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At sea, enroute Tahiti, French Polynesia

Getting an actual French Polynesian tattoo created by a real, genuine French Polynesian on an honest to goodness island in the middle of the ocean is MAJOR nerd cred in the sailing community. No mere skull and crossbones at the local ink shop here people! Take the source of hundreds of years of sailor tradition and possibly thousands of years of Polynesian culture, put it at the immediate end of the longest single sailing transit you will likely ever do in your entire life and tie it up all in one piece of very well done personalized custom art that can be tastefully placed wherever you want on your body! Though they are even more conservative than even the modern tattoos for the locals, cruiser tattoos manage to be really nice while maintaining some of their original elements.

Not to mention the bragging rights! Holy cow for the rest of your natural life people will point and ask you questions about your tattoo which is the perfect segway into you telling the crowd-enthralling tales of nautical daring-do that you had to go though in order to get that inkjob!

The result is that everyone was getting tattoos. The people you would least expect, the people who swore they wouldn’t, were coming to the cruiser diners sporting their newly minted badges. The number kept growing and, though people didn’t push, there was a taste of peer pressure in the air mixed with the hint of a limited time only offer. “We’re pulling out tomorrow and what are the odds we’ll make it out here again? Last chance!”

So, the big question, did we get tattooed?

It was very tempting and no, no we did not.

Ok, well it was very tempting for Greg. There was no way Tiffany was going to pay actual money to have someone “stab me with a needle a few thousand times!” Also, it’s a permanent mark on her skin and if she commemorated everything notable she did with permanent ink, well, she’d probably look like that guy from the last post!

For Greg, well, gosh. Remembering this trip is what this whole blogging project is for. He didn’t have an intention to get a tattoo when he left Mexico and he hasn’t really gotten any new reasons since arriving on the islands. A tattoo is something that is difficult, if not impossible to get rid of and he thinks anyone making an irrevocable decision should have darn good and specific reasons to do it. He figures he can always get a tattoo later but would have a much harder time “un-getting” one. Sides, he learned to play the ukulele and improved his French, which in his humble opinion, is both way more useful and much cooler.

… and since when did Greg need a good excuse to start telling a story?

Still, a turtle would have been pretty sweet, since we crossed the equator and all.

What would you have done?

March 28, 2011

The Art and History of Tattoos

Buy Sharktopus on Amazon!

What’s with the obsession with Sharktopi? Guess who’s in it!

———————

At sea, enroute Tahiti, French Polynesia

Know how sailors have this reputation for getting tattoos?

You may not realize this but that pretty much started here. When the European sailors arrived in the islands they were so impressed with the Polynesian tattoo that many of the ships’ crew got tattoos themselves and brought the idea back to their home countries.

The Polynesian people have a rich and diverse tradition of tattooing. Each island group had their own extremely intricate traditions and remember, there are a LOT of islands out here!

Unfortunately, like the hula dance, music (they used a flute with their nose!) and many of the other pieces of Polynesian culture, a great deal of the knowledge was lost when the Europeans arrived. The new arrivals completely banned parts of Polynesian culture that were deemed “inappropriate.” Just one more setback these people have born with incredible grace. Since the Polynesian people did not have a written language and their cultural practices fell into disuse for long enough that most, if not all, of the practitioners died off, many of the secrets and details and meanings of their culture have been irretrievably lost. However, unlike the other pieces of Polynesian culture, tattoo has some form of record. Modern Polynesian artists have recreated their unique arts using what few oral traditions remain and the diaries and drawings of the original European explorers who were so amazed with the drastic artwork etched all over the native islanders’ bodies.

As the drawing suggested, the ancient islanders covered their entire bodies with tattoo that they applied with a bone blade and a hammer. Yeah, that would be extremely hard core! Every single piece had a distinct meaning. The first marking was made when the child was 12 and it periodically grew after that according to your wealth and station in society.

Ow. A lot.

Girls got off easy, they just got their lips, jawbones arms & legs done. (AH! Who tattoos their lips!?)

The modern adaptation is slightly more conservative though no less impressive and it is not unusual to see someone with a whole leg or shoulder done in traditional designs. It’s rarer, and some people still do facial tattoos.

Next time we’ll look at the cruiser community and Polynesian tattoos…

Can anyone guess what this is leading up to?

March 24, 2011

Traveler or Tourist?

And the winners of their own special copies of Sharktopus on DVD are…

Mike Berndt with this comment

and

Michael Lockridge with this comment!

Congratulations guys, we’ll be shipping it out to you shortly and awaiting your reviews 😉

You can still buy Sharktopus on Amazon!

What’s with the obsession with Sharktopi? Guess who’s in it!

——————————–

Tikehau, Tuamotu, French Polynesia

We prepare to leave this little island paradise and head for the Society Islands with a little hesitation. Not only is Papeete, Tahiti the capital and ONLY major city in this “colony” the size of Europe and consisting of a conglomeration of over 100 islands it is also a known location. Translation: Tourist town and more importantly, normal tourists. Unlike us. We’re different.

No, seriously, we are. The nature of cruising on a sailboat makes us a significantly different “type” of tourist than the typical one. For example, we live on our boat so we don’t worry about living in a hotel. Which means we don’t have to make every day worth the daily hotel rate. It actually relieves a great deal of stress from the traveling equation. Instead of telling you about tourist attractions for gringos in Mexico, I can actually tell you what it means to really live in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle for over a month. I can tell you about a city that when we arrived there, most of the tourists were actually other Mexicans!

We don’t have a flight home to catch and that alleviates the rush of most travelers. Met a new friend and want to stay an extra few days to have them over for dinner? Heck, why not? We even have a “home” to invite them to! Fall in love with a place and don’t want to leave yet? Sure, we can tack on a few days. The main concern we have is the expiration of our tourist visas.

Also, since leaving Mexico we have pretty much been in places where the locals outnumber the tourists. If you have never been a tourist in a non-tourism location let us tell you, it makes a HUGE difference in the way people treat you and your overall experience. We actually got to meet real Polynesians, not just the smiling people at the fancy hotel and we found out how genuinely friendly most of them are. Also, because there were so few travelers in their towns, we were a novelty to the local people instead of a constant nuisance or just a source of income.

We are exaggerating to a small degree because we are subject to the movements of our ship & the desires of our captain & co-captain (when airline pilots run ships they have funny names for things…) but that really doesn’t interfere as most of us are ready to move on each time that we do.

We also experienced lots of other “non-tourist” things, like grocery shopping in a foreign language, and buying spare parts. Fortunately for us, in both Mexico and French Polynesia we had the use of specialized-for-traveling-sailors Spanish and French dictionaries, for things like the port side of the boat and the head gasket of your engine. Try to explain those with a basic high school or even university level language class!

We’re not saying that we are somehow “better” than the typical tourist; just that what we are looking for and our overall experiences are vastly different. We also put up with more headaches. Like a lack of air conditioning, slow travel and small living conditions. Our movements are restricted by weather windows and if our boat breaks or we lose something overboard we can’t just call someone like for a rental car; we have to deal with it. (There are no boat yards and shipping parts out here is not cheap.)

We also don’t get the benefits of personal service, which means we mostly do our own dishes. Oh yes, and we are sailing a 44 foot boat though the middle of the ocean hundreds of miles from any form of rescue…but to us that’s kind of awesome 😉

We prefer this style of travel. It’s cheaper, more self-reliant and you get to see what we think are the “cool” stuff. You get to connect with people…and get your butt handed to you in ping-pong.

Tahiti will be interesting as we will become tourists in a tourist town for the first time in several months.

Would you be willing to take on a few discomforts and a couple of manageable risks in order to sail the world?

March 21, 2011

It’s only $520 per night in the off season!

Click Here to Buy Sharktopus on Amazon!

or just win it for free by checking our last blog entry!

What’s with the obsession with sharktopi? Just check out who’s staring in it!

———————————————————-

Tikehau, Tuamotu, French Polynesia

Due to their unique design, Coral atolls are ideal for watersports where you want lots of wind and little waves. As this was our last real chance to play in a wide-open lagoon without a lot of traffic or other people around, both Allan and Greg made it a point to enjoy themselves to the fullest. Allan, being obsessive about the whole wind-power thing, went windsurfing. Greg was more…unorthodox…in his choice of recreation.

Perhaps you noticed the pier and what appeared to be bungalows in the background of the video? That is in fact a resort hotel that you can stay at on the island of Tikehau. Pretty easy to find, just Google “Tikehau + hotel.” It’s not as if there are a lot of choices on the island. Just a little caveat that off season prices for their cheapest room start at $520 US per night. That does not include airfare or transport to the hotel, mind you. With the nearest airport being on the next island over, you may want to plan ahead on your connection. Drinks also are extra and about $20 US at the bar.

When we see things like that it gives us pause for a moment to appreciate what we are doing. Right now we are on an island that people pay thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars just to spend a few days on. It’s just one of the places we’ve seen and that you have enjoyed along with us on this blog. We are very grateful to have this opportunity and we are now convinced that sailing is, without a doubt the best way to see the South Pacific islands.

When starting at $520 a night you expect a seriously awesome experience and being as this atoll has no major attractions aside from the sun, ocean, motu and the lagoon, well, needless to say the snorkeling and diving should be spectacular. It was:

March 17, 2011

Win Sharktopus!

Free stuff for you time!

First off, we just added a new page to the site. On the top right of the website you’ll see the “How to Crew” link. Click on that and you’ll have access to all the details of where we find rides, races and regattas we’ve been in, tips, etc. etc. It’s a work in progress and we’ve gotten enough questions about it to warrant creating a virtual warehouse of information. For those of you wanting to sail around the world for free, this is for you!

Secondly, to celebrate Greg’s break out movie role, we’re going to give away 2 copies of Sharktopus! We’ll even throw in shipping for those of you living in the USA!

No offense to our foreign friends but guys, really, we have no idea what it costs to ship a DVD to Fatu Hiva but we’ll wager it ain’t cheap. We also have no idea if Amazon actually mails to Tahiti. Does anyone know how that works?

Here’s the deal:

1) You have to be a subscriber to the blog to win a DVD. It’s easy to do, just put your email address in the box marked “subscribe” over on the left.

2) Every blog entry you comment on is considered 1 entry to the draw. So, for example if you put 2 comments on this entry and make 1 comment on the supply ship entry linked above then you’d have 2 “entries” in the draw, not 3.

2 a) Facebook comments do not count. You’ll just have to bring your natural wit and charm onto the actual blog page to win 😉

2 b) Multiple comments on the same entry will not count. You must comment on different entries.

2 c) Yes, you can go back right now and comment on old entries. They will count.

2 d) The comments need to be approved by our spam filter internet monkeys to count, so no random spam comments, please & thank-you.

4) To count, comments must be made by 11:59pm on Wednesday, 23 March US Pacific time zone. That’s less than a week away!! We will let you know the winners on Thursday 24 March’s blog posting. So if you want to put up more comments, do it now!

5) You can only win one DVD. Once you win, your name is removed for the second draw. This way everyone gets a shot.

6) When you win, we will email you to get a good shipping address. We will then order the movie and have it shipped to you.

Alternately, for those of you just can’t wait to see Greg put to good use his high school senior elective acting class (hey, that class kicked butt! And I got a good grade!) you can just buy the DVD yourself by clicking here.

Good luck!

March 14, 2011

Special Announcement!

We interrupt our normal blogging for this important, special announcement:

For those of you who don’t know, Greg is an international, B-movie, science fiction horror film star! (On the SyFy channel, no less!) and who is, as Tiffany recently observed, a mere 3 degrees from Kevin Bacon!

Greg was even in an aquatic Sci-Fi movie. He got a boat. The Sharktopus ate it.

…and tomorrow ladies and gentlemen, yes tomorrow, YOU too can now own a masterpiece of the revival of the cult B-movie genre!

A fun way to commemorate this is to watch the movie with a bottle of tequila (‘cuz it was filmed in Mexico). Every time someone gets chomped, you take a shot. This will possibly kill you financially (assuming you drink decent tequila) and will without a doubt kill you via alcohol poising. A more survivable way to commemorate this WITHOUT having your liver explode on the spot is to take a shot every time Greg is in a scene. Yes, more people die than Greg has scenes…it’s a horror flick. Eric Roberts has fewer scenes than there are deaths in the movie.

…or replace the tequila with Pacifico….whichever (Corona should only be substituted as a desperate last resort). The kiddos can have virgin margaritas.

—————————————————————————–

“Psst, who is Eric Roberts?”

“Julia Robert’s brother. He’s in a bunch of stuff. You’ve seen him in something. He was the star power for the movie. Well, him and Jack Black’s sidekick from ‘Nacho Libre’ ”

“Oh OK, continue”

—————————————————————————–

Either way, March 15^th is your big chance to see Greg vs. the Sharktopus! Here’s a spoiler for you:

Greg dies

(which, by the way, is actually pretty hard to do. I had to hold my breath a long time and the teeth on that Sharktopus’ head hurt!)

ps – Order it now on Amazon!!! – Sharktopus

March 10, 2011

Exploring the motu with the peach sand!

Tikehau, Tuamotu, French Polynesia

Our final stop in the island chain of the Tuamotu is Tikehau, a small atoll about a day’s sail from Rangiroa.

Again, for those of you who want the zoomed out picture, we’re still in the middle of the blue part.

And of course, the main anchorage of Tikehau is on the opposite side of the island from the only navigable entrance to the lagoon. We’re not asking them to pick up their whole village and alter the geological formation of their atoll just for a few boaters (there were only 3 other boats in the anchorage while we were there) but really, it’s like they planned it this way.

The island of Tikehau is of particular interest because it is famed to have beaches with actual pink sand. Wanting to see this natural wonder and having just left the big village of Rangiroa , we had our fill of the city and decided to spend some time exploring one of the islands or “motu” that make up the ring of the atoll. You’d be amazed how much stuff you can find on a small desert island.

The reason Tiffany was poking around dead crabs was that she was looking for purple dead sea urchin spines. Hey, they have peach sand, so why not?

We found a bunch of them:

And using Alison’s beading kit Tiffany was able to create some tropical jewelry:

Greg thinks it will go great with the custom-fitted coconut bikini we painstakingly hand crafted for her.

March 7, 2011

Tipping – should we or shouldn’t we?

“In the days when an ice cream sundae cost much less, a 10 year-old boy entered a hotel coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him. “How much is an ice cream sundae?” he asked. “50¢,” replied the waitress.

The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied the coins in it.

“Well, how much is a plain dish of ice cream?” he inquired. By now more people were waiting for a table and the waitress was growing impatient. “35¢!” she brusquely replied.

The little boy again counted his coins. “I’ll have the plain ice cream,” he said. The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table and walked away. The boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier and left.

When the waitress came back, she began to cry as she wiped down the table. There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were two nickels and five pennies. You see, he couldn’t have the sundae, because he had to have enough left to leave her a tip.”

– Source unknown

…and the moral of this story is: you must tip, even when you receive bad service.

We hate the American practice of tipping. Now do we mind leaving a 15% gratuity when we receive good-to-excellent service? Heck no, that’s great. We believe in rewarding people for doing well and often tip very well when someone goes out of their way for us. Both of us have worked in food service jobs before and we know how much it’s appreciated. What we do mind is when wait staff are paid below the minimum wage because it is expected that we will pick up the slack for the employer’s stinginess and if we don’t leave a tip, we are actually taking away from someone’s paycheck. What we do mind is when a cabbie is rude to us the entire trip, we get our own bags, they get lost and make us late (also adding to the meter) and then when we pay our fare without complaint they say “what, no tip?” …Or when we have to decide whether or not a service we are receiving is “supposed to” receive a tip …Or when people are so concerned about leaving the “right tip” that they have to carry tip calculator cards in their wallets or spend 10 minutes splitting a bill and computing it. Seriously, one of our friends carried one of these card things because she was often in a rush and always wanted to make sure she left the right amount of change.

Really, we have to carry this? Is this necessary?

In short, we hate it when tipping is expected and/or required because at that point, it isn’t a tip; it’s a fee. Let’s just be honest here and put it on the bill instead of creating some clandestine social stigma that people constantly argue over day to day.

We bring this up because despite the huge cost of a burger and beer in French Polynesia, tips are not even expected and in fact people look at you weird if you give them. You get your food, you pay what’s on your bill and oddly enough, you get excellent service anyway because that’s just the way these people are. They don’t require a quasi-federally mandated and taxed (what the heck? People get TAXED on a tip?!?) bribe to put a good foot forward on the hospitality front. They just do it anyway as part of their daily life. Also, they receive an actual wage from their employer vice having to enter some awkward social dance with each and every customer. I think everyone on both sides of the tipping equation could learn something from this.

For you diners out there, do you prefer the current policy of tipping in America or would you prefer to just have the entire amount on your bill like they do it out here?

And for you all out there in the service industry, which would you prefer? Larger base checks and no tips or the current system?

March 3, 2011

So where do you get a pizza?

Avatoru, Rangiroa, Tuamotu, French Polynesia

The quest for sustenance is more complex than you might imagine.

First off, you may not recall that Greg is the ship’s only French speaker (and by “speaker” we mean a vocab of about 100 words…and about 7 verbs.) So when he’s not around and often even when he is, obtaining food requires our fellow crewmembers to overcome certain linguistic hurdles. Even on the few occasions where there is some level of reasonable verbal communications, cultural obstacles also seek to derail us. Our attempts to surmount these challenges are met with varying degrees of success:

When repeated communications attempts fail or what happens more often is that our wallets can not bear the strain of eating out more than once a week without mortgaging a first born child (which, oddly enough, no one on this ship actually has) we must instead resort to our own dwindling Mexican shipboard supplies to sustain our appetites. Which, after months of isolation from the necessities of life (like Trader Joe’s) those precious stores are beginning to run “a little thin” by our fellow crewmember’s standards.

Ok, you know, we have no idea how many cartons of rice milk they had onboard when we left Mexico. We also never actually even saw where they stored all of this milk on the 44 foot boat that we have all been living on together for several months now. Think about that for a second, we never saw the rice milk on the boat, and it’s not like it doesn’t take up some space. This ship has more secret storage compartments than the Millennium Falcon.

We do alright though. Mostly based on these meager and vastly depleted supplies we manage to cobble together rudimentary meals that we share with our fellow cruisers:

Alright, in all seriousness, for those of you planning on plying the seas of the South Pacific, cheap Mexican beer (Pacifico mostly) is a viable form of forex currency out here and the exchange rate is through the roof! Those yellow cans are greeted with sighs of satisfaction and envious looks when a captain brings out a drink at dinner. A sign of true friendship between cruisers is to share one’s “Mexican beer stash.” Being as Hinano, the local brew, comes in at least $5 US per can at the grocery store, spending a few pesos on some Mexican beer is one of the smartest investments in ensuring popularity with your fellow cruisers that you can make before departing.

As for us? Suppose we’ll just have to muddle through on Tahitian wine and French baguette pizza.

February 28, 2011

Land, Sea and Air Critters

Outside of town we find the other inhabitants of the atoll: the wildlife.

Bored with getting schooled by 9 year old island ping-pong champions? Well then, your new playmate can be as close as the nearest coconut crab hole:

Some of you may not remember Greg’s previous encounters with the avian species but he has extensive diplomatic experience in “aggressive negations” with:

– Seagulls in San Diego

– Boobies in crossing the South Pacific

– And now, the finches of French Polynesia

We would be remiss to mention the creatures of Rangiroa and omit the diving. Like Fakarava, Rangiroa is world-renown for its dive areas and the water is crystal clear. The difference is that Rangiroa is far more accessible (remember the daily flights) and also far more developed. As a result, there are a lot more divers that swim in Rangiroa’s lagoon and the fish are actually very accustomed to humans in the water. The fish actually swim towards the dingy instead of away from it and when we tied up and jumped into the water we found ourselves immediately swarmed by a cloud of butterfly fish!

Greg has been told by his shipmates that by learning to dive in French Polynesia he is “spoiled for life” on diving. Wait, there are places in the world where you don’t see at least 10 sharks per dive and have to beat off the cornucopia of rainbow fish with a stick?

Category: travel

When white people mangle Polynesian traditions

Like this:

The Art and History of Tattoos

Like this:

Traveler or Tourist?

Like this:

It’s only $520 per night in the off season!

Click Here to Buy Sharktopus on Amazon!

Like this:

Win Sharktopus!

Like this:

Special Announcement!

Like this:

Exploring the motu with the peach sand!

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Tipping – should we or shouldn’t we?

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So where do you get a pizza?

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Land, Sea and Air Critters

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