“When are we leaving?” the question asked by Shadé, drenched in sweat, is not shared by our fellow travelers. We are the only foreigners waiting to board. The others, from Christmas Island, Tarawa or the Cook Islands are not concerned with time that does not exist.
The day before, I went in search of our tickets to make sure our seats were booked; there are many more passengers than seats. The arrival of the Kwai is a significant event for each island since nobody knows when it will come back The Kwai is supposed to drop us off on an atoll and come back to pick up us in 10 days…or God knows when.
When our names are called by the first mate we load up the trailer that will take our gear to the dock. The sunlight blinds us and harshly exposes the emerald green of the ocean. The Kwai is a 36 meter length schooner that’s come a long way since it was picked up by its American owners somewhere in the Norwegian Fjords. She looked fine with her rigging from another era, her ladders, ropes, shroud and her majestic mast.
Contemplating the schooner and the promise of adventure it represented, I felt reassured: firstly for myself, since past 40, I am still reckless enough to thumb my nose at the cossetted consumer safety-rail tourism of which this family trip is the antithesis. Then for my pretty wife whose king-size smile and unfailing good mood (well almost unfailing – she did not like the winter breakfasts in an anorak and hat in Chile) who’s been supportive for twenty years of voyage fantasies of her man who thinks he is an explorer from the XVIII century (ha, I even wrote 18th century the old way).
As for my daughters, they obey their father! Who’s the boss? They should thank me because at the end of the trip, they will look like top models after losing so much weight, and all without swallowing illegal drugs! So, what better than a net hung on a crane to haul us into the boat? The Kwai sets the tone: “cargo is king”, which means that merchandise comes first, unless passengers are regarded such as. Here we are, Carine, Shadé, Lou and I, caught in a huge net with two board bags and three luggage bags. The crane lifts us above the pier to be gently dropped off on the deck. A huge tarp is stretched out from one end of the deck to the other forming a large, low sun shade. We shelter under it, jostling with our fellow passengers.
