Get Lost On Purpose

Author: Drew

  • How to Fall in Love with French Polynesia

    Looking back on the month I spent alone in French Polynesia I have decided I’d rather not spend a month alone in French Polynesia again. It’s beautiful here. I love swimming and snorkeling. The sailing has been fantastic. But what good is any of that is you can’t share it with someone? At least that’s the way I feel about it.

    It finally hit me that I’m living every sailor’s dream out here. Eight months cruising around the islands of the South Pacific is the type of trip I’ll remember and talk about for the rest of my life. And there is no other person in the world I’d rather share this time with than Margie. Saturday, sitting in two feet of water on a sandbar dotted with coral heads a half mile off the south side of Tahiti, I asked Marge whether she’d ever thought she’d find herself here. She looked around at the scenery before her, the group of Polynesians surrounding her, and her toes in the clear water below. Without looking up she grabbed a potato chip out of the bag floating by on a life preserver and said “not in a million years.”
    Our two year anniversary of meeting each other comes up in two weeks.
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    If you’re ever invited to dine with Polynesians, remember this rule. You must fix your plate first or you will sit there all night. We finally figured out why it always took so long to start meals here. The food would be ready, the places set, and we would just sit there. No one ever told us we should go ahead and fix our plates so we were being courteous guests and waiting for our hosts to begin. We finally had to ask Friday night at Youenn’s house. “Are you guys waiting on us?” Yep…sure enough.

    We’re anchored out in a small bay just across from the Teahupoo Marina. We have lush green mountains coming right down to the lagoon on one side of us and the designated “most powerful wave in the world” on the other side of us. The surfing at Teahupoo is legendary and much of life in this village revolves around it. The marina houses the boats and jetskis that shuttle the surfers back and forth, the long line of snacks (small, shanty-looking restaurants) at the mouth of the river feeds the surfers, and the store sells the beer they drink all night. We’re here at the biggest time of year for this community. The yards are clean and landscaped, the signs for paid parking and camping are displayed proudly, and the guesthouses and private homes are overflowing with the tanned, buff bodies of international surfing playboys (yes Margie’s single-lady friends…we are telling them all about you…). This place is the polar opposite of the busy streets of Papeete. The people who live here go there only when they need to and from here out, we’ll do the same. We hope to stay here a couple of weeks before heading back to town to collect the little Honda generator that’s being repaired, provision the boat, and begin the dance westward to cheaper waters.

  • A Revision to Sundays in the South Pacific

    **Jessica, if you see this, I keep trying to email you but it comes back undeliverable.  Send me an email from another account.  I see you got the blog uploaded.**

    Allow me to revise my earlier entry where I spoke of everyone disappearing on Sundays in the South Pacific Islands.  From what I’ve seen that is the case in many islands but today I discovered Tahiti is a completely different animal.  Sunday on the big island seems to be Get-Out-On-Your-Boat Day.  After they found me hiding out on a private mooring opposite Taina Marina I headed back to the quay downtown.  The trip between takes you right beside the runway for the airport.  You actually have to call Harbor Control as you pass on either end of the runway to make sure there’s no jets taking off or landing.  I taken this route several times now and usually it’s just me, a bunch of guys in outriggers, and the daily procession of tidal trash heading out the main pass.  Today, there were water skiers, jet skiers, bow bunnies, and hundreds of boats anchored along the length of the sand shelf leading up to reef.  I had no idea.  If Easter Sunday over here saw an increase in traffic like I saw in Moorea last weekend, I can’t imagine what the reef looked like.

    Looks like I’ll be here at the Quay till Marge gets here.  Priority number one is getting the outboard running.  I may call my miracle worker from last year and see what he thinks.  There’s a big concert on Friday.  Alpha Blondy, the famous French Reggae star is playing.  I’m not buying tickets but it’s right on the harbor and it should echo out of the water.  Hopefully we’ll have the dinghy running so we can anchor it out down there and chill.  Hell, maybe I’ll take Dosia over there.  Tomorrow he’s playing at one of the bars downtown so I plan to take all the film gear over and see what I can get.  After the weekend and we provision the boat, I think we’ll start sailing around Tahiti since I’d like to anchor on the southside of the island near the Billabong Pro Surfing Competition in the beginning of May.  That also puts us at a better angle to sail back to the Tuamotus for a couple of weeks.  I gotta get Margie in the water with some sharks.  At least that’s the plan…I’m not telling her that though.

  • Interesting Facts About Tahiti

    Here’s 21 interesting facts about Tahiti and the islands I borrowed, oddly enough, from a gohawaii site.

    • Hawaii gets more visitors in 10 days than Tahiti does in an entire year.
    • In ancient Tahiti, archery was a sacred sport, practiced only by people of high rank. And while they were expert marksmen, bows and arrows were never used as weapons of war.
    • It’s common to put a tiare (Tahiti’s national flower, a fragrant white blossom) behind one’s ear — left side you’re taken, right if you’re looking.
    • James Michener’s mythical island of Bali Hai is likened to Moorea.
    • Moorea is known as “The Island of Love,” and Bora Bora as “The Romantic Island.”
    • Moorea means “yellow lizard” which is a name taken from a family of chiefs.
    • Natives of the lush Austral Islands grow many crops in the fertile soil. Due to their diets of foods rich in fluoride, people from these temperate isles have beautiful white teeth.
    • Over half of the population is under the age of 20 years old.
    • Tahiti and Her Islands covers over two million square miles of the South Pacific Ocean and is comprised of five great archipelagos with 118 islands.
    • Tahitians are very friendly, but somewhat shy. Visitors find that by offering the first smile or “ia ora na” (hello), they will be greeted by wonderful Tahitian hospitality.
    • The beautiful black pearls, cherished by natives and visitors alike, are indigenous only in the Tuomotu Islands of French Polynesia.
    • The Chinese population (about 10 percent) monopolizes the retail trade, so when Tahitians talk about going shopping, they say they are going to “la Chine” or to the Chinese.
    • The letter “B” does not exist in the Tahitian language. Bora Bora is actually Pora Pora, meaning first born, but early visitors heard it as Bora Bora.
    • The Pearl Museum on Tahiti is the only museum in the world devoted entirely to pearls. The unique presentations about Tahitian Cultured Pearls describe and demonstrate the history and practice of cultivating pearls as well as their place in art, history, mythology, and religion.
    • The traditional method of “stone fishing” is still performed for special festivals. Dozens of outrigger canoes form a semicircle, and men in the canoes beat the water with stones tied to ropes. The frightened fish are then driven towards the beach and the men jump from the canoes yelling and beating the water with their hands to drive the fish ashore.
    • The translation of Papeete (Tahiti’s capital) is “water basket”.
    • The ultimate private island escape, Motu Tapu is the most photographed isle in the South Pacific. This tiny motu, just a few hundred yards from the main island of Bora Bora, is best described as the world’s most perfect to relax.
    • The word tattoo originated in Tahiti. The legend of Tohu, the god of tattoo, describes painting all the oceans’ fish in beautiful colors and patterns. In Polynesian culture, tattoos have long been considered signs of beauty, and in earlier times were ceremoniously applied when reaching adolescence.
    • There are more hotel rooms in a typical Las Vegas hotel than on all 118 islands of French Polynesia.
    • There are no poisonous snakes or insects in French Polynesia.
    • Those things that look like mail boxes outside the homes of Tahitian residents are not for mail, but for French bread delivery. Residents get a fresh loaf dropped off twice a day. But alas, they must go to the post office to retrieve their mail!

  • Maeva Anchorage and Marina Taina

    Today I moved over to the west side of the airport to the huge anchoring and mooring area surrounding Marina Taina.  I think it’s called the Maeva Beach anchorage although from where I am, I can’t see any beach and I don’t know technically where that anchorage begins and ends.  There’s A LOT of boats around here ranging from ultra elegant 100’+ yachts to the rusting, hard-chine steel hulls that seem to form a some sort of niche with French sailors.  I’ve seen them along the whole trip, through the Caribbean and Latin America, but the number of these homemade-looking boats around here is staggering.  This anchorage is like the Coral Bay of the west; it’s filled with boats you can barely believe made it this far.  I don’t mind it here all that much.  It does get rolly on a monohull and I find myself staring out the window at the catarmans with a wanton desire.   The bar at the marina has bands on the weekends and you can hear the music out across the water which I love.   It’s especially handy right now since I was unsucessful at cranking the outboard.  With the wind, current, and traffic here, rowing a RIB dinghy single-handed with one working oar lock is more likely to send me in circles than anywhere close to my intended destination.

    I decided to grab a mooring since it’s so crowded over here and this area does have a reputation for getting nasty when a big stanky westerly wind blows through.  It’s not that I don’t trust my anchor but I figure the last place I want to be is up on the bow in the middle of the night, butt naked, wrestling with the anchor as Dosia drifts through a crowded anchorage in 50 kt winds.  Some things are just plain easier when your by yourself!  There’s probably fifty moorings out here but all the ones up close to the actual marina are taken by Frenchies who came here and never left.  I tied up to one of those when I first got here but within an hour I had a guy in a “mankini” on a Beneteau hovering over me explaining in French it was his mooring.  So I moved down to another which also has lines on it and certainly belongs to another boat but no one’s come yet so hopefully I can stay the night.  I plan on moving back over to the quay tomorrow where I can begin the official “Margie Cleanup” before she gets here on Thursday morning.

    Tomorrow is Sunday.  Perhaps the worst day to be alone in the South Pacific.  As Paul Theroux wrote, “there is nothing more pacific than a Pacific Sunday”  and there is no better description.  Business stops, the radio goes quiet, and the people disappear into their churches and homes.  Tahiti is the one island where you can expect a little more action on Sunday and even here it still feels like a ghost town.  Once I get the watermaker pulled out and ready to ship, I’ll probably spend my Sunday looking into our passage west.  I want to learn more about the islands in our path.  I’ve realized my eyes were a bigger than my wallet in planning our time in French Polyneisa so we won’t end up using the full six months of our extended stay visas.  Everything is too expensive here.   We’ll hang out as long as we can but with similar, cheaper islands on the horizon, it’s hard not to think about following the sunset sooner than later.