Strange sightings at sea

I just learned about a sailor, Fredrik of Australia, who saw an island form right before his eyes! I vaguely remember hearing about this but it's one of those stories that slipped to the edge of my memory...

So he was on his yacht near Fiji, and if I understand it right, volcanic ash, compressed into pumice stone, floated up around his boat, making it look like they were sailing through a beach. And they saw a volcanic island forming as they watched.
The images are amazing. Now that's an adventure.

I also learned, through his blog, about this thing called SailMail that lets sailors send mail via their on-board radio communication devices. Slick.