THE END OF AN ERA

So I imagine the first question on the mind of anyone who has been following our blog is, “Did you sell the boat?” Well, the answer is complicated. It turns out you can’t actually legally transfer the documented owner’s name to another while in Fiji without paying a stiff duty. So at this point, we have simply assigned new crew as masters of Cool Change. The transfer of documented ownership will occur only once the new crew have departed Fiji. But in all ways other than that, Rick and I are no longer tied to Cool Change.

Let’s back up a bit. Where we left off the last blog entry was Cool Change sitting on a mooring in Musket Cove. While both of us would have been very keen on returning to the Yasawa group of islands or beyond, exploring SavuSavu or the Lau Group if we weren’t about to let go of Cool Change, we felt strongly that we should just play it safe to minimize any chances for mishaps. So aside from a little trip to the mainland for Australia visa issues, we spent every evening on a mooring in Musket Cove until our rendezvous with our new crew. We spent a lot of time reading poolside. We did get out snorkeling a few times, celebrated our wedding anniversary over a romantic dinner, and gathered with friends when we could.

We had one great day sail circumnavigating the group of islands that included Musket Cove. That sailing day was fantastic: sailing in a large circle, we were able to trim Cool Change to every point of sail, and had 12-18 knots of wind the whole time. The upwind leg towards the end of the circumnavigation wetted our sails and us, gifting us one last glimpse of that thrill only sailors can appreciate: “a bone between her teeth,” as Rick likes to say. And to top it all off, a large pod of dolphins blessed us with their bow dancing, even after we changed course. This was the first time we had seen dolphins in Fiji.

We also got in several hikes on Malolo Leilei Island, where Musket Cove is located. On one of those hikes, we met Marie, a relative of the indigenous ancestral owners of Malolo Leilei island. Marie was staying with her relatives in a cottage located in an abandoned resort whose legal status was in dispute. Marie said her sister-in-law was a prophet who predicted that soon, the indigenous descendants of the original tribal owners of all the lands in Fiji that were illegally sold to foreigners would be returned to their rightful owners. Her faith in God alone insured this would happen, and warned us of the fiery perils of hell if we didn’t fully give ourselves over to HIM. She did this with complete sincerity and authority but with the kindest and most motherly of affection.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, we were visited not only once, but twice, by venomous sea snakes! The first time was on Cool Change just after we had hauled the dinghy up onto the deck. We figured he had been hanging out in the warmth under the inflatable floor of the dinghy, and slipped onto the deck when we weren’t looking. Rick almost stepped on him. Fortunately he was not aggressive, and reluctantly made his way back into the water with the help of our boat hook. Folk wisdom has it that their mouths are too small to bite humans, but Rick saw a video of one swallowing an eel so neither of us wanted to test that mouth theory. The second time we had one in our midst was when it appeared just under the dinghy seat I had just abandoned for the dock, leaving Rick alone in the dinghy with the snake. Rick managed to get to the dock and out of the dinghy too, and then we borrowed another boat hook to ease this one out too. But you never can be certain if they aren’t traveling in pairs!

So far it may appear that this was just another day in the life of Cool Change; another season like any other. But it was not; it was different. Frankly, it was a textbook case of how NOT to “BE HERE NOW.” We had agreed to wait a full three months from the time the new crew demonstrated their interest in the boat, until the time they would commit to taking her on. Those three months were agony. We were so darn obsessed with getting ready to sell Cool Change that nothing else mattered. It didn’t matter that we were living a life most people could only dream of, or that we had over two months at a destination where people save for years just to spend a week. The sale of Cool Change was like a dark cloud hanging over us, which occasionally burst into a heavy downpour, and you never knew when the next torment was coming. If Rick wasn’t fixing something that had just broken or that he remembered he had always meant to fix, he was worried about what would be next.

At the very end, too late to do anything about it, we discovered a slight fuel leak in the engine compartment. Rick labored over it until sleepless and finally thought he had isolated the cause but didn’t dare try to fix it at that late date. Over the three months of waiting for our prospective new crew to view the boat, other prospective interested parties, including some who seemed quite promising, had come and gone. If the new crew decided for whatever reason that they weren’t up for the task of mastering Cool Change, I feared I would have to put Rick on suicide watch, and that is no joke. We tried relieving the stress by considering alternate scenarios if this crew didn’t turn out to be the ones, like sailing Fiji for the rest of the season, following up with other interested parties, getting Cool Change sailed down to New Zealand or sailing her ourselves to Australia. We even looked into shipping her back to the States. But none of those hypotheticals could compare to the bird almost in hand, whose power over us had become omnipotent.

But finally the day came when the prospective new crew were to meet us and a handful of technicians they had hired to survey Cool Change at the Port Denarau Marina. It was a very long day, and the demands on Rick were enormous. They started out by doing a cold start on Cool Change’s engine, followed by a haul out and review of the hull, then returning to the slip and having different technicians review plumbing, electrical and mechanical. Finally, the prospective crew used our equipment to haul himself up the mast. The inspections took all day. No one knows Cool Change’s systems like Rick does, not even trained specialists. So Rick was the one explaining everything to everyone. Our prospective crew had all the questions of a novice but studied boat buyer and more, and it was Rick who answered the questions, more often than not. There was just enough expertise amongst the various technicians that it appeared our prospective crew was satisfied that a thorough survey had been completed. And the cause of the one issue that remained, the slight fuel leak, was confirmed by the engine technician as the simple fix that Rick had already deduced.

During this intense day of inspections, I lent a hand where I could, driving the boat to and from the haul out, and supporting Rick in his efforts, but at the same time, trying to stay out of the way of so many people on our little boat all at once. I did plan a little break in the middle of the day, in anticipation of the stress I would be feeling: a massage! Because our prospective crew had so many questions, nightfall was practically upon us before we had time to ourselves. I felt a huge burden had been lifted: while the prospective new crew had not yet accepted the responsibility for Cool Change, there was nothing that day that was a deal breaker. We had overcome the greatest hurdle. As Rick and I sat in the cockpit reflecting on the day’s events, I found myself gulping down wine. The pressure of months of anticipation of this moment had just been too much. I skipped dinner completely and stumbled into bed.

The sea trial was scheduled for the next day, a Tuesday. The crew taxied over to the boat in the morning, and we sailed them to Vuda Marina, where they had rented a cottage. We went over sail configurations, motor operation, and everything else we could fit in during the sea trail. Moments later, inside the cabin of Cool Change in a slip at Vuda Marina that afternoon, we agreed upon the terms of the crew change, and Voila! it was a done deal. We stayed one last night on the boat and the next day, the new crew moved onto Cool Change and we moved into a cottage.

We worked on helping the new crew decommission all the next day, but we had one last hurdle to overcome, which Rick anticipated with much trepidation: Fiji immigration needed to sign us off as crew and sign in the new crew of Cool Change. Depending on the particular government agent involved, and how complete your paperwork was, this could go smoothly or could be a nightmare ending in disaster. Fortunately, we lucked out on both counts: the marina staff helped us to have the paperwork all in order, and the immigration agent who happened to show up that day turned out to be one of the kind, unsuspicious ones. We turned over the paperwork to the new crew, who were now authorized to be masters of Cool Change, even to the extent of sailing her out of Fijian waters. Done!

Rick and I promised to spend a second full day teaching the new crew about Cool Change and helping them to decommission. It was a very long day, interspersed with a lovely, long, last lunch for Rick and me at Vuda Marina’s Boatshed Restaurant, hosted by the new crew. There are a lot of systems aboard Cool Change, which Rick and I have selected, purchased, installed, refined, repaired and become thoroughly familiar with after 12 years of living intimately with them. It is completely unreasonable to expect anyone, no matter how bright they are, with no previous experience in such systems, to absorb all of that knowledge in a matter of a few days. So we think we probably overwhelmed the new crew. Nevertheless, they are far better off having received those introductions than having had no preview whatsoever – a privilege very few people new to a boat have.

The new crew are a fantastic young couple in their 30’s/early 40’s. He is an Australian of Vietnamese heritage who has been living in France for the last 10 years and works remotely in a high tech startup; she has been his partner for several years, is a US citizen of Taiwanese heritage raised near Los Angeles with a remarkably independent spirit of self-sufficiency who has developed an established career as a technical writer, but loves academia and previously did post-graduate work in old English texts! They are both quite quick and bright, and obviously citizens of the world. They both surf, rock climb, and ski, amongst myriad other sports. They are in great shape, flexible, strong, and able. Cool Change will flourish in their hands.

As dusk settled into the dock basin in Vuda on Thursday, our personal remains from Cool Change were loaded into a taxi to head for the Airbnb we reserved in town. As I stood near the loaded taxi waiting for Rick to finish showing the crew one last thing he believed to be critically important, the Peter, Paul and Mary song, “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” came to mind: “… the taxi’s waiting’, he’s blowin’ his horn, already I’m so lonesome I could cry …”. I stepped down onto the deck and as I gave a hug goodbye to Cool Change’s new crew, I broke out in tears. Twelve whole years of more experiences and emotions and places and friends and marital bonding than I could ever enumerate flashed before my eyes, like the end of a lifetime, the end of an era.

While we will no longer be writing about Cool Change, we will continue this blog for now. After all, there are certainly more cool changes and adventures to come. For now, we have returned home to Northern California and are planning our next escapades. Stay tuned…