Get Lost On Purpose

Category: Sailing

  • 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.
    P1050261sm
    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.

  • Allow the bruising to commence…

    I arrived in Tahiti around 4:30 this morning after three flights and almost a solid 24 hours of travel. Last year when I made the journey to join Dosia in Nuku Hiva it took me four flights and a two hour alterain vehicle ride up and down a mountain. So when I boarded the flight for Tahiti last night in LA and knew that this was it and Drew would be waiting at the end, it made this trip feel like a cinch compared to last September.

    This go round the only anticipation I felt was that of wanting to just see Drew, hug him, give him a kiss, and hold his hand like all the other couples I’ve been watching for the past month back in the states. Drew’s mom and sister even commented prior to me leaving the airport yesterday that I was MUCH calmer than last year. That’s because traveling out of the country for the first time, and doing so all by myself…the anticipation was ridiculous. I had flown several times before but not to that extent. Changing my bags over in LA was quite an experience. I’m a southern girl. In LA an “excuse me” can often be mistaken for getting an attitude with someone. I was completely out of my element. This time around, I breezed through there as if I might have actually known what I was doing! I returned to the same grill where I sat waiting for my flight last year and had myself a couple of Miller Lites. It’s gonna be a LONG time before I get anything other than a Hinano or Heineken again.

    Getting off that plane and seeing my boy there smiling and waiting was so awesome. Ummm…skinny, mini over here has lost a ton of weight. He always does that when he leaves the country and is by himself for a while. Not to mention I could not look more ridiculous walking next to him as he has been kissed many times by the sun and I appear to have lost touch with it for quite some time!  As long as that’s all he was kissed by while we were apart then I can deal with it : )
    tan

    So here we are back on the boat together again! Drew began to unpack my things earlier to give me a chance to get a nap in but I found myself getting up to explain why I needed four bottles of leave in conditioner and ten of the exact same tank tops. They are totally not the same…they are all a different color. It’s great to be back, great to be next to him again. We hit up a local, what seems to be always packed and popular, eatery called Oasis in downtown Papeete for a grilled fish sandwich. We came across them last year, fell in love, and today it was just as good as I remembered. Highly recommended to anyone who might find themselves downtown in Tahiti’s capital one day.

    We haven’t quite mapped out our complete journey yet. All I know is I’ve been on the boat for approximately eleven hours and have already formed three nice bruises on my legs and we haven’t even left the dock. Thus….is boat life! All you can do is hope that you tan well enough to cover up the evidence that no matter how much experience you have, the boat always has the upperhand…

  • 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.

  • 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.