Tahiti – Page 3 – Coast Guard Couple

April 18, 2011

Haven’t had a pig roast yet…

Papeete, Tahiti, Society Islands, French Polynesia

We’re going to tackle the rest of this town in three parts: food, music and sexuality/spirituality.

Let’s start with food. Because really, that last one will probably have you checking back at least to see what we have to say.

The center of Papeete is the 2 story market. The bottom floor is occupied by fresh fish and produce booths, while the top floor & outside block are comprised of souvenir shops. Though we rarely like touristy stuff, we thought it was neat that this place puts locals and visitors into the same place.

Remember when we thought we had ordered French fries in our sandwich by mistake? Turns out the reason the server didn’t think it was odd is Continue reading “Haven’t had a pig roast yet…”

April 14, 2011

How do you say “Landlubber” en Francais?

Papeete, Tahiti, Society Islands, French Polynesia

Alright, well, before Tiffany’s mom arrives and we do the bungalows / hi-life thing, we have a few days to stretch our legs and explore Papeete on our own. It’s been quite some time since our last big city experience, so we were interested in what there was to do in Papeete. First thing: there are no mid-range hotels in this city, at least not any that we could find. You are either rolling big or living in a hostel. Being as we were going to spend time in the 5 star secluded resorts when Tiffany’s mom gets here, we decided to spend our days “in the city.”

After a night’s rest and a typical French Polynesian breakfast of half a fresh baguette (heaven!) jam, tea and orange juice, off we went to see what we could find out.

Oh hey, see that giant gouge on Greg’s left thumb? Important note: Boats bite. Watch your digits.

Speaking of boats, you are not going to believe what we ran into in downtown Papeete. Continue reading “How do you say “Landlubber” en Francais?”

April 11, 2011

The Little Boat That DID!

Papeete, Tahiti, Society Islands, French Polynesia

Tahiti is also the place where we part ways with FLY AWEIGH. A few months and about 5000 nautical miles ago, two friends asked us to come with them on an amazing adventure. To do what many dream about but few actually accomplish: to sail a 44 foot sailboat from Mexico to Tahiti. Along the way we’ve faced thousands of miles of open ocean and become shellbacks, combated air pirates, opened coconuts with dull machetes, swam with 250 sharks and had a dozen other adventures. What was promised was the trip of a lifetime. It did not fail to meet that lofty mark.

Now we are here, in a place we talked about as if it would take an eternity to get to and really it only took a couple of months. Our time together has come to an end. Since we already have our next boat out of Tahiti lined up in a few weeks and Tiffany’s mom is coming out by plane (wuss 😉 we will become “normal tourists” for a time. It should be interesting. Don’t worry, we’ll keep the blog going with our adventures in Tahiti & Bora Bora just like we did in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle. Allan & Alison will continue on their cruise and we will very likely see them again on this trip. From now on though, it will be as friends passing in a port.

“Shipmate” is a term that people throw around a lot without understanding what it means. Most seagoing military types understand what it means to serve on a ship with another person: when it comes right down to it, it’s just you and your crew against Continue reading “The Little Boat That DID!”

April 7, 2011

We’ve Reached Civilization Indeed!

Papeete, Tahiti, Society Islands, French Polynesia

Located in the Society Island chain, Tahiti is the best known and main island of French Polynesia. With a massive population of 131,695, Papeete is the capital of both the island and the colony. Scoffing at that number? In case you haven’t been keeping track, about 49% of the entirety of the population of French Polynesia lives in this city. Not this island, this city. The next largest town we’ve encountered consisted of about 1700 people. The only university in French Polynesia is here along with actual shopping malls, supermarkets, (…finally!) restaurants that don’t double as family rooms and all the modern conveniences. Welcome to the big city.

Papeete is most assuredly Continue reading “We’ve Reached Civilization Indeed!”

April 4, 2011

The First Place You Can Actually Name!

Tahiti, Society Islands, French Polynesia

Holy cow we actually sailed to Tahiti!

Tahiti is 4,067 miles from San Diego and that’s as the crow flies. Well, actually at that point it would probably be an albatross but we digress. Continue reading “The First Place You Can Actually Name!”

March 31, 2011

When white people mangle Polynesian traditions

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Why do you want me to own Sharktopus?

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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!

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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!

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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?

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!

December 30, 2010November 10, 2020

Happy New Year!

The past year has been an adventure beyond description and we are blessed to have the chance to make this dream come true. Thank-you all so much for sharing it with us. Your comments and emails have been a real encouragement for us as we have strived to maintain this video blog in a part of the world that doesn’t exactly lend itself to high speed internet…or any internet for that matter. Your questions and comments on the blog, Facebook and emails have been great, please keep them up!

We’re still out here exploring the south pacific, in the coming year we hope to see an actual continent again (no rush on that though!)

If I could offer you one thought for the coming year it’s this: According to the people I talk to out here travelling with me, very few people who set out to do a trip like this actually accomplish it. The number one reason has to do with health and often it is simply because they waited too long. They bodies gave out before they were ready.

I know dropping everything isn’t in the cards for everyone and grabbing a piece of your dream now, however small, at least gets you going in the right direction. Upon seeing some of the marvelous islands we’ve been to, one of my fellow crewmen (woman, actually but crewwoman sounds funny) has gotten into the habit of says “Good work God.” God has indeed done some awesome work on this little ball of rock we call Earth…and the only way you can experience it is to take the first step now. Simply said: it’s awesome out here.

Until then, we’ll keep blogging as long as you keep watching!

-Greg & Tiffany

Here’s Tiffany with her new Polynesian ukulele (not to be confused with a Hawaiian ukulele) and a nice, cheap, fresh baguette in Tahiti, two key pieces of Polynesian culture.

Here’s Greg smirking next to the tiki we’ve been calling “tripod”, one of the gods from Rarotonga in the Cook Islands with his Hawaiian ukulele. Um, they put this tiki, in all his glory, on their $2 coins…

Tag: Tahiti

Haven’t had a pig roast yet…

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How do you say “Landlubber” en Francais?

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The Little Boat That DID!

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We’ve Reached Civilization Indeed!

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The First Place You Can Actually Name!

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When white people mangle Polynesian traditions

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The Art and History of Tattoos

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Transit of TERROR 2: Rangiroa

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Happy New Year!

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