Traditional canoe ride

Shannon and I went down to the canoe shop and paid for a couple of Marshallese guys to take us on a ride across the lagoon and back on a traditional outrigger canoe. The two of us sat on the little platform, and the two men stood on the narrow hull.

I don't know my sailboat terminology very well, but the sail pivots around its main mast, which is in the center of the hull. The corner of the sail gets put at one end of the hull or the other, depending on which direction you want to go.

Shannon stayed with a host family this summer on one of the outer islands, where life is much more traditional, and she said her host father would go out fishing at night by himself. The Marshallese (and other South Pacific islanders, for that matter) must be seriously good navigators to be able to find their way back to such tiny pieces of land in such a vast ocean.