Highlights

Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Sun 29 Sep 2013 18:06
We are still in Niue, today it is Sunday. Miss My will move on to Tonga, Vavau. Probably they have to motor quite a bit. But Kristinas mother is flying in from Sweden. Well done!  We learned from friends that are considering to come that it takes 36,5 hours to get there from Sweden.
We will stay a few more days. Yesterday we got all bycicles ashore and want to explore the island by bycicle.
There was a "market" day yesterday by the highschool. Obviously there is one every saturday in one of the villages on the island.As luck would have it it was just 2 km away from us this weekend. So we took the bikes to go there. The politicians had their own tent, to give them shadow, and they took turns talking and talking. Niue has 20 full time politicians, making it the country in the world that has most professional goverment officials per capita (1400 INHABITANS).
Then you could stroll around trying to find out what kind of food that was sold. Soon the "show" started. It had a very amateurish class to it. The strangest part being that when they danced people who liked what they did would go up on stage and stick money to their body...
Even kids dancing together, people could favour one kid (wich they did) and stick a lot of money in that kids garment.
No it was not turists, it was the locals who did that. Actually there where very little turists on this event.
A few yachtees and a few people from NZ.
Going backwards, Friday, there was a birthday party for Gustav on Miss My, with our kids and kids from Felice. The swell was so bad by the dock that Ellinor fell over board when trying to get in the dinghy and holding on at the same time. That's the most dramatic I could come up with right now.
You should have seen Kristina passing on the birthday cake to Emil as the dinghy raised 4 meters up and then came down like an elevator...
 
Highlights
Friday morning I had the honour of giving a little intro by satellite to a conference in Quebeque. It was the annual IQ conference and they where going to have a session about doing things DIFFERENT. And they thought that if anybody could prove that things could be done different, it was me.
Well thank you, Im really honored. Before giving my little intro to them I was asked by the host if I could mention any highlight from the sailing trip.
Taken by surprise I realised that this is a question we will most probably get when we get back home. Probably about the most scary things and the most fun.
I like the word highlight better than most-of-something. Because there is no record breaking in this.
I started to think, and came to the conclusion that highlights are about meeting people. Some meetings are highlights.
When you suddenly realize that we have much to learn from each other. When there is a give and take.
A pig, a goat can be fascinating to feed, but there is no give and take. A landscape can be fascinating, but you can only look so much.
I think a highlight could be that we have accomplished a tough leg, for instance the sailing from St Marta to San Blas remains the hardest sailing we ever done, weatherwise. You could say it was a highlight? No. It was hard and bad weather at sea seemes to be like a flue, once it's over, life goes on.
The highlight of this trip for me at least (I will ask around next monday meeting), is to realize how small the world is. How little difference there is between humans. And how much good there is in the human mind. Before you leave you hear all this horror stories about customs, imigration and I do not know what that will hassle you. We had none of that. All very relaxed. There might be some document you have to fill in that might make you wonder what they thought when they created that but so what. By the way, I have to write it to remember, there was a document to be filled in here at Nuie that I have never seen the like before. The person who designed it must either be evil or funny, I`m hoping the last.
Think of this, Im going to give you the space that corresponds to the space given in the document to be filled in:
Vessels name____ Vessels ID ____ Vessels length _________________ Vessels Beam ____________________
Owners name__ Adresss__ Vessels home port __ Vessels radio id _________________ (usually 4 letters)
and so on....
The forms they get in must be almost impossible to read, and that has resulted in the following statement in the top of the document:
 
PLEASE FILL IN FORM WITH CAPITAL LETTERS!
 
Well we meet a lot more people than officials...
Most people we meet are proud of their village or country and they want to share.
The only time I felt stressed about strangers was in the Caribien, especially St Vincent where we where hassled by "boatboys". Desperate youngsters who tried to make money for nothing.
Here in the Pacific, people seem to be concerned about each other. You cannot stop and lay down you bycicle to rest on the ground for long, people will stop and ask if everything is alright.