Month: January 2011

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Needles, Haystacks and Islands

Toau, Tuamotu, French Polynesia

When we look at those words up there and realize that we could be putting those letters together at random for all the good it does describing our location to you.  We can tell you exactly where we are and at the same time tell you nothing at all.  We’re working on getting a map up.  Here, we’ll give you a little orientation.  How about a satellite photograph of the atoll:

That help?  Still no, huh?  Let’s zoom out a bit:

Just in case you didn’t know, the blue stuff is water.  We would like to point out that if you put the entire landmass of our planet into this one ocean, there would be STILL be room for a second Africa, give or take.   Like we said, the scale of things out here is massive.  “Needle in a haystack”?  From now on we’ll be saying “it’s like trying to find an island in the Pacific.”  People live on them.  Granted, not a lot of people, but still.

And yet, here we are.  It’s amazing that these places are REAL.  There are places on the map that almost no one has ever heard of and these places are actually a lot closer than most of us realize… yet drastically separated by water, language, culture and a lack of regular air transport (you saw the major / only airport of the area).  Coming from the States, it’s actually easier, cheaper and WAY faster to get to Sydney, which is still several thousand miles from us, than to get to this little atoll.  The Pacific islands are weird that way.

The fact that you are way off in the middle of nowhere is always right there, right in your face.  You get used to over time and you stop thinking about it.  It’s amusing to think back on how we called Nuku Hiva “the big city” but it is the largest settlement we’ve encountered since leaving Mexico a few months ago.  It wouldn’t even count as a village in the San Francisco Bay.

Greg has long been a proponent of the philosophy that humans can normalize just about anything, along as they are exposed to it enough.  Isolation is the status quo out here, after all.  Polynesians don’t wander around in a state of shock at their removal from the regular world; to them, this is the regular world.  Over time, it becomes regular to us as well and we stop thinking about the fact that there are places in the world where it takes more than 20 minutes to walk from one coast to another.  Then something little makes you think of it, like zooming out on the navigation computer while planning a route.  Then it all comes rushing back, “Holy heck we’re over 1000 miles from the nearest continent!”  It actually scares you a little bit as you think to yourself “how the heck did we get here on a sailboat!?”

But you’ll have a hard time beating the views.

Or the sea life.

Thanks to the Fakarava hotel band for the music.

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Sailing, Snacks and Garbage

Underway, transiting in the Tuamotu, French Polynesia

So we left the natural splendor of Fakarava and headed over to Toau, which was a day’s trip away, and also finally got some video of the mouth-wateringly delectable pamplemousse.

For a little over the past month now we have pretty much sustained ourselves on French baguettes and Polynesian grapefruit.  Greg will only feel deprived by the situation when this is no longer possible.  Tiffany is already dreading the day… 🙂

Also, many of you ask what happens to trash when you’re at sea.  Here’s what everyone does:

Shocking, isn’t it?  What’s nuts is that this is the norm for all ships, commercial and recreational, the world over.  Greg remembers the first time he saw trash going overboard.  It was his first cruise on a Coast Guard ship and they just tossed bags of garbage over the side while at sea.  He was dumbstruck until another sailor explained it all.  There is some logic to it.  You may not agree with the logic, but at least now you’ll understand it.  Since all the popular exposure we’re aware of is primarily focused on tossing garbage overboard as a bad thing, here we’ll take the role of explaining it.  As for our own opinions, we’ll give it to you at the end.

First off, there isn’t anywhere to really put garbage on a boat long term that is sanitary for the crew.  Also you’d have to deal with the smell, the bugs, attracting rodents in port, leaking etc.  Now there are some cruisers that “pack their trash out” by only throwing out garbage when they get to port but we will look into that idea in a minute.  Also, these cruisers are typically shorter range cruisers who will pull into an established port with garbage facilities once a week.  In Polynesia, most of the locals literally burn their trash (including plastics) because they, like us, have nowhere to put it.

As long as what you throw overboard is bio-degradable, the sea does a heck of a faster job breaking it down than anything on land.  Also, you’re not allowed to throw stuff within miles of land, so likely you’re tossing the biodegradable trash into the 80% of the ocean that is barren desert (except for the salt water).  That’s why we had so many cans in the video; we hadn’t been far enough from shore while inside Fakarava’s lagoon.   To get an idea of what is legally allowed to be tossed over where, here is a handy diagram from Greg’s Coast Guard boarding officer days (yes, we are currently talking about maritime law enforcement, don’t mind Greg while he geeks out, hey maybe you’ll learn something!)

Note the one thing you are never allowed to throw overboard: Plastic.  Plastic never degrades.  Sailors do their best to avoid having it onboard because they can’t throw it overboard, ever.  When they do use plastic they store it.  Plastic is a major problem for the ocean and is the primary focus of the whole “Pacific Garbage Patch” dilemma.

Finally, stuff falls into the sea all the time, especially organic waste.  Whales poop in the ocean – about 3% of their total body mass each day – and they live for a while, you do the math.  So do birds and basically every other creature, at some point or another, has had their fecal matter mixed in with the ocean.  Animals die in the ocean and their rotting carcasses often sink.  Also, many coastal cities use the sea as a garbage site (surprise!).  A couple of decades ago the US government was using the waters off the Farallon Islands (near San Francisco) as a radioactive dumping ground.  Once they figured out it made the sharks glow though, they cut that out.

Here’s the scary truth.  Live by the coast?  Throw stuff away?  Then it probably ends up in the sea.  Where else is it going to go?  Sailors are just a little more direct about the process.  If an apple gets tossed into the water, is it littering?  Ok, so how about a cardboard box that becomes waterlogged and decomposes before your eyes?  See, slippery slope.

By the way, anyone want to go swimming?

On the one hand is the unrealistic goal of a perfect world that no one can live (or poop) in and on the other is an ocean so polluted that the plastic outnumbers the plant life (which, by the way, is apparently true right now in some places of the Pacific.)  Ultimately, like everything else, it’s a balancing act that we all have to agree on and do.  Right after we finish up that world peace bit.

It worries me that one day God is going to show up and ask us to explain why we broke his planet.

Where do we stand?  Hard question.  As crew, we don’t really have a choice in the matter because as long as our Captain is obeying the law, we really can’t stop them.  It’s easy to be hard-over against dumping anything.  Garbage is bad!  However, all creatures create waste, it’s part of living.  Yes, humans create more.  Anyone here willing go without their spaghetti sauce?  How about your car?   Seeing both sides of the issue, actually living with the logistics and having had both sides impact our lives, we would have to say that we agree some things can be tossed overboard as long as we know we aren’t significantly impacting the environment in the area.  Right… now define “significant impact”…  We could go on…

But not with plastic.  Plastic kills baby turtles and that makes Jesus sad.

What’s your opinion about what is ok and not ok to throw overboard?

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Polynesian island TSA

Fakarava, Tuamotu, French Polynesia

(…cont from previous post)

4) The pearl farm.  This is the big business of the Tuamotu islands.  Most of the “Tahitian pearls” people buy the world over are actually from the Tuamotu.  You expect, with the price of pearls and all, for it to be some big production.  Vaulted ceilings, caviar, some champagne perhaps?  Classical music on the sound system?  Heck, air conditioning?  Nope.  A shack, 4 guys, couple of planks of wood, some oysters and hell’s dentist’s office.  To be fair, what the industry lacks ostentation, it make up for in patience:

If you’re a pearl fan at all (or at least have an appreciation for the fact that pearl necklaces are not cheap), check this out:

They leave bags of this stuff lying around.  Open plastic bags chock full of Tahitian black pearls casually placed, completely unprotected, near open windows without even a screen to keep bugs out, much less people.  Crime is not a huge concern here.  With a population of about 1500 people it’s not like you don’t know you’re neighbor.

Oh wait, you say, perhaps a tourist could steal the pearls and sneak off the island?  Not likely, as the only means of escape are rather…limited…in scope:

5) The airport

This airport has 1 flight per day, normally.  Saturdays are the big day with a total of 2 flights.  Most of the time the airfield is completely abandoned and totally wide open.  You can just wander on in, no restricted areas here.  At about an hour before the flight is supposed to arrive, a fire truck rolls in, soon followed by an unguarded fuel truck, ticketing agent and 2 baggage handlers.  That’s it.  No cops, no TSA, no security check points, no body scanners.  Heck, no boarding areas.  The gate agent?  After the ticketing agent finishes selling tickets, they become the gate agent.  Well, they become the stairway agent actually, because why would you need a gate for the one plane landing here today?  There are some cops on the island (Gendarme, kinda like French colonial police) but they don’t show up for the flights.  People get on, people get off.  The plane grabs some gas and off it goes.  The fire and gas trucks leave, soon followed by the airport’s massive 3 staff people.    I think sometimes an extra car shows up to act like a taxi and sometimes the hotel will send a shuttle.  Whole process takes about 2 hours.  It’s all very anti-climatic.

We should point out that this island is the second largest in the entire 78 island Tuamotu chain.  The second largest.    Which is weirder, the nonchalant manner in which this airport operates or our American reaction to it?

6) And finally, let’s not forget the aforementioned bar:

You sailed from Mexico to French Polynesia for a margarita?  You came all this way, on a boat, powered by wind, at about 7 MPH average speed, for at this point about 2 months of travelling, all this way to pay $15 for drink you could have gotten for 5 pesos back about 3,000+ miles ago?  Really?

Cripes at least buy a Mai Tai or something…

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Living in Farkarava, French Polynesia

Fakarava, Tuamotu, French Polynesia

Welcome to the main town in Fakarava.  So what does one do here?

(aside from the diving, we’ve already established that’s amazing.   Well, that and suicidal crabs)

1) First off, secure transportation.  Preferably, transportation with shock absorption.

What Tiffany fails to mention in the video is that at that point we still had to bike back…  And it was a very long trip home, let me tell you!

2) Well, there’s the dive center.

Two notes here:

– Greg can officially now say that he’s had a French tutor.  Which is cool, right?  The fact that his tutor was male and taught diving vice female and “l’art d’amour”…eh, less cool.  He thinks that the fact that he learned to dive in French Polynesia almost makes up for it.

– If you are one of those people looking to jump the puddle, as it is called, get your dive certification in Mexico.   Yes, we realize that it is expensive compared to other things in Mexico and you will tell yourself “nah, I won’t dive, I’ll just snorkel.”  No you won’t.  What you’ll do is snorkel by yourself and be terrified of all the sharks swimming around you while you’re all alone and all your friends are off diving.  Remember the part where they school?  Like fish?  (ask Greg how he knows this!)

Then all your friends will gang up on you and convince you that paying the exorbitant prices for a private French diving instructor is actually very chique (a French word, not coincidentally, I’m sure) and is a really good idea in order for you to fully experience this “once in a lifetime diving opportunity.”  They will be right and you will be a fool for not having paid half the price in Mexico to get your certification.  The one consolation you will get is that the instructors in French Polynesia are really cool and they use your practice dives as opportunities to actually show you some amazing stuff.  Still, it’s WAY cheaper to get your cert in Mexico.

2) The store, where we discovered that your local grocer is actually not only a national brand, but an international one:

For you east coast people, this is like running into a Publix (or in the case of our Texas friends, an H.E.B.) out here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  I mean really?  Safeway?  In FRENCH!?  Who knew?

3) The church (which is actually pretty cool)

Click on the photo above to enlarge it.  The shell chandeliers and other decorations were amazing!

(to be continued… We had way too many videos for one post!)

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The Ballsiest Way to Travel Known to Mankind

We’ve found a Microsoft background!

North Pass, Fakarava, Tuamotu, French Polynesia

We are here:

Which, in and of itself, is freaking awesome!  However when I took this picture I had this weird sense of déjà-vu.  Now I’d never been here before (duh) and I don’t remember seeing any movie that was ever filmed here and since I have a hard time remembering the name of the place while standing on it, it’s unlikely I ever googled it…but it nagged at me.  This remained a mystery for some time until a while later when I was looking through my photos and happened on the Microsoft vista sample backgrounds.

This is Microsoft’s photo.

Holy cow I was living in a Microsoft windows background!!  I’m still deciding if this is the most awesome thing ever or proof positive that no matter where you go, Bill Gates will find you.

The North pass is the main village of Fakarava (ooooh, look honey, a grocery store!) and they also have an ACTUAL hotel with guests and stuff.  It’s attached to the dock we’re anchored off.

And the ACTUAL hotel has an ACTUAL bar, with ACTUAL drinks…and a really inventive “green” bug deterrent system.

Also, the art at the bar documents what can only be described as the Polynesian predecessor to the Jackass television show.  Submitted for your approval as the ballsiest way for mankind to travel…ever:

I’ll stick with just the wind, thanks.

They also have passable (for Polynesian standards) internet in the hotel lobby and in their good, kind, warm hearted, Polynesian naiveté they offered to let us use it FOR FREE (gasp!  It is unheard of!)  So this is our office for the next few days:

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That Crab’s on fire!

Random uninhabited beach, central Fakarava, Tuamotu, French Polynesia

Figuring out that US $67.25 doesn’t even buy a single dinner out for Tiffany and myself at any restaurant on the island (seriously, crazy expensive here), my career as a professional dare taker comes to sudden, if not awesome, end.

Not that I won’t take dares.  Please, by all means.

We hauled anchor and headed up the Coast, well, the coast on the inside of the island, which isn’t very far from the other coast on the outside of the island.  Here let me show you what I mean:

Yeah, that’s really it.  Think about that for a second, they live on an island no wider than a few football fields in the middle of the Pacific.  There is a certain reassurance that large land mass provides, a reassurance that until now I had not ever noticed before.  It is something very disconcerting about being able to see both coasts at the same time of the only land for about 100 + miles.  Something in the back of your mind that says: hey, if there’s a tidal wave buddy, or maybe a hurricane, this island ain’t gonna do much more than trip it up a bit.  You’re basically screwed…

…it gives one pause.

Dropping anchor for the night, we went ashore and decided to have a “genuine natural Polynesian island beach experience.”  What does this mean?  More coconuts!

Few points here:

1)  What did Tiffany and Greg learn from their last coconut experience?  Not a DARN thing, thank-you very much!

2) Actual Polynesians are not in any way interested in “genuine natural Polynesian experiences.”  I met this dude a few days later:

Huh, a fire axe.  Don’t see that in too many beach movies eh?  Just in case you are wondering, they cut open the coconuts and let them dry because the milk is worthless.  It’s the coconut oil that is the cash crop.

The evening culminated with a perfect sunset barbecue, though more ended up being on the menu than was originally scheduled:

I swear dude, it was suicide.   I have witnesses.

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Brad Kellogg owes me $67.25

South Pass of Fakarava, Tuamotu, French Polynesia

Did you know that when Sharks get into large groups (say like 50 plus) they school, like fish?

So we learned something new today.

More of that in a minute, let’s get down to brass taxes:  Brad Kellogg owes us $67.25.

For those of you who are not friends with us on Facebook, you should be.  Mainly because that’s where most of the commentary for the blog happens each week.   Why is this?  Probably because thanks to the miracle of the friend finder, all our old smart aleck friends from our previous lives have connected with us and form some form of hybrid “metamind / advice giving / peanut gallery” thing.

So enters Brad, good friend from high school and expert at egging Greg on.  Actually, good at egging anyone on.  The guy’s got a gift.  If he ends up a senator, I called it.

After my last post about the sharks, Brad comments to Greg:  “5 bucks float with the sharks for 5 minutes, and I’ll toss in an extra quarter for each shark ya can count, double dog dare ya!”

Ok, I’m a worshipper of A Christmas story.  I’ll even spot you the Triple Dog Dare.

(If you don’t understand the Christmas story reference, you OBVIOUSLY don’t watch TBS on Christmas…and your life is poorer for it 😉

Now, you may be saying to yourself, “Wait Greg, there was a MAX of 7 sharks in that video, assuming every new cut was with new sharks.”  So that’s $6.50.

Yes, that.  Here’s the rest of the 250 sharks we went swimming with (dive masters best estimate, not mine.)  Oh, and the highly lethal stonefish which doesn’t count for an extra quarter but could kill you just as dead.

Now we were in the water for about 45 minutes but since there was no repeating stipulation on the bet, I won’t advocate for the $605.25 I could potentially claim.   😉

The South Pass was not all just highly lethal sea creatures.  I mean really, 250 sharks aren’t just going to hang around unless there’s food nearby and wow, was there.  A smorgasbord of every color and type of tropical reef fish, coral, you name it.  Amazing does not describe what we saw:  this video hardly gives you a taste of the varied and beautiful sea life that surrounded us every time we got in the water.

(PS – thanks to Serge & the guys from Fatu Hiva for the awesome music!)

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And the UN was right!

South Pass of Fakarava, Tuamotu, French Polynesia

OK, the UN was right (really, how often do you here THAT on a daily basis? 😉

This place rocks.

Did you see that coral!?  Did you see that water!?  It all looks like that.  All of it.

We headed into the south pass village & dive shop because everyone wants to do dives here, obviously.  Upon reaching the dive center we were greeted by what for Fakarava must pass for the overly friendly pet dog…

It was hard to believe that this was an actual fish and not some animatronic robot designed to impress the locals.  No, really, it was a fish.  A really big fish.  That will swim up and boink you on the shin.

At the dive shop they also crack and gut coconuts.  Here, despite their primitive appearance, the inhabitants show that they know a heck of a lot more about coconutting than some gringo and his dull machete.

(and if you don’t know what the gringo & machete comment was about, go back to entry called “gringos & coconuts”.  One of my more amusing moments…)

An interesting point: the south pass is an old village but you can probably hear the hammers in the background.  About 5 – 20 people are here from outside French Polynesia building the dive shop for the South Pass and serving as dive masters.  The UN giving your island a super stamp of approval is good for business.

Also, they have sharks here.  They have a lot of sharks here.  No, you don’t seem to understand, they have A LOT of sharks right here, on the reef.

We haven’t even gotten in the water yet!  And for some strange reason most of them still want to.

– Greg

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The UN says it’s cool

South Pass of Fakarava, Tuamotu, French Polynesia

I don’t feel like I am giving a fair scope for the distance between these islands.  I could tell you about each voyage of about 100 miles from remote isolated desert island to remote even more desolate island but really, that would get boring.  If you want to know what it’s like sailing the high seas, look at the blog entries about us crossing the Pacific Ocean to the Marquesas.  It’s like that.  FYI, my ukulele and French continue to improve and I’m learning stuff about Solomon I never knew before.

I do not wish to bore you with the details while I also do not want to deceive you that these transits are just afternoon “hops” from one island to the next.  Typically, a trip between islands typically takes a day and can take as many as 5.

The trip to Fakarava took 1 day but during that day we broke into another can of butter.

You see, Polynesians and cruisers have a similar problem: we both don’t have a ton of refrigerator space so we both minimize what needs to be put in there as much as possible.  Did you know that as long as you never refrigerate your eggs in the first place that they actually don’t require refrigeration?  Neither did I.  How about butter can be preserved for long periods of time in a can?  And that certain kinds of milk don’t need to be refrigerated until the carton is opened?  I have learned on this trip that Americans refrigerate way too much stuff.

The coral reef of Fakarava was very exciting for all of us because it the only Tuamotu to be designated a UNESCO world heritage site.  Tiffany knows more about this than me but the short of it is that the UN thinks that this place is awesome and should be preserved for it’s natural significance.  Translation: Awesome stuff here, come check it out without destroying it.

(Again, I got this off a picture of the visitor center’s map.  Don’t use this to navigate.  Buy a chart.)

The voyage in was another hair raising experience where we were stationed on the bow watching for coral heads in the perfect crystal clear blue water.  Just to add a little spice to the mix, we had currents flowing around the pass to make our lives extra interesting.  Now maybe you think after our Kauehi adventure we had relaxed about the whole sailing over a coral reef thing.  Let me point something out to you:

Narrow channel + Sharp coral reefs on both sides + lateral currents going every direction = nervous crew.

Upon completing our transit of the channel we discovered the “south pass village” that would be our home for the next few days as we indulged ourselves in figuring out just exactly what the UN thought rated this place international recognition and protection.

Also, we got invited over by one of our fellow cruising boats to experience one final taste of the Marquesas: a goat dinner.

The Marquesians raise goats to eat and they are very good at this particular skill.  A fact I learned regrettably after I had left the Marquesas…

– Greg

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