So sorry for your loss, most importantly the loss of your friend, and all the best in picking up the pieces. If this proves to be an inflection point in your lives, may you find peace with whatever changes it demands.

Eure Geschichte macht nachdenklich und demütig. Ich bedaure aufrichtig den Verlust Eures Freundes, gleichzeitig freue ich mich, dass Ihr Euch aus dieser Situation retten konntet.

Happy Birthday und gute Besserung.

Liebe Grüße
Chri und Katrin

This is horrific… I am beyond words and so very upset to hear this news.

If we can do ANYTHING to assist you and/or the people of Matuku, please let us know.

I’m so glad you got through this mishap and have chosen to share it. I doubt that you’ve read my blog post about my reef encounter at Fakarave South Pass, but that near disaster gives me at least some small way to relate to what you’ve experienced.

It is true that, what seems like a small thing, can rise up as a huge question in hind sight. If I had just thought not to trust that government buoy on a relatively calm night I mightn’t have pounded my boat on the unforgiving coral for an hour and a half. If you had just listened to your colds you might never have gone on that excursion.

Ever since then I have questioned the sanity of the my cruising life, and yet I am compelled to finish what I started. Pounding on that reef rattled me to my very marrow, both literally and figuratively. You two are much more careful and sea-wise than I am, and I expect that the lessons that mother ocean teaches you are heartfully felt, …this lesson more deeply than any in your lives.

There’s always something that we haven’t thought of or, worse, some little thought that we’ve ignored. The treacherous sea is there to take advantage, but our wits are there, too. Our wits tell us things like to swim sideways out of the current. Yours did. They saved you.

So, what you are doing contributes greatly to the world. Your careful interest in the marine life, the islands, and the islands’ people is a wonderful thing. Your wits will continue to serve you well. It will take courage to carry on as before as this event lingers deep in your psyche. Keep your balance and go forward wisely.

Yours,
Roy
SV Mabrouka

I discovered you two, Pitufa, and your journey a couple of months ago via Birgit’s article in Cruising World Magazine about using weather patterns and seasons to optimize French Polynesia cruising, and, in no time, I realized and came to appreciate how meaningful your endeavor is—much, much more than the sum of its functional parts. Thus I built a habit of visiting your blog for my daily dose of vicarious sailing and exploration from my home in Belgrade, Serbia, as I, aged fifty-two, prep myself to circumnavigate the world in the next life. The same was today, although I, admittingly, did come to check your situation in light of cyclone Gabrielle, fully aware that you are in cyclone season over there and that you mentioned earlier you are in a rather active weather phase.

So, visiting your blog and reading about your experience and the loss of Maikeli’s life has overwhelmed me with sorrow. I lack words to express myself.

And yet there is so much I would like to tell you, to offer you comfort, to show you that you are not alone in your sadness. No one should go through what you must be going through now, and I cannot even fathom how you might feel.

In time, though, your bruises and injuries will heal, God willing, but emotional scars will remain. And yet they, however deep, are incomparable to the vast mourning archipelago Maikeli’s family and friends must navigate. I shall keep them all in my prayers.

As far as you two go, I feel like you will always have each other, and I most certainly hope you will slowly recover and recuperate. But I guess, from now on, you will have two more tales to tell.

The first one is that no matter how prudent one is—and you two are, like, epitomes of punctiliousness: staying in French Polynesia and South Pacific for like nine years flat, unscathed, during all cyclone seasons, not to mention sailing in Darien (seriously, who does that?)—Maikeli’s loss will reverberate through yours and lives of any reader of your blog as a stark reminder of the power of the ocean and unwavering respect we must have when facing it anytime, anyplace, any vessel, regardless of our experience.

And the second one is that whatever we may have been through in our lives, God or Nature, depending on what you believe in—probably both; the two can be mutually inclusive in contrast to being rather exclusive—always find a way to remind us how brittle and fragile we are, how small we are, and how we should every single day celebrate the gift of the precious life we have received.

I want to believe Maikeli was striving for the latter.

Or, perhaps, in some weird and wonderful way of the Universe, he intuitively knew and felt what Gandhi once wrote: “Whatever you do in life will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it because you can’t know. You can’t ever really know the meaning of your life. And you don’t need to. Every life has a meaning, whether it lasts one hundred years or one hundred seconds. Every life, and every death, changes the world in its own way. You can’t know. So don’t take it for granted. But don’t take it too seriously. Don’t postpone what you want. Don’t leave anything misunderstood. Make sure the people you care about know. Make sure they know how you really feel. Because just like that, it could end.”

I’ve chosen to believe that Maikeli truly wanted you to take those underwater pictures of a reef pass so the government would establish a no-fishing zone on Matuku Island. If so, I believe you could consider finishing what he has started. I think that would be something he would have wanted—to protect the precious marine wildlife—and I know, for a fact, that the two of you live and breathe such environmental conviction day in, day out. In doing so, you would honor him but also give yourself, I assume, much-needed closure.

And, if you opt to do so, I believe such a no-fishing zone in Matuku Island could be officially named Maikeli No-Fishing Zone. In the end, of course, such a potential effort will be insignificant, but I believe it is very important that you two, the villagers of Makandru, and the Fijian government, at least try to do it.

Then again, what do I know? I can’t know.

One way or the other, both of you will be in my thoughts and prayers. I feel immensely saddened by your news. I know you will find the strength to recover.

May God shower you with its choicest blessings—yup, I am one of those believers not entirely convinced whether God is male or female—and may you, other than each other, have fair winds and following seas.

Very best, from the bottom of my heart,

–Dejan.