Syzygy Sailing

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.

POSTDATED

(written 5/27)

The guidebooks say to beware of getting bitten up by “nono” bugs on some of these beaches.  The guidebook for this anchorage states “The clear water provides excellent diving and shelling although the beach has many nonos.”  These nonos were a frequent topic of conversation among some of the puddle-jumpers before reaching the Marquesas–people were choosing or avoiding a destination based on whether nonos were reported to be present.  I was dismissively skeptical.  Inside my brain, I laughed at them for being sheltered little white babies afraid of bugs.  I pictured these types as the same ones who won’t go outside because of mosquitoes, or the ones who hike with one of those dorky hot uncomfortable mosquito-netting face bubbles because they don’t want a single bug bite.  Bugs were not going to dissuade me from visiting a place, let me tell you what.  Please, people, are we going to cross an ocean and then be afraid of getting a few bug bites?  

My arrogance on this matter is being revisited on me ten-fold.  Karen and I visited the beach both yesterday and the day before yesterday, and although we were unaware of it, apparently we encountered nonos.  Millions of them, potentially.  Last night hundreds, perhaps thousands of bites materialized across our backs and arms and legs, little red welts that itch furiously.  My back looks like some sort of chickenpox redux.  I am desperate to itch; it is difficult to concentrate on anything with the itch distraction;  I am barely containing the urge to scratch my entire back right off.  

These nonos are legit, my friend.  They are little ninja biters, is what they are.  You can’t see them, you don’t know when they’re attacking you, you don’t know when to run, you’ll just sit there getting eaten up, oblivious to the danger.  Invisible flying minions of the devil.  I felt nothing.  Then at night I have a bite-ridden body.  How do you avoid them when you can’t see them or feel them?  Henceforth, I will go to the beach defensively armored for battle.  T-shirt and shorts minimum, with a prophylactic misting of deet juice.

It makes me think: surely one must develop an immunity to these bugs over time.  If I was a native living on this beach, it would only take a week worth of this hellish itching before I got my ass out of here.  It would be unbearable to live on this beach permanently if it meant always being a pincushion of itchy welts.  I was only exposed for an hour or so–hell if you were out there all the time it would be an ugly sight.  So maybe after a while the bites don’t raise itchy welts–that would make sense to me.  But if there’s no immunity to develop, how the hell did the original Marquesans live on these beaches?  A) they didn’t live directly on the beach B) one develops immunity over time C) they got bitten and ignored it because they are 2 orders of magnitude tougher than me.  Now, no doubt they were tougher than me, so the answer could be C, but I’ll bet you three pamplemousse that the answer is B.  Smarties out there, can you enlighten?

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!

a quick note to tell everyone that karen and I just arrived in Fakarava an hour ago–this is the first time we have had internet access since departing Nuku Hiva on the 22 of May.  Since then, we have visited five other remote islands: Hiva Oa, Tahuata, Fatu Hiva, Makemo, and Tahanea, and we both have a number of blog posts already written that will be added in the next few days.

Everything is going really well.

Two weeks ago on Fatu Hiva we hiked 10 miles to purchase a phone card to call jon to leave a message on his voice mail telling him to meet us on Fakarava on the 14th of june–plus or minus 5 days.  Well we’re in the anchorage and haven’t been to land yet or talked to anyone or even been able to receive email, but according to Jon’s last two posts he may still be in tahiti, or here, or on his way here, so all looks well.

jon if you read this we are towards the north side of the anchorage, one boat to the north of the large dark-hulled megayacht

all stories to follow

This must start with Jerome, who while not Tahitian, still must top the list of kindness that I have encountered here.  Jerome is a couch-surfer.  Or more to the point he has couch-surfed before and now, being in the land of Paradise, hosts other couch-surfers.  I found him on couchsurfing.org, which I signed up on two days before my flight to Tahiti.  He, and another couple both replied nearly immediately that I was more than welcome to stay at their place for a few days.

What an incredible resource!  For all those travelers out there who say that want a more intimate experience, more contact and connection with locals, more exchange of culture, more of an insider’s view into some new place,  I can’t think of a better way than by staying with someone who actually lives there.  The experience seems so much different than staying in a hostel with other travelers.  And while that also provide its own benefits, mainly an excited sense of immediacy to do as many things as possible now, I feel like you just can’t beat a local’s perspective and knowledge of the area.

He has taken me to the beach, which interestingly enough, there are not that many of in Tahiti.  The postcard beaches are mainly reserved for other islands.  He provided me with snorkeling gear to use there, and my first time snorkeling in over a decade was fantastic.  He didn’t join in because it was overcast and 80 degrees, instead of the usual sunny and 85 degrees.  I told him he was spoiled and jaded.

Jerome owns his own jet-ski and so despite another day of overcast weather, I think he sensed my excitement to go and so three of us went ripping out over the lagoon and into the ocean.  It was in the ocean where it was truly fun, as Jerome piloted us over waves, jumping into the air and crashing down, more than once nearly knocking me off.  And then on our return to his place he topped 80 km/hour, skimming the flat lagoon and plowing into the light drizzle that had started.  Yes, even in paradise it rains.  In fact it has rained every day I’ve been here.

So thank you Jerome, for a great start to my trip.

At the market yesterday, I wanted to buy some breakfast and eyed some bananas.  I asked how much for two of them.  Apparently however, you are supposed to buy them in bunches of 6 or 7 and I wasn’t up for that much banana.  I smiled sheepishly as I tried to communicate, a poor attempt I’m sure as I know about two dozen words in French and no Tahitian.  The young, pretty, Tahitian smiled back, and she waved that I could simply have them.  Free breakfast!  Thank you Tahiti.

At a pier-side cafe, watching World Cup Soccer, a few Tahitians struck up a conversation with me.  Luckily they spoke English and we chatted about soccer, the weather (we had all escaped from the downpour that was deluging us) and Tahitian life.  They asked many questions about my trip and I tried my best to make myself understood.  It would be very nice to know how to speak French.  

They also told me, much to my chagrin, that the cargo ship I am taking today may or may not be leaving.  Apparently there is a strike going on with the fireman and some dockworkers.  I knew this, actually, as when my plane was above Tahiti they came on the intercom and said they were trying to negotiate a landing for us.  Negotiate a landing for us!?!? Not exactly what one wants to hear when circling your destination.

A short time later, my bill for my coffee disappeared, and in it’s place was another one, again with no bill.  Timmy and Joe had picked up my coffees and were now offering me donut-like rolls, insisting I take not just one but three or four.  I had to accept.  A couple of minutes later, I asked them how to eat some strange small fruit I had bought a couple dozen of from the market.  They laughed when I motioned in question as to whether or not I could bite into it.  No, no, you must tear it open and the fruit was inside.  They kindly turned me down when I offered them some, happy to simply give and not receive.  Tahitian kindness. Thank you Tahiti!

For the last three days, I’ve slept in a bed (incidentally a step up from the floor that I’ve been using for the last four months) and   when I wake up, I shower and then have coffee made in a kitchen with a fridge where I pull out some Gaia apples from New Zealand.  I choose those over the California varietals.  It just wouldn’t have seemed right.

I’ve gone into town and been able to buy generally whatever I want.  There is a grocery store two blocks away.  Walking to town, I pass a Porsche dealership, an auto-supply store, and a Fed Ex.  I know where the ACE hardware store is.  The drum of traffic is ever present as cars race by, and the hint of pollution hangs in the air.  The air overhead buzzes with planes.

The TV is on in front of me.  It’s a flat screen.  The computer next to it is constantly hooked up to the internet and so I have non-stop access to email.

This morning, I watched World Cup soccer in a restaurant while drinking a European style coffee with a thoroughly American style Starbucks price.  I played poker until 1 am two nights ago.  I lost.  Badly.

Some things, it seems, never change no matter where you are in the world.

I am not however, in Denver despite how similar all of the above experience might seem to the humdrum of my previous life.  I am in Papeete, Tahiti.

Tahiti is geographically almost as far from Denver as possible.  Likewise, my life now is nearly as far away as can be imagined from about a year ago.  The last year has been an incredible roller coaster.  I have been assailed with many difficult situations, happiness, depression, intense disappointment, renewed appreciation, lost relationships, and much to my delight a resurrection of another one I had long thought dormant or gone. Like a roller coaster ride pulling back into the station, My life has come full circle and I am once again about to join this sailing adventure we started planning now five years ago.  Six months, a year, two years, forever…. My mom I’m sure does not want to hear the latter, and to assuage her trepidation, I can’t imagine it either.

The year long roller coaster ride, however, had its affect, its ride while intense, has been emotionally exhausting, taxing.  Lately I have become nearly singularly focused on the transition from one ride to another, from one chapter of my life to another.  I’ve spaced out in conversations with friends, lost in reflection on the past year, and truthfully in moderate disbelief of what the next year might hold.  I am fond of saying right now that I am as happy as I have ever been, and what I have rediscovered in the last month has contributed to fairly well cementing that to be true.

I have not emerged unaffected, however from the year long roller coaster ride.  I told my dad I no longer have the feeling of unencumbered happiness.  He liked that phrase.  It is something between guilt, which is a terrible word to describe it, and quiet reflective pensiveness and appreciation of how my reality has settled and I have thus landed in Tahiti.  When you look at a baby or young child you can see that unencumbered happiness.  Bliss.  Now my happiness, while great, is more quiet, silently acknowledging that much happened which was out of my control to bring my here.  I suppose I am trying to respect that for the first time in my life, true sadness played a role in my being where I am in life, and that deserves acknowledgment from me.

After three days in Papeete, today I begin to travel to Fakarava.  In the Tuomotu’s internet connection is effectively non-existent, and so I am jealous of boats like Io who are able to update their blogs from their boat. Trust that I am writing frequently and prolifically, but updates may be slow in coming until we return to Tahiti, about a month from now I believe.  Now I must go catch a cargo ship!