A note from Robby on 2/12/08
As a foreign cruiser here at Fanning Island, everything is a challenge-- replenishing propane for example. In Honolulu, people load their empty tanks in their trunk and head to Gaspro or Ace hardware and return home maybe a half hour later with the job done. Not so 1000 miles south of Waikiki.
When we arrived here last June, there were half a dozen 18kg bottles of propane at the fuel depot on the north side of the pass. During our first sojourns here in 1996 and 1998 there was no propane ever. In fact there was no fuel depot and rarely any diesel or gasoline (they call it benzene here.) Thanking our lucky stars, we bought one bottle of propane (and paid a $70 deposit for the bottle) and decanted it into our tanks on Southern Cross over the following months. We returned the bottle later but still have not seen our deposit.
Kiribati ships have come and gone since June, but never with any more propane for the island. Finally, last week, well-worn rusty Nei Moa Moa steamed up from Christmas Island with three 40kg bottles aboard. A local half-caste (Tyrone calls himself that - his father is Irish) had pushed really hard to get some for his household so he took one and the Custom's agent bought another. Most people here can not afford propane at all (they use open fires and firewood) so we bought the third. It sat baking in the sand near the lagoon for a week till I rolled it up the beach and across the road and lifted it up onto the raised covered concrete platform at the depot.
I did not want to pay another deposit ($80 on this one) so I needed to decant the whole bottle into smaller ones ASAP. Only problem was that we only had one 5-gallon tank to fill. I asked Tyrone if he had some empties he would not need for a while and he did, a small steel tank scavenged from a shipwreck in December and a large aluminum one. Bruno, a French cruiser we had met in Raiatea in 1998, has married a local here and he had another 5-gallon empty like mine.
At English Harbor, Tyrone loaded all three on what locals call a "ferry" (a beat-up old aluminum landing craft with an open front) and Banu, the driver, brought them to the wharf on "our" (north) side of the pass with his early morning passengers. I loaded our sole empty into the venerable inflatable, picked up the others from the wharf; and with a homemade transfer hose, an adjustable wrench, and a snack and drinking water, I headed for the beach at 0800 yesterday.
The sun blazed down as usual from the nearly cloudless cerulean sky and the lagoon that shallows rapidly on this side because of the incessant easterly winds, was much greener than usual - perhaps some sort of algae bloom. "First Medical Officer," Lorraine came with me and after carrying the empties ashore and helping me flip the big, heavy, full one upside down, she grabbed her bike and headed up the copra road to check on a friend with a bad infection on his thumb.
I set an empty tank on the concrete on the shady (west) side of the platform and connected the hose between the two tanks and opened the valves. I had to occasionally bleed pressure out of the lower one which was being filled only by gravity - very slow process. I read my book and around 10:00, Taniera, the depot operator came back from the other side with the ferry that they ran up on the beach. Fortyish Taniera carries 50 or 60 extra pounds around his ample middle and has close-cropped ebony hair and a rare (on Fanning) full set of full white teeth that he flashes readily. Ferryman, Banu was purchasing a couple drums of "benzene" (gasoline) with Island Council money for the ferry; and with that transaction completed, I paid Taniera $121 Australian ($96 US) for my 40 kilos (about 90 pounds) of "gas" i.e., propane.
While I spent the morning bleeding stinky propane and changing tanks when full, Taniera's son, Maron -- his youngest at five -- ran around like a whirling dervish, throwing rocks, playing peek-a-boo with the I-Matang ("White spirit" or foreigner) and generally acting like every little boy world-wide. Maron caught a land crab and decided to torture it and dissect it next to my worksite until I kicked it away and said, "Akea te nango!" - "No flies!" He laughed insanely. Later, he left with his father on the ferry and I sat there reading, bleeding, and munched my snack and waited for gravity to do all the work. Kinda like waiting for water to boil over a match.
Lorraine returned about noon and told me our pal Ka'ata's hand was worse but he refused to go the nurse for antibiotics or bandages. Most here are afraid of western medicine and try local tricks first. Sometimes they go to the nurse as a last resort which is sadly often too late and when they die, the survivors all say, "See, we knew he should never have gone to the nurse!"
I had all but the biggest tank full and needed a different screw driver to bleed it, so I took Lorraine back to Southern Cross, grabbed the tool, some left over bar-b-qued skip-jack, biscuits, more water and banana bread that Lorraine had baked, and returned to shore. Lorraine took the ferry across the pass later to give sewing lessons to several local gals.
The sun had passed zenith; the temperature had skyrocketed; so I moved the tanks over to the shady, (now east) side of the platform and resumed work. Patience is not a virtue here, it is an absolute necessity! The emptier the big tank got, the slower it drained. I ate lunch and read; repeatedly hefting the tank on the ground to ensure it was actually getting heavier.
In 1998, there was only one truck on the south side of the atoll and one tractor with a trailer on the north side for transporting people, their belongings, copra and seaweed. Ships bringing fuel came only every 3 months of so; the island was out of fuel more often than not; so there was no need for a fuel depot.
In the 21st century, however, there are many trucks. Some are actually privately owned, but most are government-owned (for school children, etc.) and one says, "With Love from the People of Taiwan" in blue lettering on the doors. A reddish orange one (very good color in this rust inducing climate) pulled up, with four bare-chested young men crouched in the bed. All had backs and shoulders the color of the darkest bitter-sweet chocolate and they waved and loaded up 5 drums of fuel by hand (no forklifts here.)
After they motored up the dusty road, their voices and laughter fading away with the wind, the island and jungle around me returned to only sounds of nature -- the gentle slap of wavelets on the sand in the lagoon, the always present sough of palm fronds, and the crashing surf on the reef behind me. Oh yes, and the occasional hiss of propane escaping from the tiny valve whenever I checked it. Tranquility reigned.
At last, about 1530 the last tank was full. I righted the big empty and rolled it back against the wall and stuffed my trash and book and hose into my pack. The tide had gone way out so I pushed the empty dinghy into deeper water (6 inches deep) and began schlepping the full and heavy tanks out to it. I had to wade most of the way back to our boat before climbing in and then motored our inflatable alongside the barge behind our boat.
Sweat nearly blinding me, I heaved the cylinders up onto the barge, about 5 feet above the water, and after parking the inflatable, carried them one by one to what we call "The Barge Room." It used to be a bridge of sorts I guess, but on this rusty relic, it is our storage, garage, and workshop. It was 1630 and Lorraine got back shortly thereafter.
While I was writing this, some local friends came by in the ferry and dropped off a broken chainsaw. These kind folks had given us the fish I ate for lunch yesterday and breadfruit and bananas, and last time we rode by they asked us if I knew how to fix chainsaws. I said "No, but bring it by the boat sometime and maybe together we can figure it out." I never expected them to drop it off here and leave. Oh well.
And people wonder what we do on the boat all day. I even got an email recently saying 'I wish I had time to lie in the sun." Maybe next life. Robby and Lorraine and SC