(post-dated: we arrived in Tahiti July 16)

Rangiroa was our last atoll in the Tuamotus; the passage from Rangiroa to Tahiti took a day and a half.  Tahiti is the administrative center for all of French Polynesia, which includes the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, and the Society Islands (Tahiti is in the Societies, along with Bora Bora).

The passage from Rangiroa to Tahiti was tedious.  We were very fortunate to be sailing a beam reach, because the wind conditions were highly variable, from 20-30 knots the whole time.  Usually a squall is temporary–from a minute to an hour–but eventually it goes away and leaves better conditions.  This passage was like being in and out of squalls, back to back, all night long.  Wet, cold, and lots of work.  I was on-call all of the night to trouble-shoot various situations; twice the main got backwinded against the boom-preventer in big shift of heavy wind.  Jon stayed on watch most of the night, and I woke up whenever I was needed, thus we handled the division of work.  The waves were short and steep–every 10 minutes a wave would give the boat a good smack and spray the top of the wave all across the deck and cockpit.  We had a close call where one wave came in through a portlight across the cabin and managed to cover the computer station in spray–I was concerned that my laptop had been ruined, fortunately not.

In Tahiti, we tied up to a mooring just off of the “Tahiti Yacht Club”, north of Papaeete.  For $13/night we got the mooring and hot showers.  The water was opaque, dirty and frequently stinky.  No swimming here!

We used our time in Tahiti to take care of business, the first two priorities to find a new outboard motor and get lots of food at the grocery store.  Additionally we had to take care of the official check-in/out from French Polynesia.  Even though downtown Papaeete is a standard busy trafficky dirty and especially expensive city, it was still fantastic to have the resources available to us (here I’m thinking mainly of restaurants and bars and cafes).  We bought parts, new masks and snorkels, machetes, you know, the usual.  Naturally, we ended up staying longer than anticipated.

(refers to events that happened July 12th)

In Rangiroa one morning, I had headed over to the post-office bright and early to mail a couple of letters.  Our boat was anchored on the north west side of Pass Tiputa.  The post office is on the south east side of the pass.  So I headed into land, caught a twelve passenger motor boat for $2, and rode with a bunch of locals on their way to work that morning.  On both times across the pass, I could see dolphins in the pass.  They were swimming and jumping in the waves the current creates as it rushes out of the pass, marking the transition between high and low tide.

It was an incredible sight, a dozen or so dolphins surfing down the face of standing waves.  Jumping sometimes ten feet into the air.  I had only my meager point and shoot camera.  Though waterproof, it certainly has the drawback of not being the greatest picture taker.

Below are some pictures from the pass that morning.

karen wrote a good post. I will copy it here in case the links break.

The moon shone round and bright in the evening sky and the water sparkled under the stars.
We pulled our dinghy up to the short wooden dock, noting that we were the first crew to arrive for dinner.  “Are those lobsters?!?!”  I asked hopefully, pointing at a table on the porch stacked with spider-like objects.  Seconds later, we were greeted warmly by our hosts, locals Valentine & Gaston, whom we had met briefly a few nights before.  They invited us to lounge on the porch enjoying our wine and fresh baked foccacia de poisson while we waited for the others.

The porch was a sturdy structure, housing some chairs, a table, an open bbq and, interestingly, three furry frigate chicks that Gaston & Valentine were raising.  The birds’ beady eyes watched us suspiciously and if we got too close, they opened their long beaks and made hissing noises, and flared their fluffy white wings, already looking rather menacing though they were only a month old.  At our feet, a dozen hermit crabs roamed the floor, their prickly red legs clutching awkwardly at broken pieces of coral.  We made ourselves comfortable in the chairs and Matt uncorked the bottle of red wine we had brought from the boat.  We had barely poured our glasses when Gary & Tara of Pursuit IV showed up.  We all introduced ourselves and opened with the usual yachtie chit-chat, but I knew almost instantly that they were a fun couple….  Because one of the fastest ways to judge someone’s sense of humor is to see how they react when there are humping dogs less than five feet away.  In this case, a large rottweiler-pit bull mix was attempting, rather unsuccessfully, to get it on with a little shitzue.

“Doesn’t look like he’s having a whole lotta luck,”  Matt said.

“Oh, I don’t know – I thought he had the right idea with that ramp over there,” added Gary.

“Yeah, but she doesn’t really seem all that interested,” said Tara, as we watched the shitzue nuzzle a hermit crab, seemingly oblivious to the rottweiler’s advances.

That we could discuss the merits and methods of humping dogs just minutes after meeting Gary and Tara convinced me that they were our kind of people.

Gaston chased off the horny rottie just as Oscar and Graciella from Zenitude joined us.  Oscar was quite the character.  He reminded me of Sal Mineo (?) of the movies, with a tanned rugged, round face, exuding warmth and humor, and had such a thick spanish accent that every word he said made me want to laugh.  He was full of useful anecdotes, though, especially when it came to sealife.

“De moray eels, you know-ah dem? They got de big teeth and look-ah like-ah snake? Did you know that you can charm-ah dem like-ah snake too?  Yesss, when you dive, you see dem, and don’t get too close because dey are territorial, but you see dem and dey poke-ah the head out of-ah de hole and you go-ah like dis…”  He then undulated his hands slowly in front of him as though he was wafting a fragrance towards his nose.  “You do it like-ah dis and you will see de head come out and de body of the moray eel will come out and he will follow you!  Just like-ah dat…”  he did the waving motion again.

He then goes on to tell us that we should be careful when searching for lobsters because of the “dramatic triangle.”

” See, de dramateek tree-angle is de lobster, de octopus and de moray eel.  De octopus love-ah to eat de lobsters.  Dey tear off the shell and suck-ah out de insides.  De moray eel, he love-ah to eat the octopus. So, frequently, you-ah find-ah the lobster and de moray eel together.  The lobster, he like-ah da eel for protection from the octopus, and de moray eel, he-ah use-ah the lobster like-ah de bait!  So, when you grab-ah for the lobster, maybe you put-ah your hand near the moray eel hole and he will bite you, or maybe he will be bite you because he is pissed off that you are stealing his lobster!”

Eventually, our conversation made its way back to the usual cruising topics:

“Everyone always asks how we can afford to do this,” says Tara.  “It drives me crazy! I mean, it’s like asking how much money I make in a year, you just don’t do it!”  She shakes her head.  She’s 30 and Gary is 40.

Oscar leans forward, “Well, it’s-ah because you are young! Everyone knows that us old people are retired!  You’re young, you’re not supposed to be able to afford it!”  He pauses and looks around at all of us younger cruisers. “But, is good.  Is good that you do it now. My son, he want-ah to go cruising and he take-ah his girlfriend and they have a boat, and they sail for a while.  But then, she turn thirty.  And you know…”  He looks pointedly at Matt and Gary. “You know, when a woman turn thirty, she-ah start-ah getting funny in de head.”  The guys laugh and Tara and I look at each other with understanding.  “So she turn-ah thirty and want to get married.  So dey stop-ah de cruising and dey get married right away and then she get pregnant right away!  So,” he sighs heavily, “Now we have a granddaughter.”  Tara and I smile at Graciella.  “But!” Oscar continues with renewed enthusiasm, “Now I have-ah two problems!”  He thrusts out two fingers.  “One, now-ah I have to go back-ah to Australia because I have to see my granddaughter, and two…”  He pauses theatrically, ” I’m married to a grandma!”

Our conversation easily wound its way from topic to topic as good, enjoyable conversations tend to do, and somehow we ended up talking about other types of traveling and Oscar once again pipes up.

“Right-ah after nine-eleven, I was-ah moving to the U.S. and I had to pick-ah up my large moving boxes from-ah Kennedy airport.  So, I-ah rented de van from … u-haul! and put de boxes in de van and den I had to go through de mid-town tunnel.  Can you imagine what-ah happened to me?!  Dey were stopping all of de vans and so dey stopp-ah me and here-uh I am – an Argentinian with an Australian passport and a New Jersey driver’s license!  Haha!  Dey didn’t know what-ah to do with me!”

We all laughed, more so at the expression on his face than at the story itself, and then Valentine called us in for dinner.

The table was in the center of the room, covered with a blue table cloth and decorated with long branches of pink, purple and white flowers.  Evenly spaced down the center there were bowls of rice and sauces, and trays stacked with halved spiny lobsters. Valentine served slices of breaded tuna first, slightly cooked, with warm raw centers.  We dipped these in a spicy red cocktail sauce (although Matt swears it was just A-1 mixed with ketchup).  Next, we passed around pieces of lightly breaded chicken accompanied by white rice and fresh-baked coconut bread.  Finally, we got to the lobster – sweet, buttery and delicious!  All this was followed by a large slice of fluffy white cake with a sugary, carameley topping drizzled over it.

Gary, Tara, Oscar, Graciella, Matt, Jon and I shared loud boisterous tales at one end of the table.  We were discussing couple-living in small places – like a boat – when Gary said, “Arguing is the worst.  You can’t get away.  It’s like, ‘um, can you just go hang out at the bow for a while??’”   Tara added, “Yeah, it’s hard when you fight.”

“What do you mean?”  I said incredulously, with a touch of sarcasm.  “I cry,  Matt feels bad, and the problem is resolved!”   Laughter erupted around us and Oscar pointed at Matt.

“You!” he started, between laughs.  “You are in trouble!! She has a dirty mind! She is already tricking you! She has a dirty mind! You are in trouble my friend!”

Thankfully, Gary took over after that, relating his more hair-raising adventure of breaking free of a mooring buoy and getting washed up on coral the night before we arrived here.

Although I was yawning, the night still felt too young when Valentine kicked us out with an unceremonious, “Ok, dinner is over” as she stood up and started clearing plates.  Apparently, the Argentinians and the Brazilians were coming over at 4:00 AM to watch the World Cup game with Gaston, and Valentine would have to be up early, too.

Our fantastic homemade dinner felt a bit expensive at $30 per person, but the experience was priceless.  And, at the end of the night, we all unhitched our dinghies, made a few jokes about each other’s outboard engines, and putt-putted away with smiles on our faces.

(concerning events: June 20th)

After a couple of days in Fakarava, Matt and Karen wanted to beat a hasty leave to Toau, another atoll a short day sail away.  Another couple, Mike and Hyo aboard Io, were anchored there.  Mike and Hyo are awesome fun people from Canada.  They have done a fair bit of rock-climbing, are adventurous and generally see the world similarly.  Mike’s insistence that you cannot buy a new, quality, made-to-last toaster for any amount of money anywhere in the world notwithstanding.  He says the same thing about chain-saws, a subject upon which, given his Canadian background, he can more convincingly provide expert opinion.  They are also young, young 30’s, a rarity in the cruising world.  Matt and Karen, after having been predominantly on their own for the last two months exploring nearly or completely deserted locales, were, despite my arrival, still desperate for more interaction with more people.  So while I might have wanted to stick around Fakarava for a while, it was my very first place after all, I easily deferred and we were off to Toau, I content in the thought that more adventures would be waiting.  Mike apparently had a spear gun.  And a machete.  More adventures would definitely be waiting.

The first morning in Toau I was again up at 6 am.  Despite having played a game of Carcassone (a fun tile-based make cities and roads and farms and score points thing) until midnight or so with Matt, Karen, Mike and Hyo.  I swam to shore, and starting walking along the water’s edge, lagoon side.  It was not evident that anyone lived here, though we knew Mike had hung with a couple of locals, Martin and Wallace, that lived 3 miles south.  Martin and Wallis lived on different motu’s, the little islands that make up the atoll ring, and so rarely got together.  They communicated with each other every night via a smoke signal, to let one another know they were doing OK.  So didn’t think that I would be running into anyone, but about 20 minutes into my slow stroll along the lagoon, a voice calls out in Hello.  “Bonjour!”  I reply hesitantly, not wanting to insinuate that I spoke any other words in French, but also wanting not to be an ugly American and presume English capabilities.

Ken and I thus met.  I was the only person from any of the sailboats he had met and was eager to interact.  You pronounce his name like it appears, however the ‘n’ is very soft to the point where if you just say the ‘K’ and the ‘e’ like you were about to say ‘Ken’ but then left off the ‘n’, you would probably be most correct.  Retrospectively, I don’t think this was his given name, but rather the name he gave to foreigners.  Ken spoke some English and I was rapidly becoming excellent in Pantomime, so we hit it off well.  He asked if I wanted some breakfast, some coconut, and so found one of his specialized tools for copra farming he uses to cut down coconuts.  It was essentially a 10 foot long pole, bamboo I think, with a small curved scythe like blade on the end.  Reach up and hook it around a coconut, then cut and run.  So you don’t get hit by falling coconuts of course.  Out comes the machete.  Top priority in Tahiti is to buy me a machete.  With a few quick hacks the husk is off, and a small hole the interior nut is chipped.  I am now drinking coconut water straight from a coconut, while sitting on the beach, talking with a Tuomotian.  At 7 am in the morning.  This day is starting off well.

Ken and I continue talking.  I desperately wish in this moment that I could speak fluent French.  The interaction would have been so much deeper.  This feeling has happened few other times so far during my three weeks here, and we only have another three weeks or so in French speaking territory.  But in this moment, I definitely wish I could speak French.  We talk about what he does for a living, which is harvesting copra.  Copra is the meat of older coconuts which is then dried.  It is then sent to Tahiti to make coconut oil.  Or something like that.  Once I’ve finished the coconut water, he takes it from me and breaks it in half with the blunt of the machete.  A flick of the wrist, the machete slices through the air, and he has carved from the outer edge of the interior nut a spoon like utensil which he hands to me and motions that I should dig out the jelly like material inside of the coconut.  More delicious yummy goodness for breakfast.

Ken then asks if I fish, and I unfortunately have to reply that, no, I don’t fish, but I very much want to learn.  So he motions that we should go over to the ocean side of the atoll.  It’s a quick 5 minute walk away and along the way he picks up one piece of fishing gear.  An eight foot long perfectly straight wooden pole with three metal pieces of sharpened rebar on the end.  This is a traditional Polynesian spear.  We are going spear fishing.  Polynesian style.

Ken walks up to the edge of the water looking for fish.  On the ocean side of every atoll I have been on, there is a small reef between 20 and 60 feet away from shore where the waves break.  the reef is submerged during hide time and exposed during low tide.  It’s about midway right now, the tide rising, and here, (not everywhere as I will find out a week later when walking along a similar reef I am knocked over by a wave and sustain small cuts from the coral reef on my fingers, ankle, thumb, calf and a deeper, larger abrasion on my back) we can safely walk along the reef as well.  As Ken walks up to the water’s edge, he motions that he is looking for fish and sometimes points a few out.  We are looking mainly for parrot fish who with their bright blue-green skin are extremely easy to spot in the two foot deep shallows between the reef and shore.  Moments later he spots one close.  He creeps  slowly at first, then a quick burst of speed and the spear is then flying into the water.  Splashing the six feet over to the spear he pulls it up.  First throw: one fish.  He then hands the spear to me.

‘That didn’t look to hard,’ I think, knowing full well that a lifetime of practice went into that throw.  He helps me stalk some fish.  I try the slow stalking method, but he encourages me to get upon them faster and so I run up and then give the spear a toss.  Laughable.  LAUGHABLE!  the spear didn’t even make it to the water cleanly, deflecting through the air and hitting the water nearly broadside.  I laughed.  Ken laughed.  I went to try again.  I spotted more fish, and this time the spear at least entered the water cleanly.  I picked it up, but no fish came with it.  Half a dozen more tries, kept me hilariously occupied, Ken encouraging me on.  I could have gone for another two hours I was enjoying myself so, but I think that Ken was tiring of my ineptitude and was ready to head back.  I don’t blame him.

As we were walking back, we again talked about coconuts, him pointing out which ones were good for eating and what stages the coconuts were in.  As we arrived at the atoll shore, he said I should return at 10 am to do some more fishing with him and his cousin.  I asked (pantomime combined with embarrassingly short phrases) if the other people from Syzygy and Io can join.  I’m thinking Mike from Io and Matt would love to meet Ken.  Mike had met Ken’s cousin, Martin, who would also be fishing with us, but not Ken.

At ten Matt, Mike and I head back into shore in Mike’s dinghy.  Ours is not reliable.  O.K., it’s a janky piece of shit and we have tried our best to inadvertently lose it or ruin it.  (see Karen’s blog, and… just kidding.  Kind of.)

Ken and Martin take us down the shore a bit to a small little cove.  We wait on shore while they take what looks to be an incomprehensibly jumbled net 200 feet away to the other side of the cove.  To my amazement, they are able to  stretch the net out with little to no tangles; it was perfectly laid out to unfold nicely.  The net is a mesh of super thin mono filament or nylon, extremely hard for fish to see.  A fish hits it and will quickly become tangled.It also has floats along one edge and weights on another to form a wall of net.  It ends up being about 80 feet long and once it is stretched out, they motion for us to begin walking towards it.  Mike has said that he has seen this and that we should grab sticks and bang the water.  So Matt and I go looking for something to hit the water with.  We then proceed to wade through the water towards the net slapping the water with sticks in an apparent effort to scare the fish and corral them towards the net.  Three white guys walking through the water banging on the surface with tiny sticks.  It must have looked side-splittingly funny.  I felt ridiculous.  Matt later said the same.

Once we have arrived at the net, Martin and Ken start checking the net for fish and throwing ones that were caught onto the bank next to us.  Matt spots one in the net.  We’ve caught four fish!  One large parrot fish is the big prize.  Back to shore, we begin to scale them.  Ken and Martin tell us that all of the fish are ours; we can’t thank them enough.  More people in a seemingly unending string of wonderfully nice local people.  Willing to share their generosity, kindness, and skills with foreigners.  You just have to reach out a little and show you are open to it.

At the boat, Mike shows us how to clean and gut the fish, and says that since these are our first fish that we’ve done that to, we have to have a piece of sashimi from the parrot fish, right then and there.  It was excellent.  We then work up a poisson cru, a popular Polynesian dish where the fish is steeped in lime juice.  Like ceviche, this kind of ‘cold cooks’ the fish.  We then cut up some late development coconuts to get at some of the coconut meat.  You are supposed to grate the coconut meat, then put the shavings into a cheese cloth and squeeze.  Out comes a delicious milky substance.  Add that and some cucumber and onion to the fish.  Poisson cru.  We started with a cheese grater for the coconut.  Matt upgraded us to a power drill with a sanding bit.  That was fun.

That led to dinner, another game of Carcassone, and the day was done.  Thanks to Ken for showing me a great day!

(concerning events: June 17th)

The alarm sounds at 6 am.  Despite being in a deep sleep, I quickly lash out an arm, flopping it around searching for how to turn it off.  Matt and Karen will not be up for another two or three hours and I don’t want to disturb them.  Last night, I told them I was getting up early to watch the sunrise.  They scoffed and said I would get over that soon.  (Three weeks later, I am still getting up at 6 am almost every day to watch the sunrise. I don’t even need the alarm anymore.)

Up on deck, I quietly watch the sunrise.  While not the most spectacular I’ve seen, that wasn’t the point.  I envision maximizing each day, enjoying all that I can and seeing every moment of beauty.  This is the fantasy, and for the first day, at least, I’m going to make it happen.

I then find the dry bag and swimming goggles.  I put socks, shoes, and a shirt in the bag and roll it up, hoping it works; Matt voiced skepticism the night before.  I don the goggles and gingerly ease myself into the water, not because it is cold but because Matt and Karen might stir from a loud splash.  They have adapted to wake at any unusual sound, in case it might indicate something is wrong.  They have not had to deal with the morning sounds of a third person on the boat in over four months, much less a cannonball off the deck into the water.

The shore is only 200 yards away and I reach it quickly.  The one road is a mere 10 feet away.  Walking towards town on the one road of this section of the atoll, I wave at some locals driving by.  I walk past the school, the one room hospital, an advertisement for a chiropractic session.  An aged basketball hoop appears;  I wish there was a game going that I could have joined.  I wonder how often the hoop gets used? Who installed it?

Turning left of the main road I walk for 400 yards and find the ocean.  As Matt had promised, there are no wide, long white sandy beaches; the lagoon side of the atoll also lacked this traditional association with tropical paradise. The atolls have only small pieces of coral forming the shores.  After a stint along the ocean, with some pausing to soak in the beauty and awe of the atoll and the beauty and awe of the circumstances of chance and fortitude that brought me here, I walk back to the main road.  My distance along the ocean has brought me to the opposite end of town and so I begin the short walk back.  I find the a tiny grocery store.  The next day, I’ll swim to shore, retrieve a baguette, and swim back, baguette in dry bag.  Today finds me with no money.

Back to the boat, Matt and Karen are stirring.  After breakfast, we take the dinghy to shore, head to the one tiny grocery store to buy a few things.  We then visit a storefront for a pearl farm operation.  Through Matt and  Karen’s French, I inquire about a specific pearl farm I had read.  At one specific place, Havaraki Pearls, you can dive for your own oyster, retrieve it, and then crack it open and keep whatever pearl you find.  Sometimes, it’s an ok pearl, sometimes as the owner of Havarki explained later, sometimes though rarely, someone will find a pearl worth a few hundred dollars.  I may or may not have paid for the fun of getting my own oyster and leaving to chance what type of pearl I might find in it.

The exact second we walked up to Havarki Pearls they were beginning an explanation of pearl farming, complete with cracking open some shells and showing us how you seed an oyster, how to transplant pearls from one oyster to another, how to remove the pearl, and what part of the oyster is still edible.  We watched as the proprietor used tools one might find in a dentist office: tiny little mirrors, tiny little scrapers.  It was clearly micro-surgery to properly transplant and farm the oysters!

After the demonstration, it was about noon.  We decided that some drinks were in order.  Havarki pearls has a pension, which is a family-run place to stay, maybe a dozen individual thatch huts.  A beautiful open air restaurant and bar.  The bar: always open.   Awesome.  After drinks, it’s back to the boat and more catching up with Matt and Karen.  Matt and I discussed the tiny font, three column fully covered 8.5×11 page of paper listing all the work that should still be done to the boat.  It used to be Matt’s list.  Now it’s my list and I’m looking forward to tackling it, but it is laughingly long!

Day one done.  Day two, day three, day one thousand, they are waiting.

. . . a naked girl floating in a crystal clear lagoon with no other humans within 50 miles!

POST DATED

(written 6/12)

We entered the lagoon at Tahanea without incident; like Makemo, we experienced about a 2knot flood which zipped us right through the narrow pass.  When we arrived there was one other boat a half-mile distant; they left later that afternoon, leaving us with another lagoon all to ourselves.  And again, it was glorious.  The water was crystal clear–we could see the bottom to at least 200 feet.

The next day we dinghied over to another pass that was narrowed by reefs on either side, and we snorkeled alongside the dinghy, drifting with the current pulling us back into the lagoon.  It was acres of aquarium, perfectly clear, colorful fish of all sorts that I can’t identify.

We had two days of perfect calm, where the water went glassy; each night the stars were clearly reflected in the surface of the water.  We were the only ones anywhere.  We took the dinghy into the middle of the lagoon to watch the sunset, everything was perfectly still.  A bold little 4ft shark circled the dinghy as if he was going to do something about it.  I cannot give words for the quality of the sunset that evening.  We slept in the cockpit, woke to the sun warming us, jumped right into the water to cool off.

POST DATED

(written 6/10)

After a frustrating passage from Fatu Hiva, Karen and I shot the pass to enter the lagoon at Makemo Atoll, and found that we had it all to ourselves.  Zero people, zero buildings, zero man-made anything.  We anchored in crystal clear water–the bottom was easily visible at 60 feet–just off a white sand beach lined with palm trees.  For the next three days we snorkeled over gorgeous coral and fish and explored our own deserted island.  It was spectacular–a first in a lifetime experience for me.  This is what we were looking for, this is what we needed.

Regarding atolls: an atoll is a ring of coral with a lagoon in the center.  Sometimes the ring is an unbroken strip of land around the lagoon, but more often it is a mixture of little islands and barely submerged coral reefs.  There are usually only one or two passes into the lagoon (and sometimes none at all).  As the tides rise and fall, all the water in the lagoon tries to enter and exit through these passes, creating at times ridiculously powerful currents.  I have read reports of 20 knot ebb currents in some passes.  As the current in the pass encounters the ocean swell outside, crazy stuff can happen (think white water rafting on the ocean).  Adding to the danger, the passes are often very narrow; the entrance to Makemo was only 85 yards wide–that sure doesn’t feel like much as you’re being carried along in a fast-moving river of current.  And further compounding the peril, coral heads and reefs lie just below the surface, sprinkled throughout the passes and the lagoons like booby traps specially designed for sinking boats.

So shooting a pass into a lagoon is an exciting experience.  You attempt to time it to enter during slack current (the point at which the current is neither flooding nor ebbing, but switching directions), but there is insufficient information available to do this accurately–you never know what current you’re going to find.  As you shoot through the pass you’re carefully following gps waypoints to make a left turn here and a right turn there to avoid unseen mortal peril.  While doing this, strange eddy currents sent straight from hell are trying to spin the boat various directions.  Exciting!

In truth, though it can be terribly dangerous, we haven’t had any close calls with the three passes we’ve done so far.  We have seen 3 knot currents max, and an impressive tongue of white water as we were exiting Makemo, but it all just added to the adventure.

It was also our first experience with anchoring among large coral heads.  Some anchorages in the atolls have mostly sand and little mounds of coral; other spots, like the very first one we encountered on Makemo, have large 8ft tall stacks of coral to wrap the chain around.  In the pictures you can clearly our chain nicely snaked around (the depth is 50 feet in these shots).  It’s good and bad–good because with your chain all tangled up there’s no way you’re going to drag anchor when the wind picks up–bad because it can be a real bitch when you go to retrieve your anchor.  It was fortunate that we had such great visibility; as we weighed anchor karen snorkeled off the bow, examining how the chain was tangled and directing me how to steer to unwrap us.  Combine mediocre visibility with a coral head minefield and it would be easy to lose your anchor somewhere in these atolls.  Neither of us know how to dive–this would be a really good skill to have in places like this, if only to save a $500 anchor!

We had the place to ourselves, we kicked back.  We jumped in whenever we got hot.  We wandered on the abandoned island, finding only crabs and coconuts.  The shallow water at the beach was filled with fish and foot-long reef sharks.  It was quiet, calm, empty.

This is what it’s about, this is seriously fantastic.

POST DATED

(written 6/6)

We’re back in the middle of the ocean, on a five day passage between the Marquesas and the Tuamotus.  For the past 24 hours we’ve been sailing “dead down wind” and rolling from left to right in an unceasing pendulum of torture.  Thirty degrees to port, thirty degrees to starboard, tick . . . tock . . . tick . . . tock . . .  It’s never-ending, and it’s very unpleasant.  I’ve tried every trick to mitigate it; it is a result of very light wind and a following sea, and I have conceded that, short of turning around and going in the wrong direction, the torturous motion must be endured.

On the upside, there is a really beautiful sunset.

Below is a picture of us rolling to port, then rolling to starboard; imagine constantly alternating between those two positions.

POSTDATED

(written 6/4)

Our passage from our tranquil little secluded bay on Tahuata was eventful: we were smashed by a sudden squall in the middle of the night with no warning.  In under a minute the wind went from 15 to somewhere between 30 and 40, with driving rain.  I was asleep when it hit (I’m learning how to wake up very rapidly).  We already had two reefs in the main, but the full jib was out.  The wind was so strong I was unable to furl the jib–first time that’s ever happened.  The jib was flogging hard and I still couldn’t furl it in, and I was scared that it was going to tear itself to pieces.  It was dark, things were crazy, my adrenaline was definitely up.  I turned the boat downwind to fill the jib–immediately we were plowing through the ocean at 10 knots.  With the jib blanketed behind the main going downwind I was finally able to furl it up.  Somehow during the commotion I had managed to tear a big flapper of skin off my middle finger too.  We spent the next few hours under double-reefed main, waiting out the squall.

We arrived at the Bay of Virgins, Fatu Hiva, at first light, to discover that it was a small anchorage, heavily crowded with boats.    Moreover, the wind was blowing a steady 20knots, with gusts over 30, and raining hard.  It was a challenging anchoring situation.  There was very little room to maneuver, and sudden gusts made it difficult to go in the desired direction.  It took a few tries: first time I misjudged the placement and we ended up coming to rest too close to another boat for comfort; the second time it seemed that we were dragging though it was hard to tell; the third time it held well and we came to rest exactly in the middle of the biggest remaining space available.  (insert expression of fatigue and sigh of relief)

The Bay of Virgins is lauded as one of the most beautiful anchorages in all the south pacific–I thought it was quite nice.  It is set apart from other spots in the Marquesas by having the most impressive relief: both the anchorage and the small town are surrounded by vertical and overhanging rock formations.  The entire western side of the island has vertical cliffs rising out of the ocean, and crescent shaped knife-blade ridge of mountains through the center of the island is as steep as any I’ve seen.

It was windy as hell and rained hard, on and off, for most of the four days we were there.  We dinghied in to check out the town, also looking for a phone.  We needed to get a message to jon somehow, telling him where and when to meet us in the Tuamotus.  We ended up hiking 10 miles up and over the mountains to the only other town on the island, to purchase a phone card.  We left a message on jon’s voicemail “meet us on Fakarava, we’ll be there June 14 plus or minus 5 days”.  Mission accomplished.  At the end of the day we managed to catch a ride back to our anchorage in a little aluminum boat with a local (we were not excited to walk another 10 miles back).

It continues to be windy rainy and gusty; we hole up down below and enjoy it.

POST DATED

(written 5/25)

It gets better and better.  We departed Hanamenu Bay on Hiva Oa around noon today, and it only took a few hours to reach our next destination: Hanamoenoa Bay on Tahuata.  Yeah get those names, right?  Not only are the pronunciations impossible, but every place has a name nearly identical to the one you just departed (we are constantly confounded).

Anyway, after looking like a bunch of anchoring idiots for an hour–we managed to drop it onto some rock and it kept dragging on us–we settled in to a beautiful spot.  The water is turquoise colored and crazy clear, and the beach is pretty white sand fronted by palms.  There are only three other boats nearby, so we may just wander around naked anyway.  Perhaps I will make a general announcement on channel 16: “if anyone in this anchorage would be offended by the sight of naked hotties, please respond with your boat name now.”  Nude or clothed, I suspect that this may be our favorite spot so far.

This morning, in the previous bay, we made a number of trips to the beautiful spring (mentioned in the prior post) to fill up our water jugs and deliver them to our tanks.  As we were dinghy-ing back to our boat the final time, some locals were returning to the beach in their own dinghy.  They waved us over, and as we pulled up they whipped out a big bloody goat leg and handed it over to us–apparently they had spent the morning hunting goat in the hills (successfully).  We expressed our sincerest appreciation, and I was appropriately amused by the sight of karen wielding our bloody leg as we bounced and splashed our way back to the mothership (see bloody goat leg below).

So now we’re listening to some thelonius monk while karen butchers our goat leg prior to marination, while I am preparing the bbq and writing this brief post.  It will be bbq goat leg for us tonight, which will be a first so far as I can remember at least, so I sure hope it turns out to be tasty . . .

——————–
next day:

1) I climbed the cliff along the side of the bay and jumped in the water.

2) Just before dinner we noticed a disturbance on the water.  We dinghied over to investigate with our masks and got to swim with a giant manta ray–at least 8 feet across.  Those things are like aliens, man!  But cool aliens.

POST DATED

(written 5/24)

I am very fond of this quaint little anchorage.  We arrived mid-morning yesterday after an overnight passage (~30 hours) from Nuku Hiva, beating upwind the entire way.  Fortunately the seas were relatively calm for us, so the upwind work was bearable.

We pulled into the anchorage to find one other boat, Magenta.  Kim and Larry on Magenta waved us off the dock when we departed Mexico, and we were in touch with them on the radio as we crossed the ocean, so it was a treat to meet up with them unexpectedly.

It is plenty windy in this anchorage, which is keeping the boat cool and ventilated and topping off our batteries at the same time.  There are goats somewhere on the hillsides–we hear them occasionally but have been unable to spot any.  We slept out in the cockpit last night under the stars, with a pleasant breeze.  The next day we dinghied to the beach to find the crystal clear spring-fed swimming hole reported by others.  By god this pool was wonderful.  The chilly water was gratifyingly refreshing, and the pool was surrounded with green plants and flowers and grass and mint, which went right into the iced tea.

We have multiple independent reports confirming that our next bay, Hanamoenoa on Tahuata, has crystal clear water where manta rays will swim with you, and empty white sand beaches.  This spot is nice, but we’re excited about the next one, so tomorrow we plan on filling up our watertanks with the spring water and then heading off.

POST DATED

(Written on 5/22)

Nuku Hiva provided a nice sheltered anchorage for us to recuperate from 25 days at sea.  I can’t say that it’s the sort of paradise that I’ve been dreaming about: Taiohae bay, where we sat around for a few weeks (with the brief excursion to Hakatea in the middle) has rocky black beaches and cloudy opaque brown water.  Now you know we’re all thinking of perfectly clear turquoise water and white sand beaches, and we also know the south pacific has such places (bring it on).  The town was small, not tiny.  It had one restaurant (serving pizza for the white peeps), one resorty-type hotel, two small grocery stores, a basic hardware store, a few trinket shops, a large school, a church, and two food trucks that would park along the waterfront (which served an excellent burger).  The french have fully modernized this place; everything is clean and current.  It’s really hard to believe the last reported case of cannibalism was only 80 years ago!  Everyone drives pickups or suvs, the grocery stores have all the usual products (just smaller selection).  There are plenty of cell phones and satellite dishes.  The most exotic aspect of the place is how many chickens, hens, horses, and dogs everyone seems to have on their properties.  But aside from the animals running around it feels like it could be a town somewhere in europe, populated with dark-skinned marquesans of course.  Granted, this town of Taiohae is the largest in the Marquesas, and the administrative center, so it is unlikely that the other bays and islands are as familiar-feeling as this place is.

Neither is it as tropical as I expected.  Supposedly some of the more southern islands we will visit are closer to the rainforest jungle feel that I had imagined.  On Nuku Hiva there is a mix of low scrub and palm tree forest; some hillsides are covered with palm trees, others look not unlike the side of a mountain in utah with scraggly brush struggling to find moisture.

The terrain is pretty impressive–although the island is small, the hills are steep, and it looks like you could have some really exciting times negotiating the dirt roads that go over the mountains during the muddy season.

Yeah but now let’s talk about how I got a tattoo.  I have been talking about getting one for years; multiple times I’ve tried to come up with my own design, but a) there never seemed to be sufficient meaning to it and b) my designs looked stupid.   Now that I’ve crossed the pacific ocean, I felt that a Marquesan tattoo would be extremely meaningful and relevant.  Brice is a marquesan who studied his tattooing craft in france, and it seemed like everyone was visiting him to get their tattoos.  His tattoos are a modern take on the traditional marquesan symbols, and I was impressed with all the tattoos he had done for other cruisers.

The traditional marquesas tattoos are very geometric and symmetric, consisting of dozens or hundreds of smaller symbol elements.  The smaller elements are built up in geometric blocks and rows and columns (more or less) to build the tattoo.  It requires a big area to get the full effect of an old-school marquesan tattoo–the negative space is as important as the actual inked areas, and ideally there are no edges.  The Marquesan warriors would have entire limbs covered, often their entire body (including the face).  You can count me out of the whole body option . . .

ironic that despite the years of thinking about what tattoo I wanted, when it came down to it I ended up being impulsive and spontaneous about it.  I felt strangely willing to give him free rein and see how it turned out.  Formerly, the design of the tattoo had clearly been in the detailed and anal part of my personality, and somehow it ended up in the impulsive, leap-before-looking part of me.  Perhaps the recklessly impulsive element is a necessary condition for obtaining a tattoo–how many people do you know that plan every last detail of their tattoo design and still end up with one?  It doesn’t do to think about it too much, if you actually want to end up with a tattoo.  Another factor was that Brice speaks no english and I lack the vocabulary in french to talk about anything as complicated as designing a tattoo, so I couldn’t really communicate anything to him anyway.  In the end, I just wanted something that looked great–it was enough meaning for me that I would end up with a Marquesas tattoo after crossing an ocean.  So I pointed at some pictures, made some miming gestures, and submitted my shoulder to an act of chance.

So how did it turn out?  Well it’s pretty bad-ass, if I do say so.  Brice used the individual symbols that comprise the traditional designs, incorporating them into a more flowing, dynamic container, rather than the straight-edged blockiness of the ancient style.  A scary looking tiki dominates the center, with a spiral of traditional marquesan symbols around the outside.  Among others, he used the symbols for waves, sky, the “marquesan symbol”, the “warrior symbol”, love and sex, me and karen.  And I got some spiky-things as an added bonus.  Karen ended up getting one also–a small one on her back, much more elegant and feminine than mine 🙂

So we’ve wrapped up with Nuku HIva.  All in all, it was wonderful to be sitting at anchor being lazy for a few weeks, not getting tossed around out in the ocean, but we’re eager to visit the more exotic and exciting islands down the road.  Moving on!

There are some seriously strange plants and animals here.

In the states, I feel perfectly comfortable out in the woods–I feel no fear of what I will encounter, I stride purposefully and confidently through our wilderness.  Until now, I hadn’t realized that the primary reason for that confidence is my familiarity with all of the plants and animals out there.

Embarrassingly, I find that I am uncomfortable in these woods.  To start with, they aren’t even woods–it’s clearly a sort of jungle, though far drier than your stereotypical jungle.  There are fruit trees everywhere: coconut, papaya, mango, pamplemoouse, pistach, noni, banana, and many others for which I have no translation.  This is a land of plenty: you could survive off of the fruit hanging from trees alone, not even considering the abundance of sea life.  We have almost none of these trees at home, and they have none of our trees.  So I’m walking through a strange jungle, that’s cool, I can dig it.

The creatures are another thing.

We sailed over to Hakatea Bay, the bay next door, for a four-day excursion with our friends Mike and Hyo from the boat Io.  Mike is a marine biologist, so he’s a good one to have around when you’re getting spooked by the local floral and fauna.

Hakatea bay has no town, no road to reach it, and only a few rough huts spread out along the beach.  As we dinghied to the beach, getting ready to jump out into the water to drag the dinghy in through the surf, Mike informed us to “watch out for” the many black-tipped reef sharks that hung out right up in the surf.  Sharks?  His nonchalant statement implied a lack of danger, and in this case, “watch out for” was meant as “look for them because they’re very cool to catch a glimpse of.”  These black-tipped reef sharks were about a foot long, and didn’t seem overly interested in ankles, so they went onto the list of ‘not so dangerous’ (as long as they come in the mini variety, at least).

As soon as we rolled up onto the beach, we noticed the crabs.  They were all over, but that turned out to be just the advance party.  We wandered a little ways into the jungle on the edge of the beach in search of coconuts, and discovered crabland.  The ground was covered with dirt and palm fronds, and the crabs had dug enormous holes and networks of tunnels, pockmarking the entire area.  The crabs were about the size of a large outstretched hand, with a large right claw and small left one, two beady eyes sticking up on little wiggly eyestalks, and a translucent white shell.  They could run very fast in a sideways direction–as fast as you can jog.  And there were thousands of them, everywhere, making a creepy collective clicking noise as their crabby body parts click together.  As you stepped over palm fronds and downed logs and what not you had to be careful not to step on them, and if you got too close they would dart out on a sideways run, or else wave their pincher.  Lift up a big frond and there will be twenty of them crabbing away, wiggling their little beady eyestalks at you.  The question again: are these things dangerous?  Well, no, not really, you can just reach down and pick them up if you’re fast enough.  Be careful not to get pinched by that big claw, but that’s easy to avoid.  But man did they creep me out.

My final experience with them was particularly unnerving.  Mike and I dinghied in to the beach in the dark that night in an attempt to nab some lobster that he had seen earlier.  On our way in Mike tells me to “watch out for” both needlefish and stingrays, and this time it wasn’t just for a cool sight.  Apparently needlefish are attracted to flashlights and have a sufficiently pointy sharp snout as to impale you, and Mike had seen some on our way to shore.  And the stingrays, well to be honest I don’t even know where they are or how they’re bad for you, whether they cut or poison or what, and right there you see that it’s the unknown that is fearful.  So we’re jumping out in the surf on this moonless night and I’m thinking “how can I avoid this stuff when I don’t even know where it is going to be lurking or what it will do?”

We drag the dinghy up onto the beach and then he shines the light on a shallow pool of water, and there’s a sight that I don’t expect to ever see again, which is a vast carpet of thousands upon thousands of those crabs, covering the entire clearing, all clicking in that particularly creepy way, so dense that they were crawling on top of each other.  It could have been a scene from a horror movie, if you just threw someone onto that carpet of crabs and watched them devour the body–of course in actuality they would all just run away, but boy oh boy was it a creepy sight.  The sound was the clincher, all that evil little clattering of carapaces as they scurried around the bend en masse.  Just creepy as all hell.

The next day we all hiked two hours into the jungle along a well-travelled path to the base of a large waterfall.  The cascade is currently only a trickle, owing to an extended dry spell, but there was a freshwater pool at the base of these impressive precipitous cliff walls.  It looked refreshing, until Mike pointed out the little crayfish jobbies.  They ringed the shallows of the pool, waiting for something to pinch on.  They happily swam up to pinch ankles, whatever you put in there.  That made hanging out in the pool mildly unattractive.  And then the eels showed up.  Big-ass freshwater eels, four feet long and four inches in diameter, with a disgusting little face up front, with their large mouth held partially open.  As you splash the surface of the water they come closer, curious to see if they can eat the source of the splashing.  Neither the crayfish nor the eel seemed to be afraid of us–they seemed rather willing to take a test nibble of whatever, before buggering off.

I do not consider myself easily spooked, freaked out, or scared.  But these new water creatures have been beyond my understanding and I admit that I am made uncomfortable by it.  I don’t know what the dangers are, is the thing.  I don’t know what I can and can’t do.  If I stick my hand in the water, is the eel going to dart away or is he going to swim up and take a bite?

I realize that the confidence and utter lack of fear that I feel in the united states is largely a result of my familiarity with the environment.  Being in this foreign land of strange new creatures, and feeling weirded out by them, is humbling.

It does make things exciting.  Like being in an Indiana Jones movie with snakes and booby traps and poisonous things.  I just have to sack up and pet the eels, so to speak.

It will take us about a month to cross the ocean to French Polynesia, and reputedly everything is so expensive that you don’t want to buy anything even when you arrive.  As a result, we are attempting to pack enough supplies into the boat to last us for a few months.

Karen and I have different priorities when it comes to provisioning.  You can read her blog post for her view on the matter.  Here is my view on the matter:

This motherlode of beverages was purchased from the generous drinklink contributions of just two individuals: Karl Petzke–a san francisco-based photographer friend of mine (former jefe of mine, before I ran away from work), and Philip R from Karen’s family (the two individuals are not connected; we pooled their drink donations for this monster purchase).  I cannot explain how absolutely CRUCIAL this purchase will be to the success of this trip–my thirst is insatiable–especially in this heat–it cannot be emphasized enough!  Seriously though, a big thanks to both Karl and Philip–though far away from home, we’re feeling the love and support.

After Jon departed, Karen and I spent another day or two (can’t remember) at Tenacatita before heading back towards La Cruz.  We decided to stop off at an island named Isla Pasavera just offshore from Chamela to celebrate our birthday by doing some snorkeling, cooking up some good food, and drinking some cold drinks.

The snorkeling was unexciting, but it was great to be swimming in warm water.  I made some delicious iced lattes and we sat around on the deck sunbathing in our birthday suits.  It’s wonderful to expose those parts to fresh air!