Category: Fly Aweigh

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Polynesian Snorkeling

(Continued from previous post… Tahuata, French Polynesia)

As we continued to travel north along the island to our next anchorage, Hanatefau, reportedly the 3rd prettiest in Polynesia, we saw some spectacular waterspouts along the shoreline.

Upon arriving we found that the anchorage was indeed gorgeous.  Beautiful living reefs no more than 10 feet below the surface on each side of the anchorage, a pristine white sandy beach, crystal clear water with 30-50 feet of visibility, and gorgeous sunshine.  A Manta Ray swam right past our stern.  It was amazing.  Tiff started off the day helping out a fellow cruiser by free diving 30 feet straight down to get a dropped piece of equipment, which is a rather impressive feat.  (Actually, I started it by swimming some banana bread over to Rod and Elisabeth on Proximity, and when I swam back, I saw the Manta Ray fly past our boat! ~Tiff)

As thanks for helping them out, Michael and Gloria of Paikea Mist, a beautiful Beneteau Custom 50, (www.PaikeaMist.com) invited us out to go snorkeling with them.  Now, again, I am still learning how to use this camera well underwater.  That being said, there are some absolutely amazing parts of sea life just wandering around a few feet below the surface.  This is a taste of what I saw:

Unfortunately for us with this much unrestrained beauty below us, perfect warm, clear water all around us and a baking sun above us, it is quite easy to lose track of time.  We did just that, much to both of our extreme regret.

Let me tell you, it hurts.  It hurts a lot.  A LOT!  I took a shower, used a wash rag and some warm water by accident two days later and was laid out on the bed for a good hour writhing in pain as it felt like someone was jamming broken glass into my spine.  It took two ice packs and not moving much for the rest of the day to bring me back to a degree of normalcy.  Needless to say, a bottle of waterproof sunscreen has been permanently added to my ashore backpack.  But such are the risks for living in paradise.

Needless to say the tiny island of Tahuata was supremely amazing, well beyond any of our expectations or even our imaginations.

–          Greg

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Gringos and coconuts

(Continued from previous post… Tahuata, French Polynesia)

Finally, Tiffany made the discovery that lead us down the path of our second great adventure for the day: six coconuts laying about on the island.  Actually, they’re lying all over the place, you actually have to work to avoid tripping over them as you walk around.  However, it was Tiffany’s idea to bring them back to the boat and attempt to open them.  This next video illustrates a fairly simple Polynesian math equation:

1 coconut + 3 gringos + 1 dull machete = hilarity

I remind you all of that footage was from the first coconut.  Now, being Americans, we decided that the best way to proceed with the other coconuts is to both increase the number of tools at our disposal and increase the amount of power those tools put out.  This met with slightly better results…kind of.

Finally, we took a moment to regroup and figure out what we had learned.  Drawing out lessons from our experience so far as: “use a sharp blade over a dull one” and “take the protective husk off first” we refined our process and found some success with the third coconut.

–          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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Repelling Air Pirates!

Our last communication ended with our loyal crew recovering from a blitzkrieg-style home invasion from the booby birds.

Tiffany, Allan and I quickly devised a counter-strike offensive.  Luckily, between Tiff’s years of nautical experience, Allan’s fighter-jock skills (no, really – F-16s!…these birds seriously picked the wrong boat to mess with…) and my supreme knowledge of the multiple uses of sailing line we routed the enemy and chased him squawking into the night.

With the main thrust of their attacked repelled, their forces routed and in shambles, the enemy made a final, desperate play for a beachhead on our extremely delicate solar panels, which our reserve forces quickly repelled.

Unfortunately they kept coming back, growing so bold as to land on the boat hook as we attempted to poke them with it!  Eventually, with both sides weary from literally hours of intense non-stop action, our side proposed a truce: One bird on the dingy, as long as no one poops.  Of course he defecated easily twice his own body weight onto our small boat and at first light his fellow bombers attempted to join him, so we rejoined the battle this time determined to offer no quarter…

Though we survived the brutal hand-to-halyard combat of that night, our boat still carries the scars of the battle …

… and, as you can see from that video,  we must remain constantly vigilant for skirmisher forces lying in wait to catch us unawares.  For we are alone, cut off from other allied units, hundreds of miles from shore and should our efforts fail, we would be overtaken before help could arrive.  There is no truce, no peace.  That is the lesson the “night of the attack of the boobies” taught us.  A lesson we pass to you, my friends, from the front lines.  Pray for us as we battle on…

– Greg

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Attack of the boobies!

Ladies and gentlemen, today I am here to talk to you about the perils of boobies.  (no, we are not about to talk about pre-marital sex here.  It’s the name of a bird dude.  As in blue-footed boobies (or orange-footed, whatever)).

Don’t let the cuteness fool you.  These little warm weather aviary ambassadors of the devil himself have been with us since our departure.   My friends, as the crewmember with the most seaborne combat experience (hey, I am a trained boarding officer) I have led our valiant efforts to repel these determined air pirates for several days now.  Though our first attempts were admittedly crude and pathetically unsuccessful.

We only suffered a minimum of self-inflicted casualties …

… and have recently upgraded our techniques.   The scales of victory slowly tipped in our direction and our safe voyage appeared assured…until the enemy, under the cover of darkness, marshaled their forces and without warning staged their own personal Tet Offensive…

The enemy struck without warning, on all fronts and we were initially clearly overwhelmed.  Pressing the advantage one of our foes grew so brave as to land in our cockpit and make a dive for the hatch below decks! Allan had to literally tackle this squawking, flapping Captain Jack Sparrow-wanna-be with a rug while Alison pelted them both with a fruit basket (more friendly fire) and cast the beast from our vessel into the murky darkness. (sorry, no video on that one, happened a little too fast.)

The battle rages on…

– Greg

(On another booby note, we ran into someone with a t-shirt that said “I love boobies” and a cartoon of 2 little blue booby feet on it 🙂 – Tiff)

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