A bit of an ode to Tom Neale, who penned An Island to Oneself back in 1966 and no doubt inspired many thousands of cruisers to detour their milk run circumnavigations to include a stop here. Tom “marooned” himself three separate times in order to live alone and forge a life out of this tiny island. He spent some sixteen years in total living alone on Suwarrow, with a couple of cats, a supply ship that passed once every two years, and an occasional cruising yacht that would come through and be surprised to find him there. I don’t know when I first found a copy of the book, which had long been out of print, but after reading it, Suwarrow was added to the list of places I’d like to visit someday.
The atoll is called Suwarrow, but the individual island where Tom lived, and where yachts are allowed to anchor, is called Anchorage Island.
Today Suwarrow is a National Park of the Cook Islands. It is staffed by two caretakers who live there and keep an eye on things for six months of the year before leaving for cyclone season. We went ashore to check in with them and found a quiet man, and an even quieter woman. They were exceedingly friendly, but reserved. They told us we were the 107th yacht of the season, as they carefully penned us into the logbook. It’s a far cry from the remote solitude of the island fifty years ago. A testament to how easy navigation is these days, and how commonplace the cruising life has become.
I thought we’d be doing some diving, but we were informed that scuba diving was now against park rules. No spearfishing, no kite boarding, no water skiing, no drones… The list went on. We weren’t really planning on any of that, but they made sure there was no confusion that this was a place for peace and quiet for us, for the fish, and for the birds.
We can snorkel, though.
Ali discovered that our old monohull was for sale again. And wow, it looked amazing! It had been ten years since we’d sold the boat in Mazatlan, and yet in the pictures it looked like the condition of the boat hadn’t changed a bit. Like it had been frozen in time, or the new owners had just taken really exceptional care of it. Seeing as ten years had passed, they must have spent a lot of time and energy keeping up with all of that amazing woodwork’s varnishing. Or… they could have just stolen our ten-year-old photos and tried to pass them off as their own, completely screwing over any potential buyer that would put the time and energy into coming to see the boat based on those photos.
After being called out on their copyright violations and disgusting business practice, a miraculously similar set of photos of the now much less gracefully aged boat appeared online. Before and after. I try not to be a complete jerk about people ripping off our photos, but when they use them for commercial purposes, and with the sole intent of deceiving potential cruisers, it really gets under our skin. Ali was pissed off for days about it. We put a lot of time and effort into taking good pictures of the boat and putting together a great For Sale page, only to have some shady broker (and boat owner, do doubt) recycle them a decade later with no concerns. Unsurprisingly, they took the photos down but didn’t bother to pay the invoice they got for their eighteen copyright violations.
Georgie the dwarf hamster gets out for play time each day. Ali sets out different things for him to explore and he runs around as happy as can be checking out everything. When it’s time to get back in his house Ali lowers a bowl to the ground and he climbs right in like he can’t wait to get home and go to bed. He’s kind of a fun little pet to have around, even if he still refuses to let anyone touch him.
Who needs scuba tanks?
Birds love a sanctuary like this.
Tom Neale was roughly my age when he first started living on Suwarrow. It’s not hard for me to imagine why.
12 Comments on “An Island to Oneself”
We have awesome memories from that place. Tom, the caretaker when we were there in 2005 (!!!!), was not a quiet person — he hosted a bonfire on the beach and sang songs with his guitar. We also snorkeled on the ocean side of the atoll and saw grey sharks. Have a wonderful time guys!
Hi! One day we are going to have to meet up and share stories!
Happy to hear that Georgie is enjoying his travels!!!
I’ve been watching the O’Kellys on YouTube as they search for a new boat. The amount of deception in boat sales is really disappointing.
Wow. The audacity of people. To bad you can’t lien the boat for the invoice amount. That’d get their attention.
Looks like a great place to stop. Snorkeling seems like it’s top notch. I wonder how I get one of those caretaker jobs.
Really?! You and Brock would want to sign up? I think it would get lonely myself…well if Brock was there, I would be happy too.
I saw this definition of Bumfuzzle just now while googling to your blog on my phone – ‘confused, bereft of knowledge about a particular thing’.
I always understood that meaning in the context of your original break from the rate race and head first leap into a circumnavigation. With a second go round underway and twenty years down the road have you ever considered changing the name?
Surely you’re no longer feeling perplexed!
Changing the name?! Just the other day, we were walking down the street, and ran into some other cruisers walking as well — and they said, “The Bumfuzzle?”
Bumfuzzle at this point is a brand!
When we took that boat out to look for whales the other day, there were 4 ladies from Australia on there with us. We got to talking and when we returned to the harbor they asked which boat was ours. They got a good laugh when we pointed out Bumfuzzle. Remember in New Zealand and Australia, they consider the word bumfuzzle to mean bum hair. A brand indeed!
Bum hair, that’s great! That kind of worked for Pat until his recent makeover and no doubt he’ll get back to a full bumfuzzle before long.
But I just felt that you guys have long been more akin to Masters and Commanders than Bumfuzzlers.
It felt so weird when a client asked about your old boat. Disappointing the broker used the old photos – a classical ethical misstep.
Seems like a long time ago we were all in Mexico. Looking forward to getting back cruising again ourselves.
Cheers, Max and the crew of Fluenta.