Take 4 sailors without boats, a bottle of wine, a ukulele without a tuner, a fervent desire to celebrate the holidays and way too much free time and what do you get?
Hi-larity.
Proximity
Whangarei, NZ
The sailing life leads to odd relationships. Not odd in the quality but more in the means employed in establishing and growing those interpersonal connections: the happenstance, randomness and good fortune involved in who we even have the opportunity to connect with.
People come in and out of our lives literally with the passing of each tide.
Some fellow sailors are friends for a meal or a few days in one port, remembered fondly but as fate and diverging cruising plans would have it, never to be rendezvoused with again.
Other people are friends for a longer time. Perhaps an overlapping prolonged stay in a Mexican port or a shared long-term rally provide ample opportunity to get to know each other over a longer period of time. The cruiser’s net, dinners aboard and joint shore excursions are the fabric with which we begin to weave our social tapestry. Radio comms and emails (yeah, you can get those via satellite uplink or over a HAM radio now…) allow us to fill in the gaps when we are mutually underway while Facebook and blogs can keep us connected while we’re in different ports.
In our case, there are those people who ask us onboard their vessels for anywhere from a few days to a few months. For that time we become roommates in a home that none of us can leave. Typically we share meals, time, adventures and our lives for however long we’re onboard. We, to a varying degree, become family. These people are, for the time we’re connected to them, a huge part of our world. Often we leave as good friends.
The downside to our situation is that, unlike most cruisers, we are unable to extend our time in places to form a relationship if our captain decides that they wish to depart. Friendships are created and maintained by a mixture of fortunate run-ins and dedicated effort placed into correspondence.
What we’re saying here is that interpersonal proximity is a variable, sometimes an obstacle and always a consideration in the formation and maintenance of friendships at sea.
Then there’s the case of Rod & Elisabeth.
A Kiwi Christmas
Auckland, New Zealand
You’ll be happy (or envious, probably both 😉 to know that by the time December rolled around down here we managed to get full swing into summer.
And while it’s not exactly Florida temperatures, the added sunshine mixed with a stubborn defiance of the weather that the Kiwis must have inherited from their British ancestors makes for another warm-weather festive season.
The many hazards of landlubbing
Tongatapu, Tonga
We ended up at this luau & Tongan food fest put on by a local entrepreneur in an Oceanside cave. Just getting there reminded Greg of one of hazards of land bound life outside America…
Seriously, either there’s something in the North American water supply or all those growth hormones we keep feeding our cows and plants are rubbing off because back home Greg is able to pass though most passageways without being actively molested by the ceiling. A feat he has a much more difficult time with everywhere else in the world.
Remember how in Vava’u we noticed that the men’s dances had a lot more movement than the women’s? Yeah that’s because the men’s dances in Tonga were actually used for the teaching and practice of armed and unarmed combat.
Some work, mostly play in Paradise
Bora Bora, Society Islands, French Polynesia
So now that we got that pesky “work” out of the way, we can relax right?
Most of our time was spent at the Bora – Bora yacht club. “Why” you ask? It’s the BORA BORA YACHT CLUB! Two words dude: Bragging. Rights. If that isn’t reason enough, we don’t know what is:
Oh, and they have a thatched roof hut as their main building, which is awesome.
Greg did a bit more work on the computer while Tiffany went on a hike of Bora Bora with some of the other ships’ crews. It was hot. It rained. Everyone was very happy to have an opportunity to use their cheap Mexican ponchos and good times were had by all:
But the two big highlights of Bora Bora playtime were:
1) The diving. Our current captain, Brian, is an avid diver. As in there is a dive compressor onboard along with 4 full dive kits. This means we go diving. A lot. Also, he has a dive camera with a depth rating of about 100 feet so we got some awesome footage of the sea life of Bora Bora: Continue reading “Some work, mostly play in Paradise”
Polynesian Singing
Raiatea, Society Islands, French Polynesia
We haven’t given you many glimpses into underway life recently and our journey to Raiatea gave us an opportunity to not only do that but to also educate our Slovenian crewmember on American culture at the same time!
As for the Island itself, look, it’s French Polynesia and we ran out of new adjectives to describe the ridiculous amount of simply jaw-dropingly awesome sights this part of the world has to offer about 3 months ago. Raiatea is unique in that it is the main port for the sailboat charter fleet in French Polynesia, so it is particularly beautiful for recreational cruisers, but we’ll let the slide show do the talking here:
In case you didn’t know, yes, French Polynesia has a “charter fleet.” Which, in case you’re not up on the lingo, is a pretty way of saying “boat rental dealership.” So if sailing for a month straight doesn’t fit into your appointment calendar and jumping on a cargo ship to paradise doesn’t suit your fancy, you can still get the shipboard lifestyle by flying here and renting a boat. We think we’ll stick to the crew thing though, all in all. Continue reading “Polynesian Singing”
The Tahiti-Moorea Rendezvous
Moorea, Society Islands, French Polynesia
Well, now that we got the whole troublesome sailing bit out of the way, let’s get to the partying…
…by getting in an even smaller boat, but this time with no means of automated propulsion and in the rain!
(We don’t get it either dude…)
The first thing we did was participate in the national sport of French Polynesia by competing in 4-man Polynesian canoe races. As we had actually sailed to Tahiti with our friends Allan and Alison, they cross-recruited us into their canoe and coconut shucking team.
Difficult to paddle and almost impossible to steer; how the heck did these people colonize the South Pacific in these things!? Continue reading “The Tahiti-Moorea Rendezvous”
Any excuse for a party!
The Tahiti Rendezvous
There is something you need to understand about sailors: they really need very little excuse to do two things:
1) Sail
2) Party
So any occasion where an actual legitimate reason exists to do both at the same time is guaranteed to draw a crowd. Enter the Tahiti Rendezvous, an annual celebration put on by the Tahitian government to celebrate those insane people who are both crazy enough to think that traveling thousands of miles by sail is a good idea and ingenious enough to actually pull it off.
The short of it is that basically everyone who sailed to Tahiti gets together to have a race to Moorea (her neighboring island) and celebrate the fact that we have actually made it to Tahiti. Which if you’ve ever spent 3 months traveling to a place, trust us, arriving is something worth celebrating.
And what better way to start off celebrating arriving at your destination, after sailing for weeks with no land in sight, than to immediately leave land and have a sailing race?
…It’s not like we said, or even really implied, that sailors made any logical sense.
Being as our current ride was unable to participate in the sailing race because, you know, due to the lack of the sails and all, we were nominated to be the committee boat and carry the band that would provide the soundtrack to our adventure. Continue reading “Any excuse for a party!”
Ukulele 101
Papeete, Tahiti, Society Islands, French Polynesia
As previously mentioned, music is a major part of these peoples’ lives.
Outside the market and along the main drag of the city is a bank that more importantly serves as the unofficial gathering place for the Papeete street band. Guitars, ukuleles, a guy with a plastic garbage can bass and a bottle cap maracas. We already knew Polynesians had a knack for musical adaptation and the Tahitians did not disappoint. This informal gathering of street performers have been playing daily long enough to be in most of the tourist and travel books as a recommended destination. They’re really that good.
Listening to these guys inspired us to learn more about their version of the ukulele. As we mentioned before in our virtual ukulele Christmas card there are 2 kinds of ukulele: the Hawaiian and the Tahitian.
The ukulele Greg carries around is the “tiny guitar” that most Americans think of when they picture island music. It is thicker and produces a lower note. Most Polynesians refer to it as a “Kamika” due to the fact that a popular brand of Hawaiian ukulele is made by that brand. It’s like calling a cotton ear swab a “Q-tip.”
While in Tahiti we picked up a Tahitian ukulele for Tiffany. This ukulele is longer than the Hawaiian and much thinner. It is made out of solid wood and though both have 4 stringed notes and both are tuned to the same notes, Continue reading “Ukulele 101”