May 20th - On how my anticipated tourist activities are kyboshed, for the second time in a row, by the captain’s misinterpretation of upcoming weather conditions.
I have to preface this entry by stating that we are currently at Easter Island, which one might think is in the South Pacific, but, weatherwise at any rate, is still much more like Patagonia, where the saying, ‘If you don’t like the weather wait five minutes,’ is too close to the truth to be funny.
So… my story starts exactly two weeks ago, on a Monday, the day before we left Robinson Crusoe Island. The airport on RCI, as I will call it for short, is on the far side of the island, and, since there are no roads that go there, there is a ferry, well a wee fishing boat actually, that coordinates with the weekly flight from the mainland by doing a two hour run around the coast taking any outgoing passengers to the airport and then returning with the incoming ones. This happens on a Tuesday. If the seas are too rough for the small boat to make the trip then the airplane doesn’t fly. The ferry is supposed to be for air passengers only, but since I was there on RCI and it seemed like it might be an interesting thing to do, I went into town on Monday to try and find out if there was any way I could sweet talk my way into a ride on the ferry, there and back, just so I could see the other side of the island. I had no idea who to see to set this up but as I passed by the park ranger’s office I decided to stop in and ask if they could tell me. As luck would have it the wasp experts, Rodrigo and Pillar, were there, talking to the head park ranger. They were going to fly out the next day but rather than taking the regular ferry the ranger was going to take them out so he could give them a guided tour of some of the different ecosystems on the far side of the island. Then, after dropping them off, he was going to go to the fur seal colony and do something park rangery there. And, miracle of miracles, when I expressed an interest in the airport ferry he said it was unfortunately not an option, but, instead, he would take me with him for the day! Wow. I was on cloud nine, it sounded like a fantastic once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Obviously, however, from the title of this entry, you will have perceived that this is not how things turned out. I got back to our boat and Sven stated that he was planning to leave at noon the next day, Tuesday, to catch a good weather window that would allow us to get away before a coming high set in. I told him of my planned trip to the other side of the island and asked if he could delay our departure by just a few hours so I could take advantage of it and his answer was an unequivocal NO. I was, needless to say, slightly disappointed (read totally crushed) but, well, what is a lowly crew to do? I’d asked, he had replied, and his reasons almost made sense; he said that the winds were going to be perfect for a short time only and if I got stranded on the other side of the island (something that seemed highly unlikely to me) then it would put off his chance of leaving and, windwise, we’d be totally screwed. So. I didn’t get to go with the park ranger, didn’t get to see the other side of the island, didn’t get to visit the fur seal colony, and, of course, to add insult to injury, rub salt in the wound, or, if you prefer, to make me feel as if I were kicked when I was down, though we did leave at noon the next day as planned, the captain had apparently misinterpreted the weather forecast, or maybe it had merely been wrong, and we ended up stuck in the middle of the high with no wind at all to speak of and, hence, merely motored, instead of sailing, for three whole days. Aargh.
Part two of this story occurs exactly two weeks later. We got to Easter Island on a Monday, anchored, and had the authorities come aboard to check out our paperwork, our passports and visa, our supply of fresh fruit, our garbage, etc., etc.. Then we put the dingy in the water and went into town for lunch. While there I went to the tourist office to inquire about guided tours. Easter Island is such an amazing place anthropologically that I had decided I had to spring for a real guide to take me round and tell me about stuff. (For those who are not familiar with its story - which is perhaps overused today as an ecological parable for what might happen to the world as a whole if we don’t look after our resources a little better – it goes like this… Easter Island was a south pacific paradise when first colonized by Polynesians over 1000 years ago. There were no native animals but the vegetation was amazingly lush. On the geographically isolated Galapagos Islands the turtles had grown to be huge; on the similarly isolated Easter Island the palm trees were 7 feet in diameter! Because they had plenty of food, chickens and vegetable species they had brought with them supplemented by local fish and birds, and were too far away from other islands to expend energy trading or fighting with them, the inhabitants developed a very rich co-operative society composed of 12 tribes, each of whose land had different resources, and proceeded to build the huge (up to 270 ton!) now iconic statues. One day, however, the last tree was cut down. They lost not only the wood they needed to transport and erect any new statues but also fuel for cooking food and for cremating their dead, material for building boats and hence fishing at sea, habitat for land birds and hence that source of food as well, controlled drainage for their fields, and the list goes on. By the time the island had was encountered in the 1700’s by the Europeans the civilization had crashed into complete anarchy with cannibalism rampant.) But, back to my story. On Monday I discovered that there was a guided tour, in English, leaving from the tourist center at 9 am the very next morning. With my experience from Robinson Crusoe Island still relatively fresh in my memory, and, given my knowledge that the wind was due to come up and that we might have to switch to a different anchorage, I was tempted to stay on the island overnight, just get a room in a hostel, grab the iron while it was hot and do this tour right immediately before the opportunity slipped away. We’d only come in to the Island for lunch, so I didn’t have anything with me (no clean underwear or toothbrush for example, and, more importantly to my mind, no extra camera battery) but it seemed like the best, if somewhat dramatic, plan to me. I was stressing more about my camera dying and having to live the Easter Island experience there in the moment without being able to record it on film than anything else. When we all met up at the dingy at the designated time to go back to the sailboat I talked to Sven about my staying on the Island overnight so I could do the tour the next day but he said that that was absolutely unnecessary, that the weather conditions were fantastic, that he’d be happy to run me into town the next morning. By 9 am? Certainly. No problem. No doubt about it at all. So I believed him and went back to the boat for the night. Yes. Well. That evening a call came in from the coast guard recommending that we move to a different anchorage at first light, and, by morning, it was, as my kids would have said when they were younger, a ‘no brainer’. The wind was up to 30 knots, the waves were huge, and we were totally unprotected. There was no discussion at all about going into town, about my lovely English language tour, about anything. Right after breakfast we pulled anchor and sailed – a fantastic day sail as a matter of fact – round to the other side of the island where we proceeded to re-anchor in a picturesque protected spot far from any possible dingy landing. We can see several volcanic cinder cones from where we are anchored, and 15 of the stone statues lined up along the shore, but, but, but… Man, I knew I ought to have stayed on land. I hope I come to really like all the sailing, because, let’s face it, the fates are not interested, at all, in letting me fulfill any of my current touristic aspirations!
I have to preface this entry by stating that we are currently at Easter Island, which one might think is in the South Pacific, but, weatherwise at any rate, is still much more like Patagonia, where the saying, ‘If you don’t like the weather wait five minutes,’ is too close to the truth to be funny.
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| We climbed to Alexander Selkirk (AKA Robinson Crusoe) lookout, he climbed there everyday to see the other side of the island to look for ships. |
So… my story starts exactly two weeks ago, on a Monday, the day before we left Robinson Crusoe Island. The airport on RCI, as I will call it for short, is on the far side of the island, and, since there are no roads that go there, there is a ferry, well a wee fishing boat actually, that coordinates with the weekly flight from the mainland by doing a two hour run around the coast taking any outgoing passengers to the airport and then returning with the incoming ones. This happens on a Tuesday. If the seas are too rough for the small boat to make the trip then the airplane doesn’t fly. The ferry is supposed to be for air passengers only, but since I was there on RCI and it seemed like it might be an interesting thing to do, I went into town on Monday to try and find out if there was any way I could sweet talk my way into a ride on the ferry, there and back, just so I could see the other side of the island. I had no idea who to see to set this up but as I passed by the park ranger’s office I decided to stop in and ask if they could tell me. As luck would have it the wasp experts, Rodrigo and Pillar, were there, talking to the head park ranger. They were going to fly out the next day but rather than taking the regular ferry the ranger was going to take them out so he could give them a guided tour of some of the different ecosystems on the far side of the island. Then, after dropping them off, he was going to go to the fur seal colony and do something park rangery there. And, miracle of miracles, when I expressed an interest in the airport ferry he said it was unfortunately not an option, but, instead, he would take me with him for the day! Wow. I was on cloud nine, it sounded like a fantastic once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Obviously, however, from the title of this entry, you will have perceived that this is not how things turned out. I got back to our boat and Sven stated that he was planning to leave at noon the next day, Tuesday, to catch a good weather window that would allow us to get away before a coming high set in. I told him of my planned trip to the other side of the island and asked if he could delay our departure by just a few hours so I could take advantage of it and his answer was an unequivocal NO. I was, needless to say, slightly disappointed (read totally crushed) but, well, what is a lowly crew to do? I’d asked, he had replied, and his reasons almost made sense; he said that the winds were going to be perfect for a short time only and if I got stranded on the other side of the island (something that seemed highly unlikely to me) then it would put off his chance of leaving and, windwise, we’d be totally screwed. So. I didn’t get to go with the park ranger, didn’t get to see the other side of the island, didn’t get to visit the fur seal colony, and, of course, to add insult to injury, rub salt in the wound, or, if you prefer, to make me feel as if I were kicked when I was down, though we did leave at noon the next day as planned, the captain had apparently misinterpreted the weather forecast, or maybe it had merely been wrong, and we ended up stuck in the middle of the high with no wind at all to speak of and, hence, merely motored, instead of sailing, for three whole days. Aargh.
Part two of this story occurs exactly two weeks later. We got to Easter Island on a Monday, anchored, and had the authorities come aboard to check out our paperwork, our passports and visa, our supply of fresh fruit, our garbage, etc., etc.. Then we put the dingy in the water and went into town for lunch. While there I went to the tourist office to inquire about guided tours. Easter Island is such an amazing place anthropologically that I had decided I had to spring for a real guide to take me round and tell me about stuff. (For those who are not familiar with its story - which is perhaps overused today as an ecological parable for what might happen to the world as a whole if we don’t look after our resources a little better – it goes like this… Easter Island was a south pacific paradise when first colonized by Polynesians over 1000 years ago. There were no native animals but the vegetation was amazingly lush. On the geographically isolated Galapagos Islands the turtles had grown to be huge; on the similarly isolated Easter Island the palm trees were 7 feet in diameter! Because they had plenty of food, chickens and vegetable species they had brought with them supplemented by local fish and birds, and were too far away from other islands to expend energy trading or fighting with them, the inhabitants developed a very rich co-operative society composed of 12 tribes, each of whose land had different resources, and proceeded to build the huge (up to 270 ton!) now iconic statues. One day, however, the last tree was cut down. They lost not only the wood they needed to transport and erect any new statues but also fuel for cooking food and for cremating their dead, material for building boats and hence fishing at sea, habitat for land birds and hence that source of food as well, controlled drainage for their fields, and the list goes on. By the time the island had was encountered in the 1700’s by the Europeans the civilization had crashed into complete anarchy with cannibalism rampant.) But, back to my story. On Monday I discovered that there was a guided tour, in English, leaving from the tourist center at 9 am the very next morning. With my experience from Robinson Crusoe Island still relatively fresh in my memory, and, given my knowledge that the wind was due to come up and that we might have to switch to a different anchorage, I was tempted to stay on the island overnight, just get a room in a hostel, grab the iron while it was hot and do this tour right immediately before the opportunity slipped away. We’d only come in to the Island for lunch, so I didn’t have anything with me (no clean underwear or toothbrush for example, and, more importantly to my mind, no extra camera battery) but it seemed like the best, if somewhat dramatic, plan to me. I was stressing more about my camera dying and having to live the Easter Island experience there in the moment without being able to record it on film than anything else. When we all met up at the dingy at the designated time to go back to the sailboat I talked to Sven about my staying on the Island overnight so I could do the tour the next day but he said that that was absolutely unnecessary, that the weather conditions were fantastic, that he’d be happy to run me into town the next morning. By 9 am? Certainly. No problem. No doubt about it at all. So I believed him and went back to the boat for the night. Yes. Well. That evening a call came in from the coast guard recommending that we move to a different anchorage at first light, and, by morning, it was, as my kids would have said when they were younger, a ‘no brainer’. The wind was up to 30 knots, the waves were huge, and we were totally unprotected. There was no discussion at all about going into town, about my lovely English language tour, about anything. Right after breakfast we pulled anchor and sailed – a fantastic day sail as a matter of fact – round to the other side of the island where we proceeded to re-anchor in a picturesque protected spot far from any possible dingy landing. We can see several volcanic cinder cones from where we are anchored, and 15 of the stone statues lined up along the shore, but, but, but… Man, I knew I ought to have stayed on land. I hope I come to really like all the sailing, because, let’s face it, the fates are not interested, at all, in letting me fulfill any of my current touristic aspirations!
