Do the Hokey Pokey 30 Jun 19

16º 27.045s 145º 22.042w

Sun Jun 30 2019

Well here we are in the Southeast corner of Fakarava with something like 25 other boats. There’s another 10 or so down by the South pass about 6 miles from us. They’ve got good protection from the swell, but except for the few moorings there it’s a bit of a dicey anchorage with bommies galore and not many sandy patches. Intuition would make one think that it would be best to be there in dead calm weather, however the flaw in that plan is having the boat wander around and tangle the anchor chain around numerous bommies, something that can lead to damage and loss of ground tackle if the wind heats up. What’s actually better is to have the wind steady out of the South so that there’s no fetch and the boat lies still without much movement back and forth. Once the anchor is stuck in the rocks at least things hopefully won’t get worse. The boats down there now have pretty much settled in for the blow that’s coming, and hopefully they’re all securely moored or anchored.

Up here in Southeast corner, called Hirifa, we’ve anchored in about 8 meters of water at about 6:1 scope. We’ve carefully inspected the anchor to ensure it’s dug into good sand, and there appear to be no bommies for the first 16 meters of chain to entangle should we swing. We’ve installed floats at about 17 meters, 27 meters and 37 meters then the bridle is connected at about 47 meters. We reckon we’re set for the blow and so far haven’t moved in winds up to about 25 knots.

Mr. Weatherman says it’s going to blow up into the mid to high 30’s, so we’ll just see how well our plan works out. We’ve got a killer Sarca Excel #5 anchor we imported from Australia, and it’s held us in other blows about as bad as the one to come. The holding here is really good, and if necessary we’ve got enough room around the other boats to let out a bit more chain, but we think we’re pretty set for what’s forecast.

Looks like this is going to last up to a week, so now it’s time to put projects, kite surfing, and fun and games with other cruisers on the calendar. We’ve no internet access here, and the cell service is 2G so other than SSB email or Iridium Go, we’re isolated from the world. Having recently had a chance to look at the news, it’s obvious that we haven’t missed a thing and the giant bucket of noise that’s daily news doesn’t do anything but increase our stress level. Business news is more interesting, but that’s something we can get snippets of over email using Reuters or some other service.

Paddling a SUP in 20+ knots of wind is challenging, but if we survive the first 100 meters towards the beach, the trees provide good shelter and the water is flat calm. It’s fun tooling along in shallow water and the visibility is good enough to see all the little creatures living around the bommies. Yesterday I paddled by a 1.5 meter black tip shark, a fine looking fellow indeed!

For us this will be a bit like the old days when we were snowed in and played lots of cards or piddled with some craft. I’ve got plenty of dyneema lines to build, perhaps a few new soft shackles and loops, so no risk of being bored. Hopefully by week’s end a few more projects will be off the list!

We visited New Zealand a few years back, and discovered they might just have the tastiest ice cream on the planet. Certainly the amount of butter fat in their ice cream is world class. Between the local sauvignon blanc, flat white coffees and ice cream we just about went broke, but wow was it fun. My favorite flavor of ice cream was “hokey pokey”, and darned if there isn’t a sailboat anchored down at the South pass with that name.

That’s got to be one of my favorite boat names of all time, right alongside “Mystical Crumpet”.

Here comes Mr. Mara'amu

16º 27.041s 145º 22.039w

Sun Jun 30 2019

Tuesday the 25th we didn’t make the kite boarding training schedule. It turns out that a bunch of other folks also want to learn to kite board – good for Adrien and Aline, bad for us. The wind forecast for Wednesday and Thursday was looking really light, so Monday evening we started thinking that while there was a good Southeast wind perhaps we ought to sail on up to the village. For starters the supply ship was due Wednesday and no telling what goodies we might find to buy. We were needing to do a bit of internet business and hit the ATM to get more cash to pay for our lessons. To top it off, Monday evening Adrien had a mishap with his dinghy; the outboard fell off and sank in 60 feet of water! It happened just before dark so the best he could do was to mark it with a float, then look for someone to SCUBA on down and recover it Tuesday morning. The good people on SV Namaste were able to happily oblige, but with the expectation that it might be several days before any more kite boarding lessons might be on the menu, we made the snap decision Tuesday morning to enjoy the nice Southeast breeze and sail up to the village of Rotoava at the Northeast corner of the atoll.

It turned out to be a great sail, and along the way we recognized our Kiwi pals on SV Gabian, a big Lagoon cat, sailing along in front of us. Race on! It took us a couple of hours, but we absolutely smoked by them just before arriving at the anchorage. Their two young boys were firing seeds at us with their slingshots, but we were undeterred. We all met up at Fakarava Yacht Services (FYS) after anchoring and did a bit of chest thumping, then got on with the business of communicating with the outside world. There is actually fiber optic laid to Fakarava, but it ends about two houses from FYS, so the internet isn’t terribly fast. Nevertheless it put the 2G cell data to shame so we were eternally grateful to have the access. We delivered a couple of large bags of laundy when we arrived, then learned from Andy on Gabian that we could also get our empty propane cylinder filled. They use butane here and apparently it doesn’t burn as hot as propane, but them’s the breaks.

The ship arrived on schedule Wednesday morning and we scored a bunch of fresh veggies, some cheese and a few other bits. The French Baker was in high gear each morning so my job was to pop out of bed like a piece of toast and dinghy ashore around 0600 to collect some pain au chocolate, pain au raisin and croissants to increase Mrs. Hardesty’s cruising pleasure. Worth the price of admission! Wednesday was internet and shopping day, so strenuous that we had to visit Rotoava Grill for a steak frites at lunch time. By the end of the day we had clean laundry, a full tank of butane, and had taken care of most internet stuff. After checking the weather we figured we could linger another day before taking shelter, so we arranged to rent bicycles for Thursday.

That worked out great! We pedaled South a few kilometers to a local farm – raised planting beds that these guys had built and then filled with composted soil they had made. We were able to purchase a whole bunch of beautiful leaf lettuce for about $4.50, and with that in hand we pedaled on further down the paved road to a pearl farm and jewelry operation about 10 kilometers South of the village. The place is run by an older German gentleman who married a French Polynesian lady about a zillion years ago – and together they run the place; he manages the retail shop and oversees the pearl farming operation, she makes the jewelry. We got to tour the whole place, and good for us Isabel speaks fluent French as the foreman out at the pearl manufacturing building didn’t speak English. Altogether it was a fascinating thing to learn about, and what was really cool is that the pearls are seeded by a guy who is kind of doing surgery, implanting a new little sphere in each oyster after removing a finished pearl. Turns out the various sizes of these “seed spheres” are made from shells found in Mississippi! Who’d a thunk that?!?

In any case, Isabel did “a little shopping” and is now sporting some unique pearl ear rings along with a lovely necklace made by the better half of the couple. It’s great to support local artists and now that we know how the pearls were actually cultivated and grown, her jewelry will forever remind us of our experience here.

All that pedaling and learning (and jewelry shopping) made us hungry, so we pedaled a bit more back towards the village and stopped at “Snack Elda” for a killer lunch of various fish preparations. Poisson Cru is the local way of preparing raw fish in coconut milk, and it featured on each of our plates. Also featured was a nice bottle of Chardonnay to celebrate the fact that we were having a long lazy lunch in the Tuamotus on a Thursday while our pal Kal Geiler had to go to work. Kal really needs to get over that work thing. . .

We ended up pedaling all the way to the airport at the Northeast end of the atoll, so I reckon we’ve seen most of the populated parts either from the water or from bicycles. Returning to FYS we caught up with John, Becca and Simon from SV Halcyon and agreed to hike down the street for dinner at a food truck, but only after we had all returned to our vessels to stock up on adult beverages. The food truck doesn’t appear to have run in years, and is parked under a shed, but the folks doing the cooking turn out a great cheeseburger and a better steak than Rotoava Grill. Wish we had known sooner!

Friday after a bit more internet time at FKS during which a big squall blew through it was time to up anchor and motor the 29 nautical miles back to the Southeast anchorage. It was quite the slog, but we got here, and now armed with cash and plenty of provisions we’re back on the kite boarding schedule. It’s going to blow like stink for about a week, and this is the most secure anchorage on the atoll for the coming weather, so here we’ll be for a while. There’s about 25 other boats down here, ready to hunker down when necessary or to snorkel and kite surf when able, and apparently a bunch of them are ashore at the local restaurant tonight. The proprietor was cooking a pig over the fire this afternoon, and we saw another large pig wandering down the beach just before dark, perhaps looking for his brother or whatnot. Whatever; we seared some tuna on the grill, along with some grilled broccoli and Costco instant mashed potatoes, it was a stellar meal.

We dropped the anchor when we arrived yesterday late afternoon. There were a lot of weird noises in the night, and this morning with decent light I dove the anchor only to discover it was hooked on sunken a palm tree trunk. We pulled it up and reset in 25 feet of water using 3 sets of bommie floats, and now have a scope of at least 6:1. We think we’re ready – we have rum!

Oh yeah, they call these big blows a “mara’amu”!

Kite boarding 101

16º 26.890s 145º 21.950w

Tue Jun 25 2019

One of the big attractions to the Southeast anchorage at Fakarava is that it is an absolute playground for those into water sports. I’m not talking about noisy ass jet skis and the like; nope, I’m talking about free diving, spear fishing, SCUBA diving, SUP paddling, and KITE  BOARDING!

There’s a lovely couple living on their boats here – Aline Dargie and Adrien Cartier Millon. They’re both kite boarders, but Aline teaches free diving and spear fishing, and Adrien teaches kit boarding, anything from beginners to insane tricks. Aline is originally from Boston, but you’ve never know it by listening to her speak. Adrien is from Heyeres, France, a lovely town just a bit East of Marseilles. I was going to run a flight test out of the military base there until the hangar floor collapsed and we had to move the operation to Istres. Both lovely towns, so no biggy! Aline’s little catamaran is named “Pizza”. Who doesn’t love pizza?

Kite boarding is one of those activities like golf or tennis that folks can continue with well into “advanced age” as we like to think of it. Not being of “advanced age” ourselves but seeing it out there on the distant horizon, there’s just no time like the present to learn a new skill, accept a new challenge, take on a new hobby. Especially a hobby that’s purely about celebrating life and the environment we’re living in.

Isabel and I had our first lesson together yesterday, and another today. We’re hoping to get one more two hour session in tomorrow before the wind dies and we run out of French Polyneisan Francs and have to go find a bank machine. I actually got in a lesson two days ago while Isabel observed from Adrien’s chase dinghy. It’s hard to describe beginning kite boarding to the uninitiated. If we climb into the way-back machine, there I was water skiing, wake boarding, and a little trick skiing, even trying barefoot water skiing back during college. If you’ve ever learned to slalom ski, you’ll know the feeling of being all squatted down in a seated position trying not to drink the entire lake or have it wash your eyeballs out of your head, and of course the occasional face plant that sometime rings your chimes.

Flying the kite reminds me a lot of skydiving and flying parachutes, sailplanes, helicopters and airplanes. When flown statically, it seems the kite barely has enough angle of attack to do more than keep it’s own weight aloft. When you pull on the control bar the angle of attack is changed by pulling the leading edge down, and the kite surges forward with a lot of power. Statically the turning controls are not very responsive, however when you pull the control bar towards you it’s like pulling the collective up on a helicopter and tremendous power develops as the kite surges forward. As that happens the left and right turning controls become extremely responsive. It’s a bit bass ackwards from flying an airplane where taking off (i.e. increasing lift) requires increasing the angle of attack by tilting the trailing edge of the wing down and the leading edge up. I’m still trying to work out the aerodynamics of the whole thing, but it’s great fun thinking it through.

I think what’s really important to me, perhaps to us both, is that as adults we’ve almost forgotten how to play. Finally we’re creating a life for ourselves that involves plenty of free time, and it’s important to remember how to play, and to find some fun activities to get passionate about. Kite boarding work out to be that adrenalin rush that I used to get skydiving, flying aerobatic aircraft, and racing sailplanes cross country. The opportunity to share the fun with Isabel makes it way better, and as we each learn and become more proficient, we’ll be each others “kite bitch” to chase with the dinghy and offer rescue services when the kiter loses the board, gets too far downwind and can’t get back, or simply wants a break.

I’m betting that not only will we need kite gear, but we’ll also probably have to buy a few more jerry cans for gasoline. Glad we got a fast dinghy with an efficient outboard.

Tonight there was an impromptu gathering on the beach with a couple of bonfires, one of which we let burn down to coals for cooking. There must have been at least 30 adults and kids whooping it up, cooking over the fire, and sharing extra food. Barry from SV White Shadow played his guitar and harmonica and did a few blues numbers. I forgot to ask if he used to sing with the Moody Blues. . .