It’s been a little bit!
I have been terrible at keeping up lately. For reasons I am not able to go into (for reasons I am not able to go into), I have been kind of buried in my own misery of working too much and sorely missing my status as a curmudgeonly old retired guy.
It kind of gagged and bound my muse.
The last months have been a lot of work, and a bit of play, but I found my poor muse and released her, to (hopefully) start playing her role in inspiring me to start posting in here again.
Anyway, we work on this funny little island, and we are surrounded by other islands that are very, very difficult to get to…
… unless you have a boat.
So we bought one!
Okay, okay, keep your enthusiasm at bay. We did not buy a sixty foot catamaran in which to go sail the seas forever.
We did not buy a sailing vessel of any sort.
We did not buy a yacht.
We did not even buy a fishing trawler or a Boston Whaler.
Nope. We bought a Patches McGee.
What is a Patches McGee, you may ask?
It (he) is an Avon 4.01 RIB. It is essentially a little thirteen and a half foot long, fiberglass-hull, inflatable-tube, zodiac.
Here is Patches, all loaded up and ready to go adventuring.
He isn’t too big (big boats equal big problems, you know), but he isn’t too small either.
We can put four adults (skinny ones) in there, with kite gear and lunch, so he is just about the right size for our needs. He will get us around to a bunch of different islands within about twenty miles of Kwajalein, and to a bunch of different (better) surf and kiteboarding spots. We bought Patches about four months ago, but had been waiting two more months for our new Yamaha outboard motor to arrive from Majuro.
Waiting rather impatiently, I have to say.
We did finally get it, though, a couple of months ago, and we have been zipping around the lagoon here since. It is so nice to get out and get away from life on Kwajalein occasionally.
We have a couple of hand lines that we troll behind our little boat. We troll for tuna, wahoo, dorado, and rainbow runners. Occasionally a reef fish like this hooks himself up, but we don’t usually eat these guys. This one is too big, and the risk of ciguatera is pretty high.
Tam still had fun catching this one!
We take our trusty old Patches out to the causeway between Ebye and Lojjairok (Little Shell) islands for kiteboarding on days off. He is a good old boat and waits around patiently for us to finish up. We always need to deflate the tubes when he is sitting out in the sun, or he will explode. Then we have to re-inflate him before we leave. It is completely worth it. He was made in 1998 (the year Tam and I met), and may not be quite as structurally sound as he was originally (kind of like me), but with a little TLC and some on-the-fly pumping up, he keeps us afloat.
Here we are coming back from surfing “Mushballs” on Bigej Island, about 13 miles from Kwajalein. There is plenty of room for Tam and I, a nine foot longboard, and a six foot shortboard. With our little thirty-horsepower motor on there we can cruise along just fine.
Patches was originally named the “Sotally Tober”, which was kinda cute, but didn’t really tell the whole story. If you look closely at all the pictures you will see why we thought “Patches McGee” was more fitting.
Some days it feels like we traded in Enzo the tuk tuk for a little rubber boat named Patches. They are pretty similar if you can compare a creaky old three-wheeled land vehicle to a leaky old rubber boat.
In any case, we have really been enjoying the freedom and added adventure that ol’ Patches has afforded us over the last couple of months, and we look forward to many more surfing/kiting/fishing adventures in the ol’ Patches McGee.
Wind, Water, Waves, Wander 