Yacht La Novia

Just after noon 26th April we cross the equator for the first time.

Celebration mandatory. La Novia is already over run with small pirates in anticipation. These are proper Pirates, dressed for the part and very fierce too. A mermaid with strange blue hair and a winsome smile has appeared on the boat and I have succumbed to serious pressure to dress up too.

No greater love for his children hath a man than to lay down his dignity…

Several tots of Cuban rum were offered up to Neptune to guide us safely across the Pacific.

And so to the Galapagos, with our arrival dominated by concerns about the political fallout from the coup in Ecuador that we have heard of by email. Details are sketchy at first and it sounds like the kind of ‘Snap Election’ in Latin America where only 3 Generals get to vote.

We want to approach the islands in daylight for the fun of the view as much as anything so we are trying to time our arrival at Academy Bay to about 9.00 to 10am. We reckon that gives us something like 3 hours to lose on this rate of progress. Tempting looking fishing spot on a seamount only 5 miles off track, so we plan to drop sail and troll around it for a while in the hope of something for the freezer, always assuming that no unfriendly locals are already there. So far, only Marlin since Panama and the freezer is running low. Ridiculous. Small lures, wire traces and even Rapalas change nothing. We catch 3 Marlin in less than 3 hours and the freezer is still empty.

More news about the coup. Panic over. It turns out to be a popular uprising in response to the President issuing a Free Pardon to the previous President who had been impeached for having looted the country.

The people of Ecuador somehow got the idea that the two of them were splitting the cash, took to the streets and chased them both off to Brazil. The Vice President has promised everyone that it wouldn’t occur to him to profit from his office once he has taken over the gravy train.  Of course it wouldn’t. Shame on you for even thinking of  such a thing. Welcome to Latin America!

Out in the Galapagos, no one can even remember the Vice President’s name.

Even in the euphoric afterglow of completing the longest passage that most cruisers ever undertake, the mundane imperatives of life still command. First order of the day here was haircuts all round. Boys have been moaning about their hair all trip but the motion of the boat and their incurable fidgets made a trim at sea too dangerous.

Everyone studies the same weather forecasts so we had left at about the same time as many other yachts that we knew. In theory, it would be reassuring to stay within a few hours of each other in such a huge expanse of ocean, but in practice it rarely happens. We did keep in touch by email on a daily basis throughout the voyage although we soon found ourselves hundreds of miles apart.

The arrival of 3T & Sea Fever at Hiva Oa after us was hilarious with the kids in a lather of excitement and pent up energy, I started collecting children in our tender before their anchors were even set and before we knew it there were 9 kids running riot on La Novia’s deck.

We spent the next three weeks cruising in the Marquesas, which looking back, have probably been more successful in holding on to their Polynesian roots than the rest of French Polynesia. The scenery is utterly spectacular, the anchorages are lousy and the people of Hiva Oa are particularly friendly. In the absence of taxis or buses, everyone in a car stops to pick up hitch hikers as a matter of course. The days are brutally hot but nights remain cool.

The dreaded ‘NoNo’ flies are not as omnipresent as rumour suggests, but one encounter is enough to force anyone to modify their behaviour to avoid a second. These things excise a chunk of flesh when they come to dinner and the bites itch unbearably for days afterwards.

The Tuamotos are supposed to be a ‘ remoteness’ experience. But it didn’t quite work out that way. The grapevine had been working overtime and Kauehi had been chosen for a gathering of the kiddie boats. Seven boats and 15 children showed up at a deserted motu in the SE corner of the atoll.

After a token attempt at exerting some degree of supervision, the parents faced reality and the whole thing slid into a prolonged scene out of Lord of the Flies. George described it best in his diary:

“We are in the Tuamotos at an Atol called Kauehi. It is paradise and the swimming here is perfect. From the boat the sand on the beach looks white and the sea a blue blue. We made a fire on the beach ther were lots of children. Just as it was geting dark we all saw 1 black tip shark then we saw 10 baby black tip sharks.”

Back in the World, the newspapers are full of anxious discussions of the effects of depriving children of independence and risk as they grow up. Kids in London can no longer walk to school, no longer disappear with their friends on their bikes for the day, no longer build tree houses (and fall out of them) as I did as a boy. The same parents who fret about their children’s obsession with a virtual world of electronic games prevent those children from doing anything interesting in the real world because of both real and sometimes imagined dangers.

Here on a South Sea Island, the children retreated into a virtual world - one of camp fires and dens, sailing dinghies and armies, weapons and battles. Virtually no discipline was either possible or required, although against all odds George succeeded in being awarded 20 lines ( “I must not have swordfights with burning sticks” ). It was a tropical Swallows and Amazons come to life to horrify the army of Nanny-State busy bodies that western tax payers employ to tell them how to bring up their children. Yet, for all this irresponsible parenting, no one got hurt, beyond a few bangs and scrapes which they were too busy to notice. The most extraordinary part of the experience for us was seeing how quickly and intelligently the children took responsibility for their own safety when given the chance to do so.

A couple of hardcore cruising boats arrived at this isolated spot, stayed horrorstruck for a few hours and fled. The HF radio nets started putting out a warning to other boats:

‘Kauehi is taken over with children running wild. Keep clear!’ After that we had it to ourselves.

When the wind shifted north we moved to the village at the other end of the atoll to get to know the locals, organise a kids’ football match against the local team and look at the pearl farms. I think Vinnie Jones must have visited this place. The local kids had the art of the professional foul off to a tee.

I am not normally superstitious. I believe in science, in the laws of probability and the evidence of the senses. These tell me that in matters of chance, past outcomes do not affect future probabilities. But I am a sailor too, so I obviously also believe in the idea of a “Jonah” and keep my eyes open at all times for any sign of one aboard.

Now Pearl farming is a godsend to the people here and has taken over as virtually the sole economic activity in the Tuamotos.

The price of Copra is so low that the effort involved in producing it is nowhere near rewarded. The Japanese have pillaged the Pacific fisheries so ruthlessly that local fishermen cannot make a living offshore and French Nuclear Testing in the Eastern Tuamotus spread Ciguatera poisoning throughout the atolls and shores of French Polynesia destroying the economic value of the inshore and atoll fisheries that had supported people here for a millennium.

The pearl farms employ almost everyone. Without pearl farming, there would be nothing left except for a social security cheque from France.

The detail of the process is truly wonderous to see. The oysters are nurtured with amazing care, producing a pearl every 14 months which is carefully removed without harm to the oyster and replaced with a fresh seed - a perfectly machined sphere of reconstituted mother of pearl ranging in size from a tiny pea to a small marble. The oyster coats this sphere with its own outer skin and another pearl is born. The water temperature, Ph balance and nutritional content are perfect for the oysters and every inhabited atoll is now being farmed for the characteristic greenish grey “Black” pearls.

I have been trying to give my wife some decent pearls ever since I can remember. The first fiasco was at the time of our wedding. I cannot even remember what went wrong. Then I tried again when George was born, only to have it all end in recrimination. This time it would be different. Here we were in Pearl Central, anchored in a lagoon with a pearl farm, its Japanese manager and 250,000 oysters. What could possibly go wrong?

We toured the farm, got to know the quality issues, haggled a bit on the prices and went back to the boat to make up our minds. Having decided to go the whole hog and do it well, we returned in the morning to make the Big Purchase at the farm office.

Which had closed for the season…

I have a feeling that I might be a Pearl Jonah… As George said with some relish and quite a decent stab at Capt’ Jack Sparrow’s mangled tones:

“It’s the Curse of the Black Pearl, Dad”.