Month: October 2010

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Hiva Oa, French Polynesia

We find ourselves in a very small anchorage within a medium sized island on a ridiculously large ocean.  This place is land of extremes.  To give you some perspective globally, the island of Hiva Oa (which is in French Polynesia) is around 3000 miles west of Mexico and about 2000 miles east of Tahiti…yes, it’s ok, until now I didn’t exactly realize there was anything out here either.  The population of the town of Autona is about 1000 and it’s the largest “city” for about 1000 miles…one of only 3 on this island (total island population is about 1,900…and it’s one of the most populated islands by a long shot)  “remote” does not come close to describing this place.  This video should give you some reference and a neat view of the mountain / volcano we’re right next to.

I don’t think it’s actually active anymore but I haven’t exactly checked either.  After our first day of arrival, we did a little sightseeing.  Ok, well, by “sightseeing” I mean “made the 3 kilometer walk to town a few times” but it counts right?

We also saw the famous outrigger canoes both old and new.

Apparently what was once their primary mode of sea transport has now evolved into their national sport.

A few days later we found that Tiffany and Alison have given up all hope on our fishing prowess and snuck off one morning at 6:00am to commit that most grievous of sins…buying fish. In a desperate bid to “make it up to us” they also bought us some local staples…breadfruit and baguettes.

Now you may think they left that early in the morning because Allan and I were asleep at the time.  That would be true but also because of the way time works here.  You see, in the Marquesas, everyone is awake around 6:00am to about 11:00am, then in what only can be described as a beautiful marriage of French culture (who take long lunches) and Island Time, the whole island effectively shuts down and they all take off work from 11:00am until 2:00pm.  Stores open (if they feel like it) again at (around) 2:00pm until about 4:30pm at which point everyone calls it a day.  Sun sets at about 5:30pm and everyone is basically asleep no later than 9:00pm.  These people lead fairly ideal lives, assuming you aren’t living at the anchorage.  As the ship is anchored 3 kilometers from town, this mid-day sabbatical means that we walk to town in the morning and back again in the afternoon in order to spend a whole day there.

Speaking of the anchorage, nestled there right next to us is irrefutable validation that people who play RPGs can actually be successful in life

…and yes, I paddled over, knocked on their boat and asked them.  They named their boat after the Chocobo, the giant flightless bird you ride around on in the Final Fantasy games, which is awesome!  I should also note they are a married couple (there are other women out there who play games Anna, I got her business card) and have two (two!) PS2 systems onboard and they report that, for anyone who is considering bringing their gaming consoles with them on their boat, the PS2 stands up to the rigors of seagoing life much better than the PS3 and the power drain is less than the power needed to run a TV onboard.  Needless to say I made it a point to become friends with these people.

-Greg

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Land Ho!

 

This video succinctly captures the mood of the moment.

Though we have spent weeks at sea and accomplished something that many dream of, I have to say on some levels I am sad to see this transit end.  Over the past 22 days I really have enjoyed my rituals of personal development (the ukulele, French and Bible) and I know that now we have hit land those rituals will be impossible to maintain in the face of beautiful beaches, amazing island hikes, delightful food and tropical paradise.  Don’t worry, I’ll cope 😉

While everyone else was working at dropping the anchor and launched the dingy, I was tasked to establish friendly relations with the natives who, in classic Polynesian fashion, came out to greet us.

After which we all hopped in the dingy and got our butts to land.

Our first stop?  We’re sailors, where do you think?  Two words: Money & Beer.

Which is a good thing we got money, cuz everything here is nutzo expensive!  To give you an idea, we got in during the morning and went into a burger joint for our first landside meal.  Tiff got a burger, I got a local “cheap” fish snack (poisson cru for you Frenchie speakers) and we each got 1 beer.  $30.00 US later we decided we’d finish celebrating on the boat.  The local beers were eight bucks each in a little snack shack!  Big upside to sailboats: you bring your own hotel with you.

…and yes Daniel, I survived, so no, you don’t get my hot tub or my Xbox 360.

– Greg

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Bedsheet Powered Bathtub

Oh hey ya, we have actually done some actual sailing over the past few weeks.

I’d actually like to take a moment to describe to you our relationship with the sail featured in the last video: the spinnaker, or as I like to accurately call it, the petulant child.  You see, our spinnaker halyard shackle has no difficulty at all holding onto the spinnaker while we set the sail, and I have to say it releases fairly easily as well…it just seems to like to release the spinnaker while we are still flying it, turning our high-speed light wind sail immediately and without warning into a high drag and fairly effective parachute brake.  This would be a great side feature of this shackle…you know, if we had some way to actually control it.  As it stands though, when this happens (typically while Allan is on the stern showering) it leaves us with a sail to pull out from under the boat and a line to pull down from the top of the mast.

(Hey Mom, did I mention I was 1000 miles from the nearest hospital?  Just thought you should know ;-).

Tiffany has gotten so sick of the whole affair that while doing laundry she began testing replacement sails.

Expect patents to be filed once we make landfall.  Needless to say we installed a new shackle.

– Greg

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All that’s missing is a Kracken

Despite our best fishing efforts, pickings continue to be rather slim

 

 

(If you watched that…I apologize.  My only defense is that when you’re this long out to sea some things seem funnier than they are.)

 

We did manage to hook a deepwater fish.  Before parting the strongest line we had onboard, our finned friend hung around long enough to make sure I received an extensive education why I need to keep my big mouth shut when I think about talking smack about a sport I know nothing about.

 

 

What’s on the dinner menu for Greg?  Looks like a double portion of humble pie.

 

To pile on the humiliation, it appears that my role as a B-movie sci-fi horror flick victim was prophetic in nature.  Either that or the booby birds have enlisted the help of their fellow sea creatures.  Either way, the ship’s cockpit is becoming a nightly target for the beasts of the sea.

 

 

In that video I mention the term ITCZ.  This is sailor slang for Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone.  Basically it’s this place where all the horrible weather from the northern hemisphere has gigantoid WWE style thrown downs with all the horrible weather from the southern hemisphere.  If you take Michael Jackson’s music video “beat-it” replace the street thugs with rain squalls and take out the really cool dancing and hit music single, you have a good idea what it’s like.

 

Despite seemingly every creature of the briny deep, with the notable exception of an actual edible fish, deciding to make our ship their vacation home, morale remains high.  Just a few days ago we took solace in the stoic example of Captain James T. Kirk as we conducted another installment of our mandatory ships training regimen.

 

 

Even though we have not seen dry land for weeks, we remain confident God has not flooded you all out of house and home.

 

 

That’s a Bible reference yo.  Noah, from that first book.  Told you I was listening to it.

 

-Greg

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Crossing the Equator!

And so we come to it, that invisible yellow line in the water that separates the pollywogs from the shellbacks: The equator.

 

 

 

(If you don’t understand what I just said, you’re a pollywog 😉

 

Now while most people know that crossing the equator is a big deal and that it is a major milestone in the life of any mariner, what is not common knowledge is exactly how this little ceremony is supposed to be celebrated.  Since conflicting rumors abound and I was the one who went to that maritime school thing (yay Coast Guard Academy…), Allan and Alison assigned me to research and design our equator crossing ceremony (Tiff was busy at the time flying to the Caribbean to “work” on a private sailing yacht).  I hope that any of you cruisers looking to do your own crossing will find our experience helpful in planning your own ceremony.

 

Doing some online digging, I found that the majority of equator crossing commemorations ranged from the messy, disgusting & mildly sexual on the civilian side to the time honored military ceremony of beating people with rubber hoses while they kissed fat men on the belly.  I am not exaggerating either of these statements; feel free to look it up yourself.  After 9 years of service in a sea going military branch I can tell you this: I don’t care what argument you make about tradition…you hit someone with a rubber hose or humiliate them publicly and you just hazed them.

 

So being as I didn’t exactly feel like cleaning up a vat of lard off the deck and I thought most of the crew would agree with my feelings that physical abuse makes for poor celebration, I decided to get a little creative.

 

First off, cheesy costumes have been a traditional part of Equator crossings for a long time and well, I had a lot of spare time on the night watch.   Tin foil and 3 hours with nothing to do but listen to the Old Testament and you too can look like this!

 

 

Another a classical piece of the ceremony is the sacrifice to Neptune, the ancient god of the oceans.  Typically a sacrifice of wine or Champagne is made but Alison asked, “how often do you think poor Neptune gets tropical flavored popsicles out here in the middle of nowhere?”  Always concerned about the feelings of mythical gods with legendary powers to create whatever they wish, and looking to score some brownie points for good seas on the last leg of our trip, we made our ritual sacrifice with a twist.

 

 

Next Allan thought, “Hey guys, we have a perfectly serviceable boat.  Why don’t we jump off it in mile deep water and swim across the equator?”  This seemed like a reasonable idea to everyone (don’t ask me why, see below).  Our first attempt left Tiffany, Allan and I concerned that, after 15 days at sea, Alison might just have decided she could do much better single-handing.

 

 

Our second attempt garnished better results.

 

 

However it should be noted that I made our very first shark sighting of the trip 10 feet off our starboard beam about 30 minutes after we got out of the water.  Needless to say that was not my favorite.

 

After drying off and drifting back over the equator so Alison could swim across (this was before I saw the shark, OK!?) we allowed ourselves a wet ship for one bottle of wine.  After polishing off the bottle, I thought we could add another finely established maritime tradition to our ceremony.

 

 

In retrospect, looking at a chart of countries that intersect the equator, writing the notes only in English probably was not the best idea.

 

Finally, basking in our newfound glory of being accepted into the sailing elite, full of confidence & beaming with our new royal designation of “trusty shellbacks” Tiffany and Alison added to the festivities by unearthing our finely preserved treasure of the freezer.

 

 

Thus ended our observance of the Equator crossing.  All of us had a great time, a few laughs and went home happy (except the shark, but hey I like my legs where they are.)  The whole thing was pretty easy and took about 90 minutes to pull off.  I’d highly recommend other cruisers taking what we did as a baseline for their own ceremonies.  Hey, if you have any other ideas about fun ways to celebrate the crossing, leave a comment!

 

– Greg

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A Day in the Life

Tiff thought we would start out by giving you some perspective on what we see all day, every day. (PS- don’t watch this video if you are prone to seasickness.)

[Tiff thinks this one is better 🙂  It’s kinda long though, I was having editing issues.]

My daily schedule basically looks like:

Noon – wake up, shave, brush teeth

12:30PM – eat lunch, do dishes

1:30PM – personal projects (like sewing zippers in my pants pockets, doing laundry, showering.)

3:00PM – Stand 4 hour watch

7:00PM – Get off watch, eat dinner

8:00PM – Do dishes

8:30PM – wrap up personal projects, putz around

9:00PM – Practice ukulele

9:30PM – Practice French (usually involves me making spitting sounds at my computer)

11:00PM – Pre-watch nap

12:45AM – wake up, stand 3 hour watch.  Listen to Bible on audio book.

2:30AM – midnight snack time!  More Bible on audio

4:00AM – Get off watch, go to bed

Aside from occasional interruptions for critical ships business

…  and pods of dolphins using our bow as a jungle gym

Our days are much the same.  This would drive some people mad, but I love the relentless progress I make daily toward mastering my ninja-like French-Bible-quoting-while-playing-Beethoven-on-ukulele skillz.

But heck, I sleep until noon every day, so they could all be learning kung-fu and naked tribal dancing in the morning for all I know.

– Greg

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Keeping Busy

I want to convey to you our daily life.  Have you ever had a personal montage?  The underway life is a daily existence of extreme ritual, when you allow it to be, and that ritual allows you to focus on whatever you want with unprecedented clarity.  For 30 days of my life I have the opportunity to dramatically increase any skill set I want to study.  I describe it best to my mother when I emailed her:

I am spending my time sewing zippers on clothes and reading the Bible

(I feel like a monk)

…and learning French

(a Franciscan monk)

…and learning the ukulele

(a Franciscan monk with a toy guitar)

…and talking to Tiffany

(a Franciscan monk with a toy guitar and a wife….ok, fine, bad example)

This is my life for the next month…no Gregorian chanting though.

Allan spends his time developing his at sea tech support business …

… and getting an “A” for effort in his many attempts to land “the big one”.

Tiffany and Alison spend most of their personal time focused on the inspection of our cookie stores …

… and the restocking of our cookie stores (a chore in which I am sometimes impressed into service).

– Greg

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The truth about food on boats

We dine like gods out here!

To give you an idea, I offer for your consideration this typical evening “crew ration”

Stuffed peppers, avocado, fresh tomato salad and hand-made garlic bread… All par for the course for our dining experience (trust me, were you here you would not dare to dishonor the glory of our consumption rituals by addressing them as “meals” either).  Any fool who told you that people lose weight on long voyages was either a liar or someone who did not give proper respect to the culinary creation process.  Translation:  they did not have a duty cook, which is one of the major advantages of having more than 2 people on your boat.

In this sailor’s opinion, Allan probably made the best call of his ship captaining career when he took our advice of assigning a duty cook.  He actually did it cunningly well.  We have 2 duty rotations each 12 hours in length: Day watch and night watch.  During night watch, each of us stands a 3 hour and during the day watch, three of us stand a 4 hour shift and the 4th person’s sole responsibility for the day is to make sure the rest of us eat meals that would make Bacchus envious.  Tiffany and Alison typically take this burden on and they have done a fantastic job.   The reason for this is that Allan and I have both stated that Ramen noodles and a can of coke every night sounds like a fun experiment.  Alison agreed with this idea, however her idea of Ramen noodles is a travesty of college gourmet cooking.

Back to the duty cook thing.  The real advantage here is that the cook easily spends 4 hours (the length of a watch) preparing lunch and dinner.  Everyone realizes this, so none of the other watchstanders feel like the cook is shirking duty.  Also, because the cook doesn’t have to worry about a watch during the day, they can spend a lot of time creating excellent meals, despite having to deal with problems straight out of Das Boat:

Also, this way no one gets overworked between standing watches and preparing meals.

The cooks almost got a fresh sushi reprieve when we landed our first fish of the trip until we realized it wasn’t a good “eating” fish (what the heck else are fish good for!?)

– Greg

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