About Coconuts, a Sawed-Off Boom, and Monsters from Suwarrow Atoll
Keep sawing, Shura, keep sawing: it’s made of gold
That was what the captain kept saying as he used a hacksaw to saw through the boom (an aluminium club attached to the mast and serving as the base of the sail). Our boom is now 4.5 cm shorter. The rivets holding the boom to the mast had worked loose. The captain detached the boom, we laid it on the coachroof (the boom, not the captain), and then Andrei began to saw. The cut came out perfectly straight, as if done with a laser. True, the deck was covered in fine metal shavings. But that was a minor detail. The main thing was that the boom had been re-riveted, put back in place, and was firmly secured again. We hoisted the sail, although a couple of times Nastya and I nearly flew away like Ellie’s house in Kansas in the gusty wind. But we held on. The main repair was complete. Time for a trip to the reef. The aquarium fish were splashing about there, almost unafraid of the reef sharks darting around Suwarrow Lagoon like cats across a market square. We had got used to them again and had almost stopped being afraid. We still kept the sharks in sight, though—who knew what might occur to them? But the real terror of our little town on Suwarrow was not the reef sharks at all, but some entirely different creatures.
Aliens. Almost Hitchcock
We stayed on the island until sunset, soaked our clothes overnight, and decided to leave them ashore. For the mutant crabs to eat. If the makers of the horror film Alien had known about Suwarrow Atoll and its indigenous inhabitants, the coconut crabs, they would not have had to invent any monsters at all: they could simply have filmed them in the wild. Because coconut crabs are crabs that survived a nuclear war and grew to unbelievable sizes. I think they could break a cat’s neck with a single snap of a claw. We saw only part of their supreme leader, a giant in a burrow whom Lada and I now simply call the Chief. The burrow was dug beneath a coconut palm, and a vixen with her cubs could easily have fitted inside. Four vertical supports were visible beneath the palm; at first I almost mistook them for the roots of some symbiotic sibling of the palm. It looked as though the tree had sprouted with incredible vigour. Growing from the front pillars, each as thick as Lada’s forearm, were two contraptions like pruning shears. Those shears crushed a stick 2 centimetres in diameter, which the young sailor had pushed towards the burrow, as if it were a sunflower seed. The young sailor tried to drag the mutant gripping the stick out into the light of day. Fortunately for me, it did not emerge into the light, but waited until nightfall to take its revenge. We watched the sunset and began getting ready to go home. Venturing onto the night-time paths beneath the coconut palms without a torch could cost you a toe: the shears would snip it off. We may have plenty of toes, but we are not prepared to part with even one. The young sailor and I went to wash in the moonless tropical night. The dim beam of a head torch inspired only faint hope that the operation would end well. The path writhed with crabs the size of unhusked coconuts. The eyes of the beast glaring at us from the step were glowing. A second monster was wedged on the step between two buckets and a large kettle. It was unsuccessfully trying to climb into the bucket of washing, but suddenly decided to make its escape through the weakest point: Lada and me. We huddled together, sweeping the little beam from one patch of ground to another so we would know how many monsters had gathered around us. Fortunately, there were only two in that quadrant; the rest lay beyond the torch’s reach. We remembered the knives we had washed.
‘We are armed and extremely dangerous!’ I proclaimed to the mutants lying in wait.
‘Mum, give me a knife too,’ the young sailor asked.
‘Don’t come near us, or we’ll stab you!’ I sang, quoting The Bremen Town Musicians, and we heroically sidled towards the hose shower. The mutants stirred beyond the illuminated corridor. We covered 7 metres without incident, reached for the hose, and spotted its guardian: a red monster, imposing enough to make us worry about how many toes we would have left. Keeping the beam trained on the monster and the water hose aimed at the person showering, we made it through that stage too. Meanwhile, the second assault group, consisting of Nastya and Andrei, had already redeployed from the beach to the house. Lada and I were so unnerved by washing among the mutants that even the beam of a torch and human voices struck us as a continuation of the horror film. Regaining her composure, the young sailor squeaked:
‘Dad, is that you?’
‘A-ha-ha-ha-a. Ooh-hoo-hoo-hoo-oo...’ came an ominous sound from around the corner.
Our lot, we thought, and sidled away from the hose’s guardian.
‘Don’t leave without us—we’re scared on our owwwn!’
And, armed to the teeth with torches, jerrycans, and bags, the four of us marched to the shore. A new quest awaited us: when we went ashore at noon, we had not switched on the anchor light. Sullen clouds had long since covered the sky. The yacht had merged with the darkness.
‘Well, that’s it,’ I thought. ‘We’re done for,’ remembering our adventures three years ago on Kauehi Atoll (see the website).
So we took a bearing on the phone’s compass towards the yacht’s presumed location. It all worked out. The sharp-eyed children spotted the correct dark shape of Lady Mary among the dark patches on the horizon. We came alongside the yacht shouting joyfully, ‘Our little home! Our darling! Hooray, we found you!’ Then we sat down to drink tea with sweets while watching Sherlock.
Off to the Equator
All that is already in the past. Today at 5:30 a.m., Lady Mary, stocked with fresh water and coconuts, weighed anchor and departed Suwarrow Atoll heading north. The Equator is 850 miles away. Heat and loss of the pumping action. The flight is proceeding normally. Hugs from the open ocean, from position 12°45′ S, 162°38′ W! We thank all the wonderful people who keep the expedition’s spirits up through
YooMoney
and
PayPal
. Thank you to Lev U., Roman Vl., Mikhail G., and Natalia D. for topping up the expedition budget! Hugs to you all. Thank you for writing messages and including translations. May everything work out for you! Transmitted by satellite from 13 degrees south latitude. Where are we now? Visit our website, travely-family.com, and open the
Route
tab. Lady Mary’s route is plotted there using data from the RockSTAR Iridium 360 tracker supplied by MVS Telecom.