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Update 7 - August 2, 2000
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Bonjour de Papeete,
This is a long one with tales of storms, islands, and
battles with sea monsters.
When I last wrote we were in the Marquesas, getting
ready to leave for the Tuamotus, the archipelago of
over 100 atolls lying between the Marquesas and the
Society islands (Tahiti et al). We had a nice passage
of five days; making slow progress, but in beautiful
conditions.
We decided while we were in the Marquesas that we were
going to make a grand effort to get off the beaten
path in the Tuamotus. Supposedly the Tuamotus are
where one may still encounter unspoiled Polynesian
peoples. Over 100 boats passed through the Marquesas
this year, most of whom would stop at two or three of
the more commonly visited atolls in the northern
Tuamotus. A friend in the Marquesas recommended the
atoll of Raroia, to the south, at an alternative that
might afford us the opportunity to have an authentic
experience. He also advised us that there was no
fruit in the Tuamotus (nothing but coconut palms and
low scrub grow in the infertile coral soils) and if we
wanted to make fast friends we should bring a lot of
fruit. So we did: We loaded up with about a hundred
pounds of pamplemouse and a bunch of limes, both of
which keep quite well.
Raroia has one noteworthy event in it’s history: It
was where Thor Heyerdahl and company made their
landfall (actually crashed on the reef) marking the
end of the Kon Tiki expedition which gave some
substantiation to Thor’s theory that Polynesia was
settled by South American peoples using balsa rafts.
While waiting for transport, Thor and company spent
some time on the island, wrote about its customs, and
saved the life of a small boy who had an abscess on
his head using the raft’s medical kit and medical
advice received from a doctor in Los Angeles via
radio. Kon Tiki is a great adventure if you haven’t
read the book.
The Tuamotus, also known as The Dangerous Archipelago,
require careful navigation and acute seamanship so
that one does not make landings in the fashion of Kon
Tiki or the countless other wrecks that dot the
atolls. The atolls are all low-lying, visible only
from within about ten miles, and surrounded by
precipitous reefs. Getting off the beaten path raises
the stakes.
The first danger of the atolls, knowing where they are
and not running into them, has been largely
ameliorated by GPS. People just didn’t travel these
islands for pleasure back in the days of sextants and
dead reckoning, so up until about ten years ago. The
second danger of the atolls, locating and transiting
the pass into the lagoon, is alive and well. An
atoll, being a large ring of coral with a lagoon
inside, usually has just one or two passes, or breaks
in the ring large enough for a boat to get through.
In the case of Raroia, it has just one pass, meaning
that when the tide goes in or out all the water from
an 18 by 7 mile lagoon has to flow through a pass
about 400 yards wide, dotted with coral heads, shoals
and other obstructions. Everything I read strongly
cautioned in favor of transiting the pass at slack
tide when there is no current.
Being our first pass transit, we approached cautiously
at sunrise after standing off for several hours in the
dark. GPS made it easy to pick which break in the
palm trees was the pass. We were met with an amazing
smell of tropical flowers blowing off the island after
our five day passage. We neared the pass and saw the
whole waterworks in action: Between two Blue
Lagoon-esque, palm-fringed, white sand motus (small
islands) flowed a torrent so horrifying as to shiver
me timbers. A six to eight knot current rocketed the
water into the narrow part of the pass where it formed
into six to eight foot RAPIDS. Giant breaking waves.
A class five river-running adventure. To run the pass
in these conditions would be suicide, like taking a
cruising sailboat down the Snake River at high water.
Needless to say, we cooled our heels for a few hours
until slack tide, at which point we transited the pass
without incident with Felix up the mast and Tom on the
bow looking for coral heads.
Having seen a pass in action, I understood why the
tide is so important with entering or leaving an
atoll. You have windows of about 20 minutes a few
times a day to transit the pass. Other times you
would either be swimming a losing course against a
violent current or sucked in or out like a toilet bowl
to be rocked in the rapids or thrown into a coral
head. Fun stuff.
We anchored near the village among the coral heads and
waving palms and later went in to meet some of the
friendliest and most generous people in the world.
The first people we saw, four old coots sitting around
drinking beer, immediately had us join them, served us
cold beers, gave us fish and offered to take us around
the atoll. One of the old guys, Rango, was the boy
who Thor Heyerdahl’s team had saved in the ‘40s. He
even let us touch his scar. We gave him our old copy
of Kon Tiki, which he was delighted to receive. There
were pictures of Raroia from the ‘40s from which Rongo
and the other duffers could pick out long-dead
mothers, fathers, aunts and grandparents. They didn’t
have a copy of Kon Tiki on the island.
We became fast friends with Rongo, Tahutu, Enrico, and
well, we just never got some of their names straight.
But they never got ours quite right either.
Conversation was a blend of Puamotu, French and
English. For them, French was a second language that
some didn’t speak very well. Our French is coming
along, but it’s still pathetic. After about five days
the gentlemen gave us Polynesian names and started
referring to us as brothers. It was very sincere and
very touching. The trident bond of our friendship
was:
1. Drinking
2. Music
3. Loathing the French
The drinking was a daily affair. You could not walk
by the house (impossible to miss since it is the
gateway to a village of 75 habitants) without getting
a beer or a glass of wine shoved in your hand. “Wait,
I’m just trying to use the phone.” “Let me just drop
off the garbage and I’ll come right back.” No,
imbibing was to take place on the spot without delay
and without excuses.
The music was the best part. One day a trough or
something blew through the area. There was some rain
followed by a night of the most amazing stillness.
The lagoon took on the look of a mountain lake without
a single ripple. The supply boat came that day so
everyone was loaded up with goodies like beer, wine
and chicken, a rare delicacy on the high seas. The
guys brought out their ukuleles and we brought our
guitars. They taught us some of their songs, but we
mostly listened to them and occasionally offered up an
American song. We did a duet of the Grateful Dead’s
Truckin that brought the house down. Each one of the
guys had an amazing voice. They would bang out these
Polynesian songs, pegging the incredibly high notes
every time. Tahutu, without a red tooth left in his
head, nothing but gums, had a voice that would break
your heart. I think he had been a working musician in
Tahiti at some point.
The loathing of the French is a bit tricky. We have
had nothing but great experiences with the continental
French who live and work in French Polynesia. They
have been a delightful combination of Gaelic charm
combined with Polynesian generosity. I have even gone
so far as to make the generalization that all French
outside of Paris are great. But to be Polynesian, it
seems one must hate the French and curse them at every
turn. It is very obvious to me that the standard of
living would be much lower without the French. The
infrastructure is amazing for such out-of-the-way
places. Every village has street lights. Every
village with more than 100 people has a phone. Supply
boats come regularly and everyone seems well taken
care of. Most of these places, especially the
Marquesas and the Tuamotus would be remote,
subsistence living kinds of places. Subsistence
living kinds of places don’t look as nice as these
places do.
The people of Raroia have special justification to
hate the French since the French blew up over 160
nuclear bombs on Mururoa, just 150 miles away, the
final one being in 1996 when internal an international
pressure got the better of them. And they sold their
fishing rights to the Taiwanese.
People are fairly prosperous on Raroia because of the
budding black pearl industry which was started as a
government program years ago. Many of the islanders
spend their days gently prying open oysters to seed
them with a little ball which may become an oyster in
14 years.
Our hosts’ generosity knew no bounds. The
aforementioned drinking was apropos at all hours and
for all occasions. But they fed us too: Often it was
chicken, which must be brought by boat and is very
expensive. The beer is $35 per case, and they fed us
several cases. They would never let us go back to the
boat empty handed. They would always give us some
fish or chicken to take home for our next meal. You
had to be really careful what you said. In their
society if you say ‘hey, nice sunglasses’ the person
will turn around and give them to you, and if you
reject the gift you are insulting them.
I fear that this kindness and generosity will be dead
with the next generation. We had definitely hooked up
with the old guard. All these men were in their 60s.
The younger people around the village, while friendly,
didn’t have that ‘welcome to our paradise, weary sea
voyager’ kind of attitude. They listen to rap and
rock, watch western TV shows, and probably see city
life in Papeete regularly. Perhaps I’m wrong and it
is village elders’ job to entertain visiting
dignitaries while the young look on.
Then there was the fishing. Tahutu picked us up one
afternoon at the boat, doorstep service, and took us
out through the pass. We killed it. We landed five
large animals totaling over 250 pounds of yellowfin
tuna in about two hours. Each time we landed one,
Tahutu would grin his big toothless grin and laugh:
Heh, heh, heh! We weren’t sure at the time whether
this was the normal catch or something extraordinary.
As it turned out, that was some pretty ripe fishing
for Raroia. Tahutu wanted to get us out there again
the next day. We were using the trick store-bought
lures from California and his were home-grown, so
maybe ours impressed the fish. The village was now
stocked with fish and we had contributed in the day’s
work.
The bender that night was memorable. That was the
night we got the Polynesian names and they called us
‘brothers.’ One old guy and I, by my misfortune of
sitting next to him at the table, had some sort of
bonding experience that I had to endure for hours and
he probably didn’t remember the next day: Over and
over he would slap me on the back and say, “Otre
personne…..blah blah blah, dah dah dah, dee dee dee!
mois vous…de la coer! Mon frer!” (Other people are
all talk, but you have heart, my brother!). I didn’t
want to break the news to him that he was mistaking my
strong silence for sincerity because I didn’t speak
French. Otherwise I would have babbled all night.
The next time we went fishing, Tahutu brought along
two younger guys: Alphonse we had met before. He was
the village mahu, amember of ‘Polynesia’s third sex.’
He somewhat of a cross-dresser and extremely
effeminate. The other guy, Pierre, was new. Once
again the sign language and mixed Puamotan, French and
English were comical at times. Tom, Felix and I hit
it off well with the three islanders and had a nice
day on the water.
On the way out we would drag either Alphonse or Pierre
from the bow of the boat wearing a mask, while we
stood by with a large spear gun with a long coil of
heavy line, a large float and another large hook that
looked like it would be used in a meat packing plant.
On the way out they didn’t find what they were looking
for and we couldn’t figure out what it was. All we
could understand was that it was a tense business,
whatever they were doing, and that there was an
eminent danger of shark attack if they managed to
harpoon this creature.
We gave up on that business and went out in the ocean
to kill fish. We didn’t do quite as well this time,
but caught a mess of some sort of Tuna and they seemed
happy.
We headed back toward the island and resumed the
man-dragging along the reef. We were very curious at
this point. The worst occurred to us; that they might
be going after a sea turtle. Some more questioning
revealed that they were indeed trying to catch a
‘tortu.’ We watched on and hoped they would be
unsuccessful. Moments later there was some big
excitement. Aphonse handed the spear, float and line
to Pierre. Pierre swam off, dove, and surfaced
yelling and motioning. He had speared a sea turtle.
Uh, parlez-vous Endangered Species Act of 1984?
The turtle pulled the float under and there was a mad
scramble to ready the other spear. Pierre went down
again to deliver the coup de gras. Alphonse went in
after him and the two of them came swimming up with
the skewered beast. Tahutu and Felix wrenched 200
pounds of squirming, gasping, bleeding endangered
species over the gunnel and into the boat. I was
horrified. It was the biggest thing I had ever seen
killed and the only non-fish. I couldn’t tell what
species of sea turtle it was, nor did I want to know.
I believed they were all protected, but only four
species were endangered. The poor thing gasped and
dragged itself around the floor a while. It didn’t
bleed much, but the two spear-holes in it’s neck did
not look good.
It tasted like chicken. Just kidding, we never ate
any.
There was no way we could have interfered. We were
out fishing in their boat watching them do what they
and their forbears have done for thousands of years.
This was food for the village and meddling was just
not an option. Being indigenous Pacific islanders,
perhaps it was even legal for them to whack a sea
turtle, much the way the Eskimos are allowed to
harpoon a whale from time to time. Or so we tried to
rationalize to ourselves.
I went to the sea turtle center in Mazunte, Mexico
last year where they breed sea turtles for
reintroduction to the wild. The also have specimens
of all but one of the nine species in tanks to view in
all their majesty. I learned all the sea turtle
protection propaganda. And here I looked on as this
poor beast gasped. Felix asked me if it felt good to
think that maybe this was one of the turtles that the
Mazunte center had freed into the wild. I told him I
would sleep better at night thinking it was the one in
ten thousand who survives in nature from egg to year
one; the one whose egg isn’t stolen or eaten in the
ground, who isn’t picked off by a frigate bird making
that fateful first dash from the nest to the water’s
edge, or isn’t gulped down by a shark upon first
setting flipper in the ocean.
We rationalized all afternoon. It wasn’t people like
this who were responsible for the endangerment of sea
turtles. They are just feeding their village of less
than 75 people. Then the undeniable truths hit us.
First we read in the guidebook that all the species of
sea turtles are endangered, so there was no way that
our turtle was from a plentiful species. The second
undeniable truth was that we were definitely
accessories to the crime. We weren’t just onlookers.
We were out in the boat fishing with these guys and
turtle was what we caught. We coiled lines and handed
the spears to them. Felix even helped Tahutu pull him
into the boat. If the endangered species police had
come to make an arrest, we would have been hauled off
just as guilty as the others.
We decided it was time to move on just after Bastile
Day. We had a good tide for running the pass in the
afternoon and went in to say our goodbyes. The beer
and wine started flowing, the ukuleles came out and
Tahutu started playing the organ.
I had the most idyllic fifteen minutes of my life.
One of the younger guys, Feoa, was wearing an anklet
woven from palm fiber. I commented on it and in true
Raroia fashion he offered to give me one right away.
He lead me off to his house taking a way I had never
been. We walked along the waterfront, cutting through
peoples yards and being greeted right and left:
Bonjour! Bonjour! Then we came to the town’s
gathering area, where they pull the boats up and play
bocci ball on the grass. Again we were greeted by
smiling faces young and old. A little kid ran up to
me yelling “Aportez-moi, aportez-moi!” so I threw him
up on my shoulders. We got to Feoa’s house and took
off our shoes. He got the anklet and made a ceremony
of putting it on my leg, then giving me a black pearl
as another momento. These people work too hard and
have to little to be giving away the fruits of their
labors, but they are just fabulously generous.
Heading back through the village some of his friends
motioned us into their house. They were playing music
as well, but obviously practiced more than our
friends. We stayed for two songs performed by a
ukulele, two guitars, a woman shaking two spoons in a
bottle and everyone singing in perfect harmony. I
returned to Tom and Felix. “We don’t really have to
leave today if we don’t want to.”
Tahutu brought out his bon voyage presents for us too;
black pearls for each of us. We were touched. He
said they would make the women in Papeete amorous.
We spent another enjoyable evening playing music,
going to a dance and drinking with the boys. My
guitar and drum were somewhat the worse for wear, but
I was glad we stayed the night and left the next
morning for Makemo.
On the way we made cruising and fishing history by
hooking a sperm whale. I watched the thing following
us for a long time, then it made a close pass to the
stern, which made me nervous because sperm whales
occasionally ram sailboats for unknown reasons. Felix
yells ‘Hook up!’ Ah oh. Not good. No telling
whether the whale ate the lure or just accidentally
swam into it, but for a few seconds we had 40 tons of
whale on the end of our line; a whale that might get
angry about having a stainless steel hook in its
flesh; a hook tied to a line that lead right to us.
It jerked free. The hook was no longer a hook; more
of a fondue skewer.
We made an overnight passage to the eastern pass on
Makemo, this time getting bullish with my 85
horsepower diesel and powering in on an outgoing tide.
We used a phone for the fist time in six weeks.
Makemo has an eastern pass and a western pass with 26
miles of enclosed lagoon in between. We decided to
sail across the lagoon, a grand adventure of dodging
boat-killing coral heads. Tom and Felix traded off on
standing on the bow or going up the mast on lookout.
Most of the coral heads were clearly visible with only
a foot or so of water over them. They ranged from
coffee table size to football fields, but all rose out
of water that was over a hundred feet deep.
Occasionally there would be a boat killer, about four
feet deep, that we wouldn’t see until we were right on
it. A few times we had to pass so close that you
could have jumped from the boat to the coral head and
only gotten your ankles wet. As the day wore on the
light got bad. If the light is wrong you can’t see
the heads, so we stopped for the night mid-lagoon.
This was one of the most pristine places I have ever
been; a tropical motu with absolutely no evidence of
man.
The next morning we pressed on and made it to the
eastern pass, only to see it doing that deadly rapid
thing. The eastern pass was only about 30 yards wide.
We anchored in what looked like a protected cove only
to find it was a minefield of coral heads. We got the
anchor chain horribly tangled. It took me hours of
manual labor 30 feet underwater to undo the mess. We
transited the pass and headed for our next and final
atoll in the Tuamotus, Fakarava.
On the way to Fakarava we had the worst weather in
which I have sailed. We sailed most of the night
under jib and jigger, that’s right, jib and jigger,
until we got to the most horrifying pass entrance yet.
The pass faced the wind and the swell, so in addition
to being exceptionally narrow, in addition to the six
foot rapids, it had 8 foot waves breaking on either
side of it and a 35 knot wind pushing us in. Once we
got to a certain point, there was no turning back. I
braced my feet in the cockpit like a gunfighter,
floored the engine and careened us through a roller
coaster ride of broaching on waves and rapids while
barely moving forward against the current in a light
rain and menacing sky. The proper soundtrack for the
occasion would definitely have been Vogner’s Ride of
the Vakyries. It brought to mind a phrase I coined
while windsurfing over coral heads: You fall, you
die. If the engine conked out, it the rudder broke,
if the captain had a seizure it would be game over,
right then and there. But the engine didn’t conk out,
the rudder didn’t break and the captain didn’t have a
seizure. We powered on into the lagoon, breathed a
sigh of relief and dropped anchor in one of our most
beautiful places yet.
I took advantage of the strong winds and rigged up the
short board for windsurfing in the lagoon. The
snorkeling was amazing, but I had my first shark
encounter. Tom and I dinghied to a great spot with
some amazingly clear water. We saw a four foot black
tip shark. Cute. We chased it around until it tired
of us and swam off. Then a few minutes later I saw
Mr. Big. I think he was just curious, but perhaps
territorial. He came within six feet of me. I
motioned to Tom. Mr. Big and I played a little game
of ring around the rosey with a coral head. For a
second I lost sight of him and hoped that when I
looked around the coral head he would be gone. Nope,
still right there. I was prepared to climb up on the
coral head. At least I’d still have my body from the
knees up. Mr. Big made one more pass then swam off.
I never panicked, nor did I really think he was after
me, but that little voice inside said, “Now it’s time
to calmly exit the water.” I made a deliberate,
non-splashing beeline for the shore with Tom in tow.
When we got to shore and spoke it became apparent that
Tom never saw Mr. Big, only the little black tip. And
Mr. Big swam within ten feet of him. I thought he
acknowledged me when I motioned, but maybe he was just
fixing his mask. How big was the shark? Well let me
tell you, it keeps getting bigger every time I tell
this story.
We left Fakarava the next morning, having to be in
Papeete on July 23 to meet Larry, Cassandra and
Stephanie on the morning of the 24th. The weather
after leaving Fakarava made the weather coming into
Fakarava look like child’s play. We endured a night
of pretty bad stuff; big winds and big waves screaming
along under my smallest jib, double-reefed main and
mizzen. We had the hatches battened and washboards in
place. I took the first watch and was having fun
watching the enormous waves crash around us and the
rain pour down. There is a satisfaction in practicing
good seamanship and having it work. We had employed
the proper heavy weather tactics and the boat seemed
to be happy. Then some of the big waves started
crashing on the boat, breaking things, and going
inside the boat. I wasn’t having fun any more. We
lost some gear and sustained some damage on the aft
deck, which was getting that tangled sort of look. We
took one near knockdown that soaked the carpets inside
and threw everything that wasn’t individually tied
down. Namely, every book we had was thrown out of the
bookcases and soaked. How could every individual page
of my photo album get splashed? Miraculously, the
only injury was that Tom got hit in the head by the
metal buckle on a flying windsurfer harness. I now
understand the mechanics of such a roll: It’s not
that the wave just throws you to one side. It throws
you UP and to one side so things on the uphill side of
the boat get thrown, not just tipped, up and out, into
space and into whoever’s head is in the way.
So the fun was over. There was some lightning in the
mix as well, which always makes me nervous. It was a
tense night, but no real danger. Once again, the
satisfaction of practicing good seamanship and having
it work.
Arrival in Papeete was joyous. We saw about every
cruising boat I have met since I left California. We
ate out. We rode the bus. We wore shoes.
The next morning Larry, Cassandra and Stephanie
arrived at 7:00AM. I have spoken in the past about
the Sherpa Award; people who bring tons of goodies
from California on the plane. This was ridiculous.
You see, Stephanie, Larry and Cassandra’s friend, was
a last-minute addition to the trip. Stephanie is the
General Manager of the highest volume Trader Joe’s in
Southern California. They brought a Trader Joe’s
corporate care package: Hundreds of pounds of food.
Coolers full of crown rack of lamb and tri-tip, cases
of vintage wine, Crown Royal, half gallon of Absolut
vodka, hand-batch tequila, cans, packages, bags, jars
and bottles. It was enough food for the four of us
for the week, plus feeding and entertaining other
friends, plus enough to leave me with food for another
week. I don’t know how they got it all through
customs. The lamb, my God.
We had a nice week, but the weather turned on us. We
sailed over to Moorea, dropped the anchor in the
lagoon and tied to stern to a palm tree and surfed for
a day. Then we went around to the north side of the
island to be close to some other friends, Matt and
Kathy, who were honeymooning there. We enjoyed their
honeymoon suite for a day and had them out for
cocktails one night.
At about 10:00 they decided it was time to go back to
their honeymoon suite. I took just the two of them so
that we could trim for speed during the mile and a
half dinghy ride through the lagoon. There is a
channel, about 30 feet wide, blasted through the coral
heads and marked by white poles about every hundred
yards. If you lose the poles and go out of the
channel, bad news. The giddy honeymoon girl was
drunk.
What started as a tropical shower turned into a
downpour which turned into a tempest. We were all
soaked to the skin and freezing. I was losing the
white poles in the rain while trying to play the role
of the competent captain: “Just a little rain, nothing
to worry about.” As we neared their five star
bungalows we were seriously cold: “I think I better
come in for a drink!” You could see the columns of
water running off the thatched roofs, behind which
were air conditioned comfort, white linens and mints
on pillows. I pulled the dinghy under a low foot
bridge and into the hotel lagoon; a place where
honeymooners wade and frolic by day and where they
would probably arrest me for bringing my dinghy. We
tied off to a lounge chair and minutes later we were
taking hot showers, drinking hot tea and watching CNN.
I hadn’t seen TV in three months. It was Joan Rivers
as a guest on Larry King. She has had so much plastic
surgery that we kept thinking the TV was distorted.
I couldn’t impose on their honeymoon all night, so I
went back out into the lagoon in the dark by myself.
Matt gave me a dry shirt. I got lost again in the
dark but eventually made it back to the boat. There
is this false sense of security: We’re inside the
lagoon. What’s the worst that could happen? Pretty
bad things, actually. It’s a good thing I got back to
the boat when I did because the worst storm yet kicked
up around midnight. We set two anchors and were up
all night. Several boats dragged that night, one onto
the reef. The wind sustained 40 knots with gusts up
to 60. Near Condesa the wind was actually picking up
sea water off the surface and blasting it in a thick
cloud.
So Larry, Cass and Stephanie got a little taste of
everything.
They left yesterday and I’m alone on the boat for the
first time in ten months. Papeete will be home for
the month of August and I should be checking email
regularly. Write or just show up.
-Clark
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