Subject re: Kaselehlia (kah-say-lay-lee-ah) from Pohnpei (pon-pay)!

Hōkūle‛a and Maisu are getting ready to depart Pohnpei for Chuuk today (or tomorrow, since I still have trouble with the dateline where today is 5 March on our side of the dateline, and 6 March on their side).

Gary Kubota of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin is crewing for this leg of the voyage, and has an excellent brief article on the effects of current and projected sea level rise on Pacific Island nations, specifically the FSM.

If any kindly contributors can suggest a better way to correctly get the Hawaiian characters in to the Camino browser, I’d be grateful.

Continue below the fold for another update by Rod Floro, crew member on Maisu.

Here are some excerpts from Rod’s most recent email:

-we started getting a little creative with the menu. one night i busted out “butter n garlic shrimp fry bread” using flour, dried shrimp, water, garlic powder, and molly mcbutter. made hummus from our neglected chick peas. peanut butter + jelly mixed together = pb&j soup with crackers on the side. 1 lemon with 2 spalshes of aunt jemimah’s maple syrup in cold water = “maisu cocktail”
-approaching pohnpei, the mountains look like a huge maoi laying on it’s back. when you get closer, it looks like a woman laying on her side. we were greeted by huge 10 ft swells on the outer reefs. the reef pass made the kind of waves you draw on your notebook when you’re bored. perfect, perfect lines of barrelling rights, big/hollow enough to fit a vw bug. (btw: this swell got about 8ft. bigger. look for shane dorian and some other big island boys in the next surfing mag; these guys are at the same bungalows we are)
-these past few days have been a whirlwind of eating and ceremonies and dancing and eating and talking story with the locals and eating and giving lectures/presentations to the college/schools and eating with government officals and ambassadors and presidential candidates and eating and working on the canoe/reprovisioning and eating and drinking sakau (`awa or kava kava) and a radio interview and did i mention all the eating? all the weight i lost i gained back these past few days. . .fresh ahi tuna (2.00/lb) , reef fish, bbq, yum. . .

language lesson:
iarromw (yah-ram)- what’s up? howzit?
sais (sigh-sis)- good
sais en soup- lit. good enough to make soup really good
ikak song (ee-cock song)- can i try some?
iou (yo)- tastes good!!
iou douhluhl (yo dough-lool)- tastes really good!!!
itarsiaiy (ee-char-see-ay)- good to go

next stop: chuuk
check us out on the weblog for the polynesian voyaging society for pics and daily updates
otherwise, standby for the next installment. . .
yeah!
rod(dy) floro! standing by. . .

Maika‛i to all crew members and supporters of this voyage.