Today was a mellow Sunday morning, taking it easy and messing with small boat projects, anchored off a small village in Anatom, Vanuatu. The generator was running and the new batteries were happily charging. When one of our generators is shut down, there is a normal brief shake and sputter as it stops. Suddenly, I felt the boat shake and shudder and ran to the control panel since the generator apparently had failed and died unexpectedly. All the instruments appeared normal and the shaking of the boat continued like we have never felt for at least 15 seconds.
What the hell is going on? Is it possible to feel an earthquake on the boat? We looked over to another boat anchored near us. "Did you feel that?" he shouted. Earthquake, tsunami, what's next? There is no 'official' weather or government facility here to be reassured by and we don't have internet in this remote anchorage. So, we did the obvious and picked up the satellite phone and called Eagle Lake Wisconsin where we knew there would be folks celebrating the end of summer at our cabin. It didn't take Mel and Cathy more than 10 minutes to look it up online and send us an email. Yep, there had been a 7+ earthquake about 50 miles from us. No tsunami warnings had been issued.
Back to Sunday morning chores. It's a small world.
E
