Dana Emails from Rhapsodie

Hello from Rhapsodie in Musket Cove, Fiji

For the next leg of our journey, we have included an email that Dana mailed to his grandparents:

We are on our way to American Samoa, the only American Island in the South Pacific. We are at Latitude south 17 degrees 03 minutes, Longitude west 165 degrees 15 minutes. We left Palmerston Atoll in the Cook Islands two days ago. and we have 2 and half days to go before we get there

After Tahiti we went to Moorea, an island next to Tahiti, It was a very nice island and we saw lots of rays and whales. One day we had 50 knot winds when we were anchored off the reef in Moorea. We next went to Huahine, also a very beautiful French Island where we made some very good friends from Hawaii. We next went to Raiatea for shopping, and then went to Tahaa for the night The next morning we went to Bora Bora where we stayed for almost two weeks.

Bora Bora has a very high mountain on it, and lots of rays and sharks.  After that we were heading to Maupiti, but the pass had such big waves that we decided not to go there. Instead we went to Maupelia, a small atoll with a narrow pass with lots of current. One night on the beach we were looking for big sea turtles laying their eggs, and we found one that was 350 pounds and about 4 ft long. The next morning we dug up 100 sea turtle eggs from the turtle we had seen the night before We took the eggs backto the village with the chief to protect them from the wild dogs We also went hunting for coconut crabs and ate them for dinner! Coconut crabsweigh about 5 pounds, 2 feet long, and are bright blue and purple! Pretty unusual looking.

After Maupelia we went to the Cook Islands, to Aitutaki for the afternoon. It was a roily anchorage and we did not stay. Instead we went to Palmerston Atoll. The people there are really nice, and its a very beautiful island full of Parrot fish and whales. There are only 50 people living there, and they are all part of the same family. I slept in the village for a few nights and played with the local kids who only speak English. Its great to have kids to play with that don't speak French!

We had a really hard time saying good-bye to Palmerston, and the people gave us lots of presents. My sister wants to go back and live there now. Then we left for American Samoa, and we are still on the way. It's been beautiful sailing the whole way, and we have only our spinnaker up. The wind is 13 knots, and we are going 5 knots, which is good for a boat in light winds with only one sail up.

The most unusual foods I've eaten are: pod, the furry stuff inside a coconut which has already starting to grow into a tree, and it's texture is spongy. Taro is a root that tastes plain and disgusting. The best foods were pain au chocolate (like chocolate croissants) and the Ono fish that we caught in the middle of the ocean. We also had great pineapple picked right from the bush, and fresh coconuts are one of my favorites. The food I miss most from the USA is good ice cream and fruits like oranges, apples, pistachios and almonds.

    I miss you a lot.

    Love, 

    Dana

Dear family:

Here is a story we were told about Black Magic in Vanuatu. I wrote it myself. 

       BLACK MAGIC IN VANUATU

One night aboard Rhapsodie, Ma (my teacher from Australia) mentioned to me during dinner that Mackin, the principal of Epi High School in Vanuatu, had invited some friendly German people and us to come harvest some fruits and vegetables with her up on the enormous hill. So the next morning instead of school, I went ashore to meet them. The German people were waiting for us on the pristine beach. So my dad, my Mom, and I walked with the German people to the principal's house. Everyone got in to a worn out truck and we drove off to the gardens.

We drove through a big grass airfield just a few minutes before an airplane landed on it. Once we arrived at the first garden we all jumped out of the truck. Mackin showed us around. There were lots of peanuts, corn, watermelons, yams, papayas, taro, cabbage, long beans, tomatoes, chives, chilies, mangos, and all sorts of squashes. We then walked on to the next garden. There it started raining really hard and so we all stopped under a tree and since there was nothing to do the principal told us a story. Here is the story.

When Mackin was eight years old, her uncle, who was the chief of the village and was perfectly healthy, suddenly got sick and died the next day. After the death, Mackin's parents had to go back to the Uncle's village and left Mackin and her sister alone to watch the house. In the middle of the night, the girls heard dogs barking outside. Mackin's mother had always told her that when dogs were barking in the night, it means that there were bad spirits around, so you shouldn't go outside. But Mackin had never believed that. When she heard the dogs barking she looked out the window and saw a mysterious man. She thought she recognized him! She bravely hid behind the window and kept on secretly peeking to see what the man was doing. He knew that he was being observed. Black magic doesn't work when people are watching, so the man came to Mackin's verandah and started spitting leaves into her house.

Then the man ran towards the beach and the girls decided to follow him. He sat down on the beach and after a few minutes started growing at an incredibly rapid rate. Soon he looked about twice his normal size! Then the man turned in to a larger version of Mackin's uncle. She and her sister were so scared that they started screaming and calling for everyone in the village to help them. People rapidly appeared with axes and knives. When they got there, there was no man to be seen. Instead there was only a very old woman who couldn't walk properly. It would have been impossible for her to make it from her house to the beach unaided.

The villagers thought that Mackin's uncle had been killed by black magic, which only very few people knew how to do. To find out why he died, they brought doctors from Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, to inspect his body. In his stomach they found grass, and his lungs were filled up with sand. They had no explanation on how either of these strange things found their way into his body.

Mv name is Dana Edwards and I come from the U.S.A. I am nine years old and I have been cruising on our boat Rhapsodie for the last two years. Our boat is a catamaran that is 53 feet long with a beam of 27 feet. I started out cruising with my sister, my mother. my father, a crew named Mike, a crew named Rick, and a crew named John.  Once we got to the island of Tahiti Rick and John left because we didn't need them anymore. We met lots of boats and made lots of friends. We made it all the way to New Zealand very happily.  And now here l am in a wonderful school in New Zealand. I have made some friends here. and I have a teacher named Mrs. Anderson. In this school we make things out of clay. do lots of maths, lots of reading, some spelling, and sometimes a concert

Before I left America I went to a school named Ormondale.  It is very different from Riverview School.  Ormondale has more children than Riverview but is in a very small town.  I live in the same town as the school.  It is called Portola Valley.  I have lots of friends there.  My father used to work there in the computer business.  My sister used to go to a school called Corte Madera.  It is for kids in grade 5 and up.  The last time I was in Ormondale was in grade 2.  After that I came on our boat and started doing home school.  I didn’t do grade 3 because it was too easy.  I went straight to grade 4 and now am in grade five. I’ll name the islands and places I've been to since we left San Francisco. We stopped first in San Diego, were we bought supplies and visited my grandmother Nikki and grandfather Lee.   After leaving San Diego we headed for Mexico, because we needed to pick up our crew Mike, who had overstayed his visa in America, so he had to go to Mexico. Then we headed for the island Nuku Hiva, which is in French Polynesia. It was the longest passage we've ever done without stopping. It took us 20 days. It was a big relief when finally saw land. Nuku Hive is it the group called The Marquesas.  It was a very beautiful island. Everyone here spoke French and no English. The other language the people spoke was Marquesan.

After we left Nuku Hiva we went to the next closest island called Ua Pou (Ooa Po oo). That was a nice place as well, and we did our first snorkeling there which was the best I had seen. Then we sailed to Hiva Oa (Heeva 0 a). There was not much special about that island. After that we went to Fatu Hiva (Fatoo Heeva). It was very nice too, and I had my eighth birthday there. For my birthday, I wanted to go boogie boarding, hoisted up to the top of the mast, help bake my cake, and of course open presents.

After the Marquesas, we sailed to a different group of islands called the Tuamotus. The first island we went to there was an atoll called Manihi. We met some locals who showed us how to grow black pearls. They even gave my sister Rachael a handful. Another atoll we visited was Rangaroa. It was the most beautiful island I had seen. One day on Rangaroa we went camping on the  beach. We brought food, a tent, some sleeping bags, and some flares. Once we got ashore, we set up the tent and then went to play on the beach. At nighttime, we ate dinner, and then set off some flares just for fun.

After we left Rangaroa, we headed for Tahiti, the capital island of French Polynesia. It was very very expensive there. One normal dinner would cost $50. U.S. money. But the big advantage was that they had great pastries. I had to start learning French so that I could communicate with everyone else.  But before I learned French, someone started talking to me in French and all I said was "No French!" over and over. They didn't understand me so they kept on talking.

Right next to Tahiti there is an island called Moorea. We went there after Tahiti, and on the way we say some dolphins and whales. After Moorea we went  to Maupelia. It is an island that only has one family on it. They were very nice. One day they caught some really big coconut craps for us. We invited them for dinner, and ate the big coconut crabs. They were tasty. We also found some female sea turtles laying eggs on the beach. We moved the eggs so that the wild dogs wouldn't eat them. After Maupelia we went to Aitutaki.  It is in the Cook Islands. There was nothing to do there, and all we did was buy supplies at the store.

Then we went to Palmerston Island. It is very beautiful and it had very friendly people. There were about 50 people on the island and 20 of them were children. Everyone had the same last name. Then Rhapsodie sailed to a small island in Tonga called Nivafo'ou. It was a volcanic island and the last eruption was In 1946. The people were nice there, and they took us around the island in the only vehicle there, a tractor. Nivafo'ou is also called Tin Can Island, because ships used to deliver the mail by putting it  in a tin can and throwing it in the water. They did this because it was too rough for the ships to anchor. They don't deliver the mail this way any more because a shark ate a local who was trying to get the tin can.

After Nivafo'ou, we left for Fiji, That was our second longest nonstop passage. It took us one week to get there. Fiji was the most fun place I had been to on our trip. There were so many things we did, and they are too many to list. Then we went to Vanuatu, where we did lots and lots of things. The most fun was a nine-hour hike up an active volcano. When we got to the top, we were very happy to sit down and rest. We were at the highest tip of the island at 1,175 meters. At Epi Island I caught a ride on a sea turtle, and swam with a dugong. A dugong looks half way between a small whale and a walrus.

After Vanuatu we went to New Caledonia which had the biggest city since America, and probably the biggest city in all of the South Pacific. Liked the ice cream in Noumea, especially Cookies and Cream. After New Caledonia we went to Norfolk Island, where Bradley Farrand came aboard our boat for the ride to New Zealand. Bradley is off the boat Irene. and has two brothers anda little sister. We met them in Fiji during the Musket Cove Regatta. My sister flew ahead to New Zealand with the rest of Bradley's family.

Bradley and I had a great time. The boat went very fast, and we were in New Zealand in 3 days. We arrived in the Bay of Islands in early November. We went to Opua Marina, and our friends were there with their boat Siren. There are three kids on Siren. and two of them are boys. The girl is 6 years old and her name is Greda, one of the boys is 12 years old. and his name is Jordan, and the other boy is 9 years old and his name is Hunter. They are from Alaska.

We are now cruising in the Bay of Islands with Irene. We are headed for the Great Barrier Island. to do some hiking and snorkeling. My grandmother Nicki will be traveling with us to the South Island in February. We will be in New Zealand until May, and then I have no idea where we are going.

"We had a really good passage over except for the first few days which were really rough. On the second day we had a 6 meter swell crash over the boat. Tell Rachael that I only barfed twice, Gemma 4 times, and Dad about 5 times. Mark and Mum didn't feel sick at all. On the second to last day (which was Gemmas Birthday) we had a fishing line out and we caught a 55 pound Mahi Mahi. It was about 4 and a half feet long and it tasted really good. It put up a ten minute fight with Mark pulling it in, (would have taken me a minute or two). It took us six days to get to Fiji in all. We got our speed up to nine knots. We are sailing over to the Sheraton right now and we might see Mike there. Everybody else sends lots of love and a good birthday to you. Gemma had a a really good birthday. We made her a nice cake and we used sparklers instead of candles."