Well, I’m as tired of pondering my navel about the political mess in America as any of the two or three occasional readers of my somewhat twisted blog comments are of my musings. Back to the job of being a sailboat bum in French Polynesia. It’s a tough gig, but I’m committed.
The past few days have been somewhat idyllic, as the weather, i.e. that which might smite us, has been just wonderful. Well, except the wind just refuses to blow hard enough to play with our kite boarding gear. Someday we’ll get that magical sixteen knot steady breeze, then we’ll give it what fer. If you haven’t seen “Inglorious Basterds”, it’s perhaps Brad Pitt’s finest work, definitely one of the greatest movies ever made.
Anyway, the past few days we’ve been anchored up at the Northeast corner of the atoll, where there are lovely colorful fishies, flat water to paddle our one remaining SUP upon, long rugged reefs to comb for treasures, land crabs skittering around everywhere, and all the coconuts one could ever want. We’ve had crews from various boats over for dinner, visited them for dinner, caught crabs, done yoga on the beach, done boat repair projects, studied on the weather, and brainstormed on what we’d ever do if we finally get permission to even leave this lovely atoll of Raroia. Seems like we’ve decided to sail to Makemo, load up on provisions in the village, get a little internet stuff done, then sail on to the uninhabited atoll of Tahanea where we’ve some pals hanging out. There are three passes to drift snorkel, the best way to view sea life and subsea terrain. Apparently spear fishing there is great and no ciguatera is present, so I’ve sharpened up the tip and will be putting on new rubber bands.
Today after a yoga routine and an X-3 workout I went ashore to use the local internet, essentially an exercise in frustration, then wandered over to our new best friend Cali’s place to see if he would let me use his coconut shucking spike. Sure, no problem – so he went and got it, stuck it in the ground, then insisted on opening all six of the coconuts I brought. Four of them were “no good”, but no problem – one of his buddies (there were three of them sitting around) fetched up some good ones, and soon I had a bag of shucked coconuts to take back to Isabel. Thai curry soon, and I got a lesson in how to select good coconuts. Cali’s wife had made some lunch, so to be polite I gorged myself on poisson cru, sashimi, and fried dogtooth tuna along with rice and a fried bread confection. Oink.
Back to JollyDogs to report on my poor coconut picking judgement and just in time for some fresh crab salad – leftovers from our hunting trip. Next, off to snorkel the pass during the incoming tide with two other dinghy loads of cruisers. Visibility virtually unlimited, amazing fish life, three flavors of sharks. We hit the pass during low slack tide and then had a couple of rides after the flood tide started coming in. That pretty much involves hanging on to the dinghy painter and floating along, buzzing across the sea floor at the tidal inflow speed, maybe two to four knots during our drift dives today. All great fun, sharks left us alone, then we passed Cali and some of his buddies spear fishing on the way back to our vessels. Before putting the dink away we motor over the anchor and donning mask and snorkel verify that all is well. Visibility is good today.
Only way to celebrate a great snorkel (and get rid of that salty taste) is to down an ice cold Hinano lager and bask in the sunshine for a bit. Top that off with a nap in the hammock, some guitar practice, then time for the evening SSB net then dinner. Write a blog post, go outside and work on my star and constellation memorizing for a bit, then maybe watch a movie or read a bit before crashing.
It’s just all in a day’s work on JollyDogs. Apparently French Polynesia has four active cases of Covid-19 left. With any luck we’ll be allowed to sail to another atoll soon!
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