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And so begins a new era of our journey, with Brian and Motor Vessel FURTHUR! (Yes, Brian is a Deadhead. He’s such a big fan, he named his boat after their bus. Personally, I had no idea that they had a name for their bus, but the tie-dye printing on the stern for the lettering of FURTHUR clues you in that this is going to be a fun ride!)
When we joined Brian, we brought the crew tally up to 6 – Rita from the Seattle area of the US, Maggie from Australia, Luchka and Urska, both from Slovenia (and who’s names I can’t spell properly with an American keyboard…), were all already on board!
What we didn’t know was how musically inclined our new crewmates were! Luchka and Urska serenaded us with Slovenian choir music, and Urska is a world class singer who has perfect pitch, and loved to tune our ukuleles to the correct notes! Brian plays the guitar and has a beautiful Gibson, along with the 2 Polynesian Ukuleles that he picked up in Tahiti. We’re so looking forward to increasing our skill base! Brian’s been getting ukulele lessons from a local, has been practicing, and is now good enough with the local strumming patterns to play with the street musicians around the corner. He (and they) are really very good! Watch this clip to see what we mean!
Luchka and Rita had cameo appearances in the video too 🙂
Greg, Brian, Luchka and I all had a jam session on the top deck of FURTHUR with our ukuleles and Brian’s guitar and it was great! Too bad we didn’t record it… You’ll just have to take my word for it!
Remember how Greg and I decided not to get tattoos earlier in our trip? Well, Brian already had a tattoo of his ship’s brand logo on his calf (which sounds strange until you realize that he was the main US dealer for the Selene Yacht company) and he got an elaborate Marquesian design around the logo to commemorate the first Selene Yacht to cross the Pacific Ocean on her own hull. Rita and Urska joined in the Tahitian tattooing tradition, as you can see in this next video!
Shortly after we got onboard FURTHUR we headed out for the Tahiti-Moorea Rendezvous, the culmination of the Pacific Puddle Jump, and the last big party for the group of us that headed out from Mexico to sail across the Pacific Ocean to Tahiti. The Rendezvous consists of a kickoff party in Tahiti with local Tahitian dancers along with a blessing of the fleet, and then the sailboats all race to Moorea, where another bigger party is held for all of the participants, with locals leading competitions in their native skills. FURTHUR, not being a sailboat, got nominated to be the race committee boat and to carry all of the officials to Moorea! We’re looking forward to telling you all about it in the next entry!
It is good to give back to the race committee.
Especially when they let you carry the band 😉