pohnpei—we burn. The sun is intense. It cooks you—fast. Scarily fast. Like I’ve never experienced anywhere before, and I’ve been to a few tropical locations. If I’m in and out of the water and I don’t apply sunscreen at least every hour, I am going to get fried. It has taken me a while to admit to this (“But I never burn!”) and my new goal is to not get sunburned. Noble, eh? I just don’t want cancer or wrinkles. I wish I could put sunscreen on my hair too. It’s getting really light and I am just not into it.

Tomorrow, it’s back to school; I’m starting a unit on statistics—we’ll begin with mean, median, and mode. Some of them know about averages, but I don’t think they’ve really learned anything about statistics before. At least it’s more practical than most of the algebra we’ve done this year. I can’t believe it’s almost the end!

Well, until next time… The following photos, from yesterday’s Pakin trip were taken by Dan Norton. I didn’t even take my camera down there, because he takes infinitely better pictures—my shitty camera struggles to turn on. These shots are great!