Some of our Memories of French Polynesia
David
My favorite memory was looking at the Milky Way spangling across our masthead every evening. That bright belt of stars would lead my eye south to a group of five stars arching around the south pole of the sky throughout the night. This was The Southern Cross. A childhood dream of mine was to be able to see The Soutern Cross, and there it was everynight on our sail. I last saw The Southern Cross on the last evening of our trip as I was gazing over The Sea of The Moon toward Moorea from our hotel room in Tahiti. Would I ever see it again? Lord willing, I will.
Anna Catherine
It’s hard to condense my experience into a few favorite memories! It was incredible to wake up each morning and see the Society Islands rising from the Pacific Ocean. Or to perch on the rolling foredeck, haphazardly sketching the scenery as it slipped past (and losing my balance!). Or to jump in aquarium-clear water teeming with coral reef life. Or to cobble together all the French our family could produce to get directions from the locals. I believe we elevated "Franglais" to a new level of art.
One of my favorite memories was snorkeling off Motu Tape, when three gargantuan manta rays emerged silently from the deep gloom of the sea-channel. Seeing manta rays has always been a dream of mine, and I remember gazing in amazement as they soared through the water. It was an experience I will always remember!
Meredith
Living for two weeks at sea like that was living in an altered reality. No "normal" rules applied when it came to so many things.
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For instance......
Sharks everywhere, all the time?
Normal.
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Literal SHARK FEEDING FRENZIES?
Normal.
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Feeling guilty for turning on the faucet/accidentally spilling fresh water?
Normal.
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Seeing straight to the sea floor, counting the swimming fish at 60 feet deep?
Normal.
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Forgetting where you left your phone in the boat because you haven't used it in days? Normal.
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Eating tuna for EVERY GOSHAWFUL MEAL?
Normal.
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5 people trapped on a moderately sized boat for 2 weeks, who liked each other before, DURING, and AFTER the trip?
Normal.
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Sister breaking out into the Life Aquatic theme-song for every seaworthy thing done by dad?
Normal.
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Almost dying from multi-systemic failure while at sea and approaching a reef? Normal.
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Shelby, upside-down. All. The. Time. (?)
Normal.
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Myself or my sister regularly going into hypothermic shock during dives?
Normal.
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And in general.....Shelby, to be counted on to provide the necessary skill, bravery, and/or comic relief, Mom to be counted on to provide food, attention, and good reminders for personal safety, Bean to be counted on to be willing to do "it" (whatever that happened to be...) and provide theme music, and Dad to be counted on to actually know where we were and where we were going, and to take us there without dying?
Normal.
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Cathy
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mal du siècle, n.
A condition of apathy and world-weariness, associated with pessimism concerning the state of the world, and often combined with nostalgia for the past.
The cure? Why a sailing trip to Polynesia, of course!
The blues of the sky blend into the blues of the water; the sealife and birds look hand-painted; the green-earth smell just reaches the boat as you anchor and the flowers never seem to wilt, their scents just approaching too sweet for your nose. This is not a “wine dark sea”, but waters of turquoise, pale blue and aquamarine that you can see through and through into the deep realms where the manta rays glide past. The sea that at night, is covered with an inverted bowl of stars bird-shot into the void. The beauty you read about come to life.
And then there are the skulls. Empty-eyed sockets staring at you from under piles of rocks. The flowers still sweet all around the dead. A incredibly beautiful stream just down past the marae.
An amazing family trip. Epic (yup, I said it). Truly an adventure of swimming and diving with animals I’d never thought I’d see, drinking all things ginger-flavored, laughing so hard my sides ached, celebrating David’s birthday, harnessing myself to the boat to help retrieve a line (did I do that??), touching eels, touching an octopus, touching rays, getting bitten by a ray!, the hot hot hike to an incredible view, the hard hard bike to another incredible view, happening upon a Sunday choir praising our One Father, imagining how Cook & his crew must have felt dazed to arrive upon this Paradise after crossing the ocean, trying to reconcile the brutal with the beauty....
This was our family trip. Epic. Beyond the postcard.
Shelby
-The manta rays were definitely one of the coolest things I've ever seen. It was amazing to see the huge pelagic creatures in such a shallow lagoon, heedless of the bustle and tourism around them; however, the really memorable aspect was skin diving down to the rays and swimming with them. They did not seem to care one bit that we were there (until we touched them) and dwarfed us in size. They blended in so well with their surroundings that even in shallow water, it was difficult to make them out from the coral around them.
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-The stars were awe-inspiring. On a really, really good day in a remote location in the states, you can see a part of the Milky Way. On any given night in polynesia, you can see the Milky Way's band stretching from horizon to horizon, an unmistakable myriad of stars so dense that it is impossible to distinguish individual bodies.
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-The halliard fiasco was, while maybe not a good, a memorable experience nonetheless. So many things went wrong all at once and it is a miracle that no one went overboard in the rough swells. We overpowered the ship due to higher than expected winds outside of the channel. Water was pouring over the starboard pontoon as it disappeared into the trough of each swell. One of the submersions popped open the starboard hatch and a massive amount of water filled mom and dad's cabin in a matter of seconds, getting on camera equipment, charts, towels, everything. Soon after the bilge pump alarm begin going off and we scrambled to dry contain the water. While cleaning up the water, dad stuck his head into the cabin and said we needed to add a reef to the jib. I left mom in the cabin, and even though Anna and I both worked at it, we could not furl the jib, even while luffing, because the wind was too taut. We eventually wenched it in. Shortly after, Anna pointed out that there was a line in the water. I ran up to the bow and saw that the halliard had been washed overboard and was trailing behind the boat. I began pulling it in until I felt a lot of resistance, and assumed it had gotten caught on the prop. About that time, the starboard engine shut down and began wailing, and dad said he lost control of the rudder. It seems the halliard (which I forgot to stow, it should be added) had become wrapped around both the rudder and the prop. Mom and I decided to try and get it free, so we suited up in lifejackets and the most useless harnesses I have ever seen. We took a knife to the halliard in an effort to release tension and maybe free up the rudder. The rudder became free, but the prop was still wrapped. After trying multiple methods to untangle it boat side, I decided that I needed to pull up the remaining part of the halliard trailing behind the boat and attached to the prop so that it did not become tangled in the port prop as well. Against my family's wishes, I tied myself to the boat, stuck my head in the water off the stern, and grabbed the halliard. We tied it to the boat and limped to our mooring. Upon skin diving in the bay, I found that the halliard was wrapped just once around the prop.
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-In Tahiti after Air France went on strike, they gave us each a $90 per diem for dinner. There was no way we could or should use all of that in one meal, but we certainly wanted to try. For starters, I encouraged my family to order the sashimi tuna since it was fresh, cheap (relatively), and difficult to find in the states. We had it once before on the trip at Bloody Mary's, and they served the normal, few pieces of meat amount; however, the waiter at this restaurant brought out a HUGE loaf of fish for each of us. We were appalled and told the waiter that we ordered the appetizer, not the entree portion, but he confirmed that the loaf was, in fact, the appetizer. I guess they are used to fat Americans. None of us could come anywhere close to finishing our tuna (this was just the appetizer), so we started feeding it to a cat that had befriended us. At first he was overjoyed, but after a while he slowed, and then stopped eating and just laid down. He could not move for a while. Needless to say, I haven't eaten tuna since.
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