Impressions of Polynesia

A naked man just drove his chartered catamaran through our crowded anchorage. It’s a wild world here in the South Pacific; next we’ll see natives chanting while paddling their outrigger canoes out to sea. Actually, that last scenario has been a daily occurrence (often without the chanting). We have seen hundreds, perhaps thousands of outriggers since arriving in the Society islands. There were a few in the Marquesas and Tuomotus but alongside 9 out of 10 houses, there is a canoe shed with up to 4 outrigger canoes in it. There are many handmade ones with tree limbs for the outrigger, but most are similar to the sleek fiberglass models the canoe club in Santa Cruz uses. Canoe building and small boat building using molds and fiberglass are well-known skills here. From about 2 in the afternoon until the sky is dark at 6:30pm, paddlers criss-cross the lagoons with powerful shoulders and rhythmic motions. There’s cultural pride in this sport as testified to the proliferation of va’a (outrigger) T-shirts, bumper stickers, and tattoos.
These crafts have been part of Polynesian culture for centuries. In fact, I learned today at the museum we visited, that one type of sacred building found at the ancient maraes (or central sacred stone platforms) was specifically for war canoes that could have been up to 55 meters long. These canoes also had outriggers, and some were built out of buoyant reeds instead of hollowed logs.

Another frequent structure at the maraes in centureies past, were roofed shrines for dead bodies. This is similar to a practice I’ve observed in the Society islands. They build small houses or roof over the gravesites of their family members. One of my first impressions of Papeete, the largest city in French Polynesia was wondering what it was I could see through the binoculars as we approached the main pass. What looked from a distance like an acre or two of wooden craft stalls with triangle roofs turned out to be the cemetery. The funny thing is that most people don’t seem to be interred in cemeteries, they’re buried in the family backyard. So, there’s the canoe rack and Granny’s burial shed in most of the tidily raked yards we look in to. I’ve seen up to six headstones in one yard. My favorite appeared to be a mound of sand under a clump of coconut palms. Fresh bouquets were at the foot and head and sides of the mound, and a hammock hung between two of the palms. No shed had been built yet.

busy 24 hours in Moorea

Saturday afternoon we re-anchored by motoring out of Cook's Bay and west 1 mile to the entrance of Oponuha Bay. As we pulled in, we saw Banyan, a boat we know with 3 California surfers all in their 20s. So, we anchored next to them. The anchor wasn't even fully set when they hollered over to have us come later that night for drinks and snacks on their boat. No problem, we'd had a quiet couple of days previous and were craving socializing. We ended up having some great conversations and then saw that our boats were rotating toward each other, and about to collide. This has never happened before. The situation was that Banyan was in shallow water without much scope on their anchor chain while Nomad was in deep water with a lot of scope on her anchor chain. Instead of fighting the inevitable, we rafted up when Nomad came alongside. Fenders were placed in between the boats and ropes attached between our bows and sterns. This allowed us to easily invite them all (the numbers had swollen due to the arrival of two French nurses) at about 11pm to the hamburger barbecue we had planned for ourselves for earlier in the night.

The next morning, Brian and I went in search of the rumored location of a place to swim with manta rays. On our way we saw and spoke with John Neal and Amanda Swan Neal aboard Mahina Tiana. They are well-known cruisers (we took a seminar from them at one of the Oakland Boat Shows) and were very friendly and gave us good advice. We arrived at the sting ray location just as a tour boat disgorged its 30 passengers into the chest deep turquoise water. They were sprinkling shrimp parts around and the rays were flying in between people eating and not minding being touched at all. The largest we saw was about 4 feet in diameter and the rest were around 3 feet. They all had tails that were straight and stiff, up to 4 feet long. I got to touch some delightfully slippery wings and swim a foot or two above others while looking them in their top mounted eyeballs while the gills below the eyes opened and shut. They are incredibly agile and graceful and strong. The feeding also attracted about 10 black-tipped reef sharks, some of which were about 4 1/2 feet long. It was a good thing for my fear of sharks to be around them and realize that they just want to eat small things, not attack me. Many times they glided by within a foot of my legs looking for tidbits of the fish parts the tour guides were flinging out for them.

After the ray-feeding session, we tried to find the location of the underwater tikis. I'd read about them and wanted to see them. Apparently, when the missionaries were here in the early 1800s they were making the people all destroy their stone and wood tikis. A few people went out into the lagoon and dropped their stone tikis into the water to hide them from the missionaries. The tikis are still there. I saw pictures of them and hoped to find them. Alas, I snorkeled all around their reported location and saw only coral and beautiful reef fish.

When we returned from this excursion, it was time to un-raft the two boats and get Nomad ready to leave for her overnight journey to Huahine.

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Moorea to Huahine

Ia Orana, (Hello)
Our boat friends picked us up from the boat today to have a look-see in Fare, the town we're now anchored in front of. We arrived here this morning after our overnight passage from Moorea. Joan and Dan were already anchored here and offered to drive their dinghy since ours is still tied onto the front deck. A downpour started just as we pulled away from Nomad. OOPS gotta go back to close the hatches and hide from the 5-minute gusher. We made it to the dock and the first store before the next sky bucket was turned over on us. After that one we spent the 10 minutes to do a circuit through the small town in the fierce sun.
Huahine is known for having been the central location of most Polynesian maritime excursions, and having the most revered marae (native temple) back in that same time period of hundreds of years ago. Nowadays it's known to have a few very very good waves for surfing, and some very intense protective local surfers, unwilling to share "their" wave. Up to this point, the Polynesians have been exactly the opposite of that about waves. Brian has been greeted with handslapping and smiled at in the line ups. When the swell hits, tomorrow, he'll find out how accurate the rumors are about this place.

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Moorea

Cook's Bay on the island of Moorea is one of my favorite places so far. It's got a small grocery store at the head of the bay, lots of places to go ashore and explore, massive spired cliff walls rising from both sides and a beautiful hilly valley rolling up from behind the grocery store. The spires catch clouds on their tips like my dog Sugar's white fur used to get left behind on the brambles she walked through. It is far less inhabited here than Tahiti, diesel fumes don't fill the air like in the anchorage there. The water is quiet and deep and the bay is uncrowded.

It's been one week since Brian's butt cheek pile-drived into the reef at Vairao. It has a dramatic bruise the size of a medium orange, solid Concord Grape colored, and still swollen. His skeleton is still sorting itself out as new aches radiate from the spine area. But he's back to only Ibuprofen and no more Vicodin. Still no surfing for a few more days, though.

My family is all in Grant's Pass, Oregon camping along the river without me. This is a difficult thing. I still feel the loss of on-going family visits and friends' lives going on without me. On the other hand, in 5 months, we'll return to Santa Cruz to rejoin that life for a while. I'm sure I'll miss the cruising life when I get home. So, we're trying to relish these last few months of exploration, knowing that we will most likely never come this way again. I'm thankful to have family and friends to miss, and thankful to have islands still ahead to see, islanders still to meet.

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Sunday and Monday

Sunday, August 2
I went to a local church today. Every single woman was wearing a hat. It's like in the Southern Black churches. Most of the hats are woven decorated with elaborate flowers made out of the same straw as the hats. I understood one word during the whole service, "maruuru" which means thank you. It was entirely in Tahitian, not french. Even so, I understood the spirit and the beauty of the music. At the end, a man came up to me and started speaking French. I understood "we have...tradition.." at which point I interrupted and said, "I don't speak French". He said OK and pointed to a spot and said, "Stand here." I was in between the pastor's wife and the pastor. We were a receiving line. The colorful string of Polynesian church-goers gave the traditional French greeting to each of us. A kiss to each cheek. I pressed cheeks with about 40 beautiful complete strangers. Walking home, I could still smell the perfume on my face and feel the burn in my cheeks of having smiled for so long at so many people.

Monday, August 3
Today, Brian woke up able to move much better than since his injury on Friday evening. I've been giving him massages and he's been taking pain pills and muscle relaxers and icing. So we left Teahupoo after a last visit with Vaughan, the single hander cruiser from Hawaii on the dock next to us. Here's Brian's description of his injury written the morning after the incident(Saturday)....
Actually I think Tahiti has gotten the better of me. Several casualties have occurred up to this point including two broken boards, lots of lost skin, then this: I got my behind kicked hard. The big local with the helmet passed on a set wave. Then one of the older Brazilian guys called me into a wave because he could not get in. All seemed perfect, then the bottom dropped out on me and I free fell to the flats. All my momentum was going down, so when I hit the bottom I think I just stopped. I'm not sure what happened, but I think at that point the wave sucked me back up and threw me out. The first to hit reef was my butt. It was a very solid hit, then I felt my left booty getting ripped off and my heel ripping across the reef. I don't remember coming up, but when I did, I knew I was hurt pretty bad. By the time I made it back out to the lineup I was shaking; like in shock. At first I thought I'd have to paddle for the boat; but I remembered reading a Transworld Surf article of a guy at Teahupoo who hit bottom very hard, then went on to score the wave of the day. I told myself to shake it off and go for another wave. About 15 minutes later I got a small one. I was having a hard time standing up for the ride. The next wave was smaller, and not even a real ride. By this time I was coughing up junk from deep in my lungs that had been knocked loose in the collision. My entire rib cage was aching, as if it had all been jarred to the point of loosening up the connective tissue to the spine and sternum. I was still Coughing, shuttering, and trying to shake off the impact at least 45 minutes after the pounding. Finally a good medium sized set came and I got my third wave. I could hardly get my body into surf stance, so I decided I was going to have to call it a day. As soon as I got to the dingy, the wind was increasing and I was had a hard time just getting in the boat. I dreaded the trip home as the wind had increased to 15 -20 knots, creating half knee high square wind chop that I had to drive straight into for 6-7 kilometers. I banged into it sitting down until I could not take it any more. Next I took the bow line in hand, negotiated my two pieces of broken board from a few days prior that were lodged into the floor of the boat and stood up in order to absorb the shocks. About a half way to Nomad the rain began to fall. Now I was coughing, shuttering, in shock, and cold, furthermore it was getting dark. The last half of the way I had to sit down, reduce speed a bit, and tack up the lagoon to the point that obscured marina Teahupoo. After getting aboard I made myself take a warm shower, dress the reef rash on my foot and leg and put on some warm pajamas.
My neck is whip lashed to the max. That is the most painful part of it all. I have been using a big fleece blanket wound around my neck as a neck brace. I wish I had one of the braces people use after a car accident. All of my ribs are sore where they connect to the spine, and the muscles are tweaked on my right side. When I take deep breaths I hear the ribs and spine cracking and adjusting, over and over. The right side of my butt has one solid inch of circumference added to it. Megan has been monitoring it's size and color, waiting for the bruising to start. She says it is like I have a water balloon implanted underneath the skin. I can't even look at my toes, so its hard for me to know exactly how big it looks, but she seems very impressed. (I am!) This is the biggest hit I've every taken surfing by a long shot.

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Life on the free dock

We're keeping busy. Brian goes surfing in the morning before I'm out of bed. He usually goes to "Big Pass" a couple miles north of Teahupoo, the big daddy surf break. While he's gone, I read or write or bake. When he gets back we do chores. Yesterday I foot-washed some laundry in buckets out on the dock. It's easier on my hands. I just stomp on the clothes barefoot then rotate them, stomp some more then let them soak for a while. Stomp and scrub a bit, then do a rinsing procedure. Brian wrings them all out because my wrists and thumbs hurt with that kind of motion. (Too much typing in the past). Then I hang clothes all over the life lines and the boom and anywhere else I can find. Usually it's a quick dry in the tropical places but yesterday afternoon the clouds rolled in and kept it humid and cool. Today's sunny so the rest of the laundry should be quick.
Brian's been doing some wood projects. He made a small fishing gear storage box on the back of the boat yesterday and today he's working on repairing a drawer that broke during a violent lurch we got out in the ocean a couple months back.
We have to wait around here a little longer than we wanted because Brian's surfboard broke yesterday and he's trying to track down the local man who repairs boards. He has a great reputation but doesn't keep "office hours". As soon as we can, though, we're off to Papeete to get our "zarpe" (official paper saying we left a country) and then off to explore Huahine and Raeitea. They sound much less touristy.

Yesterday, Brian and I went down in the dinghy to watch Teahupoo breaking. It was only a medium day but WOW. It's a very large beautiful barrel of turquoise water that rolls up onto the fringing reef. The sounds of those waves were as loud as a construction site. I'm grateful that Brian only surfs it on small days.

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Try not to be jealous

Brian caught a barrel this morning at the Teahupoo surf break. Along with the 9 or so other great waves he caught also, he's pretty stoked. So now we're working on projects again. We're running a leech line through the leech of our genoa sail. It's never had one and it will help us control the shape more minutely. Brian is sewing up the sun covers for the fuel jugs that Abe and Jeff cut out and designed for them.
The rain has stopped and skies are blue again. But it's not too hot at all.

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