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…
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| A different cat about to be put back in the water. |
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| The wooden boat next to us is even more work. |
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| As usual my part in this job is invisible... but I hoisted the captain up many times! |
