From night until morning we are going around tiny Starbuck Island. The chart says it has the ruins of a hut, a dangerous landing and guano.
How do you manage, in an endless ocean, to accidentally hold a course straight at one tiny island?
We joked that in the morning we would land and go to Starbucks for coffee. Apparently there is no coffee shop there, though — only the ruins left by people who collected that valuable natural product whose name sounds suspiciously like a Russian word.
But the birds! What a racket they make.
Through binoculars we can see a grove of trees resembling Lombardy poplars, right where the ruins are marked, and a flat lifeless shore that serves as home to the birds producing all that guano.
We had to pass the island to the west, losing precious miles of longitude. No sooner had Lady Mary cleared it than the wind became more favourable and we found ourselves sailing at exactly the angle that would have let us pass Starbuck to the east.
A small-scale irony of fate :).
Sea and household affairs
For breakfast today we finished the burritos with yesterday's Thai green curry — see the previous report.
Strangely enough, when the curry is wrapped together with rice and beans in a tortilla it no longer seems quite so eye-wateringly hot as it does without the tortilla. With tea it went down brilliantly, almost without tears of happiness.
Tea itself is difficult to drink. There is a good breeze — if only it were from behind, what beauty that would be. Instead we are sailing close-hauled into the trade wind. The heel throws us off the sofas; food can be held only in our hands.
The rubber tablecloth keeps laptops, flat biscuit boxes and very flat plates on the table. Everything else is a matter of luck.
The fans buzz for fourteen hours a day, hard-working creatures.
The deckhand has finished her enormous abstract still-life painting. We will have to show it to our beloved Geography School and perhaps give it to them one day. She already misses school.
She is dreaming about trying to join lessons from the middle of the Pacific despite the time difference. They will start at eight in the evening local time, while in Moscow and at the St Andrew the Apostle Geography School it will only be nine in the morning.
I miss their lessons too — the ones where they sing songs in Spanish, invent fairy tales from funny pictures, solve maths puzzles and read fluently in English.
Oh, by the way, will you help us solve a logic puzzle in the next post? The deckhand was given one at school and apparently the whole crew is short of ingenuity.
For now Lada is concentrating on English, maths and Russian, but still has history, geography and biology to catch up on. There is no shortage of things to do.
Water and human rights
Today — thank you, Seryozha Yakubenko — we received your comments on the post about the zombie apocalypse on Christmas Island. Hugs, dear friends. Both laughter and tears.
Thank you to everyone worried about us and talking about raising the issue with the media and official institutions.
Unfortunately this outrageous case is not unique. Rules like these are increasingly being elevated into a new normal. History already contains a terrifying example of absurdity gradually turning into normality, until respectable burghers failed to notice over eight or ten years that they had become willing to burn people in ovens.
A prohibition on helping people at sea violates maritime law and human rights. Entire countries have lost their minds over Covid. Authorities have created regulations under which people can legally be left to die.
We are not dying, which is why we left Christmas Atoll. Otherwise we would have stayed there to the bitter end, demanding that they put us in prison — with water :).
Our water supply is critically low, but we still have some. We also have an emergency hand-operated watermaker.
But the Kiribati authorities did not know that. They knew that a yacht was asking for help, there were children aboard and the water was almost gone. And they refused.
Samoa and a number of other countries are acting in the same way. From Stanislav Berezkin's comment we learned about Morocco too.
Our predecessor, the yacht *Elizaveta*, spent four months crossing the Pacific and received official permission for a quick supply stop in only two places: Easter Island and the Gambier Archipelago. That was all. They were refused entry to Tahiti, and Samoa refused them an emergency stop, water, food and fuel. The yacht was finally able to enter Fiji. There is a film about it on YouTube.
Russian yachts face a greater risk of being left without water and assistance than most foreign yachts, simply because of visas. Citizens of the United States, Australia, New Zealand and the European Union can enter Hawaii, French Polynesia and American Samoa without visas. Russians have to prepare for a non-stop crossing of the Pacific or hope for a miracle.
The problem is that bureaucratic cynicism born from an irrational fear of infection from people who have spent months in isolation is becoming a new world order. And that order needs to change.
We are considering taking the matter through official channels, but not now — only after we have left Polynesia.
There is no need to rescue us at present. We are coping.
Rain may begin around 10° south. Even if it does not, we will unpack our emergency watermaker and take turns pumping the handle. So far there has been no need because our remaining water has not yet run out.
Why do people need victories?
There are 800 miles left until we cross our own track and finish the Sailing Expedition Around the Great Capes and Antarctica with Children.
By the time this post travels through the satellite to the website, Lady Mary will already have begun eating into that final eight hundred miles.
Eight days if nothing changes. Just eight.
Then three years of our hardest sailing through all the southern capes of the planet will be complete and our family record will be set.
Why do you think we humans need victories?
To show everyone how incredibly cool we are? To boast? To be liked? To make people envious?
I do not think so.
We need victories so that we know we are worth something. So that we believe in our own strength and can light a spark in other people's eyes.
Because you and I can do anything.
You. Me. All of you. She. He. They.
We can fulfil an impossible dream. We can change the course of events. We can become happy. We can make the world a better place.
Because if not us, then who?
May your dreams come true, our dear people. Do not be afraid. Keep moving forward. We will go together, because together it is not frightening, right?
Thank you for being with us.
Hugs from 6°18′ S, 155°40′ W.