Kiribati: Fanning Island, the International Port That Nearly Sank My Love of Cruising
Maritime law has a sense of humor, and that humor sent me deep into the Pacific to Tabuaeran, a remote coral atoll in Kiribati that was worth every rolling mile.
March 2019 · 5 min read
Fanning Island, officially known as Tabuaeran, was not exactly the kind of place I expected to visit on a Hawaiian cruise. But maritime law has a sense of humor, and apparently that humor involves sending a ship deep into the Pacific so it can touch an international port before returning to Hawaii.
The island itself is a remote coral atoll in Kiribati, a thin ring of land wrapped around a brilliant lagoon, sitting hundreds of miles from Hawaii and feeling even farther from the rest of the world. From above, it looks like someone dropped a turquoise jewel into the Pacific and forgot to tell modern life where to find it.
The reason I went was practical: because the cruise needed an international stop, and Kiribati was the closest option that made the itinerary work. 'Closest,' of course, is doing a lot of work here. It was a full day south across the open Pacific, then a full day north back to Hawaii. The seas were somewhere in the 18 to 30 foot range, which is nautical language for 'hold the railing and reconsider every decision that led to this moment.'
The Pacific was putting on a master class in humility, and the ship was collecting extra credit.
I have always loved travel, but this crossing almost ruined cruising for me forever. Almost. I remember thinking that whoever wrote the itinerary had clearly never tried to drink coffee while the horizon was moving like a stock chart during earnings season.
Fanning Island itself was worth remembering. Historically, the atoll was named for American captain Edmund Fanning, who sighted it in 1798. It later became tied to coconut plantations, British colonial administration, and even the early global communications network, serving as a cable relay station on the trans-Pacific telegraph route. That is a lot of history for a place that looks, at first glance, like pure lagoon, reef, palms, and silence.
Kiribati is one of those countries that reminds you how big the world is and how small I am in it. A quick visit to Fanning Island was not polished or commercial in the way most cruise ports are, and that was the point. It was remote, beautiful, fragile, and unforgettable.
The cruise did not ruin cruising for me forever, but it absolutely filed a formal complaint with my inner ear. Still, I came away with a new country, a wild story, and a much deeper respect for the Pacific Ocean, which is apparently not always interested in guest satisfaction scores.
