Extreme Cooking and Dining
So, what do you eat on the boat? Like canned food and more canned food? No, not really. On our first trip from Tahiti to Tuamotus and back, my friend and sailing mentor Karissa tells me that “you can cook anything you would cook at home, just depends how much time and effort you want to put into it”. So here we are throwing a Thanksgiving dinner in the open ocean: On our Tahiti-Hawaii crossing, we discover early on our trip that all French men are gourmet cooks. If two out of two happen to be, it is only logical that the rest should be. Also, I dated one. He…
5:50 am Struggle
Sometimes you don’t know how sleepy you are until you find yourself fumbling with clothes while standing on one leg, balancing against the side of the hull, before your early shift. Can’t fit into my shorts for some reasons. A call to the Nike customer support would go like this: Nike: Ma’am, has your caloric intake increased within the last few weeks? Me: Yes, sir, we have been pigging out since Thanksgiving but not since yesterday when I wore them last. (Yes, it is not only acceptable to wear yesterday’s clothes for the next day’s shift but kind of expected).) Nike: Ma’am, can you describe those shorts to me please,…
Hair Washing 101
I never understood those sea salt hair products. I got the opportunity to experiment with “the real and organic” sea salt for two weeks and still don’t get it. My hair is as matted as our cat’s underbelly. I will try to talk our cat into letting me take his grooming appt when I get back to Seattle. I am considering wearing a shower cap every time I go to the cockpit. Day 7 – Guinness world record in washing hair. The freshwater future on the boat is quite uncertain at this point and I have to get a little creative. How about shooting a useless time-wasting self-absorbed YouTube video?…
The Bird
Day 5 –Jim wakes me up from an afternoon nap by tugging at my ankle. We have a stowaway! Trump better build his promised gold-plated wall quickly, we are not even safe even in our own boat! I crawl upstairs, bleary-eyed, and try to make sense of the situation. The stowaway happens to be a bird resembling a blue-footed boobie, which I have seen in Galapagos, but with yellow feet. He seems to have his right wing injured and refuses to eat my fried breadfruit. Also, he tries to bite Pierre when he offers him some fried eggs. Apparently, we have morally offended him by offering eggs. The bird is…
Crossing the Equator
Tonight, on my shift we will cross the equator. Pierre tells me I must give gifts to Neptune. What kind? Good ones, like a laptop and the like, he replies. I am willing to sacrifice the fridge, the dessalator, and a bunch of other broken things but my environmentally conscious citizen’s mind won’t let me go there. The best thing on this boat is my husband. Can I throw him while he is wearing the Spinlock and then reel him in with the Life-Sling? The captain says “no”. During my night shift, I squeeze into the chest-minimizing device (aka Spinlock harness) and fiercely steer the ship towards the equator. The…
Sailing Boot Camp
This sailing boot camp is merciless. It must be like the astronauts, learning to live in a zero-gravity environment. Well, not that extreme but I find I must quickly develop brand new skills in everything I do. Lesson 1 – Learning How to Shower on a Moving Sailboat The most effective way to shower is while sitting on the toilet. Otherwise you need a helmet, knee and elbow pads. The toilet seat has now become loose from the abuse. Once you have almost mastered the skills of showering or peeing on a bouncing toilet, Sailing Camp raises the bar. How about you do all that but without the fresh water?…
Day 1
The day starts with a quick trip to the market for the last-minute fruits and vegetables and gratuit good-bye mosquito bites. The shower mesh bags end up working well for this project. All four of us wedge ourselves into the non-American-size Pierre’s car and head to the immigration office at the airport. We wait, and we wait, and we wait. The immigration officer must email some document to the Port of Papeete to clear us for departure and then get it emailed back. Arnaud warns us that an email here can take up to an hour to reach the destination. Turns out he is not joking. I ask if it…
Meet the Crew
If somebody would have told me a year ago that I would be crossing the ocean(!) on my own sailboat(!) for two weeks(!) with no breaks(!), I would have thought: 1) Wishful thinking. 2) Too scary. 3) What’s the point? Our dear non-sailing friends and family had even more thoughts: So how do you cross the ocean? What do you mean you sail at night? You can’t anchor? Is it really that deep? Aren’t you afraid of crashing into other anchored ship? Aren’t you afraid to sail in the dark? When do you sleep? What if you need to get out? What if you don’t get along with the rest…
In Papeete Marina
We are in Papeete marina and preparing for moving the boat to Hawaii. It is hot and humid here, as summer in Tahiti should be. Rain showers come and go soaking us to the last thread while walking on the street. The laundry never dries outside. Seattle is clueless about what ‘rain’ really means. Welcome to the tropics! I am about to learn how much time goes into opening and closing hatches on the boat. I occupy myself with endless cleaning and familiarizing with hatches, cabinets, newly discovered nooks and crannies, cleaning some nasty slimy biofilm from the water tanks, and scrubbing the teak floors. Multiple times. While dripping in…
Moe Tere
Why would you buy a boat? How do you buy a boat? How do you choose a boat? I will get back to what lead to the decision to buy the boat and where the boat will take us (we hope) but fast forward and here it is: a Freydis 49. A 49-foot custom catamaran built in France and currently located in Tahiti. The boat was the brain-child of the well-respected yacht designer Erik Lerouge and built in France for a fascinating person, who due to an accident became a wheelchair-bound, yet still managed to sail around the world in this boat. The next owners Patrick and Christine refit it…