Fun with Dick and Arlete: Around the neighborhood

Stan.
One day last week when we came to shore, we saw Stan watching a very small dinghy going out to a sailboat. His son Joel was taking some supplies to their sailboat anchored very close to our boat and would return shortly to pick him up. In the meantime we got to hear his story.

In the 1960s, Stan had built a trimaran. Without engine or GPS, he and his wife set sail for French Polynesia. They arrived safely and were anchored in an atoll in the Tuomotus. Unfamiliar with how the currents worked and in a period of heavy weather, their boat was lost on a reef. They were stranded on the motu for three days before help arrived. Of course, Dick and I responded with the expected “oh-no” but Stan said, “No, it couldn’t have turned out better.” Their rescuers were local Tahitians who invited them to recover and recuperate. When they found out that he’d built the trimaran himself, they asked if he could build a fishing boat for them. Stan said yes. In the next ten years, he and his wife built a home on a small piece of land and Stan built 40 boats for the locals.

Currently Stan and family live north of Hilo on 40 acres. Last year, he bought this sailboat in San Francisco and sailed it back to Hawaii - in just 14 days. Joel is living and working on a few boat projects currently.
Suzanne and Jochem. A few days ago, Pagena came to anchor in Reed’s Bay. S&J had just spent 35 days at sea sailing from the Galapagos to Hilo. They were intending to sail to the Marquesas but changed their minds about 2 weeks into the voyage. S&J left their native Germany in July 2011, intending to cruise for three years before returning to home, family, and jobs. Their plan now is to cruise all the islands for the next month, sail to the Pacific Northwest then south along the coast to Mexico, then to the Marquesas and the South Pacific, and end in New Zealand or Australia where they will sell their boat and go home. What an ambitious plan. Here we are lazing the days away, while S&J are busy seeing everything important and reprovisioning. They do have a few years (decades?) on us, however.