Just Living

June 11 Mangareva, Gambier Islands AKA Just Living

After a fun day exploring Pitcairn Island and a very fast 36 hour sail west we have arrived in French Polynesia and are just living. It is relaxed, stress-free and totally wonderful.

The Gambier Islands are a group of small rocky islets - the last remnants of an old long-extinct volcano - in a large shallow lagoon surrounded on all sides by coral reef. It is the first set of over 10, 000 islands that stretch all the way from here to Asia. From now on we will have short hops from one island to another, countless choices about where to sail next, palm trees and white sand beaches and little drinks with umbrellas in them in all directions.

We are anchored near the village of Rikitea along with a dozen other boats. It is totally calm inside the lagoon and so we sit flat, without rocking or rolling, as if at dock. An easy swim to the shallows allows one to snorkel with countless exotic fish. The weather is ideal. And the (only) street in the village is lined with lush trees, mango and orange and coconut, laden with ripe fruit for the taking. There is a small restaurant/pub that wants to attract the ‘yatchies’ and so offers free internet. (Yes, I am there at the moment with my laptop, drinking a cold beer and considering the snack menu.)

One of the other boats here has a Canadian couple on it whom we met at Easter Island and two of the other boats are previously known to Sven. All three of them have been here for a while and are getting ready to head on to the next spot as soon as the weather looks good so we quickly invited them all over for an after dinner drink yesterday and had a wonderful evening.

One of our forestays broke on the leg here which means Sven has a problem to tackle and we will likely end up staying two weeks instead of the one originally planned which gives me lots of time to be a good crew and do chores on the boat but also to be a tourist, go for swims, walk the town, climb the hills, visit the black pearl farms… 

So I am just living. I am, for the first time on this whole adventure, utterly stress free, relaxed, happy, and at peace with myself.

I want to be here. Or somewhere else. I want to just live. Sort of like we are now. Forever. We got up with the sun this morning, had our usual healthy breakfast, and discussed the day’s chores. I made Sven laugh, which is always good, every day needs some laughter in it, then I wiped the salt off the lifelines, made fresh bread, helped him take down the stay sail, did a laundry, prepared lunch, had a break, took a long swim, attacked some rust spots on the stainless steel, and was, basically, just happy. I don’t want to stay on this boat, where I am paying crew (yes, I admit, I am not being paid to be here, nor am I here for free, I am paying for the right to live and work here, but, to be honest, it is not much, $15US/day, which covers everything, room, board, limitless drinks, the use of all the boats toys, the odd sarcastic comment…) I want to find a partner to sail with. The three couples who were on board last night have each been sailing for years, literally, and all of them are so relaxed, so happy, so content to just be. The boat I am on is magnificent, I am unlikely to ever live again on such a fantastic vessel, but here I am crew, merely crew, and as I looked at the couples sitting round the cockpit with us I wanted to be one of them. Don’t get me wrong. I am thrilled to be here at all. And the situation I am in at the moment is almost absolutely perfect. This is almost exactly paradise. I want to live like this, where the days in harbour are filled with cooking and repairs and long swims and fresh fruit, exploring new places, meeting new people and happening across old friends, and where the days at sea are filled with watching the weather, navigating the boat, changing the sails and learning the names of the stars. But, also, I want to have at least a tiny bit of say into our itinerary and at least a little bit more responsibility with respect to sail handling. But that is all. Everything else I can compromise on. (Except safety of course.) I doubtless will never end up again on a boat as magnificent as this one, but, really, that’s ok.

And, of course, I am going to have to spend next year living in Arnprior and being the Art teacher first. (What? Art? Really? Weird!) 

But it’s all good. It’s all very very good. Roll on 50!

Hopeless

Lisa is hopeless. And so, by the way, am I.

Lisa, by the way, is hopeless. Don’t get me wrong, she has some great qualities, she is an excellent cook and likes to clean and would never ever question Sven’s judgement or statements. (I do. If he does/says something that I am sure is wrong I correct him and always he is pleased to have had his error pointed out, like this morning when I pointed out that the waypoint he had set was for a different island than the one we are intending to get to!) But Lisa has been on Dana for TWO years now and still knows NOTHING. Sven asked her to teach me how to put the preventers away. She got it wrong and he had to re-teach me. He asked her to show me how to raise the anchor. Same thing. When she is “on watch” she sits in the captain’s chair – which she loves to do, reminds me very much of a lovely co-op student Catherine had once – but Sven looks after the course and the sails, or gets me to do it, something I was quite embarrassed about the first time or two but which doesn’t seem to faze her. And, she can’t even read the nav instruments correctly! Today she was on watch and Sven asked what the course over ground was and she gave one number, which was wrong, and because I could see the instruments from where I was sitting, I, instinctively, without thinking, gave the correct answer, and she got upset and said I was wrong and Sven came over and taught her that COG stands for course over ground. Really? After two years she doesn’t even know this? Their relationship baffles me.

And this, all this rambling, it is all about, really, not her, but me, and the question of what I want to do with the rest of my life. Do I want to hike alone with the freedom but loneliness that that entails? Sail as crew with the exotic destinations but with random people and their foibles that that entails? Try to put my marriage back together, yet again, to have a permanent partner to do things with? Do I want to work forever keeping the security of an income, and, eventually a pension? Or quit my job completely and live the life of a vagabond? I just don’t know. Lisa is happy where she is, intends to remain here forever, but me, I don’t think this exact life is for me.The grass frequently seems greener on the other side of the fence to me. I often feel that were I to jump over into the greenest field possible and then look back over my shoulder I would find that the one I had just rejected was greener still. But, for now, for this spring and summer, there is no doubt whatsoever that I am exactly where I want to be – not necessarily who I want to be with - but where I want to be.

For now, that will have to do.

And soon, very soon, I will make a life plan. (Yeah right!).

Anchored at Pitcairn Island, waiting for the swells to settle so we can go and visit land, I spend most of the day working with Sven fixing the second reefing line. I had noticed at some point during the last leg that it was sorely in need of a stitch in time and when we pulled it out we saw this was very much true and so the two of us spent most of the day fixing it. Lisa spent the day indoors doing data entry putting old logs onto the computer but I was out in the sun, on the foredeck, with Sven, and had a wonderful little conversation with him along the way about life. He asked about my job and my marriage and I, after having given candid answers, asked if what he had was enough, his boat and the freedom to travel anywhere and his family back home and he admitted that it was not. “I am not happy,” he said. And he went on to explain that he would really like to have a partner, intellectual stimulation, permanence and commitment, but that he does not. He has a $3 million dollar boat but is stuck with Lisa and I (my words not his). Man. I guess whoever said that money can’t buy happiness is right after all. But it does buy freedom. Is that enough? According to Sven, No. Hmmm. If he, who is brilliant and had such a very successful business life, cannot get retirement right what hope is there for me? 

On the other hand, on the small scale, it was a perfect day. I, ironically, was totally happy. Sitting in the sun, stitching meter after meter of black and yellow line with bright red highly waxed thread, while the huge swells, deep blue and turquoise and white, crashed into the black volcanic rocks beneath the rust coloured cliffs beneath the multi-green palm covered hills of such an exotic island, my life was, for today at least, perfect. I was exactly where I wanted to be, doing exactly what I wanted to be doing, and, if I was not with exactly whom I wanted to be with, well, then that was a compromise that I was willing, today at any rate, to accept. We finish the line about 5, sit altogether out in the cockpit having a drink, and then retire to the pilot house to read or relax. 

Yes. It is not all bad. That is for sure!