Kelcey Chandler-Yates and Jim Yates present...

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Birds Eye View of Penrhyn in the Northern Cook Islands

September 27, 2003

Penrhyn, Cook Islands We arrived her after 5 days of floundering seas. High winds, low winds, and no winds! When we asked other cruisers about this island we were dismayed. "The mayor takes all your alcohol and won't let you dive anywhere and you can only anchor by the two passes," we were told! Well we were already tied into guests coming who we already changed from Bora Bora so we took a chance as we always have a knack with the difficult places. When we arrived the customs and immigration officers were fed chocolate cake and coffee, given fishing hooks and squid and basically brown nosed to the max! -Then we traded jewelry with the locals for beautiful black pearls as well as for natural little gold pearls. They loved us and then we traded the agriculture guy our old sewing machine for a beautifully made hat out of rito, two fans and a bunch of keshi pearls and pepi shells with natural mabe pearls in them. The gold natural pearls sometimes "stick" to the shell and form a natural mabe. This is then polished front and back and is spectacular!) Then there is the lady on the beach and her family who have adopted us and now each day are cooked and served lunch, and given a vehicle to drive and handed beautiful pearls or rito fans each day! If this was not enough, another guy who we give movies each night to watch, has offered us his scooter to use when ever we wish!! -How can you beet this hospitality! -Not that we need vehicles often as the motu is only a mile long but it will be nice to pick up our guests when they arrive on the 11th of next month. Now the mayor, who we met today at Jacobs house during lunch, gave us permission to dive fish or anchor anywhere we like! He also took Chris tuna fishing tonight and asked if we would like to dive the pass while they were out fishing-he would give us a ride---Life is good!!

September 28th

Today we were invited in to do trades at Jacobs home-I traded chain and jewelry work for pearls and Jacobs daughter in law fed us donuts for breakfast! I learned how to prepare the rito for making the woven hats and fans and spent over an hour pulling pieces of palm frond to straighten them for weaving. When I had enough I found Jim and Chris who had been abducted from the road in order to fix a guys VCR! They had spent the earlier part of the morning fixing a large hole in the plastic cistern with the torch and underwater epoxy-they are becoming very popular with the men as I am with the women! Nick was tired of looking a dirty people so he went back to the boat to do homework! (I don't know when the take baths here as everyone seems to have rings of dirt around their necks and god knows where else-but their kindness makes up for their apparent lack of cleanliness) Tomorrow we are invited to go with the family to church and I was told I could borrow a hat and shown a beautiful one they were weaving.

September 29, 2003

Sunday This am we awoke and dressed for church. I have 3 dresses on board so I wore the one with cap sleeves and a hem that goes to mid knee. We were to be at Jacobs home at quarter to 9am. We arrived promptly to his wife in the attire of a towel holding her bra and panties and exclaiming to me that my dress was way too short and having her son hand me a different one! It was a bit worn as in dirty but doable. Then I received my hat to wear. -Bright blue ribbon woven with white-ughhh-I thought I would be the laughing stock!! (Nothing like the one I was shown yesterday!) Only then to arrive at the church and see that mine was mildly conservative!! It was a beautiful service and lots of singing and heart felt joy of life. I don't think the boys want to repeat the experience however as the pastor was a Polynesian Roy Orbison!! After the service we decided to walk back to the dinghy but the pastor got to us first and invited us for watermelon! -We were not going to turn this down, as we haven't had that for 4 months!! Now we sit on the boat, as we are not allowed on Sundays to even swim-no work is taken seriously here!!

Mermaid and Rarou (The Flika 21') at Anchor

October 1, 2003

Yesterday was a huge day for us-after spending Sunday on the boat doing laundry after church today Monday I went to town and was abducted again by the locals.  Not knowing exactly what chiropractic is they just think I am a doctor so when there is a sickness they come to me, as the local doctor Zaa is Burmese. Well today's malady was a tubal pregnancy so I suggested she go to the hospital. This hospital consists of a doctor and a bunch of rooms. They have a scale and many tablets but no machines to do testing such as blood panels or ECGs! Just the doctor and his tablets and his pills-poor guy is right out of med school and is beside himself-I understand why the locals confide in me. Well he appreciated my coming to the hospital and I offered Jim and my services for him to use at his will for the island. Around 12 we got a call that he had set up 5 people to be seen at the hospital but one to be seen at her home. Ma Masters. -A spry 75 year old who looks like 90 but speaks English better than I. She has had headaches for as long as she can remember so I felt her neck and sure enough there was a major fixation in the upper neck-CRACK! And voila she instantly could turn her neck and had very little pain left. Today I checked her again and she had slept through the night for the first time in years! I adjusted her again although this time there was very little fixation. When she arose she went right back to work weaving a beautiful matt. I asked her if she sold them and she said yes, for about 150 US in Rarotonga but if we wanted one we could have one, as she felt so good. I told her I would bring sheets and pillowcases in to her for the mat, as I noticed hers were threadbare. She said then that I needed to take two of these beautiful baskets she weaves also!

- At this point she  packed it all up and handed it to me and gave me little choice but to stop the argument and go to get her sheets!! Right about then there was a huge screaming match outside-come to find out there was a piglet that died and one guy was blaming another guys son!! -All the children hanging out said that the piglet was found by the ocean dead and why would he kill it anyway?? Ma just shook he head and said to me quietly-well at least people will have something to talk about for the next few days!! -Anyhow back to yesterday-after going to Ma's home we went to the hospital and while Jim adjusted the guys I talked with the doctors wife who is 5 months pregnant and very lonely-after the adjustments were finished we went to the end of the island to meet a family who "is dying to meet you" -come to find out that they are all white people who are descendants of an American man who was here during the 40's to build the runway for the B17's to land during the war. He came back after the war and married a local girl and this family came back to claim their property about 7 years ago where they now farm black pearls and enjoy a quiet life making/drinking home brew when working their butts off farming. Today we moved the boat down to their end of the motu this eve I made them a chocolate cake and they made fried pearl oysters for dinner-Chris and I both found keshi pearls in our food! Very nice people-very nice-tomorrow we will go diving for natural pearls and then have a feast with the meat.

October 3, 2003

Well today was equally as disappointing as yesterday was gratifying! Yesterday we spent the morning collecting pepi, which are the oysters they get the natural pearls from. We collected 4 huge bushels full and only got through one and a half of it! We collected the meat that was delicious and made oyster fritters from it and the bonus was 10 or so great little pearls about a millimeter to two millimeters big. The Ann Marie found the whopper-a whole 4 millimeters in diameter but she gave it to us! It was a lot of fun and we hung out all eve drinking beer and telling cruising stories as they too used to be cruisers. Today was a whole other story however-we got news that we must move back to the other end of the motu by town because we were not allowed down by Rolland's place?? After kissing butt and doing all the things we were required to do as well as getting the major's OK! We are perplexed as we have heard several different stories and several different versions of the same story but Danno the customs agent who told us via the grapevine to move is nowhere in sight-I did talk to the head council member and Jacob who was there when the major gave us the OK and they do not know what the problem is?? -Tomorrow we will find out. Tonight we will eat the coconut crabs that Rolland and his family caught us today. October 4, 2003 Got up and went to Danno this am-He had just come from the doctor so I broke the ice asking him how he was-Too Big he said-ahhhh I said-everyone is too big-he is too small (being from Burma he is a short skinny thing!) anyhow the rest of the conversation went well but the misunderstanding is understandable but their rules around here are not!!-I still don't get what we did wrong but I learned that here we need to ask permission before we do anything!! Except Sundays when you can't do anything-even swim or visit another boat!! Such is life but tomorrow is our anniversary and Sunday is my birthday so I should at least get some rest!

October 5, 2003

Interesting day as usual-since the whole blow up from us moving we have been hanging low and have felt a disrespect for  the locals -today we went to shore and found out tomorrow we would have to wear all white for the church service-we have no white so we will stay on the boat-another boat has a reverend aboard so we will have a service on our boat around 5 to celebrate my birthday!! It took all afternoon to get permission for the other boats to come to our boat however even after having the deacon and the supreme counselors OK!! What a pain in the a……………… this island is becoming-I am really tired of getting permission to wipe my nose!! However I was talking to a local woman today and she said that the local community loves us but that the island counselors are the problem-they want control now that the major is gone---go figure that it would be our luck that we dot the I's and cross the T's and then the major leaves and we are stuck in one anchorage with no way to prove our innocence -Jacob said he would stand up for us but none wants to talk to him-anyhow I took pictures of Ma Masterson today with her palm fronds drying and gave her a pair of earrings so she could feel pretty-she is wonderful- --