July 23 August 4, 2008: South Pacific

Pago Pago, American Samoa (S 14 18’ W 170 29’) http://maps.google.com/maps

We left Avatiu on Wednesday July 23 with beautiful conditions. The wind was blowing in the low to mid teens with calm seas. The crew would be made up of Dave Smith (on the left), myself (center) and Dave Berke (right). Dave Berke took this picture and most of the ones I’ll be using throughout the rest of this blog. I’ve also used a lot of Dave Berke’s blog adding my own two cents. As you will see he is a talented photographer and has a keen wit. It would take us six days and nights to make the 710 mile passage. The word was that Pago Pago was a dump but there was a festival going on as a result they were making an all out effort to get the place cleaned up. Even though Pago Pago had a poor reputation among yachties, it was one of the few places in the Pacific where you could stock up on American goods at a reasonable cost so most everyone stopped there.

The weather was favorable during the whole trip. We had to motor for almost three days, but the fishing was good thanks to Dave Smith’s skills and the sunsets glorious. `

On July 25, 2008 at 0600 hrs Pago Pago came into sight and it wasn’t long after that we could smell it. You see the “Charlie the Tuna” plant is in Pago Pago. At any rate we soon cleared customs, anchored in the bay and made our way ashore to see this festival.

We were to find out it would become the high point of the whole trip. You could see the best of what every Pacific Island group had to offer, all in one place! The festival takes place on a different Pacific island every three years and brings together the arts of crafts along with the music and dancing unique to each island group.

The most outstanding element of this entire festival are the dancers. These are nothing like anything I have ever seen. They're highly trained, skilled dancers and musicians representing and perpetuating their own unique cultural, with costumes and storytelling besides the music and dance. We have seen them on the grass and beach stage in the daytime, the indoor and outdoor pavilions at night under the lights and every time was thoroughly impressed. The experience having witnessed all this is priceless and impossible to convey with words.

Pago Pago while cleaned up considerably for the festival by the local Mormans was still a dump and too dependent on American’s disposal packaging.

But there were other parts of the island that were as pristine as it gets.

I won’t describe American Samoa as Hawaii but its certainly very American. There’s not a great deal that makes up the town. It’s built up mostly along the waterfront and was being modernized. This section was to be devastated a year later when a tsunami struck as a result of an earthquake.

The residents had a way of bringing out the local color and lived in well built homes.

We had a great time catching up with the folks on the other boats that we had last seen in the Marquesas. This was to be our last major provisioning stop before New Caledonian. So after we were stocked to the gills we pressed on to the our next port, Apia in Western Samoa