Boating to Paradise
Bible translators Taylor and Ali Coomb climb on a 20-foot fiberglass boat with their children. It’s only 20 miles across the sea from the Solomon Islands of the Pacific to their village on Big Gela Island. Before they get on, however, the boat is already overloaded with people and cargo. They had hoped to leave at first light, but the “canoe driver” was late. Now the seas are rough and it is beginning to rain. Yet if they don’t take this boat, it may be six weeks before a larger boat can drop them off on the island.
Aware of the perils, the group pushes out. Soon waves are crashing over the bow. Men are bailing, but not fast enough. They are in danger of sinking. Fortunately, before they do, a larger boat rescues them. Ali, the kids, the other passengers and some cargo are moved to the larger boat. Taylor and the “canoe driver,” however, decide to push on.
Shivering, sea sick and soaking wet, Ali watches her husband disappear over a wave crest and wonders, “Will I ever see my husband again?”
Thankfully, Ali’s husband did make it safely to his destination, but not without a struggle. If you think Ali and Taylor Coomb’s traveling to an island to do translation work represents just a small group, you are mistaken. About 150, or almost 10% of Wycliffe’s Bible translation teams, are spread across 4,000 miles of the Pacific on small islands from the Solomons, northeast of Australia, to the eastern edge of the Indian Ocean…
Perils in PNG
The Alan Canavan family, translators from Australia, represents one of these teams. The Canavans worked primarily on the island of Tubetube, some sixty miles east of the coastal town of Alotau, Papua New Guinea (PNG). When the SIL boat couldn’t take the family to their allocation, they resorted to paying passage on small commercial boats, usually overloaded and ill-equipped. Some boats have no compass, night lighting or life preservers.
More than once Alan stood on the island’s hill waving a white cloth to flag down a passing small boat so they could return. The flag-downs were sometimes nothing more than twenty-foot long open-cockpit boats, often powered by a single outboard motor. If the motor had died, they could have ended up weeks later, probably dead, in Tahiti, 1,500 miles to the south-east. Furthermore, the Canavan family was nearly rolled over by freak waves on multiple occasions. Once Alan watched through binoculars horrified as his children nearly perished in the final channel crossing.
The Gebauer Family
On April 21, 1995, Bible translator Ron Gebauer and two of his four children, Erich and Lisa, decided to accompany the children’s school teacher, Cathie Calder, by small boat from their translation work on Malaita Island to Afutara. In Afutara a plane was waiting to take Cathie on to another location. At 6 a.m. Cathie and the family pushed off, not knowing that their journey would come to a tragic end.
About halfway across the stretch of water, the seas turned ugly. Then, within sight of their destination, a freak wave rolled the boat over. Hours passed as the group struggled in the current, making no progress to shore. Ron and the boat driver had no life preservers. Cathie and the two children did.
Assessing their situation and rapidly loosing strength, the boat driver and the children decided to try to swim to shore using a plastic gas can for extra buoyancy. Cathie wasn’t doing well, even with the life preserver. She told Ron that if they didn’t make it, to tell her family she died in peace.
“I’m not sure I will be alive to give the message,” Ron replied, “but if I am alive, I will.”
More time passed. Finally Ron said to Cathie, “I’ll see you in heaven.” He meant soon.
Now hours into the ordeal, Ron moved away from the boat, so it only had to hold up Cathie. With no life preserver and quickly waning strength, he headed for shore. Vomiting, hallucinating and trying to stay afloat, he thought his fight was over. Then Ron heard what sounded like a boat. It was! It was the boat driver. The driver and the children had made it to shore! They pulled Ron into the boat, his body retching. They soon found Cathie’s lifeless body bobbing in the sea.
A Call for Help
Ordeals like this prompted JAARS to create JAARS Maritime Services, headed by Glenn Smith, a former assistant regional director in Papua New Guinea. Glenn became burdened about boat safety for island translation teams. After extensive research, he put together training programs, maritime safety equipment packages, and a host of ways Bible translation teams can more safely travel to Bibleless people groups that are island bound. Nearly all the teams now have basic safety equipment.
.JPG "Family on Leaky Boat")
Over the last two years, Wycliffe has seen the addition of two couples who own their own sailing yachts. Sea captains Larry and Anne Hamilton and Bob and Nancy Haussler have sailed to many of the islands where Wycliffe works in the Pacific. They’re learning the travel needs of island translators and teaching translators about maritime safety—how to read ocean charts, tides, currents and weather prognosticating. The couples even transport teams to their islands.
Island translators have expressed great thanks for these captains’ tireless help and servant attitudes. After these couples arrived to help, one translator said, ‘This has been the most powerful example of God’s care that we have experienced in the past two years or more.”
There is still much work to be done by the Maritime Safety Services and its able staff, but lives have already been saved. Translators are much better prepared for boat travel. “Boating to paradise” isn’t an easy thing. And the tropical “paradise” once you get there, is less glamorous than you might imagine. But that’s another story.
(Story by David Ramsdale)