Sailing – Page 6 – Coast Guard Couple

February 14, 2011

Special Delivery is all they’ve got!

Rangiroa, Tuamotu, French Polynesia

In the United States, if we want some lettuce, we go to the fridge and get some lettuce

(what does this have to do with Polynesian life? Stay with me a sec.)

Fridge empty? Fine, we go to the grocery store. But what would we do if the grocery store had no lettuce? What if all the grocery stores had no lettuce because there was none to be had? What if we couldn’t go to the farm, organic or otherwise, to get our lettuce because it was literally impossible to get to one via land?

Well then I’d guess we’d just have to sit on our happy hands and wait a few weeks / months for the next delivery, now wouldn’t we?

Alright, take that paragraph above and replace “lettuce” with everything from “milk” to “vegetables” to “paint” to “beer” to “wheels for my car” to “computer monitor” to “gas for my stove” to anything you use in your daily life.

You can now understand what we mean when we say the supply ship plays a very critical part in the lives of Polynesians.

The M/V ARANUI 3 makes 16 trips a year to resupply many of the Marquesan islands and a couple of the Tuamotu islands. “Oh, that’s a lot of trips.” No, no it is not. Imagine that only 16 times a year, basically once a month, you could get fresh vegetables or a new TV or your favorite book series or just about anything over the size of an airmail package. Think of the mindset shift for a purchasing consumer. First off, you’d better be darn sure you want whatever you’re ordering, because it isn’t $5.95 shipping and handing, we can tell you that. After having to deal with the Polynesian internet “service”. These people have to order things far enough in advance to get it delivered to Tahiti (which is not exactly on the beaten path to start with) early enough for it to get onto this ship so it can get delivered. The boat only comes by 16 times a year and if your package isn’t onboard when the ship leaves Tahiti, well, guess you’ll just have to wait another month then, won’t you? So that new bike you want to get your kid for Christmas? Might want to think about ordering that around September or so. Just in case there’s a delay somewhere along the delivery chain (sure that never happens) or just in case the weather’s bad on the day the delivery ship shows up and it can’t make any deliveries so it leaves to make it’s next appointment (because we’ve be told that does happen).

Sure stores stock stuff and here on Rangiroa there are more stores than on most islands (about 3) but they each don’t carry much, and by “not much” I mean “not much beyond basic living necessities like clothes, food and cookware” and none of them are specialty stores. You want your XBOX 360 video games or a replacement laptop because yours broke? That you special order and wait for the boat.

Did we mention that the supply ship also has to enter the port via the the aforementioned narrow pass of tidal death ? It comes inside the lagoon and anchors off the pass and deploys small boats, since it’s too big to tie up at the shallow pier. Then it uses its crane to put things into the small boat. You know the video arcade grabby claw? Ok, play that game, except if you screw up, you lose the island’s ration of potatoes for the month, retail value several hundred to several thousand dollars. We did mention this game is being played on a fluid maritime environment where nothing is stable, right?

We have heard stories of new cars and trucks being dumped overboard during transfer…oops!

When the stars do align and the delivery ship can drop anchor, release its tender boat and actually make deliveries, it’s a big deal that a good part of the whole village turns out for.

These people get their supplies from outboard motorboats. The Port of Oakland or New York, this is not.

People buying and selling, right there on the dock. Why? Because if there are 50 wheels of cheese to be delivered to Rangiroa this month, you want to make sure you get your cheese before it’s all gone.

We also found out that you can even book a cabin onboard and ride the ship to a lot of the places we have been. For those of you wanting to see what we’ve seen without the whole, as my friend Michael put it, “sailing across the largest expanse of nothing on the planet on little more than a bathtub powered by a bedsheet” this might be for you. Ain’t cheap though.

http://www.aranui.com/index.php

February 10, 2011

Transit of TERROR 2: Rangiroa

Rangiroa, Tuamotu, French Polynesia

Oh you want the zoomed out picture? Being as on that Google map we showed you before the scale was 1 pixel = somewhere around 500 miles or something, I don’t think it would change very much. We’re still in the middle of the blue stuff. 😉

With about 2400 permanent inhabitants (this is a HUGE number by the way, we haven’t seen cities so populous since Nuku Hiva) being only a paltry 220 miles from Tahiti (laughable distance really) and with an airport with actual daily flights (*gasp!*) Rangiroa is the de facto capital of the Tuamotu. Its coral reef is made up of 415 motu (islands) and it has only 2 passes in or out. This is where our story begins:

We had gotten a little cocky about the whole “sailing though a dangerous coral reef” thing but don’t you worry, Rangiroa was kind enough to re-humble us. Her lagoon is big: about 50 miles long and 20 miles wide. This atoll actually has its own horizon and generates its own localized micro weather patterns. Land’s still about 300 yards across though, so no help there. 50 miles long, 20 miles wide and a lagoon about 100 feet deep. That’s a lot of water and there are only two skinny little passes (say about 100 yards across) in or out. Perhaps you can see where we’re going here.

Rangiroa has a tidal current.

Those weren’t jumping fish; they were 5 foot long dolphins surfing in the standing waves. Rangiroa is famous for them. Also, some genius French entrepreneur (they did invent the word, after all) built a channel-side bar with an observation deck to watch the struggling boats…it’s like the nautical version of celebrity death match with dolphin cheerleaders & umbrella drinks!

A 6 – 7 knot tidal current shifts back and forth throughout the day, creating 5 foot standing waves in addition to the coral on both sides of the channel just waiting to snack on your fiberglass hull. If you don’t know anything about tides and currents, let us give you a visual. We watched one boat who thought that the reports of the rip tide were exaggerated and decided to just push though. For a full hour we watched this cruising boat, at all ahead full, pedal to the metal, going though gas like a drunken sailor though vodka, transit this 300 yard long pass. 300 yards! At sea – calm. In the lagoon – calm. In the pass, one little boat struggled to get in while 2.09×10¹³ gallons of water wanted to get out…all at once. Oh yes, we just broke out the scientific numbering system. The same system they use to measure the distance to other galaxies. Do we have your attention?

“Oh but that isn’t so bad”, you say. “Just go in while the current is pushing you into the lagoon.” Bad idea for two reasons:

1) For the non-sailors out there, the way a rudder works is that it’s a board sticking out of the bottom of your boat that turns you by pushing against the water. Turn the rudder, the water flowing past it hits it at an angle, which pushes the board and the boat attached to it, in a new direction. If water isn’t flowing past the rudder, the boat won’t turn. When a boat is in a following current (aka being pushed) in a narrow channel where the speed of the water is equal to the speed of the boat, then no water is flowing over the rudder and your half million dollar floating condo just became the world’s biggest pinball.

2) You know that desert island with the one palm tree that people get shipwrecked on in the movies? Found it. It’s at the end of the fast flowing channel of Rangiroa, right there in the smack dab middle of where all the really fast water lets out.

It’s cute, when the current isn’t pushing you right into it – then it’s scary!

February 3, 2011

And you thought the other village was small…

Toau, Tuamotu, French Polynesia

We arrived in Toau to find two really nice guys in an outboard who guided us into the 10 boat anchorage they had set up near the “village.”

Why is “village” in quotations?

Just wait for it.

After helping us get anchored the nice guys invited us over for dinner that evening. It’s a pretty common practice for the locals to prepare dinner for cruisers for a price and then “invite” you to dinner. Remember in Fatu Hiva where the terms “restaurant” and “living room” were synonymous? Yeah, pretty normal and to be fair, they take good care of you:

Those would be fresh lobsters. Paired with baguette and fresh fried parrot fish and by “fresh” I mean the two guys who guided us in? They are also the fishermen; brought the fish in that afternoon and cooked them up alongside one of their wives. Same with the lobsters.

Also, they have a dog

Cute little guy, kinda scraggly. Not really worth noting until…hey wait a second…how the heck did a dog get way out here?! It’s not like he evolved from the freaking fish! Did you ship him in? How much would that cost? Is he some sorta descendent from dogs brought over by Capt. Cook? Seriously, where did you get a dog!? (see, like I said, sometimes it’s the little things that make you remember where you are).

We had a great time at dinner and then the 2 nice guys and the lady invited us to come to church tomorrow. Well, we’ve all heard legends of the Polynesian church singing and it’s also when the whole “village” would typically turn out, what a great opportunity to meet people! …and truthfully, it’s been a while since we were able to get to an actual church, so heck why not?

Here’s the church:

And here’s what the service was like:

Not exactly what we were expecting. Ok, so all the white people? Sailors. That leaves the lady at the front and the two men in the seats…

…noticing a trend here?

You know that joke where the town’s so small that the mayor is the sectary while moonlighting as the pastor and city garbage collector?

Yeah, that’s here.

Greg played bocce ball with the two guys on the beach with their bocce set. Won one game, lost the other. In other words, he beat half the bocce ball playing population of this island in one go.

…Hey wait, where the heck did they get a bocce ball set?!

January 31, 2011

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.

January 27, 2011

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?

January 20, 2011

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!)

January 17, 2011

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:

January 13, 2011

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.

January 10, 2011

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!)

January 6, 2011

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

Tag: Sailing

Special Delivery is all they’ve got!

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Transit of TERROR 2: Rangiroa

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And you thought the other village was small…

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Needles, Haystacks and Islands

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Sailing, Snacks and Garbage

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Living in Farkarava, French Polynesia

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The Ballsiest Way to Travel Known to Mankind

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That Crab’s on fire!

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Brad Kellogg owes me $67.25

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And the UN was right!

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