It is now autumn in the South China Sea. An hour ago it was spring. There was no winter. It is always summer on the equator. We have sailed from the Southern Hemisphere into the Northern Hemisphere. The ship’s log shows 14,971 nautical miles.

It is fitting that my daughter Lilly has joined me on this passage. Exactly 620 days ago, Lilly and I sailed together from the Northern Hemisphere into the Southern Hemisphere, at a point southeast of the Galapagos, on a westbound passage to Tahiti and beyond.

The equator is 24,901 miles long. On land it crosses the Batu Islands of Sumatra, the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The equator passes through the mouth of the Amazon River, the pre-Colombian ruin of Catequilla, the island of Isabela in the Galapagos. It continues westward through Oceania near the atolls of Aranuka, Nonouti, and Kirbuti. The equator meets Indonesia at the Gebe Islands and continues through the Halmahera Sea, the Molucca Sea, and the Java Sea. It crosses Borneo at Pontianak. Finally, at Longitude 105 03’.603 E and Latitude 00 00’.000 N, it is where we meet the equator today.

Sailors have always noted crossing the equator. In the 19th century (and later) line-crossing ceremonies were sometimes brutal events. Pollywogs, as first-timers were called, were beaten with boards and wet ropes, and often thrown over the side of the boat and dragged from the stern. Charles Darwin notes in his diary that on his first crossing of the equator he was “placed on a plank” and tilted into the water after having his face and mouth “lathered with pitch and paint.”

Lilly and I have celebrated our two crossings more moderately. A small ration of rum followed a voluntary swim as we crossed over the invisible line. Our event is recorded with a portrait of a young sailor at peace in the sea.

I hope you continue to follow to voyage of Flying Fish

For upcoming passages when I have no cell or WiFi signal, I have activated a satellite tracking link that shows the daily position, current weather, and includes a few personal thoughts from the daily log of Flying Fish. I will not be able to respond to messages via satellite but I love the idea that you are sailing along with me. If you would like to follow the daily progress of Flying Fish into Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean via satellite you can click this link: https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Flyingfish

Please subscribe at the bottom of this page so that you don’t miss a new update, and consider sharing this post with others who might enjoy following the voyage of Flying Fish.

To see where Flying Fish has sailed in the past year click here: https://cruisersat.net/track/Flying%20Fish

Instagram: FlyingFishSail

Text and Photography © Jeffrey Cardenas 2019

As Flying Fish continues its aquatic walkabout around the globe, I sense an acceleration of the calendar and de-acceleration of time spend under sail. It’s time to start moving again.

This week begins a new chapter in the passage of Flying Fish. My daughter Lilly joins me in Bali and we will spend a month together sharing the view of each new horizon. This is every father’s dream.

This shifting of gears also gives me an opportunity for reflection on the past 60 days in this unique and surprising country.

I had originally intended to bypass Indonesia completely. “You will hate it,” a sailor told me on the dock in New Zealand. “I just got back,” she said, “and every beach was knee-deep in garbage. You will suck up plastic into your boat engine intake as soon as you start it.” She continued: “Nothing you have is safe from theft. Indonesians will steal you blind.”

I wonder what Indonesia she visited.

Her exaggeration was unfair. Of course Indonesia is not as clean as New Zealand. Nowhere is. Indonesia is a developing country, and perhaps that is what makes this place stand apart. The Indonesia I have encountered is a country that shows its visitors no acrimony–regardless of differences in race, religion, nationality, economic disparity, or even awkward bad manners. I have never felt threatened. Nothing has gone missing aboard Flying Fish, not in the most remote anchorages or the busiest of ports.

No person is a societal expert of a foreign country after only a two-month visit. I have prayed in mosques and churches and temples where I was warmly welcomed regardless of which deity was in my thoughts. Indonesian Muslims and Christians and Hindus are not fighting each other over words and possessions. They co-exist in kindness.

That’s not to say this archipelago of 18,307 islands is Eden. There is more plastic in the ocean and on the beaches than in many other countries I have visited aboard Flying Fish. The coral reef is extraordinary but in some place locals still utilize blast fishing methods, stunning fish and destroying coral with homemade bombs in Coke bottles filled with layers of ammonium nitrate and kerosene. On some islands there are areas of poverty that are heartbreaking.

Nonetheless, whatever Indonesians have they are willing to share, even with those of us who come from the land of plenty.

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It will be nice to become reacquainted with Lilly. I haven’t seen her in more than a year–she’s a pilot now!–and an expert sailor. Lilly will help me guide Flying Fish through the wilds of Borneo. We will take river trips in search of wild orangutans. We will look for the primitive divers of Sulawesi who spearfish using only their lungs and a pair of wooden goggles. Our destination will be Singapore from where Lilly will return to her work in Lahaina and I will leave the boat for a month to visit family in Key West.

Going forward after the new year… who knows? Maybe Phuket and Sri Lanka. Africa for certain, either via the rough-water routing around the Cape of Good Hope, or the risky passage through the Red Sea to the Suez Canal and Eastern Mediterranean. There is only one shot at life and the acceleration of the calendar reminds me to live each day.

I hope you continue to follow to voyage of Flying Fish

For upcoming passages when I have no cell or WiFi signal, I have activated a satellite tracking link that shows the daily position, current weather, and includes a few personal thoughts from the daily log of Flying Fish. I will not be able to respond to messages via satellite but I love the idea that you are sailing along with me. If you would like to follow the daily progress of Flying Fish into Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean via satellite you can click this link: https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Flyingfish

Please subscribe at the bottom of this page so that you don’t miss a new update, and consider sharing this post with others who might enjoy following the voyage of Flying Fish.

To see where Flying Fish has sailed in the past year click here: https://cruisersat.net/track/Flying%20Fish

Instagram: FlyingFishSail

Text and Photography © Jeffrey Cardenas 2019

During a drift dive the underwater world passes by as if in a dream.

Usually I search for clear and still water where I can free dive slowly to observe the minutiae of subsurface life. On this day, however, I am letting the wonders of the ocean unroll before me like a movie reel as I drift over the reef in a three-knot current. I am being towed along by a rope attached to my inflatable dinghy. The water is silty, stirred up from a large breaking swell, but I savor the muted detail and color as I am pulled swiftly past the underwater landscape. I like knowing that my propulsion today is powered solely by the gravitational pull of distant celestial bodies.

It is said that these large underwater boulders known as Purple Porites are the most unappreciated of all coral species on the reef. They wow me. I like how they suddenly appear out of the underwater haze—a massive community of living coral polyps that somehow has evolved to be colored purple when everything else around it is tan or green or brown. They are sometimes etched with the bite marks of parrotfish. Often the Porites will have colonies of Christmas Tree worms flowering in their substructure. I wiggle a finger at a worm as I drift past and its spiral of feather-like tentacles zips closed into the security of an inconspicuous exoskeleton.

A drift dive is like listening to soft music. The current carries me in a state of consciousness that seems just out of focus. It is meditative and relaxing. I have to remind myself not to become so complacent that I drop the line to the dinghy as I drift swiftly toward the Indian Ocean.

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For upcoming passages when I have no cell or WiFi signal, I have activated a satellite tracking link that shows the daily position, current weather, and includes a few personal thoughts from the daily log of Flying Fish. I will not be able to respond to messages via satellite but I love the idea that you are sailing along with me. If you would like to follow the daily progress of Flying Fish into Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean via satellite you can click this link: https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Flyingfish

Please subscribe at the bottom of this page so that you don’t miss a new update, and consider sharing this post with others who might enjoy following the voyage of Flying Fish.

To see where Flying Fish has sailed in the past year click here: https://cruisersat.net/track/Flying%20Fish

Instagram: FlyingFishSail

Text and Photography © Jeffrey Cardenas 2019

 

I often forget about the process necessary to bring food to my mouth. Tonight that process is in my face.

I have ordered grilled chicken from the blackboard menu at Nusantara, a tiny, thatched roof Indonesian eatery on the water at Gili Gede. Casual restaurants like this are common everywhere in Indonesia but two things make Nusantara stand apart.

It begins with the restaurant’s proprietor. Fitriah Rahmadany is a 25-year old who has just embarked on her first entrepreneurial enterprise. She was born here. She is bright, happy, and optimistic. “Some days we don’t have any customers,” she says with a smile. “But we are always ready for them.”

 

Fitraih is always ready because the ingredients for items on her menu are walking around in the restaurant. There is no sentimentality about preparing them for supper.

The process begins when a chicken is caught by the feet. A quiet prayer is said and the chicken’s head comes off with a swift cut of a knife. The body is dropped briefly into a pot of hot water which allows the feathers to be easily plucked. The organs are carefully removed and threaded onto a homemade bamboo skewer for later preparation. The whole chicken, feet included, is then lathered with a creamy coconut curry sauce. Ten minutes after the knife, the chicken is becoming food cooked over a fire of sweet-smelling coconut husks.

I am not being flippant about this process. It is a meaningful experience for me to watch an animal killed to feed me. The meal is delicious, but it is more than that. There is a life force that accompanies my grilled chicken supper tonight.

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For upcoming passages when I have no cell or WiFi signal, I have activated a satellite tracking link that shows the daily position, current weather, and includes a few personal thoughts from the daily log of Flying Fish. I will not be able to respond to messages via satellite but I love the idea that you are sailing along with me. If you would like to follow the daily progress of Flying Fish into Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean via satellite you can click this link: https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Flyingfish

Please subscribe at the bottom of this page so that you don’t miss a new update, and consider sharing this post with others who might enjoy following the voyage of Flying Fish.

To see where Flying Fish has sailed in the past year click here: https://cruisersat.net/track/Flying%20Fish

Instagram: FlyingFishSail

Text and Photography © Jeffrey Cardenas 2019

This exotic Indonesian bell jellyfish first made its presence known to me this morning as a splash of fire against the side of my neck. The microscopic nematocysts—spring-loaded darts of toxin—got my attention as I snorkeled over a coral wall near Pulau Gililayar. The pain was not as intense as that of a Portuguese man-o-war, and nothing like the box jellyfish that can and has been fatal to some swimmers.

Once the sting subsided I took a few moments to observe my antagonist, and then later read up on it.

According to Dr. Lisa-Ann Gershwin, a jellyfish researcher based in Tasmania, when some species of medusa die they sink to the ocean floor and, amazingly, their cells then regenerate into polyps. From these polyps a new jellyfish will emerge. This means that when certain jellyfish become weakened either by age or illness they can call up this incredible survival mechanism and transform into an entirely new being.

Jellyfish have evolved to learn the secret of eternal life.

“This was a real mind blower for all of us,” said Dr. Gershwin in a recent BBC interview. “It’s one of the most amazing discoveries of our time.”

I’ll take a little shot of pain anytime to learn about something as fascinating as the life, death, and rebirth of jellyfish.

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For upcoming passages when I have no cell or WiFi signal, I have activated a satellite tracking link that shows the daily position, current weather, and includes a few personal thoughts from the daily log of Flying Fish. I will not be able to respond to messages via satellite but I love the idea that you are sailing along with me. If you would like to follow the daily progress of Flying Fish into Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean via satellite you can click this link: https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Flyingfish

Please subscribe at the bottom of this page so that you don’t miss a new update, and consider sharing this post with others who might enjoy following the voyage of Flying Fish.

To see where Flying Fish has sailed in the past year click here: https://cruisersat.net/track/Flying%20Fish

Instagram: FlyingFishSail

Text and Photography © Jeffrey Cardenas 2019