Fakarava

The 3 day sail to Fakarava was horrible, fluky winds and choppy seas and dark nights with nasty squalls all the way. The captain got a very bad rope burn on his hands during one panic situation and the other crew took a large chunk out of his foot during another and all three of us were continually seasick, basically just endlessly nauseous and unhappy.

Fakarava is a large atoll. The huge volcano which was there millions of years ago eroded completely away in the very distant past and all that is left is an impossibly tiny thin shoelace of coral marking the place where it once was.

Fortunately it's the classic perfect cruising destination. As soon as we arrived we were happy to be there. From the moment we sailed through the pass into the calm water of the lagoon, dropped anchor, jumped into the water to snorkel, and then took a cold fresh-water pre-nap shower it was all absolutely lovely.

Today the population is about 800 happy and (relatively) prosperous people. The atoll is blessed with amazing pink sand beaches, world-class bucket-list quality diving, and a pass deep enough that small cruise ships can enter. Like many other atolls there is one single flat road leading from the airport, along through the town, and beyond. The town has a church, two small stores, and several dive shops, restaurants, pensions (BnB’s), and artist’s galleries. On the day of the week that the cruise ship arrives it's decked out in its best party frock with music playing, bicycles for rent, and handicraft stalls lining the street. You can buy beautiful (and very expensive) pearl necklaces from the local black pearl farms or intricate (and very cheap) seashells necklaces made by the local women. Everyone is out and about. On other days it's calm and relaxed and just super chill, midday is too hot to get excited and so locals and yachties gather in the late afternoon at the different waterside eateries to nurse a beer and check their email and then sit back and trade stories as the sun slowly sinks into the sea, maybe even stay for supper ($10 for a huge plate of meat or fish, fries, and salad).

First stop Rotoava AKA Heaven on Earth.

Our boat, along with about a dozen others, anchored a couple of minutes dingy ride from town. Every boat was different, some with young families others with old sea salts, some who had been there forever others who were on their way round the world. It seemed there were more languages spoken than boats! While there we biked the road, snorkeled to our hearts content, and even went on a SCUBA dive during which we saw several huge manta rays, hundreds and hundreds of sharks, and about seventeen gazillion fish. The captain spent hours and hours repairing the damage caused on the short trip over and Daniel and I, when we weren't needed to help him, wandered the town, swam, read, played scrabble, and took naps. It was wonderful.  

Second stop Hirifa AKA Heaven on Earth.

After a lovely relaxed visit in the north we sailed one full day inside the lagoon (a wonderful combination of wind but waveless water) a lovely relaxed sail with the spinnaker pulling us south past plenty of pearl farms and the occasional interesting mansion, and towards evening we anchored in a sheltered corner at a place called Hirifa (which must be Polynesian for Paradise) where we were the only boat. We walked the deserted beaches and swam over fine white sand and in the middle of the night the stars not only filled the bowl of the sky but were reflected perfectly below on the mirror-smooth water of the bay. It was wonderful.

Third stop Tetamanu AKA Heaven on Earth.

Eventually, as our time was running out, we motored a couple of hours over to the south pass and hooked onto a free mooring ball. Tetamanu was capital of the Tuamotus many years ago before being destroyed in a hurricane. Now all that remains is the old church, a couple of small low key yet upscale resorts, and two diving outfits. Here the trick is to dingy out through the pass to the edge of the ocean just before the tide turns and then jump into the water with your mask and snorkel on so the incoming tide carries you through the pass and into the lagoon sweeping you gently alongside a steep coral wall with fish fish and more fish all around you, and sharks, and rays, clams and conchs and crabs, and all manner of other amazing underwater life. The water is crystal clear, the only problem deciding in which direction to gaze at any given moment as there are awesome wonders in all directions, and the only thing missing David Attenborough’s voice-over explaining the ecosystem. Wow. It was wonderful.

The three day sail back to Tahiti from Fakarava was a mixed bag. Some days we flew a sail called a code zero, bigger than a genoa but smaller than a spinnaker, and zipped along at 9 knots (very fast). Most nights the squalls were relentless with the wind repeatedly jumping almost instantaneously from 12 knots (a good strong breeze) to 42 (a nasty blow) and we spent our shifts nervously awaiting these. (When a squall arrives, usually with a shifting wind direction and heavy driving rain, you have to act FAST, in the dark, to furl the sails into tiny triangles and monitor the direction of the boat and be ready to loosen the sheets to let wind spill if a particularly brutal gust threatens to knock the boat over. It's great fun.) Daniel, there to have his very first sailing experience, certainly got a lot of experience!

Water so clear it seems almost not there. 

 Easier to take pic in calm Hirifa bay than in squally night sea.

Boat on anchor at Rotoava.

Squall on the way - but at anchor during the day.

Post sail drinks.

The only really big mistake I made on the whole trip to Fakarava was not taking my youngest son along with me to keep me company and make a visual record of the wonders of the atoll.

Never a dull day.

1) Visas - Three lost days

I feel a little less silly about my LAX fiasco right now as my captain drastically misinterpreted his own visa situation. He'd thought he had a 90 day visa. When he entered the country they told him 30 days. Then, as we approached being put in the water, and with three separate sets of crew with tickets booked to fly in from different continents to sail with him, and his 30 days almost up, he decided to look into it. And learnt he had had merely 30 days. And a huge panic situation arose (though fortunately not mine) which overwhelmed everything for several days. And almost caused us to miss our weather window to head to the Tuamotus. (But did allow the other crew and I time off, to walk into town for frozen yogurt and a visit to the pearl museum, to talk and talk, to discover we were both excellent scrabble players… :)

2) Verdict - Heading out to sea.

The captain returned from a day pleading with government officials, police, and immigration officers to state we'd be leaving in one hour so we scurried about tidying up inside and tying everything down outside, and, as the sun set in the west behind Moorea, we set out from Tahiti for Fakarava.

‘Which way would you head?’, the captain asked me in what had to have been intended as, I must assume, a teaching moment. ‘I'd follow that boat,’ I replied pointing to a fishing vessel not too far in front of us that was winding its way along a well marked channel between red and green buoys. ‘And if it wasn’t there?’, he asked. ‘I'd go along the channel between the red and green buoys,’ I said. ‘No,’ he stated, ‘You have to keep the red buoys on your port side when leaving,’ and he started steering our boat out of the clearly marked channel until some canoeists yelled at us at which point he stopped and went below to study the charts and returned to admit I was right.

It was not an auspicious start.

And similar things happened with laying the jacklines and plotting a course and setting the sails…

I did my very very best to be as differential and diplomatic as possible but I was totally aghast and starting to get worried. How can someone who's captained a boat halfway around the world not know so many such very basic things? How did he make it this far? How is that possible? And more to the point, was I going to have to double check every single one of his decisions? And more to the point, how safe were we?

As we sailed East into the dusk with the most beautiful sunset behind us I chatted with Daniel. ‘Well?’ he asked? ‘I can't sail on this boat to Australia,’ I replied, ‘The verdict is in: No way!’

3) Verification - Night Squalls Night One

In a monohull you can tell when you're overpowered (have too much sail up) because the boat heels over. But in a cat you have to know to reef based merely on wind speed. Our rule of thumb, the captain said, is to reef once at 15 knots and then again at 20.

The first night out I awake suddenly to beating rain and general disaster. The captain's on watch. The true wind is 30 knots and rising. The jib is flapping madly, unable to be furled as its lines have tangled. The main can't be taken in safely as to do so one must go on deck up to the mast and currently there are jib sheets and other assorted ropes whipping about out of control up front. The waves, as always, look bigger in total darkness, and, did I mention, the rain was torrential… For the first time I'm actually scared that the captain's incompetence might put us in danger. (How do people manage to circumnavigate with so little idea of how to sail?) (And how do I pick these guys to sail with!) Daniel and I put on our safety harnesses, a process that takes longer than it ought as we haven't practised, and meanwhile the captain has received bad rope burns on his hands from mishandling a line. Basically it's a shit show. Five very long minutes later we're all out in the cockpit, soaking wet, ready to help, and, fortunately, the wind speed falls slowly to 25 and finally down to 10. It was just a squall.

In the calm that follows we untangle the lines, put two reefs in the main, and furl the jib almost completely. All this takes about half an hour. I'm very grateful we're doing it at 10 knots and not at 40! The torrential rain lessens to mere drizzle and we get a few minutes reprise before the wind picks up to 30 again and the next squall blows through. This time we're ready. It's still nasty but no longer dangerous.

I have my verification. I will not do even one long leg at sea with this particular captain.

In fact I might even have been cured of any desire to go to sea at all!

Maybe it really is time for me to pursue other avenues.

Roll on life.

In other news, Daniel, 34, retired self-made multi-millionaire is intelligent, interesting, and an amazing cook. He dished up baked eggplant casserole with a green salad for the first night and it was to die for. I don't particularly like eggplants generally but this was fantastic, and the salad, complete with touches like parsley, capers, and his signature dressing beyond description.

In other news we are heading to Fakarava (how cool is that) where I anticipate a week of pink sand beaches and out of this world snorkeling. Life could be worse. (As long as we don't all go down with the ship.)

Wyn confuses me. He decided to sail around the world. And he's doing it. I mean, good for him. I'm thrilled and impressed and envious. But he hates sailing, consequently isn't any good at it, and so is forever, in his very words, “over-stressed, angry, exasperated, and frustrated!” He started this trip last year and can't wait to get back home and sell his boat. To top everything off it's cost him a metaphorical arm and a leg and, more poignantly, his marriage.

I came here expecting at very least a fantastic sail to Australia and hoping for, perhaps, even more. At this point, if I were a betting person, I'd put the whole of my fortune on the odds that I'll take neither!

And every night there are squalls and scary winds and beating rain.

And everyday Daniel makes me laugh and pushes me to think.

And at all hours we both do our best to make it a happy stressless interlude for the captain.

And as the sun sets over a series of squalls all I need to make my life perfect (for today) is for one of my lines to catch a tuna!

Tahiti I

The first few days AKA On the hard

The first few days in Tahiti it is so HOT that that overshadows everything else. 30 feels like 40 the weather network says but to me it’s 30 feels like 50. The sky is blue, the air is humid, the sun is relentless. I could positively melt. I plaster myself with sunblock repeatedly as it all drips off and my eyes sting from the sweat that is forever pouring into them. The boat is on the hard in an industrial workyard. The landscape is a fenced cement lot and the music and endless cacophony of hammers, electric sanders, and drills punctuated with the beep beep beep of forklift trucks moving huge cement blocks about or the raucous deep throaty roar of the marine travel lift. There are no bells and whistles here, this is not the Tahiti of tourist brochures. There’s a very rudimentary washroom with a couple of stalls and a shower (though no internal doors) so we can pee and have a cold shower now and again but no pool or beach. The view over the water is huge fuel storage containers and though I don’t see any fishing boats it smells like a fishing harbour. Because we are on land the boat’s air conditioning, which needs water cooling, is not on, and since half a dozen men are at work sanding the bottom there is dust in the air and so all the doors and hatches are tightly closed making the inside a veritable greenhouse. Outside the sun is merciless. Everywhere it is just HOT.

Despite the team working below and the occasional specialists coming in to fix rigging issues or engine problems there is still plenty of work for my captain Wyn (meaning wine, pronounced Vain) and I. By the morning of the second day I get up and put on my long sleeved shirt and my longest shorts (to keep off the sun) and am helping Wyn with jobs that need two - patching leaks in the dingy, hauling him up the mast to put new shoes on the spreaders, etc - and finding endless other chores to keep myself busy in between, mostly, of course, low skilled repetitive jobs, like cleaning the exterior of the boat, which is yet another job best done while she's on land, but which involves hours and hours of heavy elbow grease in the hot hot sun…

Fortunately it cools down in the evening so by six when we knock off work it's nicer out and it's not so hot that it's possible to sleep at night.  

I love it here.

This is where I want to be, what I want to be doing.

We're in Tahiti which I've been to before and visited properly so I'm not even stressing about the fact that I'm not getting enough ‘tourist’ time in (though that might well be a future worry as the summer moves on as there is only work, no fun, in our foreseeable future).

And as the boat is currently overbooked for the trip to Australia later this summer there might not even be a private cabin for me if all the other crew show up. I'd still be welcome to stay but would have to share a bunk with the captain, something I'm very uncertain I'd be willing to do.

Our other crew on the first leg will likely be interesting. He's a 34 year old British entrepreneur, a self-made multi-millionaire, already retired and on a long slow trip around the world while he contemplates what to do next with his life. He knows nothing about sailing but was so keen to do ALL the cooking that we relented and said sure.

So…

my initial reaction is…

the verdict is not in yet…

at all...

we'll see…

A different cat about to be put back in the water.

The wooden boat next to us is even more work. 

As usual my part in this job is invisible... but I hoisted the captain up many times!

PS I notice the sky is not completely blue in my photos. I promise though that it is HOT here!

5th Departure

Leaving yet again AKA Getting ready to go on what might well be my very last (long) trip.

As part of my pre-departure routine I went, of course, to say goodbye once again to my favourite beach. 

Preamble: Fall 2017 I rented a small house on a small river only 10 km from where I was working and 30 minutes from downtown Ottawa but the same time a million miles from either. It was a slice of absolute paradise in a zen kind of way with nothing but water and trees and sky visible from the huge picture windows and with beavers, otters, and great grey herons as frequent visitors right in my backyard. It was the loveliest place I’ve lived in all my life and yet also the loneliest. I taught during the week, of course, and visited friends and family on weekends, but mostly I moped about, I lay on my bed watching the fall mist rise up and dance above the water and the sun and moon and stars rise up over the treetops and the deer come out and walk along the far shore as the leaves slowly turned gold and red and then fell to the ground, and I endlessly regretted letting my relationship from the previous year fall apart.

It took awhile but inevitability, if in imperceptible increments, my tears eroded my sadness away and eventually I reapproached my standard state - lost and alone and utterly unsure what to do next with my life.

So when the semester was over I cheated. I retreated to a condo at the base of Tremblant owned by the friend of a friend who doesn’t use it anymore and spent two glorious months living there skiing and skiing and skiing. It was heavenly. The snow was always soft, the sky always sunny. I even woke up one day to find that fresh air and exercise and being continuously surrounded by happy people had successfully soothed my battered soul and that the world was once again a perfect place.

And then, of course, who wouldn't, I looked about and found a boat to crew on.

Four years ago I’d crewed from South America to Tahiti (well, almost to Tahiti, but that’s another story) and so this year I chose a boat that was going to start in Tahiti and sail westwards towards Australia. Sailing right across the Pacific from one side to the other might not be on everyone's bucket list but I was pretty sure it was what I wanted to do. After booking my flights to Tahiti however, in a spatt of unparalleled indecisiveness, I cancelled them, then re-booked and re-cancelled them, and then re-booked them yet again. I waited 24 hours with baited breath to see if I was going to re-cancel them a third time, but, to my astonishment, I didn't, so instead I went into pre-departure preparation mode.

My five year plan has been to teach five months of the year, travel five months of the year, and have two months left to sit on the beach, visit everyone's cottages, and eat sushi and play board games with my kids. And it's what I've been doing. But I think after this trip, my fifth trip, I'll rethink my next five years and change up my game plan, which is why this is most likely my last long trip. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I made a list and checked it twice: things to pack (mask and snorkel, long sleeved sun shirt, shorts…), things to buy (headlamp batteries, maple syrup, sunblock...), things to do (get oil changed in car, reschedule upcoming medical appointments, file income tax…). As always the list got longer before it got shorter. And, also, the most important things weren't even explicitly on it (walk round town with Shelley, have dinner with Suzanne, call Shelia, spend time with each of my kids…). I still wasn't sure this was exactly how I wanted to spend the next 5 months - and I always worry about what I'm going to miss when I'm not here - but having a list, and a deadline, focussed me. Before I knew it I was having my last meal in Canada (supper with Ben and Fred and Laura), stressing about whether to take my favourite jeans or not, and walking, at 2 am, in my sandals, the only footwear I was taking for my 5 months away, through several inches of fresh wet snow, down Bank. The 97 bus, right on schedule as always, whisked me off to the airport, I had my last Timmy’s coffee, and was on my way.

My first trip I had had an agenda (plan my life), my second one I got serious about writing (my blog), and the one after that I tried to keep a visual record of the places I went (with a point and shoot). This time I'm travelling light. In more ways than one. I was supposed to have bought and learnt to use a drone and gopro last fall but was I too busy feeling sorry for myself to do anything productive. So I didn't. And I'm not only heading off without new gadgets and gizmos, I'm heading off completely cameraless. I doubt I'll even blog (this post is just to tease SD) because 5th time round there'll almost certainly be nothing new to say about sailing, and I've given up on trying to figure out my life, so... nothing at all to write about.

For now I'm just going to let it flow.

Try to be a positive proactive productive crew.

And maybe have fun.

We'll see.

PS  I ALWAYS seem to forget how LONG it takes to travel almost halfway round the world. On paper my flights looked fine: Ottawa to Newark 6am - 8am, Newark to LAX 9am to noon, LAX to Faa'a 4pm to 8pm. Bam. All done in one day. But, leaving on an international flight means being at the airport 3 hours early so I had to be at Ottawa airport at 3am which meant setting my alarm for 2am to get up and walk to bus station first. And, with 6 hours time changes factored in, my lovely-looking 8pm arrival was in fact 2am Ottawa time or 24 hours after I'd gotten up. And, there was, of course, a huge snow storm going on in the Eastern US so my first flight was over an hour late which had me running like a bat out of hell in Newark to make the connection there, which I did, just, but then we all sat in the plane, for three hours, before leaving the tarmac and, on top of that, had a super long flight as we flew around the storm instead of straight across the states. And, of course, the story doesn't even end there. I'd known that you can't fly to Tahiti without proof of onward travel (they are, justifiably, worried that it's so lovely people will come and simply stay) so I'd planned to buy a one way ticket out during my 4 hour layover (I'd had plenty of practice the previous week with free cancellations within 24 hours and knew how the system worked) but when I actually landed it was exactly 30 minutes before take off for my next flight and boarding had already closed and my free airport wifi wasn't working and a super kind woman offered to make them hold the plane for me and escort me, at a run, all the way from one side of LAX to the other jumping to the front of every security line along the way… but, unfortunately, as I'd known was going to happen though had neglected to tell the super kind woman, when we were at the check in desk getting my boarding pass my paperwork didn't hold up. Which was a HUGE problem. (You can buy a ticket you have every intention of cancelling if you do it quietly and anonymously online but the rules are just strict enough, justifiably, that you can't actually do so while standing at check in with the plane literally waiting for you.) (Fortunately I have just exactly the right mix of shamelessness (to act innocent and pretend I'd thought by boat papers would be sufficient) and travel savvy (to quickly figure out the only actual workable solution) that I made it, legally, onto my last flight with only a hit to my conscience and not to my checkbook.) And, the travel gods, aware that this fiasco would leave me totally exhausted, took pity on me and provided 4 seats for me to lie down on and have a good nap!

Tahiti, here I come.

PPS I've never actually survived 5 months on a boat. Always before I've left after 3 or 4 months (or been kicked off) so who knows what will happen this time. Occasionally I get to a boat and it's a disaster and I don't stay at all (which might yet happen here). Either way it should be an adventure.

(Maybe I'll post one more entry.)