A few pictures

Tuamotu Sandpiper



Redfooted Booby



Redfooted Booby Chick



Atoll Fruit Dove showing red feet



Atoll Fruit Dove

Hermit Crab

Pamela's Pearl Farm

Pamela's Pearl Farm

Pamela's Pearl Farm

 

Fringed File Shell

Laundry done with a wringer

Brown booby trying to land on the mast
with its sensitive antennas and electronics

More boobies trying to land

Lynne with Valentine and her nephew and niece

Chart of Rangiroa with a black perarl
showing where we spent so much time
in Rangiroa, across the lagoon from the Kia Ora

Titahi putting leafe with flowers on her
grandmother's grave shown by black pearl
on chart on previous picture

People off Tamsen visiting our motu

Pacific Golden Plover

Bristle-thighed Curlew

Ils du Recifs shown by black pearl on the chart on previous picture

Searching for the Spotless Crake



Living Cowry

Someone from Fakarava

Someone else from Fakarava

August 27, 2012 In the middle of nowhere

We must make quite a sight, if anyone could see us, out on the boat, naked, screaming at the top of our lungs, "Bad Booby, Bad Booby!!" to the very heavy bird trying to land on our mast head.  And Barry has a new horn which he honked just for good measure.  From Barry: Our concern is due to our having a delicate plastic weathervane that we can see from the cockpit at the back of the mast head and another weather vane with even more delicate plastic anemometer cups for the wind instruments projecting in front of the mast head.  If a large bird lands, something will usually get broken.  I installed a thin anti-roosting wire connecting the two to discourage birds from roosting on the mast head.  Usually, the boobies circle again and again, trying to figure out how to land in spite of the wire and eventually will give up and go away. The wire and our yelling have been successful in the past but this bird was going to land despite the wire.  However, because of the noise, it eventually gave up and left, to our relief.

The last couple of days have been eventful.  Adding to it, the shackle pin holding the mainsheet to the traveler car on the deck fell out, letting the boom swing forward out of control.  Fortunately, the wind was light, the damage nil, and we have a spare shackle of the correct size and shape.  I went forward, attached another line to the middle of the boom and brought the other end back to the cockpit.  I used a winch to pull the boom back enough to re-attach the mainsheet tackle to the traveler car.  We use seizing wire to prevent the shackle pins from unscrewing themselves.  There are two shackles and the broken remains of the wire were on both.  This will have to be checked more often in the future.  We are fortunate that this happened with only about 8 knots of wind.  Had it happened two days ago with over 20 knots of wind, there would have been major damage to the boom and/or mast rigging wires.  Keep in mind that the force of the wind goes up as the square of the velocity.  We dodged the bullet this time.

To be precise, if we were to turn L 90 degrees, the next thing we would come to would be Antarctica 3100 miles to the S. If we were to turn R 90 degrees, we would come to Hawaii 2000 miles to the N. If we didn't stop at Suwarrow, the next stop directly W would be the Solomon Islands in 2400 miles, then Papua New Guinea and directly E behind us is Peru at 4500 miles.  Basically, in the middle of nowhere.

Position :  13 27.44' S, 156 04.36' W

Speed : 4.8 knots,  Course : 277 degree

August 25-27, please pray for rain...on September 1st apparently

In case you have been pondering this deep question, the ocean here is about 16,000 ft deep.  We are geographically half way between Hawaii and the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, still in the Hawaii time zone 3 hours earlier than PDT.  This is a long 5 - 7 day passage.

We found out how the Italian honeymooners can afford to stay at the Kia Ora.  The custom now is for the wedding gift to be a contribution to the honeymoon fund.

And what birds have we seen?  Red-footed and Brown Booby.  That's it.

Barry wants you to know that in addition to our other misfortunes we have doused the bed 2 times with salt water.  I wasn't going to mention it because it is so stupid to leave the windows open in rough seas!  That means we have 1 set of clean sheets on the bed to last for the next month or more.  That is unless we get a really good downpour, enough to rinse the salt out of the otherwise clean 2 sets of sheets and 2 bed pads!  Pray for heavy rain with no wind, please! During the day would be better than night.  And please pray that no one falls overboard trying to hang sheets and heavy mattress pads out on the line while at sea.  This heavy downpour should come while we are at anchor about Sept 1.

Calculations of loving it or hating it

A gimballed stove similar to the stove on Sunrise,
without the olives and beans of course.

Oh, and I forgot to tell you about the beans and olives.  Remember how I said we would make tacos out of smashed canned beans, olives, tomatoes and Nacho Doritos?  I was preparing this for dinner on the broken whisker pole day and had the smashed beans and olives sitting on the gimballed stove,  the only stable area on the boat, when we were hit broadside by a big wave and the beans and olives went flying off the back of the stove onto the items we store behind.  The cleanup required disassembling the stove top and fishing out everything stored behind and leaning over to try and reach every smashed bean and rolly olive.  Careful calculation will lead you to the conclusion that there must be an awful lot of good times and fantastic beauty to outweigh all the grief and work and danger involved in sailing a boat.  And there is.

August 23-25, 2012 The good and the bad of it

August 25, Saturday morning we left for Suvarov/Surrarow a 5 or 6 day sail away and out of French Polynesia beating by 2 days the deadline imposed by our 90 day visa.  We headed NW in a brisk wind going at times 8 knots.  We were running dead downwind with the whisker pole out so that we were sailing wing and wing.  Barry, being a good physicist, kept stating things like, "I don't like the compression loads on the pole" and "There is far too much load on the whisker pole" and pow! And, "Oh, no!!" and the pole bent in half.  Of course, this sent the genoa into a wild rage flogging and beating itself to death.  I was praying that the pole would not completely break in half with 2 jagged pieces to smash into Barry.  Yes, he went into the maelstrom to subdue the whisker pole and sail.  Together we got things under control with Barry directing and me following his shouted instructions.  The noise of the flogging genoa, the banging pole, the roaring (30 k) wind and the crashing sea made it hard to communicate but we did it! After an hour and a half Barry had the pole secure and safe and the genoa on the opposite side where it belonged.  

When Barry finally got to bed a tube of handcream fell onto a tender part of his naked body.  That was the end of a very bad day that could have been far far worse.  

Actually, this very bad day came a day and a half after another bad day which could have been far worse.  The lifting bridle on his outboard motor broke and the outboard went into the ocean and was only prevented from sinking to the bottom by a safety wire.  Together we managed to get it back aboard but by then it was full of salt water.  Barry spent about 3 hours purging it, getting it started and essentially saving its life.  It did live!  So there you have it, again, the good and the bad of it.

Now Barry is sleeping, though wounded,  and my job is to stay awake, keep a good watch and make sure we don't run into Motu One (oh nay).  It is just N of Manuae where the people in the book "Black Wave" ran into a reef and nearly perished.  (You should read it!)  We have red danger circles around both atolls and all sorts of precautions to keep us out of harm's way, night and day. (I, Sheryl, listened to the audio book and loved it!) 

August 21, 2012

We spent the morning with Paul Atallah, Island Eco Tours. When I asked about birds he said that no, he doesn't know his birds, but he would tell us what he knows about birds in relation to archeology.  When the Polynesians arrived about 500 AD there were many more species of birds than there are now and those birds had no predators so they were unafraid of humans, the only mammal that had ever been in Polynesia.  The Polynesians would simply scoop up the birds as they rested and devour them.  The feathers were used for ceremonial and decorative purposes. One of the few ways to indentify early settlements was by finding a site with many many bones of birds.  This easy pickins caused 60% of the birds to go extinct.


The following is what he had to say: French Polynesia is incredibly expensive for 3 reasons.  Wages are determined by French standards, $1600/month and 5 weeks vacations in contrast to $200/month in places like Tonga.  All goods are imported and there are import taxes and indirect sales taxes tacked onto the price of everything.  These taxes are extremely high because there is no income tax.  Businesses are monopolies.  For instance, Air Tahiti is the only airline flying between the islands.  Wan Air couldn't make it.  [Speaking of monopolies, Robert Wan owns just about everything in French Polynesia starting with the black pearls.]  Everything looks good in French Polynesia - good roads, cell phone towers, TV, good schools with good teachers, excellent medical care and facilities and a fiber cable from Hawaii to Huahine; but that is because France pours $2 billion (my book says 20 billion Euros!) a year into French Polynesia with a population of less than 300,000 .  This can't continue and when the axe falls - paradise will be no more.  That also is why the total independence idea doesn't fly when the Polynesians have a chance to vote on it.

Many of the dates for initial contact, for instance when people first arrived in the Marquesas, have changed as carbon dating has improved.  The Marquesas were probably populated around 400 AD.  The names of things show migration and contact paths. (Similar to York, then migrating to New York or Orleans then moving to New Orleans. Sweet potato is kumra in South America, kumara in New Zealand and kumra in New Guinnea.  Hawaii is the name of many places in French Polynesia.  During the migration, the Polynesians brought small seedlings of their food-producing trees, except for the coconut,which is everywhere.  They brought dogs, pigs, chickens, rats and maybe cats.  Rats may have been stow-aways and rats eat seeds, which prevents trees from reproducing.  It would take several years for the plants that they brought to bear fruit or tubers to eat.  They could not eat the animals that they originally brought because they needed them to reproduce and multiply first.

French author Rousseau's "noble savage" concept notwithstanding, it was not a paradise in Polynesia when the European explorers arrived.  There was constant warfare, human sacrifices, infanticide, cannabalism and a multi-class society.  There were  many religious rituals asking for rain, abundant crops and marine resources, fertility, protection from enemies, success in combat, etc.  Cloth was rare and sacred, so white sails on European ships looked divine.  Smoke, noise and destruction from cannons looked like lightening from the gods.  Since lighter-colored skin was associated with high rank in Polynesian society, European's skin color placed them at a higher rank than Polynesian royalty. The higher rank of lighter skin came from the fact that the lower ranking people who worked outside in the sun all day were darker whereas the nobility could stay in the shade and avoid the tan.  The Polynesians' resources were limited to stone, coral, wood and shells.  The Europeans' metal tools, mirrors, optics, pottery, guns, cloth, etc. were beyond the ability of the locals to comprehend or produce with their limited resources.  Since mana or power was a sign of the gods, they thought the Europeans, backed by their technology, were gods.

We visited blue-eyed fresh water eels in a mountain stream.  They are the same species as what we saw in Tahiti and Hawaii and are in the Marquesas.  Acacia trees were introduced and have gone viral.  They are pretty but invasive. The economy is very bad now in French Polynesia.  The biggest and best hotel in Huahine has 44 bungalows and, as of this moment, only 8 are filled.  There is very little tourism in FP compared to other vacation destinations.  For instance,  Hawaii has the same number of visitors in a week as FP has in a year.

On a personal note, he has been divorced from 2 Polynesia wives.  He thinks the reason is because Americans and Polynesians have very different ideas when it come to money and raising children.  Polynesians slap their kids around and speak to them very rudely.  They have no foresight when it comes to spending/saving money.  He took offense that his boy's teacher said Americans are all fat.  He said the facts are that 30% of Americans are obese, 50% of Polynesians are and 25% of Europeans are.  Polynesians live on a diet of meat and refined carbohydrates - usually in the form of fish or pork and white rice or French fries. (To which we can attest.) Also, he told us where to find the tofu in the market, which we did.)  He said the high level of Polynesian generosity comes from the fact that in the old days there were no freezers or other forms of preservation, so if you caught a lot of fish or your bananas got ripe the best and most practical thing to do was to give away the excess.

By the way, the engine runs fine without overheating ever since Barry cleaned the raw water intake.

August 19, 2012

Huahine is divided into 2 islands with a bridge connecting the 2 halves. Hiro, one of the original gods, drove his canoe through the middle of Huahine dividing it in 2.  You can see his canoe paddle and a body part in protruding rocks in Baie Maroe. The 2 halves are called Huahine Nui (nui means big) and Huahine Iti (iti means little).  Yesterday, we circumnavigated Huahine Iti in the dinghy, Rubber Ducky, going through all the side bays and under the bridge.  We saw the locals out for their Sunday picnics and social gatherings and young men paddling their outriggers with their surfboards aboard out to the fringing reef to surf.  When they got to the edge of the reef in the outrigger they would tie it up, walk to the edge with the board and paddle out into the Pacific Ocean.  Not big surf but if you wiped out on the coral reef - ouch. Rubber Ducky was made in New Zealand to Barry's specifications.  This is her first year of real use and we are finding her to be fast, strong and very stable. She replaces the much heavier Avon, Sunbeam, who went AWOL one very windy night in Fiji.

View of Raiatea and Bora Bora

Upon our return to Sunrise in the late afternoon we were visited by our neighbors on the catamaran close by.  He is from Munich, she is from Ukraine and their 4 year old skinny dipping daughter, Katerina, speaks German, Russian and excellent English. Katerina spent the day playing with the local Polynesian children on shore.  The family will spend another year in French Polynesia.  Being from the European Union, they do not have to leave after 90 days like we Americans do. Miss Goodnight is the name of their boat. We call them Mr. and Mrs. Goodnight and they would call us Mr and Mrs. Sunrise.

Mr and Mrs Goodnight and daughter Katerina came back for a visit this morning.  Franz told Barry all about their very large (to us) catamaran with its 3 bedrooms and 3 heads and superb stability and Svetlana discussed her feelings about the passage from the tropics to New Zealand.  She and Katerina are flying there because she is afraid of the trip especially with a 4 year old.  I told her we had made the trip 5 times and I was never frightened but certainly tired and uncomfortable and maybe I would fly also next time! She said they lived on a boat for their entire married life, 7 years, and don't know if they could live together in a house but she would certainly like to give it a go.  They have cruised the Med for 2 years, Turkey, the Black Sea, 2 years in the Caribbean, then the usual Panama Canal and the Galapagos.  I taught Katerina how to play Angry Birds but forgot a lot of key points.  As she left she reminded me to check with my grandchildren to see how to play it better.  Her mother asked her if she would rather play games on the iPad or climb a tree and Katerina said she would rather climb a tree.  Her mother was so proud and happy!  I told Katerina that I had a shirt that said "Life is good" and that she should have a shirt like that because she has a good life and  she said yes and that she had many many friends all over the world.  She was very fluent and talkative for a 4 year old for whom American English is her third language.  After a long visit discussing their and our past cruising adventures and destinations and boat stuff, they left and we weighed anchor heading toward the town of Fare on Huahine Nui where there are internet, a supermarket and good restaurants.  In town we saw the first pigeons since leaving Oxnard.  Lunch was coconut crusted mahi mahi with a huge pile of fresh green beans and cheese scalloped potatoes and only $50 instead of the usual $100 for 2 meals in French Polynesia. Upon returning to the boat who should show up but the Goodnights.  They decided to follow us.

Photos of late

Wandering Tattler, Huahine Iti

Lynne’s pretty new toes,  pedicure by Barry

E side of Huahine Iti

Blue Lorikeet with red feet and red bill

August 18, 2012

 A Polynesian family was out this morning, dad, mom, teenagers, youngsters throwing a net in the water, four people holding corners and the rest loudly splashing and beating the water to get the fish to go in the net.  Then they all sat down in the water with the net and picked out what looked yummy.

Great numbers of Great Crested Terns fishing and arguing about who gets which fish.  Fairy Terns, Pacific Reef Heron (white morph) and mynas.  These are the first mynas we've seen on our trip which is good because they are non-native, aggressive and harmful to the local birds.  They have the Spotless Crake here.  Another bird we hope to see is the Chattering Kingfisher.  I hope this guide knows his birds.

Great Crested Tern, Huahine

Fairy Tern

August 14, 2012

Vince and Noelle brought us all kinds of important things like the weather fax,  boat parts, the French dictionary, freeze dried veggies and berries and chocolate and our mail.  However, they left the 90 tortillas to the last minute so they would be fresh and . . . events overtook plans and they forgot.  Have you ever tried to go for months on end without tortillas?  Have you ever tried to find tortillas in the South Pacific?  Have you ever tried to explain to French people or French Polynesians what a tortilla is?  It's like trying to find a baguette in Tijuana.  However,  I have come up with a simple solution.  We can use Nacho Cheese Doritos instead of tortillas.  French Polynesia has every imaginable kind of American junk food including every kind of chip ever made which means every tiny little magazin has Doritos!  We'll just kind of jumble it all up together instead of a nice neat taco and voila - there you have it.

Speaking of magazins, Magazin Simone by the Maitai was the best.  Yesterday we bought grapes from California - all fresh and juicy and plump.  They had potatoes and apples from New Zealand, limes, eggs,  and cabbages from Tahiti, bok choy, bananas and ginger from the Marquesas.  Ooo, la la!  All this importation is because the Tuamotus have no soil.  Can you imagine?  If you want soil you have to pay for it and have the supply boat bring it.  That's why their plants are in planters and so lovingly tended.  

Magazin Simone

This morning we finally decided to go to Tikehau.  Perfect weather and tide for going through the pass - so pacific that I decided I (L) could drive through myself which I did easily.  We were joined by the usual dolphins and were delighting in beaucoup des boobies, noddies and another large group of mother and baby dolphins when  . . . ! the engine over temp alarm went off and we smelled burning something. Barry thinks it is the raw water pump.  Anyway, we are sailing in 4 knots of light breezed WNW over the top (N) of Tikehau headed nowhere.  We can't get in Tikehau with no engine and Huahine is SW.  Fortunately, the seas are flat calm and there is very little wind today and tomorrow so we are just wafting along smoothly making it easy for Barry to work.  For sure, we will be sailing all night instead of sleeping peacefully in the heavenly little atoll of Tikehau.

Tikehau

Pictures to accompany previous posts

August 8-13, 2012

Aug 13: Vince and family left Saturday. It was definitely a boo hoo event. I know you all think the same, but we have the most amazing, super grandchildren and belle-fille (isn't "pretty daughter" a wonderful phrase for a daughter-in-law?) and fils (son). All are strong and graceful and accomplished in the water. Vince and Noelle did several SCUBA dives and Boden, 9, and Colby, 7, and gramma & grampa did drift snorkels where the dive guides drop you off outside the pass on an incoming tide and you are swept along into the atoll over dolphins, sharks and a turtle, seeing canyons and mounts along the way. Colby spent half the time free diving below the rest of us just for the sheer joy of it. Next summer the whole world of SCUBA diving will open up to them. We snorkeled more by the islet just inside the pass - the best snorkeling we've ever seen in all our travels. From Ford Thompson: Snorkeling is like birdwatching only wetter. 
We got the same taxi driver that we had at the beginning - the one we thought was grumpy.  We've decided that actually he just has a strange sense of humor.  I asked him to take me to the bank and he said it was closed.  I said that's OK I am going to La Machine (ATM) and he said it was kaput.  I said no it was a bonne machine - it gives beaucoup d'money.  He said OK,  he would go for 1 minute but not 2 minutes.  Then we said we wanted to go to the Magazin Simone for 10 minutes and he got angry so we said OK 5 minutes but actually he was only kidding about being angry. He also took us to look for the laverie (laundry) but, alas, the owners were just leaving for Papeete in Tahiti so no laundry.  Fermee -closed.  C'est la vie.

We are anchored in the Baie in front of the Hotel Kia Ora which is $800/night.  There are no Americans there - too expensive - but it is full of Italians and a few Japanese who have a better exchange rate for the French Polynesian Franc.  How did all these young Italians on their honeymoon get so rich?  The Italians have all been very friendly to us I must say.  The receptionist at the Kia Ora told me that the French in France are rude (she is from there) and I said that, aside from Paris, the French people were extremely kind to us.  She said that is because we have a good vibe.  Maybe.  Anyway, the conglomeration of nationalities and cultures is interesting, educational and fun.  Today we saw another Wauquiez and stopped by to converse about what great boats Henri Wauquiez made.  The Wauquiez Centurian's owner is from France but he bought his boat in San Francisco.

We are anchored near a barge that houses a colony of Spectacled (Gray-backed) Terns.  Nice neighbors who fly around beautifully all day and chit chat all night in Ternese.  We like them.

Barry wants to stay here in Rangiroa until Thursday in order to work on boat projects and I want to go to Tikehau tomorrow morning so that we can work on boat projects somewhere new and more pristine.  We'll let you know how it goes, but we've been working it out for 46 years now.