Getting into a small boat is always a tricky proposition. Getting into a rocking boat in the open ocean: even harder.

Doing so on a rope ladder in a thu seemed at least unwise. Even if I somehow made it down, I worried there would hardly be room: the Nanospirit was loaded to the rim with elderly, topless women, and a wooden coffin. Baskets of fish and clothes and toothpaste filled the remaining pockets of space.

But this was my Pacific coming-out party. I wanted to wow them.