We are at a new island, called Huahine. It was an overnight sail from Papeete, it was the first time that we sailed overnight without a third person helping us as part of a 3 man watch system. We have been speaking to quite a few couples with kids to find out how they do it, and its basically the father's job to do the night watch, using a radar alarm and its OK to doze off. So that's what we did, Chantal was on watch until 10/11pm, then i took over until the morning. The radar alarm is loud enough to wake me (it did) and I sleep with my hearing aid. Yes, I still have my hearing aid can you believe it. The only reason i still have it is because I hardly ever use it! It was a great night cruise, no wind so we motored, by 6am a nice beam breeze was up so we sailed the rest of way. We were slowly overtaken by another catamaran, as it came past we saw that it was a racing cat with knife-like hulls, rotating mast shaped like an aeroplane wing etc. Made us feel a bit better. As you know, whenever 2 yachts sail in the same direction its a race.
We spent a long and expensive week in Papeete. The main thing we did was sort out shimmi's electrics. The charger was not charging properly, the battery control panel was erratic, the wiring generally a mess. So we had a marine electrician guy help us. Three long days later it was all sorted (we hope). I also did some work on the starboard engine, I had a bit of a fight with a leaky impeller pump, after a few gasket attempts I realized that it was the lipseal sitting on the shaft. Of which I have 3 spares! Every now and than something that you need is actually on board. The highlight of our days in Papeete were the 5-6pm happy hour beers at the local "Dinghy Bar", followed by a pizza to share. We also met another cruising couple with 2 young sons, we ended up doing dinners together and Josh and Indie played like crazy. Their sons are 3 and 5 called Morgan and Wyatt (cowboy names!). Josh and Indie are both happy, strong, healthy. No-one on shimmi has been sick for a long time. My eczema is slowly clearing up, I am on a long cortizone program which we slowly taper. It started as 40mg/day 2 months ago, currently I am taking 15mg/day, hopefully we will reduce to 10mg/day soon. But this eczema is a bastard, its your own body reacting to an "imagined" allergy, so there is no cure, all you can do is use the cortizone to "trick" the body so that it stops reacting, hopefully if you do cortizone for long enough the body will eventually "forget" what it reacted to in the first place.
Our Huahine anchorage is beautiful, a stone's throw from a lovely white beach. Two navigable reef passes lead into a big friendly lagoon on the west side of the island, there is good surf on both of these passes. But right now the swell is flat. I have recently realized that the surf in French Polynesia, like the rest of the world, also GOES FLAT. We have not really had a good swell since that big day a month ago at Teahupoo. The WCT contest at Chopes was also held in small, marginal conditions. In the end we decided that with the lack of swell its not worth it to go down there, hacking for waves with 44 of the best surfers in the world. Our Huahine anchorage is at 16deg42.7S and 151deg02.4W, its has a small town called Fare, it is a small quaint harbour village, we look forward to drinking a few cold Hinanos this evening at one of the local restaurants, called a "Snack" in French Polynesia.
We are now in what's called "The Leeward Islands" of the Society Islands. The leewards are Huahine, Raiatea, Bora-Bora and Maupiti and they are in a cluster about 100 miles Northwest from Tahiti and Moorea. Our French Polynesia visas expire on 17 June, we will probably set sail from Maupiti which is the westernmost of the leewards. But we have a lot to do until then: We have a haul out booked at a boat yard for 2 June on Raiatea. Shimmi's rudders are vibrating, this caused the autopilot failure previously. So we hope to have the rudders re-sleeved which means about 3 days on the hard. After that we really hope that shimmi will not give us any more major shit. Everyone we speak to say that the first year of owning and cruising long distance on a newly bought yacht is make or break, as everything goes wrong, everything needs to be fixed/replaced and you have to really intimately get to know your boat. So can someone please tell me if we are finally coming to the end of this soul destroying and prohibitively expensive "phase"? Anyway, yachties (grotty yotties) refer to this concept of constantly fixing things as "staying ahead of the boat". And am I getting ahead of shimmi? Only time will tell. As I am writing this email the gennie just sputtered and died. Dirty filter? 70 hrs since last filter change, so maybe. What a pain. Incidently, this process of getting to know one's boat transforms all yotties into so called "systems experts". Unfortunately, topics surrounding boat systems thus dominate all yotty conversations, you can spot a long time yottie from a mile off, he is the guy who is constantly rambles on in a boring monologue all matters related to ship's systems, it sounds like the soft far away drone of an almost broken generator, the purpose of this monologue often has the sole purpose of showing you how damn smart he is. I hope I am not describing myself....yet...
What I have realized is that cruising long distance equates basically to the crazy task of fixing one's boat in different parts of the 3rd world. Utterly foreign places where you know no-one, know where nothing is, have no transport once ashore, cant get cash, where people don't speak your lingo and charge outrageous prices for the most basic services. Where no spare parts are available, electricity in the wrong voltage and every cruising yacht is seen as a major source of income. One cruiser told me: Cruising is only 10% fun. The rest is just a slog. Yes, now that we are in our second year of "cruising with kids", we can start having a few opinions on the topic. We often wonder if we are doing the right thing. Especially w.r.t. the kids. They cannot hang out with their grandparents, extended family and friends and basically have no stable "neighbourhood". This is a big thing which you take away from them. But in return you give them hands-on parents, 24/7. And they should do very well in Geography once in school! But in the end we are happy that our cruise will be coming to an end in Oz at the end of the year. We miss home too much (read 'babysitters').
Another thing I realized is that the French yachties have got the best deal. There are French Islands in all the oceans: In the Caribbean (St Martin, Martinique), Pacific (Tahiti, Noumea, New Caledonia), Indian Ocean (Reunion, Mauritius) and so on. Cruising around with a French passport (and lingo) is just so much easier. Us English speakers think that the whole world is "English", that English is the so-called lingua franca. Not so. In most of Central and South America the language is Spanish. Call it a separate Spanish/Portugese universe, because that's basically what it is. Now we are in a part of the "French Universe". Which extends right around the globe. And another universe that we know so little off is the Chinese... What I am trying to say that when you cruise along the equator of the world's oceans, the english language is of little use. No matter how loud or slow you talk. The South Pacific is also as far from home for South Africans as it is possible to be on the globe. We would love to fly home for a quick fix of family and friends, but its too far and too expensive. Also the main reason why none of you can come visit us...
Cruisers also often get little more from their destination than the initial "post card view" of the place. It is usually very difficult to land a dingy ashore unless there is a dingy dock, and even if you do, will your dingy still be there when you get back? Once ashore, can you afford to rent a car, if not, figure out the local bus route? If you have some kind of bicycle on board then that's fine, provided it has turned into a rusty pile of junk in the forward locker. But do you have a bike for each crew member? And if you add kids to this equation ... the youngest who has to sleep from 12 till 2pm ... so in the end, shore excursions are few and far between. The first 2 weeks at any destination is in any event spent fixing everything that went wrong on the way there. Doing any kind of overnight shore activity means you have to leave your boat either on a secure mooring or in a marina which = $100/night and you haven't even gotten started on your own excursion. Some yotties manage to do a lot of shore stuff: hiking, bussing and biking their way around. But if you have young kids, forget about it. So yes, on shimmi we have an endless series of post card impressions of all the places that we have visited, but we have not really penetrated this gold fish bowl very often. Thing is, that even when you do, you are just a tourist, you will always be just a tourist, expect to be treated as such. The irony is that the only places that you get to know really well are the ones where you have to do repairs. I know every single filter, fan belt, volvo spare part and ship chandler shop in Papeete!
Surfing is the same thing. Every time you get to a new surf sport you have to go through the slow and stressful process of staking a minor claim for yourself in the lineup. Be friendly, greet all the okes, smile as they paddle around you again and again, even though they are teenagers on boogey boards for fucks sakes. After a few sessions you start seeing some of the same faces, you start getting a few bombs, you don't fuck them up so you get a few more. You start to get a feel for when in the day its the least crowded as its often very busy on the dawn patrol. Some locals are friendly, some are just pure assholes. Often the assholes can barely surf. Of all the places I surfed, Teahupoo had the mellowest locals, figure that one out. Some islands, like Raiatea, has a reputation for heavy locals. This usually means that it takes even longer before you get one of the bomb waves. Yes, its awesome to surf all these great waves. But it is stressful too, its not like you are paddling out at your local spot with a few of your mates. I am every inch the outsider. You get dropped in on without so much as a sideways glance. But every now and then, especially when its big and pulsing, you end up in the right place. All the elements come together and WOOOOSH, you get spat out of the craziest pit.
Cheers
G
