And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy.
– Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
So, that sailing thing…
…yeah…
…that didn’t work out for me. Like, at all. I mean, the first few days weren’t horrible. But, after that…
Just to give you a little catch up, I arranged to spend a few nights on a sailboat in French Polynesia through helpx.com. I flew to Tahiti from Bali last Monday, spent two nights in the capital Pape’ete, then caught the ferry to the nearby island of Mo’orea to meet my host at the marina there for a 6-night sailing expedition. My first night on the boat was the day before Thanksgiving. My host showed me around the boat and took me to the local grocery store for some last minute shopping before we set sail the next day.
About the boat: The boat is a 30’ monohull – a small sailboat. I’m guessing the boat is no more than 10’ wide at its widest point. The living quarters consist of two rooms: the v-birth in the front, which contains the host’s bed, some storage space, and the toilet; and the main cabin, which contains the sink, oven and stove, control panel, benches, a table, and a refrigerator. My bed was the long bench between the table and the cabinets. It’s maybe 6’ long and as wide as my shoulders; if I lay straight on my back, one arm is pressed against the wall while the other has to be tucked under my leg lest it dangle over the edge. If I want to adjust my position, I have to rotate on an axis like a rotisserie chicken. Even so, I was constantly banging against the cabinets on one side or the table on the other. Besides the cabin, there’s a small, square cockpit with a tiller (basically a long pole you push side to side) instead of a wheel for steering the boat and a small forward deck that was really only useful if you needed to be up front for some reason, like dropping or picking up anchor.
So, that’s the boat. On Thursday, we left the marina and my host taught me how to sail in the safe waters of the lagoon, which is formed by a natural coral reef ringing most of the island. I’m told the island of Mo’orea is a dormant volcano, and the coral reef that surrounds it was the ring of the volcano (feel free to fact check). This reef acts as a natural break water to keep the Pacific Ocean at bay, creating many peaceful lagoons and protected bays around the island. We sailed across the lagoon a couple times as I got used to steering and learned some of the sailing techniques and lingo.
This boat has two sails: the main sail and the jib. The main sail is attached to the mast in the middle of the boat and the jib is in the very front. The sails are most efficient when the wind is hitting them at about 45°. What you don’t want is to have the wind coming directly at you or from directly behind you. This renders the sails essentially useless, flapping limply in the breeze, and can be dangerous if the main sail picks up the wind on the opposite side, causing the boom to swing precariously across the cockpit. There’s an arrow at the top of the mast to indicate the direction the wind is blowing, along with markers to tell you when the wind is coming too directly from the front or back. Because the wind is hitting you at an angle, you basically have to zig zag your way to wherever your destination is. There’s special terms for cutting across the wind if you’re going against the wind (tacking) or with it (jibing). Whether you’re tacking or jibing, the main sail is catching the wind from the opposite side, which causes the boom to swing back and forth. The boom is at about head height and could either knock you out, knock you out of the boat, or both, so you really have to be careful not to get in its way.
After the sailing lesson, we dropped anchor and commenced relaxation sequence. A little bit of snorkeling and a lot of being lazy layabouts was the order of the afternoon. So far, so good.
The next day, we hit the open waters of the Pacific Ocean to sail to the north side of the island to Opunohu Bay. Apparently, sailing in open waters is referred to as “being in the shaker,” and the description is apt. My host said the swells were normal, and I believe him, but they seemed huge in that tiny boat as we rocked side to side, up and down, among swells that rose higher than the boat deck. We weren’t very lucky with the wind that morning, either. It kept changing directions and dying on us. At one point, we put on the motor just make a little headway as we were listing about out there among the swells and getting nowhere. I started to get sea sick. I never get sea sick. The fumes from the motor didn’t help with that, either. My host told me to keep my eyes on the horizon, which worked, and the sea sickness passed.
After a while, we finally picked up some wind and sailed through the pass and into the bay. I’m guessing the entire trip took 4-5 hours, though I didn’t check times. We dropped anchor in the western part of the lagoon and recommenced relaxation sequence. The snorkeling in Tahiti is okay. A local told me the coral used to be big and beautiful, but it’s died off over the years due to all the boats and other human activity in the water. It’s the same thing in Hawaii – still beautiful, but nothing like it used to be. Snorkeling in Tahiti doesn’t hold a candle to Bali, which was just spectacular. Still, there’s lots of different fish to look at and even some rays (though I didn’t see any when I was out there). The coolest fish I saw out there was a big puffer fish with two pointy bits darting out over each eye. It was digging in the ocean bed looking for food.
The next morning, we motored eastward across the lagoon and anchored just off a beach there. That’s where we would stay for the next three nights. Winds of up to 50 kilometers/hour were forecasted over the next several days, which was apparently unsafe for sailing, even in the lagoon. So, we stayed anchored. As far as passing the time goes, being anchored in the lagoon means either finding something to do on the boat, finding something to do in the water, or going ashore and find something to do there.
What’s there to do on an anchored 30’ sailboat? Not much at all, actually. Stare at the island. Stare at the waves breaking over the coral reef. You could read, I suppose. Except…the boat isn’t all that comfortable or conducive to reading. There’s somewhat comfortable seating inside the cabin, except the cabin is confining and usually hot. I didn’t really want to sit inside the cabin all day long. Outside, the only place to really sit without being in direct sunlight is the cockpit. But, the cockpit isn’t comfortable. The seats are hard, they sit at an angle, and there’s no backrests. So, reading in the cockpit wasn’t an option, either. Writing? Maybe. I did do a little bit of writing while I was there. Of course, you have the same problems with writing that you do with reading, with the added difficulty of having little electricity on such a small boat. All the electricity on the boat was supplied by small solar panels, enough to charge small electronics, but nothing else.
What about in the water? Well, there’s snorkeling. All the snorkeling your heart desires, provided you don’t mind being in the sun that long (which I do, even with sunblock on). Besides snorkeling, you could go to shore and find jet skis, stand-up paddleboards, kayaks, you-name-it. Assuming you wanted to spend the money, that is. French Polynesia is expensive, folks. Really, really expensive. And I didn’t come here to drop cash on touristy entertainment.
Then, there’s going ashore. When you’re anchored, you use a small, inflatable dinghy to get to shore. I’m going to go out on a limb and say most sailboats have motorized dinghies. There were a few sailboats anchored near us and they all had motorized dinghies. Ours was not motorized, which meant that if we wanted to get to shore, we had to row or paddle there and back. Aside from being laborious, this just didn’t seem safe to me. I’m guessing the distance from the boat to the beach was between 100-125 meters. It rained off and on the entire time we were there, along with strong winds and strong currents in the lagoon. Going ashore with a paddle boat meant potentially getting stuck there if it was raining or blowing too hard or the current was very strong. We got stuck maybe 2/5 of the way back to the boat once because the current was so strong; my host actually told me if I didn’t paddle harder the current would sweep us out to sea. We weren’t wearing life vests, by the way. Didn’t even have them in the dinghy. We ended up getting rescued by one of the other sailors who happened to be at the beach, saw us struggling against the current, and towed us to the boat using his own motorized dinghy.
And what’s on shore that makes paddling across 100m of unpredictable water, wind, and rain so appealing? Once again, not very much, at least if you’re on foot. There’s a stretch of public beach with picnic tables, coconut trees, grass, and a couple open-air fresh water showers for rinsing off the salt water. There’s a tiny grocery store. A little further away, you can find bungalow rentals, a small café or two, or walk to the Hilton for an expensive cocktail or meal. We actually tried to go to the Hilton one night but were not allowed in because of a private event – the Miss France competition was apparently going on there that night. Still further away is a small local fruit stand. But, there’s no car rental nearby. There’s no water sports rentals nearby. There’s other things to see and do there, but they’re really too far to walk. In that case, you either catch the bus (which runs unpredictably) or you hitchhike.
Readers, I don’t like leaving that much to chance. Going ashore without any assurance whether or when I would be able to get back on the boat to wait endlessly for a bus or hitchhike an unknown distance to an unfamiliar location through unknown terrain in unpredictable weather under the intense tropical sun for an unknown period of time is pretty much my personal hell. My host was genuinely dumbfounded that this did not appeal to me.
So, I didn’t get off the boat very much. I spent my days trying to find a comfortable place to lounge in the cockpit without sitting directly in the sun. Meals were necessarily simple and consisted mostly of dried and canned foods and local fruits, along with cheese, eggs, and dried sausage. Fresh veggies were out after a day or two since the boat didn’t generate enough electricity to power a refrigerator and fresh veggies are scarce and poor quality here in any case.
If you had to use the bathroom there were two options: the ocean and the on-board toilet. The toilet is not a normal flush toilet, but some kind of pump toilet. Basically, I guess you have to pump sea water into the basin when you want to use it and then you have to pump it all out again. But then there’s some other stuff you have to do that, if you do it wrong, you’ll end up flooding the entire boat with ocean water, so I wasn’t allowed to use to the toilet by myself. If I needed to use the toilet, my host had to set it up for me and then do whatever he had to do once I was done to, you know, finish off the flushing process. Also, no toilet paper down the pipes – you had to carry it through the cabin and throw it overboard. Also, the door to the toilet was a sarong. When the forward hatch was open and the wind was blowing, the sarong just flapped, flapped, flapped in the breeze with wild abandon.
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TMI ALERT
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This is a TMI Alert. You are about to receive Too Much Information about female bodily functions. If you do not wish to receive Too Much Information about female bodily functions, avert your eyes and scroll below to safety.
I got my period on the boat. So, you know, that was fun.
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TMI ALERT
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It was all just too much for me. Having never sailed before, I didn’t realize I had expectations about what it would be like or how miserable I could get. Not that my host didn’t warn me about some of this stuff. He did. But there’s only so much you can think of in advance. For example, I had the erroneous assumption that sailing was a daytime activity and that nights would be spent in a marina somewhere. It never occurred to me that we would spend our nights anchored away from land. I figured people sailed from marina to marina and only anchored out of necessity if the distance between marinas was really far or you got caught in bad weather and had to seek shelter. Those of you who know better may laugh at my naiveté, but I just didn’t know. I didn’t even know what I didn’t know to ask. Especially on such a small boat with so little space and so few amenities. A bigger, more comfortable boat I could understand, but not this boat. Even knowing we would be anchoring, I would have never guessed I would be rowing or paddling to get to land. There was so much about this experience that seemed unnecessarily difficult and risky to me.
I was quite miserable. I was bored and restless and I felt stuck. I wasn’t actually stuck – I could have gotten off the boat at any time. But, that would have meant spending even more money on overpriced accommodations. And, afterall, this was what I had come to Tahiti for – to spend 6 nights on this sailboat. It’s the only reason I came here and I wouldn’t have come here otherwise. So, even though I was miserable, I didn’t want to get off the boat. It seemed that everything that could go wrong on this adventure did go wrong. I was reminded of Khalil Gibran’s words above and I was determined to stick it out and learn what this experience had to teach me.
I thought I was doing a pretty good job of handling it, too. I wasn’t angry and I wasn’t desperate to change it. I was trying to quietly accept that this moment sucks right now and that’s okay. I was taciturn and sullen and quiet. I wasn’t entertaining and I wasn’t much fun to be around. There were two instances when I was asked and expected to do something I didn’t feel I was physically capable of doing and I did throw some mini-tantrums as a result. But, otherwise, I kept it to myself. I may not have been very good company, but I didn’t blame my host for my circumstances and I didn’t take my frustrations out on him.
My bad mood weighed on my host all the same. He kept trying to offer up things that might cheer me up (like paddling to shore to spend an unknown amount of time hitchhiking an unknown distance across unknown terrain in unpredictable weather to an unfamiliar location under the intense tropical sun without any assurance when or whether I would be able to get back to the boat) which only made me feel worse. And each failed attempt to move me left him all the more frustrated.
I thought about it a little later and wondered if perhaps my problem was that I was resisting the present moment. I was certainly resisting my host’s suggestions to hand my day over to chance and hope that kind strangers would materialize to transport me around the island and that the weather and current wouldn’t strand me on the beach overnight. I don’t know what the answer is. I wasn’t resisting my misery, after all. I was fine to sit there and let it be.
I was resisting up and getting off the boat, though. For some reason, my known misery seemed to me a safer bet than whatever lie “out there.” Does that sound familiar? It should – it’s how I started this entire bloody thing to begin with. Honestly, have I learned nothing in the last 6 months?!
My host and I had an ugly row yesterday morning, the day before I was supposed to get off the boat, and I ended up leaving that morning. I had my purse, a backpack, and an overstuffed tote bag that was difficult to lug around, so the last thing I wanted to do was go blindly walking around, you know, unknown terrain for an unknown distance blah blah blah under the intense tropical sun hoping to find a vacancy for the night and that it wouldn’t be too expensive. But, I didn’t want to stay any longer. The atmosphere was toxic at this point. Something would work itself out. Something always does.
So, into the dinghy with all my stuff for one last row across the lagoon. We hit the beach and I was off, lugging my backpack and my overstuffed tote down the road which, by the way, didn’t have a sidewalk. To add insult to injury, I got slapped in the face by a thorny leaf the wind happened to pick up just as I was walking past it and ended up with small bloody cut across the top of my lip.
Many of the vacation rentals on Mo’orea are small open air bungalows called “fares.” The first fare I came to had vacancies but they only took cash. I didn’t have enough cash and I had no idea where the nearest atm was (it turns out it was a good 10-minute drive away). So, I kept walking. I turned into something that looked like maybe it was a fare, but I couldn’t really tell and so I started to walk out again. A local happened to be driving out of the same driveway as I was walking out and asked if I needed help. I told him I needed a place to stay but that I didn’t have enough cash. He offered to drive me to the nearest atm. I hopped in and off we went.
The primary languages of French Polynesia are French and Tahitian. Even in the service industry, most people only speak a little bit of English. Romy, however, actually spoke a decent amount of English. He drove me to the atm and then insisted I take his car for the afternoon while he was at work. He just gave me his car and told me to pick him up at 5pm. It was like heaven had sent me an angel.
I dropped him off at work, checked into a fare, then drove. I drove west across the northern lip of the island, past the beach where I’d walked away from the inflatable dinghy and its insufferable paddles for the last time, past the sailboat anchored in the lagoon, around Opunohu Bay, and then south along the western edge of the island for a spell. It was getting on in the afternoon at this point and I was getting hungry. I found a French restaurant that was open (most places on the island seem to be open only during mealtimes, and it was already after 2pm) and treated myself to a very expensive lunch. I drove a little ways further to the south before turning around and heading back. I picked up Romy and he drove me back to my fare. We agreed to meet later for happy hour and dinner.
Romy picked me up and greeted me with one of those flower necklaces made from the Tiare Tahiti flower that smells so amazing. We headed to the Mo’orea Pearl hotel for cocktails. This is one of those fancy hotels with the bungalows on stilts over the water that you pay upwards of $500/night or more to stay in. The hotel was beautiful and the drinks were served with ornate, flowery decorations. We headed to a popular restaurant for dinner where we had Chinese food and something Romy called round fish. The round fish was prepared a bit like ceviche but with some coconut milk added in and was absolutely delicious.
Romy brought me breakfast this morning, then insisted I take his car while he was at work again. This time, I drove to the Belvedere, which is a fancy word for a look out point. From about the southern edge of Opunohu Bay, you drive south along a narrow road that winds its way up a mountain. As you approach the vista point, the switchbacks get tighter, and I ended up climbing the last kilometer or so in 1st gear. The view was stunning, of course (see above).
I drove back down the winding road and stopped along the way at some ruins of old marae, temples devoted to various deities.
This was one of the places my boat host was trying to get me to hitchhike to. The Belvedere is about 7 km, nearly 4.5 miles, from the beach. There’s an agricultural high school maybe half way to the Belvedere from the main road and then nothing after that. I didn’t see any cars on the road on my way to the Belvedere once I got past the high school and only 2 or 3 on my way back down. It was great with a car, but the thought of hitchhiking there, or partway there and walking the rest, and then potentially being stuck and having to walk that whole way back…it was unfathomable to me.
Anyway…after that, I went back to the bungalow to grab my stuff before picking Romy up at work. Romy was kind enough to drive me to the ferry terminal. He gave me a beautiful lacquered shell and then stopped along the way to buy me a shell necklace, too. He’s an incredibly generous and giving and kind man. A true angel. I was very lucky to have met him.
And now, here I sit, in my AirBnB outside Pape’ete looking out on Mo’orea Island. Here’s the sunset view:
I gave it a shot, readers. I gave sailing a shot. I tried something new and it didn’t work for me. Them’s the breaks. But that’s life, right? If you never try, you never know.
TL;DR: Sailing not my jam; feeling pretty blessed and so thankful for the Romys of the world.
