The Beat of a Different Drum

We pull into Hanavave Bay*, Fatu Hiva after a long afternoon of sailing. The jagged mountains and deep valleys of the Marquises Islands have made for gusty, shifty winds and trying sailing conditions. We long ago stop depending on the engine to get us to our destination and struggled to tack into the winds funneling out of the bay.  Cautiously we approach the anchorage, our depth sounder, newly installed in Panama City is again on the fritz; seems like we may never shake the electronics gremlins onboard.  The anchorage if fairly busy and as we pass a German flagged boat he advises us to head in as far as possible, the whole bay is very deep, he is anchored in 30-35M. We motor past and find spot close to the sheer cliff on the port side of the bay.   At Steve’s signal I pay out the chain.  I am not too worried about not having a depth sounder; I got pretty good at seeing the slight hesitation in the chain when the anchor hits the bottom while in Mexico, when our original depth sounder stopped working. But this afternoon it is either too deep, I am paying out the chain too fast or am just not paying attention; the chain just seems to scream off the windlass.  I lock off the gypsy at 50M and we wait.  Seems like we are dug in, but without a true depth reading I am hesitant.   I head back to the cockpit to grab the back up depth sounder; a lead weight on the end of a marked spooled line, something so simple that it will never fail or break on us. Back on the bow I toss it over and all 18M wind off without a pause, we are deep.  I attach the lead line to a hand fishing line and toss it over again. The line slackens at 25M; we have to start getting use to these deep South Pacific anchorages.  I pay out all 80M of chain and we hang sharply into the wind.  After a few hours of sitting in the cockpit and watching the boat ride safely in 25kts gusts we decide we are firmly anchored, we feel confident now to go below and start on dinner.

The next morning we are back to boat business as usual; trouble shooting the depth sounder problem and doing interior clean and maintenance.  All morning I can’t help but hear the rhythmic thumping coming from shore; it is vibrating though the hull and ricocheting off the surrounding hills. It buzzes in my ears and I can feel it in my chest. Drums. When Steve comes in suggests that we head to shore to find the source, I have one foot in the dingy even before he finishes his sentence.

Heading into the bay we motor the dingy around the rip rap breakwater that has been obscuring our view of the town. As we round the corner we are greeted by what seems like the whole community, at least 100 people, gathered on a stage like concrete pier. They are not here to greet us but to practice; it is the local dance troupe and band and we are approaching the big celebration in mid July, Heiva, that culminates in days upon days of dance competitions.  The concrete pier is the perfect setting; flat, unencumbered and the sheer 50M rock wall behind it has created a natural amphitheatre sending their music and voices out into the valley and surrounding harbour; the source of the mystery is solved.

As we pull the dingy up the concrete ramp I twist and strain to watch the performance; row upon row of men and women weaving in and out of one another, hips twisting, arms flowing, voices raised.  We walk out onto the rocky point and take a seat, our feet sloshing in the clear water.  We sit and watch the performance as the children frolic in the water and leap off the pier into the ocean.  As elegant as any ballet and visceral as any war dance the dancers move back and forth in a well practiced choreography; taunting, teasing and challenging one another as the various guitars strum a melodic song and the drums keep a primal rhythm.  I can’t take my eyes off them, not even to dig out a camera and snap a few pictures. There is a director of sorts, a Rey Rey** with a clip board shouting directions and cueing the dancers in their vocal responses.  The dances seem at once completely foreign and inherently familiar.  We are mesmerized.

A few days later, while returning from shore on a brief water and provisions run we stop to say hello to our friends on a neighbouring boat.  As it is a hot late afternoon they invite us aboard for a cool refreshing drink, of the alcohol fizzy sort.  We end up passing the afternoon comparing notes and exchanging stories. As the sun dips low on the horizon the air is again filled with the distant sounds of drums echoing through the anchorage.  Try as we may they can’t be ignored and soon we are all pilling into our dingy, roadies in hand, and once again heading ashore in search of the sound. 

As soon as we land and start to walk into the village someone stops to tell us that we should follow the shore line to find a soccer field, that’s where the dancing is being held tonight. And so barefooted we hobble down the rocky beach, across a stream and find the soccer field, full of people assembled into lines and groups once again practicing their dance.  We shyly join the on lookers, trying to get a good seat without infiltrating the local crowd too much, and enjoy round two of the community preparing for the up coming dance competition.  In the last of the days dusky light we sit entranced and watch another stunning, and yet totally different, performance. I can’t but help smile at the four year old girl on the side lines as she mimics the group “on stage”; sashaying and turning at all the right ques, it seems everyone here knows how to dance.  But what holds my attention the most is the band.  A rag tag team of musicians, young and old, they sit at the head of the field; guitars, ukuleles and drums of various heights and descriptions giving voice and rhythm to the dancers.  Drawn to their fast staccato beats without a word I get up and start towards them, their songs vibrating inside my chest. My feet carry me towards this ancient sound as if they have known it all along. Slowly I walk a little closer, than closer still until I am standing beside a young man beating a four foot high drum.  I can’t help but stare; he is almost dwarfed by his instrument but at the same time he is strong and concentrated and handsome.  Suddenly he notices me, turns and smiles without ever falling out of time. Encouraged, I move a little closer.  Then he motions to me with a tilt of his head, a nod, a slight raise of his eyebrows and flicker of his eyes.  Do I want to try?  For some reason I don’t hesitate, perhaps it was that last rum sundowner (we long ago ran out of beer),and suddenly I am stepping behind the band and in front of his drum.  He pauses and picks up the beat, showing me the rhythm and how to play this incredible drum then steps back and pulls a pack of tobacco out of his pocket to roll a cigarette.  Brazenly I bring my hands down on the taut goat skin and try to keep up with the band.  I catch the rhythm for a few bars then drop it, the tempo and cadence quite unlike anything I have played before. With a tight cigarette balanced on his lips the young man step beside me and demonstrates his skill again, then recedes, takes a haul on his smoke and motions me to try again.  I catch the tune for another few bars before losing myself in the music.  Somewhat determined I let the band play on and jump in again when I feel the timing is right only to falter again after a few bars.  I look up into the crowd of dancers and catch a woman in the front row giving me the hairy eye ball; I am obviously not helping the band.  Regardless, I give it one more try before the man stamps out his cigarette and returns to his drum. I graciously step aside, but barely out of the way, still thrilled that he gave me the opportunity to try my hand on his beautiful drum.  

The sun had long gone and as there is no electric lighting to illuminate the field the performance is over shortly.  As the band begins to pack things away I meander back over and help my drummer carry his drum inside the shed close by, trying to make conversation in broken French and admiring all the instruments.  When I return to Steve and our two friends waiting on the dewy grass beside the now empty field they are as speechless as I am elated. It is not like me to act so spontaneously, to get up and play a drum in front of a hundred strangers.  I can’t explain it; words can’t explain this incredible feeling in my chest.  As we walk back to dingy I feel like I am on air, I am beaming with a wide smile, I can’t stop talking about playing that drum. 

In the days and weeks to come we will have the chance to see more dance performances and hear lots of other bands play in the Marquises but they will pale in comparison to the night when I stood barefoot in the wet grass and lent my sound to the symphony that filled the valley in Hanavave Bay. That night, that for a short while, I was part of the community, I was just one of the band. 

I am not sure that I dance to the beat of a different drum, but I certain recommend going in search of the sound of one echoing through a distant valley, because you never know what great spectacle you might find or opportunity might a wait.

Love,

H&S

 

* Hanavave Bay , located on the western coast of the island on Fatu Hiva, is also referred in French and English as Bay of Virgins , but not due to its chaste inhabitants.   It is deep wide bay located at the mouth of a long and fertile valley that is surrounded by high lava peaks and turrets that, poetically said, “bring to mind suggestive symbols of virility”. To the regular Joe they just reach, rather phallic-like, towards the sky.  It was nicknamed by early sailors as Baie de Verges or Penis Bay . After the missionaries conquered the island they changed it to something more to there liking; Baie de Vierges or Bay of Virgins . What a difference a little letter can make!!

**Rey Rey is a difficult term to explain; partly because we haven’t completely figured it out our selves, everyone seems to have a different explanation for it.  On the surface a Rey Rey is a man who is very effeminate, although not necessarily petite. They dresses in women’s clothing and most likely has long hair and wear make up.  Sometimes in bigger cities they might have had plastic surgeries. It is said that it was started centuries ago; when families could not produce a girl child they chose one of the older boys and raised them as the girl of the family; dressing them in girls clothing and expecting them to perform the girls chores. (Various sources both confirm and deny this claim.)   However, just because they dress and act like a woman they are not gay, or transsexual or any other kind of “sexual deviant”, as many in Western culture have surmised.  In fact they are often married to women and have children. What we do know from our 8 months in French Polynesia is that they are an everyday and widely excepted part of Polynesian culture, often working up front in the public service sector. And that they, like everyone else here, are warm and friendly and kind, and expect nothing less from you.

What Do We Do Now?

During a recent phone call home my Mother asked me what we do to fill our days.  This is a valid question, and one I am surprised that I haven’t encountered before now.  I guess it is hard to imagine how we fill all day every day when there isn’t a “job” to go to or all the other “normal” things about living on land (TV, gym, friends, internet, telephone etc.).  Honestly we had a hard time adjusting to boat life in the beginning, not living on a boat or working on a boat but the lifestyle itself.  We’ve both worked since we were young and for the most part enjoyed it. I am a creature of habit and easily follow routines and patterns so if we weren’t up and working on a project by 0800 it felt a little like we were slacking off.  I collated lists and checked off things when accomplished. I did this not only so we could remember the ever growing pile of projects we wanted to tackle but also so at the end of the day we could really feel like we accomplished something; the amount of red lines on the list were our achievements. I kept a close eye on the finances and worried constantly about all the money going out and none coming in.  I was still trying to live in the structure that a job gives you….but without the safety and gratification you get from the pay cheque at the end of the day.  In short, I drove poor Steve crazy for a long time. 

But somewhere along the line in Costa Rica, after the second round of engine problems left us without propulsion and the choices were; sail for a week to the last port in the country, miss half of the coast line and do engine repairs, again. Or slow down, sail in and out of bays and on and off anchor, explore and enjoy ourselves like we set out to do.  We had recently decided that since we had a delayed departure from San Diego that we were probable too late in the season to do the Pacific crossing and get to a safe location for cyclone season 2010 without blasting through everything from Costa Rica to Fiji (we originally planned to sail to Australia from California in 12-18 months). And so we chose the path less traveled and sailed around Costa Rica for six weeks, literally.  When there was no wind we drifted, if the entrance to an anchorage was a little tricky we put down the sails, tied the dingy at mid ships and “motored” in with our 6hp outboard.  We stayed at anchorages until we were ready to leave or when there was enough wind to make it out and around the next point of land pushing through 3kts or more of current.  A 60 nm passage could take one day or three and we just had to accept it.  My learning curve was steep and it definitely wasn’t a stress free couple weeks (I really didn’t believe that our big heavy boat could be moved and maneuvered by tying the dingy along side and gunning a little engine, but it can. Let alone learning how to SAIL into an unknown anchorage and throw the pick with a depth sounder that seemed to act up when we got close to land!!!) but I figured maybe someone was trying to tell us something; It was time to slow down. That was just over a year ago.

So back to the original question; what DO we do with our time?  Well, there is definitely no shortage of boat things to keep us busy.  After the first couple years we’ve pretty much gotten out all the kinks but we’ve also put her to the test and have started tweaking little things here and there. We’ve sailed nearly 5000nm in the last six months so there is also the general maintainence and repairs from using the boat; lines chafe, stainless steel rusts, canvass tears, sails need to be kept up, just to name a few things.  Not to mention general engine maintenance and service that Steve does on a regular basis. 

 To do all these things you have to carry a full stock of parts, spares and supplies so lots of time in bigger ports is spent sourcing replacements.  This doesn’t sound like it would be too difficult, just walk into this local hardware store and fill a basket full of belts, filters, oil and cleaners right? We’d like that to be true but most of the time it is not.  Most of the time you cannot just walk into a store and browse the isles, you walk up to a counter and ask for what you’re looking for then they go out back and poke around a bit and come back, frown and shake their head and tell you they have everything but the size, shape or colour that you need. That’s how we came up with Rule #1: Bring an old package with as much info on for them to look at and double your chances that they’ll understand what you want. Although, when they don't have it and you ask who might sell such an item people are generally very helpful. They will direct you to the nearest place that they think does carry it, complete with convoluted directions and descriptions when they cannot remember the name of the store, if it even has one.  It is very nice of people to give you street names but ninety percent of the time the name is not posted and half the people you ask don’t know it by that name anyway. SO Rule #2: Bring the map that you picked up at the tourist info desk so they can point it out to you. (I am not kidding about this I recently stopped a lady in Papeete to ask, in French, what street we were standing on. She laughed and said although she lived around here she did not know and following directions was very hard even for her.  She advised me to walk into the nearby pharmacy and ask the shop keeper what street their store was on, and only after looking at the map could they tell me).  And did I forget to mention that this exchange is usually done in a language other then English?  So trying to find, say, a belt for the engine can involve a fair amount of walking, lots of half understood conversations and most of a morning.    And, while you’re looking for this store or that you also must keep your eyes open for the ten other things you have on the list, which brings us to Rule #3: If you find it and you need it/want it BUY IT! (Even if it is an over priced jar of PB!!) This is because chances are you won’t A. Find it at a better price B. You won't find the store again or C. If you do make it back it won’t be on the shelf anymore.  And just to make things a wee bit more interesting most countries in the tropics take a siesta during the midday heat and close for a few hours anywhere between 11am-3pm. But don’t think that there will be any consistency in the closing hours within one country, far from it. So, when you finally do find that store that you’ve been walking all over some foreign city looking for it, your shoulders aching from all the stuff you have to lug around with you just to get the job done plus the other bits and pieces you’ve purchased along the way, it may just be closed….even if the sign says it should be open.  Lucky most corner shops sell cold beer, so waiting isn’t always so bad.

Thankfully provisioning food isn’t usually so trying, although no less time consuming.  Having just spent the last four months sailing around the Galapagos, Marquesas and the Tuamotu atolls Papeete was a bit of a shock.  In the Marquesas and the Tuamotus when you walked to the store looking for something (eight times out of ten it was just a room on the front of someone’s house set up with shelves, identified by a red Coca Cola awning or a blue Hinano Beer Sign) you had two choices; they either had it or they didn’t. Everything is shipped in from Tahiti so there was the possibility that if they ran out more would arrive…eventually.  The basics; flour, sugar, butter and some cheese are subsidized and always available cheap. Not to mention everyone had a good stock of potatoes, onions and garlic with probably some carrots, tomatoes, cabbage, bok choy or cucumbers thrown in and wilting in the fridge.  You could find long life, unfridgerated milk, over processed cheese type products, MSG laden powdered soup mixes and instant noodles, pasta that you hopefully found before the weevils and basic tinned veggies. With any luck there was some frozen, imported meat and a beer fridge with beer in it.  Oh, and of course, pop, chips and candies for the kids. But they all came with a bit of a price tag; they were shipped in of course. If you wanted fish you went to the fish market or bought it on the side of the road and fresh veggies were available at some ports if you got up at 5am, at which time you could also get a baguette and a chocolate croissant.  We have even been known to drive the dingy an hour to the closest town to buy petrol, beer and bread. In Papeete there are big modern grocery stores like you’ve find everywhere in the world; they are the first air conditioned stores we’ve seen since Panama City.  They carry every conceivable food product you can imagine at fairly reasonable prices, comparable to Canada or Australia.  They also have electronics, small appliances, clothing, cosmetics, dishes, paper products, nix nacks and a garden, sports and BBQ section, not to mention a fish market, deli counter, fresh and frozen meats and a bakery.  So, after four months of consumer deprivation we found it a little difficult to go to the grocery with a short list and have it take less than a couple hours.  Not only do we have to walk there and back carrying everything we bought (we usually make a separate beer run and for some reason two foreigners carrying a case of beer bottles between them like they are holding hands get honks and bug thumbs up from passing drivers!) , but we could easily be heard wasting away the morning exclaiming to each other such things as “Oh my GOD, they have a wall of chocolate bars ALL less than three dollars!” and “Co’ mere you gotta see the WHOLE isle with JUST cheese and salami” and “Which of the six brands of ketchup do you think we should buy?”  So you see, the first couple trips just to get groceries were not only time consuming but a little over whelming and required some quiet recovery time, hence the beer.

Once we’ve bought everything and gotten back to the boat (hopefully fairly dry but you never know when the wind is going to pick up) and either put it away (a task unto itself that I won’t go into) or used it for a job (and ticked it off the list) we are free to have “days off”.  These are spent playing tourist, walking around the town, eating at road side stands, drinking beer at cockroach infested dives (how ever do we find these places!) and watching the world go by.  When we are at a nice anchorage we go snorkeling as much as we can (sometimes scrubbing the boat comes into his category), explore the island, go on hikes, beach comb and take long afternoons fishing from the dingy.  When there are other boats around you usually get invited once or twice a week for “sundowners”. You bring your beers and a plate of nibbles and crowd into someone’s cockpit for an evening of chatting and telling stories.  And there is day to day menus to prepare, what is almost gone bad in the fridge or how to use the leftovers. When you make almost everything from scratch preparing a meal can take a bit of time.  Let’s not forget the issue of laundry, which is done by hand (and foot) in a bucket in the cockpit. No, there are not a lot of coin operated laundry mats on islands, and if there are they can cost 3-8 dollars per wash, and more to dry! When most people can throw on a load of laundry, vacuum four rooms and nip over to the neighbours for coffee while the machine does the dirty work, it takes a better part of two hours for us to soak, wash, rinse, wring and hang to dry a couple small loads. And let’s hope it doesn’t rain before you take two weeks of clothes off the line! And laundry takes a lot of water, so you either ferry in jerry jugs from shore when there is potable water available or sit and listen to the engine run and make water for a couple hours to replace what you’ve just used.  Everyone loves house work but when was the last time you had to wipe every surface, walls and ceilings included, down with hot water and vinegar to stop the mold and mildew from taking over? Then there is always the trip planning and preparing and actually sailing the boat.

So, Mom, what do you spend our days doing? The same things as everyone else except they take a little longer to accomplish, usually require more patience and involve a little adventure.

Love,
H&S

 

 

Tsunami, Tsunami

It is generally not a great idea to still be up at 4am, especially if you just realized that your watch doesn’t say 12:20, all indicators point to the next/rest of the day being a bit of a struggle. Being awoken at 4am, however, is a whole other box of frogs; one that generally doesn’t leave you feeling any better about the situation I might add. Being awoken at 4am, especially by the sputter and wheeze of an outboard motor approaching your cozy little boat, only means trouble. Steve, who hasn’t been able to sleep all night and is lying on the sofa, thinks of reaching for the baseball bat.  Thankfully on Friday morning it only heralded a well meaning neighbour, coming to warn us about a pending tsunami.  “OK, thanks.” We said and laid back down on the sofa. “Again?” we looked at each other. 

In Panama, almost a year to the day, we were greeted with “A TSUNAMI IS COMING, A TSUNAMI IS COMING” panicked call on the local VHF morning net. It was information garnered from a friend of a friend of a mechanic on shore. There was no advisories from the Port Authority, this is one of the busiest ports  in the world, none of the marinas in the area could fill in the details and shipping traffic into the canal seemed to be going along at its usual fast pace.  Pandemonium broke out in the anchorage and all 50 boats promptly pulled up their anchors and headed out to sea, in the same direction.  We had just picked up our newly serviced fuel injectors the night before; that’s picked up, not yet installed, so we were engineless. As Steve got to work I watched as boat after boat pass us by, not even people that we knew hailed us on the radio to ask if we were ok; scratch them off the Christmas card list then.  As the last few boats pulled away an Aussie boat with a couple and three young kids onboard motored over and asked if we needed help, we’d never met them before this morning. We assured them we were fine, just getting things together, and we’d sail out if the engine wasn’t back online soon. They even offered us a tow. It was nice to know someone is watching out for you. The VHF was a constant stream of people adding their opinions, drama and scuttlebutt to the panicked situation. It didn’t seem like anyone had reliable information but that didn’t seem to matter to anyone. When Steve got the engine going we motored out into the wind line and raised the sails, heading toward the island of Taboga, some 8nm away and in the opposite direction of the rest of the fleet.  We were able to get some information via telephone from our friend Rick who was hold-up at the Balboa Yacht Club Bar, his boat, Evenstar, disabled, but safe on a mooring down below. Seems it was the real deal, caused by an earthquake in Chile. Now, with Kate in deep water we happily sailed on. After a couple of hours we sailed back into the harbour, listening as some guy on the VHF declare that he could “actually see the wave coming” and watching as then every boat that was heading into port turned around and motored back towards the horizon, this was seriously turning into a gong show. We picked a choice spot and dropped the anchor in an almost empty bay.  We made it through our first tsunami wanring.

So, quite honestly, at 4 am on Friday morning we were ready to take the call to arms with a dash of salt.  We booted up the computer but were unable to find a wifi signal, it was still dark and two hours away from the impending doom so we put the kettle on; 4am is a little easier with a cup of tea in your hand. A half  hour later the town started the general alarm siren and the Gendarme SUV was patrolling the shore line with flashing lights and bullhorn; ok then this isn’t a hoax. And at 5am, Radio Tahiti was broadcasting advisories in French AND English over the VHF. All inter island shipping was suspended and a cruise ship in the area was weighing anchor and leaving their harbour, we figured it best to sit up and take notice.  Having been caught in a few situations now (sudden storms with sustained 40kt winds, major wind shifts that leave you on a lee shore and boats dragging down on us) we try hard to keep the boat tidy and everything stowed; you never know when you might have to move and you don’t want to waste time packing everything away. I had a tray of dishes to put away and a few books to place back on the shelf, we are ready to go. When it was light enough to see we picked up Kate’s anchor and slowly motored out of the pass in the reef surrounding Huahine.  When we were half a mile offshore we pulled out some of the headsail and hove-to, calmly bobbing around with the eight other boats that were in the anchorage. The only talk on the VHF was from Tahiti radio; repeats of the advisory, communications with ships in the surrounding waters, no panicky calls or frenzied boat to boat gossip.  Steve grabbed a fishing rod and I got busy in the galley making a fresh batch of scones for breakfast. Without much of a sea running we had a fairly comfortable time finishing off our Turkey Spam and Egg McScones while listening to the local rock radio station discuss the tsunami advisory.  The allotted times for the tsunami arrival, 0653 for Huahine and 0714 for Tahiti, pass without any observed change onshore.  Our little fleet of sailboats continues to quietly stand off, milling around in the light breeze.  A little after 8am we start back towards the pass, weaving through the crowd of local boats that had to also abandon their moorings ashore to wait out the tsunami in deep water.  As we approached the pass I noticed that the reef seemed more exposed than usual, or did it? With out much swell running and breaking on the reef edge did it just look like the reef was out of the water, had I really paid that close attention before? We stopped briefly to discuss it, looked through the binoculars at shore but couldn’t see any definitive waterline on the rocks which would confirm our observations so we motored back to our favorite anchor spot, and as all looked normal here, threw the pick just before the rain started.  I stuck my head out for a look see, make sure the anchor was holding and if the rain would last. “Steve, I might be crazy but does the water look low to you, was that reef at shore exposed before?” Sure enough the reef that was totally submerged before was now well above water, the channel marker close by also showed the coral growing beneath it’s low tide scum line and the rocks well behind us that appeared as nasty brown smudges in the clear blue water when we anchored now broke the surface.  Kate remained stationary, pointing into a light breeze, so we ducked back out of the rain.  Five minutes later the water returned to its normal depth covering the rocks, the reef and the scum line on the channel markers. We watch it happen again with no perceptible change in the currents or water flow, dropping no more than 30cm for a few minutes before rising again silently.  At 0930 they sound the all clear siren throughout the harbour and Tahiti Radio broadcasts that all ports in the Society Islands, except those on the North East of Tahiti island itself, are open; it is back to business as usual.  We survived our second tsunami.

Later that day we dinghy over to say thank you to the boat who’d come to warn us at 4am. They report that they’d been telephoned by a friend ashore and had been up since 0230 prepping the boat for sea, stowing all the gear left on deck, taking down canvass awnings etc…They thought the warnings system here was rather lax and didn’t give people enough time to prepare.  “Well,” I counter, “makes you re-assess how you run your boat, have to be ready for anything”. “How can you not put a sun awning up, what do you do with all the stuff on deck?” she asks,  “We’re lucky we heard about it earlier, two hours just isn’t enough time” she adds. I have nothing to give in reply. We smile, say thanks again and motor off towards Kate. I think they missed the point, at least we were warned.

Love,

H&S

 

Food…for Thought.

Food is important, we all know that. It is how we feed our bodies and nourish our souls.  Food can form habits, trigger memories, define experiences and effect economies, so it is not a wonder that we have a rather intricate relationship with the stuff.  In the last few weeks I have found that we are spending an unusual amount of time thinking about food (the only thing that we talk more about onboard is the weather). Perhaps it is because it was the holiday season and many of our indulgences of late have been food related (I feel like all we did for two weeks is eat and drink, yep it really felt like Christmas!).  Maybe it is because we are heading back to the Marquesas for cyclone season so I am preparing not only for the 1000NM passage north, cooking and freezing meals for underway, but also provision for the next few months when, although food stuff will be readily available they will also be 50% more expensive.  And, it could just be, that after six weeks of consumer exile in the Cook Islands the trips to the grocery store back in French Polynesia have been both exciting and over whelming. Whatever the reason, the buying, storing, preparing and, of course, consuming of food has been dominating our conversations of late.

Admittedly we probably think a little more about the topic than most for the simple reason that we try to be as self sufficient as possible.  You see, we just never know when we might arrive at a remote atoll for a months stay only to find out that the last supply ship was wrecked on the reef a few months back and there it no foreseeable plan to replace it (haha).  In these situations it is comforting to know that we have enough canned goods and dry stores onboard to feed a small family for a month or so, as long as they don’t mind a little scurvy setting in.  We also realize that we are in the very privileged position of being able to travel to all these beautiful and sometimes remote destinations, in the comfort of our own home, so to speak. It would be extremely irresponsible of us to expect the local community to support us when they themselves rely heavily on the supply ship appearing regularly on the horizon.  For this reason, we stock up in major ports so that when we arrive somewhere small we don’t have to go knocking on doors looking for food.  That said, we also do try and support the local economy, many an afternoon has been spent with a walk to the little corner shop to see what they sell. (I use the term corner shop loosely as it is often just a room with dedicated shelving in the front of someone’s house, marked by an awing with a Coca-Cola or local beer logo on it).   Almost always we come away with a little something; stick of bread, can of beer, some strange product that you never realized existed to be sold in a can. But what we won’t do is empty the shelves. We never buy the last one of anything, no matter how much we need it or want it, especially if it is beer.  Imagine if you wandered down to your local store only to find it had been bought out by the plague of locusts called the “tourist”? Bet you’d be pretty pissed off, wouldn’t you?

For fresh goods I prefer to buy local, who needs an over priced and half rotten bag of lettuce flown in from the good ol’ USA, dripping with pesticides and a carbon foot-print too large to even begin to fathom? If there is roadside stall or community market you’ll find me there, caressing vegetables or buying pastries from the wrinkly, toothless, lovely old ladies, bargaining and trying to strike up a conversation about how I am supposed to prepare some tropical veggie that looks like a soccer ball. This is, in fact, where I prefer to buy all our veggies and eggs, and miscellaneous things like jams and honey, if I can. My motto is “If the locals shop there then so should you”. It is places like these, no matter where you are in the world, that you find your freshest produce, in season. Sometimes this means getting out of bed at five am and taking a ten minute dingy trip ashore in the dark. Sometimes it means that you don’t buy tomatoes, even if you’ve been dreaming about them for weeks, ‘cause sadly, tomato season is over. But you get to come home with a bag full of bright and crunchy vegetables, you put money directly into the hands of the farmer and you got to hangout with the locals.  Anyone that has ever bought fruit from an honor stand, eggs probably laid that morning by chickens that run around the yard, or a jar of pickles out of the back of a half ton truck knows that it is worth the effort every time.

As well, buying at the market most likely means the produce has not yet been refrigerated, and therefore will not need to be refrigerated onboard, unless of course it’s green and leafy.  Even in the tropics tomatoes and peppers, eggplants, zucchini, carrots and even cucumbers will last weeks without being chilled. Potatoes and onions, as long as they are not stored together, will last well over a month. Winter vegetables like squash will last several months (we ate a butternut squash in the Tuamotu, 3500NM and a couple months out from the market in Panama. It was perfect!) . When leaving the Galapagos I even left out a cabbage or two and they fared well until I had room in the fridge for them a few weeks into the passage and even then, in the fridge they stayed almost perfect for several weeks. Of course most tropical fruits don’t need refrigeration, they grow in the tropics! Even a wrinkly browned citrus will still yield usable juice.  Here are a few tricks to the trade: 

1. Don’t store anything at home at a higher temperature than it has been previously stored or transported at. So, hoping that you can put a few green tomatoes in the fridge to ripen them on the countertop in a few weeks won’t work. They will rot, quickly, from the inside.

2. As mentioned, potatoes and onions taste good together but make bad bedmates; they will both rot if stored side by side. 

3. Tomatoes and bananas off gas and will ripen anything in a three meter radius, or at least, stored in the same basket. 

4. Woven baskets or net bags are preferred to bowls, better air flow. But a hanging net rarely works, especially for heavy fruits, they tend bruise and get cut by the netting. 

5. Sort produce regularly and remove anything with a blemish right away, it will promote further spoilage.

6. To extend the life of eggs stored at room temperature turn them a couple times a weeks to prevent settling (we never remember to do this and everything turns out fine…so who knows). A bad egg will float when put in a glass of water, in case you have a weak stomach and don’t want to crack them to see.

7. They say if you brush fresh bread with white vinegar it will not mold for weeks. Ours has never spent long enough on the countertop to verify this one.

8. Store refrigerated produce in clean, dry, zip lock bags, not the bags you get at the store.  I swear by this one, everything gets re-bagged before it hits the fridge on Kate, it makes produce last twice as long.

9. Put bay leaves in all your pasta, flour and other wheat products to deter weevils. Rice and oats as well. And if you find weevils throw it all out…they are mighty hard to get rid of.  We have also heard that if you freeze wheat products for 24 hours it will deter weevils, but our fridge is not big and empty enough to try this one.

10. If you’re going to store things at room temperature be prepared to eat them; this means you might be on a 4 bananas a day diet or you have to find a way to creatively cook cabbage all week long. The thing we hate most onboard is wasting food.

As for everything else we do try and shop responsibly, both for our health and the planet.  For example we actively avoid products with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in them, if you still haven’t heard all about this one do yourself a favor and Google it, you won’t be sorry!!  Thankfully once we left North America it became easier as things like pop (soft drink), ketchup (tomato sauce) and jams are all made with, hold on to your seats, plain old regular sugar.  But, we are still bound by economics so as much as I would kill for maple syrup on my pancakes on Sunday mornings I cannot afford $15US for a 200ml jug of it.  At least those mornings I actually know I am eating corn syrup.  We also try not to buy corn or soya oil, optioning for sunflower oil instead (so far I have heard nothing about the evils of the sunflower industry).  We definitely noticed the difference in meat when we left the USA; it suddenly smelled different when cooking and tasted like meat. Something’s you had to get use to, for instance in Mexico they feed the chickens marigolds, giving the eggs bright orange yolks and the meat a nice yellowy hue, all a little suspicious until we found out why.  We found the breasts of the chickens to be smaller but the bird to be really tasty.  We immediately switched to meat from the country we were in, and whenever possible still do so, and avoid USDA imported meats. This one is not so easy in the South Pacific where not many animals are grown on an industrial level and a local chicken is $20, a little rich for our plate.  Here most meat is imported so you often have only one choice; to buy meat or not. Since it is mostly from New Zealand, and of very high quality, we stock the freezer when things are on sale, just like you do back home. 

Eggs were another change. Since starting on this sailing adventure we have yet to encounter yet eggs sold or stored refrigerated. And really, when was the last time you saw a live chicken kept in an air conditioned coop?  It is common practice on our boat not to refrigerate eggs, saves precious cold storage space, but finally finding the stack of eggs cartons at the end of the grocery isle and not in the cold isle next to the cheese was a little surprising.  What you might find even more surprising is that eggs stored at room temperature will last 3-4 weeks, easily, even swinging from the ceiling in our bountiful, chicken shaped wire egg basket.  I rarely find a bad egg, and when I do it is either suffered a hairline crack or it is just one of a whole bad batch. Even so, we’ve gotten into the habit of breaking all eggs into a small bowl first, not directly into the pan or batter…ever found that one bad egg?

Excessive packaging is another thing we actively try and cut down on. Whenever possible we buy in bulk; 25 lbs of flour here, a giant tub of baking power there.  Back onboard I empty as much as possible into the plastic, air tight containers that fill the dry stores area and vacuum pack the rest so one package fills one container when opened.  (The plastic vacuum bags we reuse, when not filled with meat or fish products). This way we not only cut down on plastic and packaging in general (and spend our money more wisely) but at sea we then have less plastics and garbage to worry about. And no, plastics NEVER go overboard.  This is all well and good to say but with some products extremely hard to live by. Crackers (dry biscuits), for instance, seem to have triple the amount of packaging in the tropics; each sleeve of crackers is plasticized, or even worse all you can find is snack size packages sold in a box. Makes sense; the whole box of crackers doesn’t go soggy the day after you open them. But it also makes for an awful lot of garbage.  Flour is another thing that is packaged in small quantities against moisture; 2kg in a waxed paper bag, in a box, wrapped in plastic. Keeps the flour nice and fresh on the shelf and means that if it gets splashed while getting loaded off the ship or carried home in the dingy it will stay that way. I guess sometimes there is just no avoiding it.  

One thing that we really support anywhere we can, and especially here in French Polynesia, is there returnable bottle program.  Beer, and some soft drink, are sold in glass bottles, available by deposit, individual or by the crate.  Simply pay the deposit on the crate and 20 bottles and then buy the beer.  Return the empty case for a full one or a refund. You can carry the crates from one island to the next, and the deposit is the same. Strangely enough bottles are cheaper than cans of the same quantity. And even better if you can store a crate of full bottles you can store a crate of empty ones. Other than a few dozen bottle caps, which everyone knows make good checkers, back gammon tiles, fishing lures, decorative snakes and I am sure fetching jewellery, there is no garbage!

At sea, and in anchorages where it will go out to sea and not end up ashore on someone’s lawn, all organics go over the side.  We also sink our glass bottles, foil and labels removed when we are out in the deep ocean. Glass is silica; silica is sand. We wash our zip lock bags. We rare use plastic wrap, in fact have had the same roll for the last two years, instead have a variety of plastic containers for storing leftovers.  We only use cloth napkins onboard, saves on storing paper products. Every little bit we do helps reduce our garbage output. In bigger cities we bring all of our trash ashore, sometimes separated, hoping there is recycling (and in Tahiti there was), figuring that with a larger population they’ll have the facilities to deal with it. In places with a large marine community you’ll usually find a dirty oil depot, a way to throw out paint and solvents responsibly. And probably a small pile next to the dumpster of “still good but I don’t want it anymore” items, for your perusal.  In smaller, more remote communities you’ll find us on the beach some afternoon, standing in front of a fire, disposing of the trash, after we’ve cooked up a feast, of course. I guess it is better than throwing it all on the local trash heap waiting for it to magically disappear into the jungle.  Don’t laugh; you didn’t see Boca Chica, Panama.

One thing we don’t do much of is buy souvenirs, no space to keep them and if we did they’d probably be damaged by the time we got a place to unload them. The exception to the rule being something useful and therefore probably food related; a tortilla press and hand carved bowls made out of gourds from Mexico, the perfect hand blender come food processor found in Costa Rica, the pounds of Panamanian coffee that I just finished drinking, a cookbook from the Galapagos, a bag of wild chili’s that we dried on a string in the Marquesas, and a coconut grater/fish scaler/papaya seed remover that we bought in the Cook Islands, made of stainless steel and signed by the local guy that recovered the materials from a washed up fishing beacon.  On our table is a vast array of sauces and seasoning reflecting every country we’ve made landfall in.  If there is a more acute way to relive your travels then by triggering a smell or taste from a country you’ve visited, we have yet to encounter it.

So what is left? The eating part!!!!  Now that we sourced, scrounged, picked, paid for, transported and stored all these tools and food, let’s see what we can do with it.

 I am a firm believer that even though we live on a small sailboat and modest budget, there is definitely no need to eat like a poor college student; instant noodles are reserved for desperate, rough days on passage.  Even then, we probably have a vacuum packed meal in the freezer that we can pop in the pressure cooker (best kitchen tool EVER) over some rice and water and VOILA! You have a hot, nutritious, tasty meal in 10 minutes.  There is rarely a night on passage that we don’t sit down for a hot dinner together. Most nights we have what we have come to affectionately refer to as a “bucket meal”. We have two round Tupperware containers with hearty lids that, once wrapped in a cloth napkin and served with your one utensil, are easy to handle, can be put down without spilling, be put in the fridge filled with leftovers, left in the sink to wash up later and all without worrying about them breaking. You’d be surprised how much a hot meal at the end of a hard day can raise your spirits. 

When we have the luxury of a nice anchorage we spend a little more time preparing meals.  Even with our cranky, old three burner stove and crematorium oven you may be surprised are what you can achieve.  I am not talking four stars here but nice enough to warrant a nice bottle of wine and good company. Steve very often volunteers to BBQ, and not just meat.  The array of grilled fruit and vegetables we eat is impressive; pineapple, potatoes, green beans, zucchini, peppers, onions and garlic, just to name a few.  This also keeps the heat out the cabin; nothing like standing over a propane stove during the tropical summer, or even worse, when it is raining and all the hatches are closed! Recently we have been making fires and cooking on the beach; fresh caught fish cooked over an open flame is hard to beat.  Get yourself a good cast iron pan and a bit of tin foil and you can bake bread on a bed of coals. The options of what can be put in a tinfoil packet and steamed or cooked over a camp fire are endless. The only thing we are missing on the beach is a good way to keep the beer cold!

We like to experiment with what is in season; currently creating recipes for papaya, something I thought I didn’t like to eat, smells alittle like vomit!!.  Stuffed, sautéed and blended into cakes, you can eat quite well with a little imagination. With fruit dripping from the trees and coconuts falling on your head there is never a dull culinary moment on Kate.  I have actually been writing recipes down recently, thanks to the prodding of Steve, so check out the recipes page for what’s cooking in our kitchen these days.

See what I mean about spending an unusual amount of time being concerned with food?  That took most of my morning. Thank goodness its time for lunch! As we say on board BON APPETTIO!!

Love,
H&S
 

 

Tahiti Ink...

“Patience is a wondrous virtue.”

“The best laid plans of mice and men are meant to be mislaid.”

“Good things come to those who wait.”

These are just a few of the inspirational quotations meant to give you a sense of calm and direction in situations that are not quite going exactly according to plan. Our favorite is from a Buddhist text;

“Everything is as it should be.”

Is it a sentence that we grappled with for most of the past summer (winter?! I’ll always be a northern hemisphere gal at heart).  In fact, it became a kind of unofficial mantra onboard; a gentle reminder that if we just looked at the situation from another vantage point we might see that although things were not working out as we planned, they were, actually, working out quite well.  Perhaps we came to a state of enlightenment, how appropriate!, and realized that you cannot dwell on what might have been but simply enjoy what is.

But the path to enlightenment is generally not an easy one and ours was strewn with 1400 bumpy, sleepless, teeth chattering miles to windward before we let go of the idea of sailing back to the Marquesas. Unseasonable strong easterly winds were making it not quite impossible but certainly uncomfortable. We finally decided that since we’d already been there once that the ride back would be unnecessarily stressful for both ourselves and the boat. It was a hard pill to swallow. We were looking forward to returning not only to one the most rugged and beautiful places we’ve seen yet, but to return to get to know the people a little more, to understand their fierce pride and gentle warmth a little better.  So instead, we spent a few months enjoying the serene anchorages of the Leeward Society Islands with very few other boats interrupting our tropical horizons. It wasn’t the plan, but it was lovely. 

In April we decided to return to Tahiti, we had one outstanding project to do on the boat, install a removable inner forestay, and wanted to get there before the onslaught of this year’s Puddle Jumpers arrived, congesting the anchorage and taxing the local marine industry to their max.  We had a pretty successful week considering installing the inner forestay had to be worked around the wind and weather (Steve was up the mast 5 times in 4 days) and “island time”, a phenomenon that happens on any tropical island on the globe, best known for an inexplicable reduction in the speed of time and a carefree attitude towards work, deadlines and posted store hours, especially during the hot hours of the afternoon. Steve not only got the inner forestay installed but did it under budget, no small feat itself in good old French Polynesia.  In between trips up the mast were trips into Pape’ete to restock some boat parts and get some quotes on jobs on our wish list. 

On one tiresome trip into busy Pape’ete we were hot and frustrated as we had just spent the last few hours adding just one more errand to the “To Do” list, but most of our efforts were turning out unrewarded. We were getting hungry and cranky, not a very a good duo especially when combined with midday tropical heat, so we’d stopped at the Market to grab some lunch then decided to call it quits, we’d had enough.  All our running about had delayed our departure from the city and it was now afternoon rush hour. After fighting our way onto the bus we finally found ourselves melting into a hard bus seat and huddling under the small air conditioning vent; we were both weary and spent.  We idly watched the bus fill up, marveling at the colourful crowd, the ladies with flowers in their hair and at the children with such curiosity in their eyes, when a man passed us to sit in the back row.  Steve and I both do a double take.

Now, as I may have mentioned before, everyone here seems to have tattoos, and a man sporting a full sleeve, or even two, is a common sight.  So it is not that we are taken aback by this man’s tattoos (they totally cover his right hand and arm and his whole left leg) but he has a particular motif on his forearm that we recognize; two sets of concentric circles that are joined together in the middle like a link of chain. From what I can gather it means fearlessness and tenacity. It denotes that you are a fighter, not of the literal kind, but strong in spirit, resilient. It is the kind of motif that a tattooist will only give you if they know you; if you embody the “power” that the symbol implies.  We first saw this tattoo last July on the island of Nuku Hiva, in the Marquesas. It was worn by the man who gave me my first tattoo. By a man that looked suspicious like the one who just walked onto our bus in Tahiti.

We ride most of the way home in silence, me periodically nodding off beneath sun glasses, and Steve keeping an eye on our man in the back.  We are getting close to the end of the route and have been craning our necks so much in the last few minutes that we are starting to draw attention.  Finally Steve gets up, turns around and walks towards him, “Brice?”(Pronounced Breese) he asks tentatively. “Oui”, the man replies as the bus comes to the last stop.  As we all file off it is obvious that he doesn’t really know who we are, he’s got that same look on his face as we had on ours half an hour ago.  Once on the sidewalk Steve lifts up his left sleeve, revealing a large tattoo. Brice’s eyes light up, he recognizes his work, he recognizes us.  With my bad French I get the gist of the story; he recently moved to Tahiti, his house is just down the road and, yes, he is still tattooing.  I take out a slip of paper and he writes down his mobile number. We shake hands and go our separate ways.

On the way home Steve and I are in wonder. We discuss all these past months that we’d been beating ourselves up about not being able to get back to the Marquesas; how disappointed we’d been not just because we wanted to see the islands but because we really wanted to find Brice and get another tattoo.  We debated what would have happened if we’d gone all the way to Nuku Hiva and he’d already moved to Tahiti. We considered how strange it was that we kept getting delayed that day and how, only an hour before he walked onto our bus, we’d been to another tattoo studio that a friend recommended in Pape’ete to check out their work (we didn’t like it, like the work of so many other tattoo artists we’d checked out over the last few months). What were the chances of meeting him not only on a different island but some 1200 miles from his home, on a bus!? And not only that, but he is just next door to the marina we were anchored by and we could have never even known he was there. 

We finish up our work and decide to head to Moorea for a little vacation; a week back in the busy city is just that, too busy and too much city for us. This goes a little pear shaped because it is Easter weekend and on Good Friday our anchorage of 2 boats swells to 20. But here is better than there and we’d both like to get in the water again before getting inked when we will have two weeks of staying dry and especially staying out of salt water while our tattoos heal. 

When we return to Tahiti we face the problem of calling Brice; he speaks very little English and I can’t understand much French over the phone.  I duck into another tattoo place close by one afternoon in hopes that he is working there. No luck but I talk to the artist in broken French who is friendly and kind, but does he know Brice? Not really, but maybe he’s heard of him. I explain I have a phone number but can’t call as I find French difficult when not face to face. He assures me my French is fine but offers to make the call anyway.  A few minutes later it is arranged that we are to meet Brice at the bus stop up the road. It all seems too easy but a plan is in motion.  Half an hour of watching traffic and Steve and I are disappointed, no Brice.  Maybe we have the wrong bus stop, did I misunderstand the directions?  We’ve got things to do so we head back to town and decide to try again another day; it’s island time, he’ll understand.  Saturday afternoon we find a friend of friend that speaks both English and French and pled our case. She makes the call and sets up an appointment for Monday morning; we spend the weekend debating our new tattoos.

8:30 Monday morning finds us waiting on the road side again, at another bus stop, hoping this time we got it right. 8:35, no Brice. We agree to give it a half an hour and try to find some shade from the already hot and sweaty day.  Moments later a truck pulls up, the window rolls down and a guy with a smile and sun glasses peers out at us. Brice has arrived.

Now I have to say Brice is a man of few words, French or not. You’d probably classify him as the strong silent type. When we met him Nuku Hiva it was at the bar during the dance festival; Steve inquired with the bartender who is the best tattooist around. The bartender informed Dave the security guard we were looking for someone and Dave brought Brice to our table.  He sat down with his Jack and Coke; spoke to us briefly in French and very broken English. He sat for five minutes more then excused himself, telling us to come by his house the next morning, his tattoo studio was there.  He said if we had trouble finding his house we just had to ask anyone we saw, they’d point us in the right direction, as everyone knows where Brice lives. 

And this morning is no different.  He turns on his computer, brings up photos of his latest work and leaves Steve and me to consider our tattoos. But, like last time, Steve and I already know what we want; or rather already know where we want it and some idea of style. And also like last time, we will leave the rest to Brice.  This may seem like a leap of faith but one look at an artist portfolio will let you know if you want him to draw on you…permanently.  And we are not interested in simply picking a drawing out of a book and having it gunned into our skin; I do not want someone else’s tattoo.  Quite frankly we don’t think Brice really enjoys this either.  Give him some creative freedom and he’ll happily create a piece just for you.

Monday morning I was elected to go first and after establishing general location and idea we watched quietly as Brice methodically laid out his equipment and prepared his set up.  It seems as much ritual as concern for hygiene; everything comes new out of the package, his tattoo guns and foot pedal are wrapped in plastic, work surfaces covered in foil, gloves, ink, needles and creams neatly laid out for future use. He spent a quiet 45 minutes sketching in a rough design, making notes on my skin, cues for his creation. He then took a photo and asked my approval.  After answering a few brief questions he started.  The only things he said were “Ready” when we first began and when I commented that it felt hot he replied “Very hot today, eh?”.  I then spent three and a half hours in painful silence while he worked none stop. Finally he declared “OK, done!”  Like I said, he is a man of few words.

Tuesday morning was Steve’s turn and I tagged along as translator.  This morning he was a little more chatty and out of the blue asked if we had plans for the evening, and, if we didn’t he’d like us to come over for a BBQ.  We were flattered and taken aback, he didn’t seem the type to invite just anyone into his home (even though his studio space is in his home, it’s a different feeling).  Of course we accepted!  That night, after Steve (and Brice) recovered from his four hours of tattooing, we enjoyed a lovely BBQ dinner with Brice, his girlfriend Myra, and his two sisters Isobel and Rose. We shared a few drinks, some tall stories (some in frenglish) and plenty of laughs.  As we headed home Brice gave me a kiss on cheek and when Steve tried to give him a simple hand shake he grabbed him into a big bear hug, “Friends” he said as he smiled.

As we headed down the dock at the marina and climbed into the dingy we marveled at how life just seems to work out sometimes; try as you may you cannot force things to happen and that maybe there are greater powers in control. As we motored home to Kate we both nod our heads in agreement; Everything IS as it should be.

Love,
H&S

P.S. Here's what we got!

 

 

When it Rains it Pours!


Nothing could be truer this morning when at 5am I crawled out of my cozy warm bunk to check the already firmly dogged hatches and the position of the boat. A light pitter patter of drizzle was quickly building into a grand crescendo of rain that sounded more like we were driving Kate through a water fall then just another passing squall. The boat was tightly closed and, since we are on a mooring, in the exact same position we left it last night when we went to bed. However, the cacophony of feral dogs and roosters had already started up onshore so there is no point in crawling back into the bunk; there would be no more sleep for me this morning.  The days are getting noticeably shorter here in the southern hemisphere, this early there is just a sliver of silvery blue light outlining the jagged mountain on the horizon as I open the computer to write.  I love this time of day but it has been a while since I have had the opportunity to enjoy it, our usual quiet routine has had some very fun and social interruptions this past month.  We caught up with some old friends who were “in town” working on a mega yacht, met four fun and young Aussie boys on a boat in Tahiti, and had our good friend Kim come and visit from New York for three weeks. But all good things must come to and end; people return to work, boats sail in different directions and old friends get on planes to return to their lives up north.  We are left back where we started a month ago, just the two of us on a mooring at the Bora Bora Yacht Club trying to figure out our next move and catching up on some sleep.

In the last three weeks with Kim on board we covered seven islands; Tahiti through Bora Bora. We had incredible weather, the winter rains giving way to endless days of sun. For once we had fair winds and calm seas so our passages were flat and dreamy (mostly) and sailing in the lagoons fast and fun, just as you hope when you have guests onboard.  However, not to give the impression that it is all umbrella drinks and sunsets and in true Kate style, we did show her a little of the excitement and drama that is involved in sailing. We planned a day sail from Huahine to Raiatea, it was a little rolly but all in all a nice day. Steve said he had something heavy on his mind all day and was wracking his brains doing sums about fuel consumption and diesel in the tank while we sailed. After navigating the passage in southern Raiatea and thinking we might be getting low on fuel (the fuel gauge is inaccurate) he put 25 litres in the tank, just incase. We were motoring our way through the narrow channel, approaching a tight corner strewn with coral heads when the engine over heat alarm went off.  We made a tight U-turn and drifted with the current while we checked the engine. All seemed ok, plenty of coolant and water flowing in the exhaust, we must had spun an impeller.  With the option of sailing rather impossible, too narrow a channel and the wind directly on the nose, we quickly we launch the dingy, mount the motor and tied it along side at midships. Once again our 10ft inflatable with (this time) a 15hp outboard saved the day. Rafted up we ever so slowly made it the remaining 2 miles through the channel without harm (although Kim and I got rather wet in the dingy) and threw anchor at our intended destination before sunset. It turned out that we only sucked up some seaweed; it clogged the engine cooling saltwater intake causing the engine temperature to rise. Thankfully it didn’t even make it to the strainer; it just got caught in the through hull. Finally an easy solution to a boat problem! But drama aside we did try our best to show Kim a little of the South Pacific; snorkeling, dingy tours, deserted islands, beach barbeques, sparkling blue water, fishing, local foods (picking fruit on the side of the road) and cold beers on hot afternoons, just to mention a few.  We hope were successful in opening her eyes not only to this stunningly beautiful part of the world but to our modest lives onboard as well.

And having Kim onboard was eye opening for us in many respects.  I realized how much knowledge I have gained about sailing in the last year; how far I have come, both literally across the globe and in my abilities onboard, it sounds like I know what I am talking about these days!  I also became aware of the language that Steve and I share, both verbal and non-verbal, that is pivotal to the working of the boat.  Over the last two years we have developed hand signals, working systems and a whole range of commands and responses that enables us to sail the efficiently and safely. In fact, most of the time we have already anticipated the other person’s thoughts and are ready before they even set into action.

Not only was Kim kind enough to volunteer her luggage as a courier service, devoting a whole suitcase to parts and pieces for us, but she thoughtfully brought us some treats and gifts as well; a really neat water bottle/solar powered light that she filled with toiletry goodies like nail files and lip balm, English tea for Steve, peanut butter and nutella for me and a whole stack of magazines that are current AND in English!!! Leafing through our new treasure trove of glossy magazine I realized how completely out of touch we are; global news stories we’ve yet to hear about, fashion trends, television shows and celebrity gossip I could care less about and technological innovations we never even dreamed of.  I can’t count the amount of times we had to ask Kim what some article was referencing or to define some new techno term.  We marveled at her everyday gadgets (I-touch etcc..) and hung on her every word when she explained things like the Nike chip that you put in our shoes that records all the info about your run, downloadable “apps” for your personal whatever you carry, barcodes in magazine you scan with your phone to download information or the proposed e-wallet that will soon enable people to have all their credit cards details digitally on their phone. It seems the world is spinning faster than ever, yet somehow we’ve managed not only to stay in one place but possibly even slow down.

We recently had an anniversary onboard, and such an occasion makes you stop and reflect on what exactly you’re celebrating.  Two years ago we untied the dock lines and sailed out of San Diego harbour; destination, all points south and west. It is hard to believe we’ve made it this far or perhaps I should say hard to believe we’ve made it ONLY this far?  Our recent acquisition of all this techno-babble and global information has confirmed our recent decision to slow down, enjoy our time sailing, exploring and living a simpler life, without all the encumbrance of “modern life”, ie. cell phone, television, car, a closet full of clothes. We are not sure where we are headed to next, we would still like to get back north to the Marquesas, but standing in our way is not traffic jams or phone calls or if we are up with the last trend and therefore “cool” enough.  Our obstacles are the wind, the sea and our own determination. We may have realized that we are completely behind the times but when you slow down long enough to enjoy the view you realize how much you missed by traveling so fast. When we started sailing the question was “How will we cope working, sailing and living on a small boat together, just the two of us for long stretches of time and open ocean?” After two years and several thousand nautical miles I have to answer that it is at times difficult but that, perhaps, we’ve done better then I expected. I mean, something must be going right if we want to continue on sailing together.  Is the question now “If we stay out here too much longer how will we cope with the busy modern world and all the changes in it?”  I don’t know. What I do know is that right now we are in Bora Bora, sleeping soundly on a mooring, enjoying the sunshine and the rain, and to getting back to the routine of the two of us keeping the old girl ship shape.  We are enjoying our private, quiet and slow life too much to even consider asking that question out loud. So, for now, the answer will just have to wait.

Love,
H&S