Skiffing!

Hello!

I've been sailing this amazing boat with an couple here in Palau, Richard and Rita.  They are incredibly inspiring people who have taken the American dream, injected it with saline and sailed it around the globe.  They live here in Palau on a beautiful sailboat and awake every morning to the serene alcoves of the Rock Islands.  Richard is a lawyer here, so to all those legal naysayers, the answer is yes, you can be a lawyer and be totally rad too.  

Richard and Rita started sailing an Australian 18-foot death wish about twenty years ago.  It's flat bottom, super high mast and short hull make it a very unsteady, very fast machine.  Four people sail at any one time, and two people are attached to harnesses, and balance the boat out on racks that extend from the boat.  Because the wind is so variable here, and comes in short bursts, some filled with rain squalls, balancing this boat is often precarious and often results in capsizing.  Of course, those several seconds all the way out on the rack with only your feet touching the boat are worth all the fear and bruises. 

Last sunday the boat capsized in high seas, a couple miles off shore.  The waves and the wind were such that getting the boat back up was nearly impossible, and proved to be too time consuming with the setting sun.  Luckily we had enough extra crew members that day to have had a dinghy out with us with a motor, so we went back to get some help from the good palauan rangers.  At about 9:30, with a very tired, cold, head-wounded (for Vivi) crew, we made it back to land.  

All in a good day of sailing!  Here is a picture of the skiff on a sunny, calm day.  It doesn't look nearly as scary as it is in real life!