Sunday, September 28, 2003

6:30:19 PM     6:26:20 PM     The Best Coconut in the World The next destination on our itinerary was Mangareva, part of the Iles Gambiers in southern French Polynesia. These islands are the closest to Pitcairn, and Mangareva has an airport, with a prop plane from Tahiti once a week (a four-hour flight). (It would be only 2 days by boat to Pitcairn, but the catch is that there is no regular boat; going to Mangareva isn't a way to get to Pictcairn.) The reason for the air connection over such a long distance, to service an island with less than a thousand residents, is the black pearl industry. Mangareva is one of the few lagoons in the South Pacific that grows black pearl oysters. The black-lipped pearl oyster looks different from what we think of as an oyster. First of all, the shape of the shell looks more like a scallop than an oyster--flat and round--and second, they are very large. The oysters take years to grow, hanging off a line suspended by buoys in the shallow lagoon, and are periodically opened up to be seeded with a nucleus made of Mississippi river clam shell. This is covered with nacre by the oyster over the course of 18 to 24 months, and then removed. At that time, another nucleus is introduced until the oyster isn[base ']t making very good pearls any more. By then the oyster can be up to 20 cm across! The shells are very beautiful, and can be polished and carved on. However, most of them end up in piles by the shore and burned. Our stop in Mangareva was weather-dependent because of the dangerous lagoon entrance. In contrast to Pitcairn, which is a younger island, this one is surrounded by a very large lagoon. The island group was formed from two volcanoes side by side. The southern one is all but gone, save for a few small bits sticking out, and the northern one has only the northwest edge of a caldera left; that is the main island. The northern group is ringed by motus, which are thin barrier islands made from the outer coral ring. It is typical of this type of island group that approaching by boat is tricky. The ocean will change from thousands of metres to a few metres very suddenly, far far from the island. One has to follow the chart very carefully and enter through a passage into the lagoon. There is usually one caused by fresh-water run-off from rain, which kills the coral in one area and leaves a navigable channel. Attempts to do this during heavy weather or with bad charts has resulted in many a shipwreck. Fortunately, the weather was relatively calm and the passage was well-marked. We motored through the lagoon and were able to anchor in the inner harbour, right off the main settlement. I say settlement rather than town because there is hardly anything that can be called a town. Normally, crew members go off to find a cheap hotel, but there was nothing of the sort to be found. There was something called a guest house, but it looked just like someone's house, and it was $100 (all prices in USD) per night. Prices in French Polynesia are shocking. There was hardly anything to buy, but a small bag of potato chips was $5, as an example. However, like in all of French Polynesia, even in this remote location you could buy baguettes and brioches, plus French cheese. So, the normal day activity for crew on shore leave was to buy a picnic lunch and go for a hike or to the beach. One item that no one bought was black pearls. There wasn't any pearl retail outlet because they were all shipped to Tahiti. However, some of the cultivators offered to sell us some direct. The Captain said that they would be cheaper in Rarotonga, but that was a rare case of really bad advice. Some people traded t-shirts and hats for a pearl or two. And several of the pearl workers were quite taken by some of the female crew and gave them loose pearls and even a necklace. Others were offered a price of $20 each, but they declined. We found out later that black pearls in Rarotonga were 10 times that price, and that the necklace given to one of the crew was worth thousands of dollars! That explains why I am not bringing back any black pearls as souvenirs. My souvenirs are the photographs I did during the hikes. One was to the top of the peak, called Mt. Duff. That was a steep climb with a spectacular view of the island group and the lagoon; you could sit on the edge of a precipice and eat your lunch. Other hikes were along the perimeter road around the island, or across the backbone ridge in a few places. I did all of these. The strange thing about them was the flora. The island is ringed by coconut palms, bananas, and grapefruit trees (more like a pomelo, and the best I have ever had), but the centre of the island is ferns and some kind of pine tree. During the hikes, one could be excused for thinking that one was on Gambier Island, near Vancouver, rather than the Iles Gambiers. I snapped some pictures and they could have been taken on one of the Gulf Islands. You could also walk around and explore the buildings. One strange legacy of a rather fanatical Catholic monk who came in the 1800s was a huge cathedral and a monastery. The former could seat 1200, more than the population of the island, and was still in use. The monastery was in ruin, however. Long, white sand beaches are a feature of motus, not high islands, but there were a few small beaches on Mangareva. One of these was about a 40-minute walk from the ship, and most of the crew ended up there at one time or the other. I decided to go one afternoon by myself and lie in my hammock (souvenir of Panama). It is a typical experience of this trip to sit on a beach and look out over the ocean, and know that hardly anyone has ever been there. No resorts or hotels are around the corner. Tourists or visitors of any kind are almost unknown. Even the locals don't go to the beach much, which explained the plentiful coconuts, both green and brown, all over the sand. These are both useful for cooking and eating raw and would normally be snapped up. We had recently had a coconut-opening workshop on board, and I decided to use my new skills. I was thirsty, and decided that some green coconut milk would be just the thing. The green coconuts have sweet milk and thin gelatinous meat, if you can call it meat at that stage. Such a nut is called a "drinking nut" or a "jelly nut", depending on how much meat has been deposited on the inside of the hard shell. The brown coconuts are much older and the milk is less sweet. The meat contains the goodness and is ground up with water and then pressed to make the coconut cream that you buy in cans for your Thai curry. It is difficult to husk a green coconut and very easy to husk a brown one. That explains why the one you can buy at a supermarket at home has been husked. It is not a drinking nut. Opening a brown nut starts with taking something that looks like a crowbar and peeling the outer husk off. It takes about a minute, and experts can do it in seconds. When you have the centre nut, you can poke a hole in one of the three eyes at one end and drain the water, if you want it. Then you hold it in one hand and tap it across its equator line (if it were a globe and the eyes were at one pole) with the blunt side of a machete or a hammer. If you do it correctly, the coconut will start to split into two perfect halves; a few more taps and it is open. You can extract the meat by cutting it out with a knife and then use the bowls for drinking or serving Polynesian side dishes at dinner. Opening a green nut requires a large, sharp knife, and consists of whittling away the husk to make one end a point. It takes some practice, but eventually you will have removed most of the soft husk on one side. Then you make one horizontal cut across the top and a perfectly round hole about the size of a quarter will appear. I did not come prepared with my sailor's knife and only had the Swiss Army stand-by. However, I was determined to have some coconut and went at it in smaller cuts. Eventually, I made the final stroke and the top popped off like I had opened a can of beer. This was a huge coconut, and must have contained a litre of the sweetest and most fragrant coconut water I have ever tasted. I couldn't drink it all, but wanted some of the jelly. I hacked at the shell to expose the inside and scooped it with a spoon made from some of my coconut shavings. It was like eating incredibly rich creamy coconut-flavoured jello. It was so good that I couldn't stop and ended up eating the whole thing! It was the most delicious coconut in the world. 6:24:16 PM     6:22:20 PM     6:19:53 PM     6:18:15 PM     6:15:39 PM     Pitcairn Island Pitcairn Island is a place that is very difficult to get to. This was something that was in its favour as a hiding place for Fletcher Christian and the mutineers on The Bounty, the people made famous by setting Captain Bligh and 18 of his loyal crew in a longboat and letting them drift and sail 4500 nautical miles to what is now Timor. The descendents of the mutineers liked the island so much that they still live there, more than 200 years later. We were going to Pitcairn to meet and stay with them. Pitcairn is one of the last islands in the archipelago that forms French Polynesia; east and south of it is just a lot of ocean and then South America and Antarctica, respectively. It has no air service, which means that you must arrive by sea if you want to visit. We were sailing the tradewinds from the Galapagos Islands (the trades in that part of the world go west, which means that sailing from Tahiti, which is west of Pitcairn, is difficult), a journey of 2700 nautical miles on a great circle route. We started the trip from the Galapagos on a fresh breeze that eventually blew up into a full-blown gale. We were sailing at 8 knots (about as fast as the Picton Castle will go unless in ridiculous sea conditions), which meant that we were covering a lot of ocean each day, but with the disadvantage that we were also in 10- to 15-foot swells for a while. The seas calmed down, and then went flat calm. Not wanting to drift around for days, the captain motored, but we then met an opposing wind with large swells, which slowed us down. The last 6 days of our 22-day voyage to Pitcairn caused a certain amount of seasickness because we were constantly smashing into big seas. And as we sailed out of the tropics, literally south of the Tropic of Capricorn, it cooled off, so much so that I was wearing four layers of clothes and full rain gear during night watch to keep out the chill of the wind. Eventually, we spotted the island early one morning in the cool and gloomy cloud. It looked nothing like the perfect spot that we had been hearing about. We were prepared for bad anchoring conditions, as the island is more or less a rock 3 km long dropped in the ocean, with no shelter for a sea vessel, and we tried to anchor off Bounty Bay, a small nook from which the residents launch their longboats. That didn't work, so we had to go to the other side of the island, which was protected from wind, but not big swells from a low-pressure system way to the south. The cargo hold of the Picton Castle was filled to bursting with supplies for Pitcairn. The islanders lost their last regular supply ship early this year and it is very difficult for them to get materials. Therefore, we were carrying about 4,000 kilograms of cement, a large amount of wood for building, and, oddly enough, a bulldozer blade, all of which was loaded manually at the dock in Lunenburg. This had to be unloaded and transferred to a longboat at sea, in the swells that were causing our ship and the longboat to bounce up and down about 6 feet relative to each other. Before anyone went ashore, this was our job. Eventually, the cargo was delivered and the port watch bill was posted; I was in the first group to go ashore. We loaded overnight bags into the longboat along with the second load of supplies and got on. We had to go around to the other side of island, which involved crashing through rather large swells and some surf as we came up to the dock. We arrived totally soaked. At the dock we were greeted by the residents who were going to put us up. There are no paved roads on Pitcairn, but a lot of narrow dirt ones. These are navigated by Honda ATVs, which everyone has. They really seat one person, with perhaps some space behind the driver on a motorcycle-style seat. The front and back has some space where you can strap whatever you are carrying, but everyone uses this space to move people around, so we piled our luggage and jumped on. We held on to anything we could while our hosts drove up "The Hill of Difficulty", the name of the road that takes you up to the main settlement of Adamstown, and the Hondas proved themselves magnificently. Later, I came to appreciate what an amazing invention asphalt and concrete sidewalks are. Dirt roads get muddy after rain and the mud gets on all over you, either by being splashed by the tires on the Hondas, or just by kicking it up all over your pants when you walk. I thought that the ship was hard on clothes, but all my shore clothes ended up covered in mud by the end of my stay here. There are 46 residents on Pictairn. We numbered 48, which means that we would totally overwhelm them if all could come ashore. To reduce the effect we would have on the island, the captain allowed only half of the crew off at a time; besides, half of the crew had to remain on the ship in case we had to pull up anchor and heave to (float around with some sails up) if the weather got too bad for anchoring. Not all of the residents of Pitcairn are descendents of the mutineers. There is a teacher and his wife contracted by the High Commissioner in New Zealand, plus a medical practitioner who also doubles as a pastor for the Seventh-Day Adventist Church (the islanders picked this religion for some reason that is not clear). It turned out that I and another member of the crew were put up at the house of the teacher. At first, I would have to say that I was disappointed that I wasn't staying with one of the "true" residents, but Allen and Jude were such gracious hosts that I couldn't have imagined a better experience. As well, as "outsiders", they were able to fill us in on all of what was going on with the island, since something was really going on. Several years ago, a woman police representative was placed on the island by the British government, which is the ultimate ruler of Pitcairn (though most of the government is done through New Zealand). The policewoman "uncovered" some sexual irregularities that had been going on over several years, which had something to do with men having sex with underage girls. While no one seems to deny that this may have indeed happened, the issue seems to have been blown out of proportion and now about half of the men on the island are charged with sex crimes. This has understandably rent the community, since they are really one large family (a lot of inter-marrying). The British government sent 4 law officers (for 46 people?) and 2 social workers to check out the island. They were understandably not welcome, and now only 2 officers are left. But the worst thing is that the Pictcairners get hardly any support from the British for basic services, yet they spend thousands of dollars sending legal delegations to the island to prepare to argue the eventual case. There were 3 magistrates, plus their entourage of a few others, plus 3 defense lawyers when we arrived. They fly to Tahiti, take a small plane to Mangareva, and then get on a chartered 100-ft vessel for the 2-day sea journey to Pitcairn, all of which is very expensive. Some people say that the British would like some excuse to remove many of the men from the island because it will make the community non-viable, and then they wouldn't have to support it any more. It sounds a bit paranoia, but there may be some truth to it. But enough about all the unpleasantness. It is time to describe Pitcairn. Imagine a small island that is just large enough, but not too large, filled with banana trees, coconut palms, mangoes, avocados, pineapple, guavas, papayas, and breadfruit, all for the taking. Imagine an island where overfishing is unheard of, with seas filled with tuna, wahoo, and other delicious fish. Imagine fertile soil with a climate where you can grow practically anything. Plus, imagine steep hills on which you can perch houses that have specacular views of the open ocean, yet be close enough so everyone is connected by a short walk. Imagine a place where everyone is so desperate for outside company that an outside visitor can't walk by any of the houses without being invited in for a chat, or a drink, or even a complete meal. It is about as perfect as you can get! Our hosts, Allan and Jude, were New Zealanders that were on contract to teach the school. There were more than halfway through a year contract, and were sorry to be heading home soon. This was the second time they had come; the first time was about 20 years ago, when they had stayed for several years. At that time they had their children with them, and the school had many students. At the moment, there were only 6 school-age children, and 3 of them were of high-school age, which meant that they stayed at home and did correspondence courses. Therefore, the job of teacher wasn[base ']t all that demanding. However, the lack of young children was a concern for the long-term viability of the island. Most of the residents were older, and with a significant portion of "senior" age. Jude had a cookbook of Pitcairn recipes, which attracted me because of my recent interest in how people eat in different parts of the world. In this community, the food is very local for the simple reason that supply ships come so rarely that imported foods are almost impossible to get. I flipped through the book and found lots of things made from bananas, breadfruit, arrowroot flour, and coconut milk. I made dinner one night, adapting a Malaysian dish ("rendang") to what was available, and made side dishes from the book. A staple side dish is pilhi (pronounced pill-eye), which is grated breadfruit or sweet potato or green banana mashed with salt and maybe coconut milk before being wrapped in a banana leaf and baked. I had always wanted to try breadfruit, but the season was almost over. Banana trees are ubiquitous, but breadfruit trees are owned by specific families; you can't just go and pick one, like you can almost everything else. However, while on a drive with Allan I saw one on the road. Allan thought it might be rotten, but I picked it up and it looked mostly OK. I grated it and added salt, pepper, a bit of coconut milk, and a few tablespoons of flour before wrapping in a banana leaf and baking it. The result was delicious. Imagine a starchy mash with a tropical fruit fragrance, something like bananas, pineapple, and passion fruit. Dessert was something that no one had ever heard of, but is perfect for the island: key lime pie. One of the canned goods that comes by the cartons--so everyone has it--is sweetened condensed milk. Limes grow all over the place, and many people have chickens. All you need is some lime juice, a can of condensed milk, and some egg yolks. A box of gingersnaps was crushed for the crust, and presto, a new island dessert. I went to seek out Irma, the author of the cookbook I had used. She is 75, spry, and very friendly. I came to the door and was immediately invited to tea. She was thrilled to hear the story of how I had made something from her book, and I found out later that everyone had heard it within a few days. Word travels fast in that community! The Pitcairners have an odd communication network (besides the grapevine). Many years ago the British government installed a telephone system, but the technology was very bad and it doesn't work any more. Now, everyone uses VHF radios. This of course makes sense, since ship culture is basic to the island (the origin of everyone there), and VHF is used for near-distance ship-to-ship communication. The radio is on all the time, monitoring channel 16. If you want anyone, you just pick up the mike and say their name three times, standard radio protocol. If that person is home, they will pick up and tell you to move to one of the other channels, where you can continue your conversation. If that person is somewhere else, chances are that they will hear their name. In this way, the system works as telephone--fixed and mobile--and paging system at the same time. All of the Picton Castle crew got used to it, and soon were heard endless calls for ship-mates looking for each other to schedule a walk to the swimming hole or the cave. Activities during the day were mainly about seeing the natural beauty of the island. Pitcairn is a very young island, which means that it is high and steep, with no coral lagoon. (As islands age, a ring of coral forms around the perimeter. The island then starts to sink, which creates a shallow lagoon between the coral ring and the island. Eventually the island will sink completely, and the only thing left will be the coral ring. The top of the coral gets smashed into sand by the surf, which is stabilized with plants, and the coral ring becomes the island, an atoll.) A very steep hillside is the location of "Christian[base ']s Cave", a hole in the hill where Fletcher Christian hid supplies in case he was found by the British and he had to lay low for a while. This walk, like many others on the island, can be quite frightening to anyone with a fear of heights, as it is steep, with many drop-offs. The same could be said of "Ship Landing Point", which is a narrow ridge that comes to a point, overhanging a many-hundred-foot drop-off to Bounty Bay below. Practically everyone did the walks, which probably says something about how dangling from yards day after day makes you less worried about cliff edges. One activity in which all of the crew ashore participated was the weekly church service. The residents of Pitcairn are Seventh-Day Adventists, who worship on Saturday. They also follow many of the same prescriptions of a Kosher diet, and avoid alcohol (fewer than half of the residents are strict about these, though). Because of the inevitable modernization of the island (driving ATVs, using power tools, watching imported videos and DVDs) church attendance was dropping, but special occasions bring everyone out and we all went too. The day before, I was approached by the pastor who said that he had heard I was musical and would I play the organ. I said that I would prefer to sing, if that was an option. He thought perhaps that could be arranged. The reason that he wanted an organist was because the regular organist was off the island and the repertoire of the pastor's daughter was limited. I knew that one of my ship-mates, Jaime, played the piano, and asked her if she wanted to put something together with me. We looked through the hymn book, and the pastor's daughter suggested that a very popular one with the islanders was "The Sweet By and By"; in fact, it is almost the island anthem. Hymns are pretty easy to sight-sing and we had it down pretty well after 20 minutes. The only problem is that my voice is really out of shape! I was careful to do a very light warm-up the morning of the service, as I may have only had one song in my vocal chords. When my turn came up to sing, I asked the congregation to sing the third verse along with me, since the Pitcairners have a distinctive singing style, reminiscent of Polynesian singing (there is a lot of Polynesian in them now, after many generations of mixing with the original Tahitian wives that the mutineers took). It was a great experience for me, and I think the congregation liked it too. Irma came running up to me afterwards and said that hearing me was better than the story about the pilhi! Our trip to Pictairn Island was the third for the Picton Castle, and the Captain had been there before. It was a very special visit for both the ship and the residents, but soon we had to leave. The Pitcairners loaded us up with many stalks of bananas (hundreds of the best bananas we had ever eaten), a freezer full of delicious fish, and all of the vegetables they could spare. They came aboard for a quick going-away celebration and then reboarded their longboat. As had been the tradition on the island for a long time, the residents sang a good-bye song as we pulled up anchor. There were some tears, as no one wanted to leave. Eventually, the longboat returned to Bounty Bay, and we pointed the bow of our ship into the sunset and sailed off to our next destination. 6:12:18 PM     6:10:18 PM     A Party at Sea The wind has died, you are bobbing around in the middle of the ocean, the crew is bored; what do you do? Have a party! We were in the middle of an ocean passage of 2700 nautical miles (approximately 5400 km), from the Galapagos Islands to Pitcairn Island. Things can get really tedious in the middle of such a long crossing and planned activities help to break up the tedium, plus they help us get to know the other crew members a bit better. Because of the way that the "watch system" works, we spend our 8 work hours a day with the same group of about 12 people. We don't get too much of an opportunity to see people in the other watches--except at dinner--because when they are working, they can't socialize and we are probably napping. A party was announced. The party had a theme: tarts and vicars, which meant that you were supposed to dress up as either one. Creating costumes while at sea is a challenge, but at least guys can become vicars with the addition of a white collar made from a piece of sail canvas. And girls can become tarts with the aid of a lot of make-up. But the strange thing is that for some reason there is something about ships that causes men to dress up as women, or so says the captain. He was proven correct, as all of the male crew under 30 ended up in a dress. Most of them are quite thin, and had disappeared into the Bat Cave (the nickname of the aft cabin, which is populated exclusively by women) a few hours before 4 p.m.--the party start time--for lessons on how to wear dresses and even a make-up make-over. Dresses came from two places: some were borrowed from a female crew member of about the same size, and others were purloined from black garbage bags filled with used clothing that we sell or give away to isolated South Pacific communities. At such functions, the captain serves alcohol. Some, in fact many, ships are dry, but not the Picton Castle. The rule on alcohol is for the crew to avoid doing anything that would make the captain have to make a rule about alcohol. Things that would fall into that category would be: showing up for watch really drunk, falling off a yard because of impaired balance, or generally being a nasty drunk. As it turns out, two of the three things have happened (no one has fallen off a yard), but not enough for it to be a pattern that the captain has to modify. I don't know if this is universal, but it seems that the drink of choice on a ship is rum. We usually make a large pot of rum punch or pina coladas and snacks come from the hidden stash in the cargo hold (hidden because the night watches are always snacking and the party food would be gone in a few weeks if it were easily available). We ate dinner as usual that evening--it just became part of the festivities-- and the sun set at the usual early time that we get near the equator (6:30 p.m. is about average). Then the "dance floor" hatch cover lit up with a few strings of Christmas lights. A portable CD player blared tunes that the assigned DJs had assembled from various laptops, and dancing started. Here is where it really got interesting: guys had to figure out how to move around with a dress on. By far most of these guys would have failed at being a drag queen, but there were a few surprises. Another surprise was the women. Two very tall female crew came as tarts, but they actually succeeded in making themselves look like men dressed as women. (I don't think they actually realized that.) At one time late in the evening, the crew was dancing (and falling all over the place because we forgot that the ship is still moving and we didn't have dancing sea legs), I looked up at the stars behind the coloured lights, and all I could think of was that it would be impossible to describe this scene: that somewhere in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean far away from any ship or island or land-inhabiting thing--save for the occasional bird--there was a small community that had forgotten that they were floating on an object that was their home, workplace, entire world. At 10 p.m., rules say that the ship is quiet. Music was turned off, people went back on their normal watches, dresses returned to their owners, and the Picton Castle went from being a floating dance floor to being a ship again. 5:46:38 PM

© Copyright 2003 Andrei Godoroja. Last update: 10/11/03; 12:58:00 AM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.