Niue Here We Come

We said goodbye to French Polynesia and sailed out from Bora Bora on March 11, bound for Niue. Niue is a small island nation in association with New Zealand. It is supposed to have spectacular diving and snorkeling because all of the groundwater filters through the limestone rock on the island. It is situated west of the Cook Islands, mostly South of Samoa and east of Tonga. Our crossing so far has gone well. We have done consistent 150-mile days. Winds have not been too light or strong, but occasional rainsqualls have stirred things us a bit in the last few days. It is a 1065-mile trip. The sailing has been mostly down wind, varying between off a stern quarter and dead down. We never hoisted our main, but instead put up a second jib. My dad brought back the old jib that came with the boat when he went back to the States in December. Somehow we had forgotten it when we originally left. With two headsails up on spinnaker poles, there's no flapping and banging by the main and sailing during the night is comfortable. In a rainsquall yesterday while I was on the helm we heard a bang and then I see the spinnaker pole flying forward. “All hands on deck!” The sheet to the second jib had snapped, we hadn't attached two sheets because it was our second sail up, so the sail was out of control with wind and rain incoming. We managed to bring her down and put her away as well as securing the pole, which broke free from the mast for an unknown reason. Maybe it just wasn't quite secure to begin with. Now the sail's back up. Two sheets this time. We also got a big hit on our fishing rod but the line snapped, very disappointing. We are still about two days out and we'll probably have to head to nearby the island and wait out the night. It will be strange hearing English spoken again. Our whole trip has been in French Polynesia up until now, so we have become quite accustomed to hearing French. This will be a change. Right now we are still in our planning stages for the end of our trip but we will get the boat back home instead of leaving it somewhere. We can either sail it or ship it. It depends on crew and what we are up to. It is a long sail, but coming in under the Golden Gate is quite appealing.

Giovanni

FIRE

We have sailed over to Moorea a few times, and when Stephanie and Nancy came we went to Huahine, but we always managed to return to Papeete, for our visa or for the wind generator. Now we are on our way. Spending time on Huahine was beautiful. We toured the island by car which did not take so long, but the views were spectacular. Once we returned for our visa extension we saw some of the movies in the film festival, which were all well made and interesting. They covered a huge range of topics but all centered around the Pacific islands (Australia included). My dad, Dylan and I went surfing a few times over at the beach break at Papageno in Tahiti. I saw some good improvement, and my board sustained some injuries. After all that we left for Moorea where we stayed for only one night because the winds were just too good to pass up, so we set off again heading for Raiatea in the evening. The wind generator, recently installed, had been doing a pretty good job. We have two solar panels on the stern so we ran the wiring for the wind generator together with the solar panels. Both went throught a 25 amp charge controller (regulator), which was a little small but it was only temporary. Anyways, come a middle of the night rain squall and there's an electrical smell down below. My dad and Stephanie are on watch. I sort of wake up and hope that I can continue sleeping but the smell is only getting stronger so I get up. Out of the back lazarette smoke is sort of billowing out, surrounding Stephanie in noxious fumes. We looked in at the stern but saw no flames, so we reconsidered and my mom and I looked down below. The regulator had melted; it was mounted below the starboard aft bunk. I peeked through the cushions and saw a lot of smoke. I started taking off the cushions and then made way for my dad with the fire extinguisher. He lifted up the board and the fire flamed with new fury from the intake of oxygen. The board was put back after my dad attempted swatting the fire. It took two brains to overcome the complexity of a fire extinguisher, which is locked with a pin. The lever is on top of the handle, not a very ergonomic design so I pushed the lever while my dad aimed the thing. The fire was out, and the whole cabin was covered in white ash that smelled horrible and probably did a number on all of our lungs. The night proceeded as normal.

It took quite a bit of cleaning to spruce up the cabin, but we managed after quite a bit of sleep. This of course is only a side-remark on our ongoing war with ants. We have the worlds smartest on board. They are incredibly quick and they hide. They run into the cracks or crevices that are too small for our fingers. Furthermore, they love damp plywood, so they have hatched some baby ants on board near the condensation from the fridge and other choice places. We have been inhaling more noxious fumes from the penetrating epoxy sealer that makes the wood less inhabitable. So far the war rages on.

We had a great time in Raiatea. I got to paddle an outrigger, which after flipping in the first ten seconds turned out to be really enjoyable. We also ate the best pig of the trip so far.

Right now we are on Tahaa and Benoit, from Makemo, is visiting us. We are on the closing end of our stay in French Polynesia and we will depart soon for the Cook Islands. English comes.
Giovanni

Notes on a Tahitian Dance experience

Today my heart is soaring, yet it is only out of a sadness that I am aware of this "incredible lightness of being". We will soon leave Papeete and I attended my final Tahitian dance class today. I will make an attempt at describing my experience at this unique school. The "Heiragi Ecole de Danse" is this amazing (and I am sorry to say rare and unusual) space where women of many ages and backgrounds gather to study Tahitian Dance. The owner whom I fondly refer to as "Il Generale" is of Tuomotan heritage and infuses the school with a cultural force that proudly displays the beauty and strength of the Polynesian people. She brings a deep sense of her culture and for her it is dance that is a woman's expression of Polynesia. She expects us, the learners of this kind of dance, to come each day ready to work and to keep on working (she often reminds us, " boku travail"), both to learn the dance forms in an exacting yet artistic way, and to know the Tahitian words for the individual moves. When she attends the classes everyone becomes just a bit more serious in their studies, yet she also brings along her big belly laugh that reminds us of our shared womanhood. I call her assistant "La Professora", and she very sweetly gets each dance class started, and the very difficult labor of learning this dance begins almost effortlessly under her guidance. She too brings along a good humor and suddenly we are all laughing because she has imitated our awkward attempts at a particular form, then the laugh is over, now she warmly gives us the corrected move. Many women look in the mirror as they attempt to imitate her; as for me, I am so far from approximating her form that I simply watch her and imagine that it is my body moving with just the same grace as hers. We " ladies of the dance" come in all shapes, our common thread being women joined together in the learning of this art of Polynesian Dance, and it is interesting how beautiful we are each becoming as the work begins to reshape us just a little and gives us a bit more grace. There are a handful of women that are of Polynesian heritage, the two dozen others are mostly from France with a sprinkling of ladies from Australia or New Zealand, and me, the lone American. Children often attend the classes and become a part of the dance. The baby in the stroller who begins to fuss is cooed at by anyone near, the dropped toy retrieved as one of us dances by, and when the fuss becomes a near scream, the baby is suddenly in a mother's arms, the arms usually belonging to "Il Generale or La Professora", the baby now happy to watch our mostly clumsy display from a new vantage point. Newcomers are always welcome in this school, even now as the dance school begins the more serious preparation of their performance for "Heiva", a huge cultural "fete" held in July. "Il Generale", actually Veronique Clement, has chosen the songs and created a choreography that she and Selena, "La Professora", are teaching us. As we learn the individual moves and begin to put them together, she also writes out the Tahitian words to the songs and explains just what our gestures are meant to convey. The dance forms that are often described in the French language are now frequently referred to by their Tahitian names and we students must know the meaning. Since my days at this special dance school have come to an end, Jeff joined me at the class today to take photographs of all of us hard at work. I introduced him to a woman in the class I call "my Tahitian Idol" and asked him to watch her move and attempt to capture that on film ! This woman is much shorter than I and quite a bit more broad, her movements are completely fluid and graceful and she never seems to tire, her hips just keep on circling round and round as if this is the way a woman's body is made to move. The only way to perceive just how hard she is working is to be close enough to see the wet glow of her skin, or when her butt length hair falls out of its clasp as she dances. For me, she absolutely shines with a true womanhood, the kind that many of us belonging to the world of the dominating cultures are attempting to obliterate with our excessive thinness and surgical sameness. If you were to attend this class I think you would agree that the fashion photographers of the modern day are really taking photos of nothing, the emaciated, hollow-eyed, soulless shapes being nothing when compared to these dark- haired, full- figured beauties. My heart soars at this very lovely and surprising experience here in Tahiti, and I know that although I can grow my hair long, clasp it up, wear a pareo as my dancing skirt, it will not be so easy to build a space that carries an equal amount of feminine strength in its architecture as the simple "Heiragi Ecole de Danse". Maururu Roa to Veronique and Selena and all the "dames de danse" of Tahiti.
Ia Orana, Teresa

Holiday Festivities

Holiday festivities started right on time here, which is of course way too early. People began setting off fire works in early December already shouting Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. The weather was entirely too hot for us to even imagine that it was Christmas time, much less have our normal holiday cheer. Nevertheless things quieted down around the marina. David and Stephanie left for San Francisco on December 22, so Christmas was just my mom and I but we also celebrated with Dylan, from Australia, who we had met in the Marquesas, and just to make sure everything was unusual, we made fondue.
This is the summer season and December is said to be the wettest month and the weather has definitely lived up to its reputation. It rained almost every day in December, sometimes for hours nonstop, but at times other it was clear and beautiful. I have been taking surf lessons and the learning curve is slower than I expected; it's still a lot of fun.
We ended up buying a new dinghy and engine here because our old one is quite big and it is fully inflatable so getting it up on a plane was rather challenging and our 15 hp engine weighs a bit too much for comfort. We bought a smaller rigid bottom inflatable with a 9.9 hp engine and so far it has worked fabulously. Yesterday we tied a rope on to the stern and went scurfing (getting towed behind the boat on a surf board). We had heaps of fun and lots of laughs and certainly is an activity worth repeating many times over, especially in this heat.
It is truly amazing how much heat effects my motivation to get up and do things. When I am just sitting on the boat dripping sweat from doing absolutely nothing it is kind of hard to just get up and start moving. Grocery shopping and the general errands for living always leave us completely drenched. Swimming is always the easiest activity for obvious reasons.
We left home on this trip with nothing in the world of tv entertainment besides some PBS dvds. Here we discovered the wonderful world of watching other people's dvd collections. I even found a few in German so that has been fun attempting to brush up. Nevertheless staying in this marina for so long has been challenging, both my mom and I are ready to start moving again. Just bearing witness to just how much materialism has permeated the far reaches of our planet has been slightly depressing. Furthermore the city of Papeete gives the atmosphere a completely different feel from community centered outer islands, which are our personal preference; you are able to connect with the people in a much more human way. My dad missed his flight from LA so he is flying in early tomorrow morning but we will remain here to finish up some work on the boat before we set sail again. The departure date is however inching reassuringly closer.

Pictures From The Voyage...

Below, lies a link which is the gateway to pictures from the begging of our voyage in July until Easter Island on November 15th. Just click on the link below and it will connect you to a picturesque recap of our journey.

http://picasaweb.google.com/giovannisaarman/

Rapa Nui, Easter Island -- December 3, 2007

So we ended up buying tickets to visit Rapanui (Easter Island). We thought that when we re-entered French Polynesia our visas would be renewed but that was old informationg. Never the less it was a wonderful experience. We stayed there for a week and the weather was much colder that what we had experienced in French Polynesia. The biggest relief for us all was that finally we could get by on our mediocre Spanish rather than our non-existent French. For me it just felt so much more like home. It is a spectacular island and learning about the history was also really interesting. My dad went there on his first year-long sailing trip, when they raced in the Trans-Pac to Tahiti, but a lot more archaeological work has been done since then. Looking at an island that was completely deforested on behalf of human interests was enlighting as to how much influence we can have as a people on our environment. When we were there, the Esmeralda, which is a Chilean navy ship came into the harbor so we got to watch the soccer game between the locals and the military. The island is the most isolated in the world. When you are there you can feel this sense that this is the only spit of land for a long way. It is just in the Pacific ocean without anything nearby. We went on tours of the archaeological sites on the island and we spent one day riding horses which was a lot of fun. Perhaps the most amazing aspect of the culture there is that the population was reduced to only 111 people at one point. From those the people have recovered tremendously, and have restored a great deal of their original culture. The population was decimated by disease and slavery. Now with the influence of the modern world, drugs post a horrible threat to the serene island life. Like many of the South Pacific islands, the importation of drugs destroys the culture. Overall the trip was a great experience, and the Chilean government has done a good job of maintaining the island.

Toau -- November 1, 2007

Halloween sort of passed us by. It's hard to keep track of the date and the day of the week, but we were on an overnight passage on Halloween. We were sailing from Toau to Rangiroa. Toau is one of the smaller atolls that we have visited and very few people live there. Near the pass into the lagoon is a village that has inhabitants only during copra season, which is when the coconuts are harvested and dried so that they can be sent to Papeete to be turned into oil. We did not however enter the inner lagoon because it is uncharted. There is a family that lives on another one of the motus. But they have a small bay with moorings for boats that is directly accessible from the ocean. It is a well protected harbour and could almost be used to wait out a tropical storm. The mooring are better for the coral ecosystem because anchors tend to damage the coral. The two sisters of the family each have their own working life cut out for them with their husbands and children. One sister has a small pearl operation and sends fish to nearby Apataki for export, and the other sends fish to Fakarava, raises pigs and chicken, and has a small pension. For us is was astonishing how many fish they caught each week; we were sceptical about how long they will be able to continue this until they have overfished. They mostly set up fish traps, but in the process of trapping the parrot fish, many of the other fish are killed as well. For them they simply supply the fish to meet the high demand for poisson cru which is a specialty of French Polynesia.

Toau is one of those islands where cruisers tend to loose track of time and a proposed week stay soon turns into a month. This however could not happen to us because my grandparents are leaving soon on a plane from Rangiroa, but we stayed as long as we could. When we first arrived there were nine boats in total, but by the end we were the only ones for the last few days of our stay. They cooked food for us and it was spectacular. The sister who has the pension had three close to us in age so it was nice to meet them. We have had so little contact with people our age because the majority go to the Society islands, especially Tahiti for school. Leaving Toau was quite hard because all of us enjoyed the island.

The sail to Rangiroa was a typical Tuamotu sail for us; we always seem to leave when there is barely any wind. Such is life! Rangiroa is the biggest atoll of the Tuamotus and it has three passes but they are only on one end of the lagoon, which is 45 nautical miles long. When we came in the pass there was some wave action and we were greeted by a pod of bottlenose dolphins who had come to play in tidal swells of the pass. They were overjoyed to ride on our bow wave. There were some small boats from the hotel with passengers who had come to see the dolphins and they got a great show because of our boat. The dolphins were jumping out of the water and then quickly slapping there tails on the surface of the water, something we had never seen before. The highlight was when three or four of them did this simultaneously. Dolphins are always overjoyed to see a boat in the water. They suddenly show up near your bow, give a show, and then leave as quickly as they came. Some pods stay longer than others, often depending on if they have turned out of their way to meet you or not. It's unthinkable how someone could want to hunt them because they are always so happy to come into contact with humans.