Andrei Godoroja's Radio Weblog

Wed, 26 Nov 2003 12:02:20 GMT

The End of my South Pacific Sailing Adventure Thanks to everyone who has been reading my travelogue. The posting below is the last one in my South Pacific series, as I am now in Australia. I don't know if I'll be continuing this weblog, but I still have more travelling to do--Bali, New Zealand, Central, Northern, and maybe even Western Australia--and I may have the urge to publish more travel writing. You'll know by checking this space from time to time. Happy trails.

Wed, 26 Nov 2003 11:54:25 GMT

Wed, 26 Nov 2003 11:45:09 GMT

Wed, 26 Nov 2003 11:38:35 GMT

Wed, 26 Nov 2003 11:31:58 GMT

Last Stop, Tonga Paradise. I may have found it after 4 months at sea. Tonga was the image that I had in my mind when I signed up for my Picton Castle adventure, though I didn't know it at the time. Sparklingly clear water, warm sea breezes, deep blue skies. I imagined living in a pair of shorts day after day, and waking up to balmy morning air. Some of these I did experience at various times, but never in the same place together. The Caribbean was hot--too hot--and the air was hazy. The water around Pitcairn Island was blue and startlingly clear, but it was coolish in the evening. And my most recent stop, Rarotonga, had very changeable weather--and not tropical at all--with a cool wind that made sitting outside sometimes impossible. Plus, the water was almost too cold for swimming. Yet Tonga, just a few degrees of latitude closer to the equator than Rarotonga, had weather that was much closer to "tropical". That is not to say that it was always perfect. The two days before we arrived were very windy and stormy and we just made it into Neiafu harbour in time to avoid a strong gale that shredded the foresail of a 54-ft yacht owned by friends of Mark & Gabe. Our first few days in the Vava'u island group of Tonga were quite stormy, but shortly afterwards the clouds blew over and the sky and sea went from gray to deep blue. Tonga is geographically quite different from its neighbour countries. Many of the young islands of the South Pacific are "high", which means that they are steep rocks rising out of the sea. Older ones like Rarotonga have a coral ring around them as they sink. But the Vava'u group is a collection of many islands, some large with a long and narrow bay almost like a fjord, and many small and rocky, with a white sand beach on one side. The entire island group is enclosed by a huge coral reef that tames the ocean swell and creates a piece of heaven for people in yachts, allowing them to sail gently between the 40 or so possible anchorages. The natural setting makes it one of the best places in the world for yacht chartering, which explains why two international charter companies have bases there. It also makes it a welcome stop for yachts that are on the "Coconut Milk Run", the path followed by yachts from North America or the Panama Canal, across the South Pacific, on their way to New Zealand. The annual seasonal cycle herds a group of about 500 yachts across the South Pacific on a schedule that ends in November. That is the first month of the tropical cyclone season and the time when boats must make their way out of the cyclone path, a swath of the Pacific that encompasses all of the islands between northern Australia and French Polynesia. Yacht insurance is nullified if you are caught in those waters after December 1st. Brave souls who don't rely on insurance may look for "hurricane holes", very sheltered bays that withstand most (but not all) wind and sea conditions, or may take their boats out of the water and anchor them onto a cradle on land. Otherwise they head for New Zealand or Hawaii. Boaters on the annual migration across the Pacific see a lot of each other and friendships develop while at anchor. Communication within groups is maintained via daily short-wave radio "scheds", which let all know how everyone is doing, what the local conditions are, and where their next landfall will be. Through these daily communications I heard about Robbin and Warren, artists who funded their way across the Pacific by making and selling jewellery, Gordon and Helen, successful Scottish professionals who were taking a sabbatical from their jobs, and Jeff and Deirdre, beneficiaries of the high-tech boom in Seattle. Terry and Kathy were from South Africa, and Chris and Julie were from Belgium. We would meet up on each other's boats for dinners, games of Pictionary, or drinks after a day of snorkelling. We also participated in group shopping expeditions, picnics, and dinners at restaurants. This was another difference between sailing on a yacht and on the Picton Castle that I didn't mention in my last post. One's community is not just your fellow crew-mate, but a collection of cruisers that is doing a similar trip to yours. Therefore, there are always stories to exchange about the same destinations, and hints on the best anchorages, beaches, snorkelling, and shelling. Northern Tonga is just remote enough that its beaches are empty of people, but full of shells. This was a delightful discovery, as walking along the shoreline and stumbling across a perfect cowrie shell is a thrill I had not yet experienced. Robbin and Warren were the master shellers, with Gabe not far behind. I tried to build up a small shell collection over my short time in Tonga, and supplemented my own finds with a few shells that I bought at the local market. I predict that they may become my most evocative souvenirs. Robbin and Warren's boat deserves some description. It has the most beautiful interior of any yacht that I have ever seen. They purchased the boat and had the interior completely renovated to their design. They are craftspeople who work mostly in wood, and their boat is solid teak and bamboo inside. It is like living in a piece of beautiful furniture. A picture would be worth a thousand words here, but the most important feature of the boat is its name: Cuchara, the Spanish word for spoon. The reason it has that name is because the boat was bought and built on spoons. Robbin and Warren started making spoons from coconut shells and found wood and sold them at juried craft shows across the US. They are quite expensive (around $200), but they sell well, as each is both utilitarian and an objet d'art. Their goal was to sell one thousand of them to buy the boat, and they did. I bought one (at "mate's rates", but still a lot) in order to remind myself that you can live an idyllic existence floating around in paradise by making something as ordinary as a spoon, as long as you make it beautiful. Helen, from a boat called Mantra, was an interesting character. She gave up life in a very smart flat on the Thames in London for adventure with her husband. She personifies how people can become very resourceful even if they had been used to a life of comfort and convenience before. Every boater makes their own bread, because flour is easy to carry and bakeries are scarce in the middle of the ocean. But Helen perfected other yeast-based recipes. Going Greek tonight? Make pita breads. Indian requires naans or puri or chapatis. They are all variations on the same thing, even though they all have their own technique, and Helen had perfected them all. Boaters become very resourceful and self-sufficient with concerning food. Some even made their own yoghurt and cheese. Gabe and I tried the former and it was delicious. After 2 weeks of blissful cruising around the islands, Free Spirit returned to the main town and I disembarked for the second time in five months. Mark and Gabe were leaving for New Zealand in a day and I was going to fly directly to Sydney as soon as I could get a flight. My last 4 days allowed me to explore the main town, a very odd mixture of primitive and modern that I have come to expect in that part of the world. Tonga is a much poorer place than Rarotonga, and the village of Neiafu is a few falling-apart buildings and a covered market with a dirt floor. Pigs roam around the streets freely. Here and there are quite nice cafés, laundries, Internet places, and a few newer hotels, only because of one reason: tourists, and especially boaters. The first thing that everyone wants to do after a week or so at sea is laundry. And despite most boats having short-wave-radio-based Internet, long and detailed e-mails must wait for a land connection, which requires an Internet café. An American who came to Tonga and took up residence saw an opportunity and opened a combination Internet café and laundromat. You drop off your dirty clothes and read your e-mail while you wait. It is very successful. If anyone wants to visit Tonga, I would suggest sooner rather than later. It hasn't been "ruined" by tourists with too much money yet, and the prices are reasonable. I stayed in a hotel that was on the water in the main town. Their best rooms, with a view, were on the order of $100 per night, but the hotel was built to address all sectors of the market. Many travellers are young backpackers, and I found many places on my travels that cater to them, with dorm rooms, and communal kitchens and living areas. My hotel had a backpackers wing and I stayed there, for $15 per night. The facility was brand new and two occupants shared the top floor. We had our own bathrooms, and the hotel had a pool and a very nice restaurant overlooking the harbour. It was a great way to spend my last few days in the South Pacific. On the day before I left I rented a bicycle and pedalled around the island as much as I could; that is, until the 32-degree heat wiped me out. (The locals gave me strange looks as I panted up the hills; any sensible person would have been inside with a cool drink.) As I took in the vistas of ocean and islands scattered about, I was struck by how much it all looked like a very tropical version of the Gulf Islands near Vancouver. Mark & Gabe and I mentioned it frequently, and so did Jeff and Deirdre (as they had sailed among the Gulf Islands from Seattle many times). It is too bad that we all see things using references that we find familiar, but in this case the comparison was involuntary. Tonga is a very beautiful place. It is the perfect place to spend a month or so on a boat. I have always loved sailing among the Gulf Islands, and even more to islands north of Georgia Strait, all a day's sail (or two or three) from Vancouver. I had known that I lived near a boater's paradise, but I was struck at how I was reminded of this fact only after having sailed thousands and thousands of nautical miles, down one ocean, across a sea, and most of the way across the largest ocean in the world. Granted, northern Pacific waters are freezing in comparison, and anchorages can be crowded, considering that 5 million people live in the area, but I will never look at the Gulf Islands in the same way, nor take them for granted, again. The next day I packed up my considerable luggage and bags full of local crafts. I took a taxi to the airport, where I boarded a small plane to the main island of Tongatapu. My bonus during my last experience of Tonga, and indeed my entire South Pacific sailing adventure, was to travel 2 seats away from Her Majesty the Queen of Tonga, and to see the islands and coral below, complete with humpback whales and their calfs frolicking in the stunningly clear and blue water. A short time later, I took my seat on the Royal Tongan Airlines 757, bound for Sydney. Around me were people who were returning from a holiday. Their skin was all colours of white, pink, and reddish brown, signs of too much sun in too short a time. I looked at my arms and legs, a perfectly even shade of nut-brown. I was a sailor, at least, for a while.

Mon, 10 Nov 2003 10:16:11 GMT

Mon, 10 Nov 2003 10:10:25 GMT

Mon, 10 Nov 2003 10:03:30 GMT

Farewell Picton Castle, Hello Free Spirit Rarotonga is where I said good-bye to the Picton Castle. I came down to the dock with two other crew-mates who were leaving the ship, did a lot of hugging and waving, and watched the ship slide out of port and over the horizon. Two weeks later I returned to the harbour to look for Free Spirit, a 44-ft Spencer sloop (originally a ketch) owned by Mark and Gabe, people I know from Vancouver. They were doing the "Coconut Milk Run", a route across the South Pacific that starts in French Polynesia or the Galapagos and usually ends in New Zealand. We had been in frequent e-mail contact over the week before and according to their latest message would be making landfall in Rarotonga on that day. They had, and a few days later I moved aboard to be a crew-mate for their next passage, to Tonga. I was very grateful to Mark and Gabe for giving me the opportunity to do some yacht sailing as a postscript to my adventure on a barque, especially to see how a yacht and a sailing ship are very different. The Picton Castle is a time machine with the clock set somewhere around the beginning of the 1900s (with the exception of GPS and a water-maker (for desalination of sea water)). Free Spirit is a modern yacht where the main piece of navigation equipment is a laptop computer. However, even with these differences I was surprised at how the sailing experience of the two vessels was similar. Of course, there were also differences: On Free Spirit I had my own cabin and bathroom, instead of sharing with 18 people. When you clean something, it actually gets clean. When you are on night watch, you are actually sailing the boat, rather than sitting around waiting for a command. The food was better, and I helped provision food items that I liked. There was hot water, and you don't wash dishes in sea water. The music was better (because of Mark's amazing MP3 collection). Sail-handling commands weren't shouted all the time, as if there were an impending catastrophe. The f-word wasn't used in every other sentence (which doesn't bother me, but it does get tiring, and there are more imaginative adjectives around). And, there was an auto-pilot, which means one person can sail, plus check the radar and other instruments at the same time. Don't think that I am saying that sailing on Free Spirit is better than sailing on the Picton Castle, since there were times that I would have rather been on a ship than on a yacht, specifically when we were at sea. Ocean passages on a yacht are something to be endured, while sea conditions felt by the Picton Castle rarely got so bad that you were counting the hours until landfall (motoring into 18-ft swells once was pretty bad, but sailing was always fine). While at sea on the Picton Castle, we did maintenance projects, such as scraping, sanding, painting, varnishing--unless the weather was inclement, which it rarely was. However, initial conversations between yacht cruisers when meeting at anchorages are very telling: the first questions are all about how much sleep one got on the passage to the current location, whether one had enough prepared meals for the whole time, and if there were any weather-caused disasters such as torn sails or broken rigging. A large and heavy ship doesn't get knocked around a lot by waves. It does roll, but when it encounters a large swell it usually goes through it, or the swell comes up and over the side. The effect of big seas is the occasional (or not-so-occasional, depending on conditions) wave that crashes over the rails, soaks the deck and all those who were in the way, and means that you spend a lot of time with wet feet. A yacht is light and will be picked up by a wave and tossed around. The motion on a ship still allows you to walk around, perhaps with one hand always ready to grab a railing, but never got in the way of the galley crew's ability to make three meals a day (see my description of cooking in 10- to 15-ft swells, some months ago). Trying to cook on a yacht in big seas is an exercise in frustration; everything you put on the counter inevitably flies off a minute later. Some people even carry enough dishes so they don't have to wash them for a week or longer. And despite the fact that yachts usually have hot showers, at sea they are rarely used. All of the above explains the first thing that yacht cruisers often do when they make landfall after a challenging passage: have a shower, have a stiff drink, and crash in their bunks for a few hours. Then they go ashore and find a restaurant for dinner. The crew of the Picton Castle, however, arrived at a destination with a bag packed, ready to jump off and enjoy their shore leave. The experience of being at anchor is where a yacht and the Picton Castle were as different as can be. The best time to be on a yacht is while at anchor. You can open all the hatches and windows, put away the lee-cloths (that prevent you rolling out of bed), and generally relax. You can go ashore when you want, or just stay on board and enjoy your boat full of books and music and snorkelling equipment and fresh food that you bought at a local market. In contrast, the minute the Picton Castle crew was cleared in by immigration when we arrived at any destination, we all took off. Something about the ship really made everyone want to get off and have a shore-only experience. This was too bad, since the Picton Castle really wasn't a bad place to spend some down time. You could sling a hammock on the fo'c'sle head and read in peace, unless someone was chipping or grinding rust a few feet away, which often was the case, which is why we wanted to get off the ship... Well, this entry in my weblog marks the end of my Picton Castle story. It was a fascinating journey, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, with memories that I will always treasure. My top experiences, in no particular order, were: making new friends among the crew, eating dinner on the pin-rail with a view of the setting sun, walking up the stairs from the main salon for night watch and seeing the star-filled sky framed by the hatch, swimming in the open sea in 10,000-ft-deep water, standing on the fo'c'sle head on lookout duty and watching dolphins playing in the bow wake, watching the ocean from the quarterdeck on a fine and breezy day, learning shippy skills such as splicing rope and using a sextant, scanning the horizon from the mast top, arriving at each destination with no jet lag, no airport transfer hassles, and no having to get used to the weather. It wasn't all smooth sailing, of course. Living on a ship has its inconveniences, like smelly heads (toilets) and eating off plastic dishes that smelled and tasted like bleach, but I'll forget most of these. However, there is one problem I will cite with the hope it will be rectified. The actual seamanship training, the major reason many of us were aboard, was terrible. I was at sea for 3 months and disembarked with few skills that were transferable to Mark and Gabe's yacht. Learning to read weather, to interpret a radar screen, to trim sails, to use a radio, to understand the fundamentals of anchoring--all of these were the domain of the captain and a few of the professional crew. I picked up some in that list because I already had a foundation by being a pleasure sailor and a boat-owner for more than a decade, but I wonder about my fellow crew-mates. In addition, some of the pro crew thought that their task was to turn us into order-following automatons. That might have made for a well-run ship if the ones doing the ordering were always super-competent, but they weren't. And that is not an environment I can live in. Farewell Picton Castle. You are a fine ship, sturdy, stable, strong, with a stunningly competent master. I would sail any ocean with you. My life has been enriched by my experience at sea, and you were the portal through which I visited the community of sailors. Fair winds and calm seas forever.

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 22:52:34 GMT

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 22:50:39 GMT

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 22:48:48 GMT

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 22:46:59 GMT

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 22:44:36 GMT

Rarotonga Sometimes your memories of a particular place are dominated by a beautiful landscape. Sometimes you remember the intense culture revealed through a built environment. And sometimes you remember a place because of the people you met there. The latter would be the case with Rarotonga. Rarotonga was the end of the first "leg" of the voyage of the Picton Castle, the end of the first 3-month quarter. At this port there was to be a minor crew change, as three of us were getting off and six were joining. It was also the first stop in a while that was a tourist destination--with all of the trappings of such a place: resorts, car and bike rentals, SCUBA diving, bars, restaurants, and souvenir shops. In fact, after Mangareva and Pitcairn the sight of traffic and strip malls--tiny as they were--was a shock. Rarotonga is a small island, only 24 km in circumference, with a permanent population of only about 9000 residents. It is the capital of the Cook Islands, a country made up of several small islands scattered over a large distance. The nearest neighbour island, and second most visited, is Aitutaki, a 50-minute flight away. Rarotonga is the only island in the Cooks with jet service and is the stop on a regular flight from Auckland to Los Angeles. The Cook Islands were annexed by New Zealand near the beginning of the 20th century, but are presently an independent country. However, the currency is the NZ dollar and Cook Islanders have automatic New Zealand citizenship. Because of the ties with its former ruler, many islanders go to New Zealand for higher education, and many Kiwis come for a holiday. The first order of business for many of the crew upon arrival at Avatiu harbour was to find accommodation ashore. (Is it a good sign that the first thing everyone wants to do when they can is to get off the ship?) My tenure as a crew member was ending here and therefore I was not bound by the port watch bill; I could leave the ship immediately if I wanted. But, we arrived too late on Friday afternoon to arrange anything and most of the crew stayed on the ship for the first night. The next morning I arose early to scout out accommodation for myself plus a handful of other crew members with whom I arranged to share a house, if we could find one to rent. Lesley, a fellow crew member, and I rented a scooter and went to look for properties. This turned out to be more difficult than anticipated, as most of the accommodation was full, and this wasn't even the high season. The only things available were way out of our price range. Fortunately, we were saved by a friend of the Captain's whom I will call J. She had some apartments and villas for rent, which were mostly full, but her daughter and family were abroad and their house was empty. J put some of our group in her apartments and set up Lesley, Kevin, Therese, Brendan, and I in the house. J is a very interesting woman. She had a shop in town that sold island crafts and black pearls. She started in business many years ago with a small boutique that sold dresses that she made while she was raising her children. The boutique was successful, and having been a former Miss Rarotonga probably helped. After she sent her second husband packing she decided to expand her businesses and invested in vacation property development, which was why she had apartments and villas. That wasn't enough for her, because she had just started a commercial fishing venture on one of the smaller islands. She leased two fishing trawlers from New Zealand; they arrived on the day the Picton Castle left. There was an inauguration ceremony on the dock that was advertised on the local TV station, with everyone welcome. J had an outdoor kitchen on the roof of her apartments, 2 houses down from her daughter's place, and my crew friends and I used it for several dinner parties, catered by me. I was really going native with my cooking and used these opportunities, plus dinners at our house, to practice local specialties such as "ika mata" (raw tuna marinated in lime juice and then finished with coconut cream and sliced vegetables; basically a South Pacific version of ceviche), and rukau (taro leaves--like rich spinach--braised with onions, tomatoes, and coconut cream). I also introduced J and several Rarotongans to the Pitcairn speciality of pilhi. No breadfruit was available, but grated cooked arrowroot mashed with a banana and some coconut cream made a very acceptable substitute. You may notice that coconuts are a theme in this cuisine. That probably explains why I gained at least 5 pounds during my weeks in Rarotonga. I should probably tell you a bit more about the island. It is nice, if a bit touristy, but the residents are very proud of their culture, which they practice through a lot of singing and dancing. The Cook Island teams usually win dance contests held every year across all of Polynesia. The island is very green and hilly; only the outer edge is at all inhabited. Because the island is so small, there is no real "island weather" that makes a wet and a dry side; therefore it is all quite green and lush. There is one trail that crosses the island and passes by "The Needle", a sharp rocky point in the centre that Michael (another crew member) and I hiked. You climb up one side of the island and on the way down the other side you can stop and have a dip in small ponds fed by the stream along which you descend. After the ship left I fed and sheltered Alex, a destitute crew member (well, not really, since he had his father's credit card), for a few days before he returned to Bermuda and then went off to London to start university. J's daughter returned and I moved into a spare apartment in the building where J lived. I offered to make another dinner for J and some friends as a "thank you" for the favourable rate she charged me. Menus were always tricky because ingredients are quite limited in the supermarkets. Meat comes from New Zealand; prime cuts are expensive and therefore a lot of the cuisine is with things like chicken thighs (huge) and lamb necks and shanks. Local ingredients are not terribly varied, mostly papaya (lots and lots and lots of papayas), taro, sweet potato, and in this season, tomatoes. Several vegetables that we take for granted are expensive: small carrots and single stalks of celery are $1 each. I suppose that is mostly airfare. Fortunately, I particularly like lamb shanks and made them in a style reminiscent of "rendang", a Malaysian dish of braised meat and coconut milk (again). Of the key ingredients, lemon grass was not available, but ginger was imported regularly. The lamb was simmered in coconut milk and ginger, with the addition of lemon peel. Oddly enough, the result was somewhat like a cross between rendang and an Italian method of braising meats in milk. But I felt that the result was truly Polynesian. It was served with all of my new specialities, like pilhi and rukau, plus steamed semi-ripe papaya tossed in butter and fresh basil (which grows in people's gardens like crazy). At this dinner party, I met an acquaintance of J's whom I will call M. M is an American woman who had been living in Rarotonga for 6 years. Through her I was able to learn a few things about people from wealthy temperate-climate countries who come to live on small islands in the tropics. Everyone has their own story, of course, and M's was particularly interesting. Many years ago, M became quite ill with a mysterious illness. She was debilitated and had to stop working. Among all the testing to find out what was wrong was a positive result for HIV; at that time a death sentence. So, for the next few years she lived with the stigma of someone with AIDS. However, it turned out that the tests returned a false positive and the diagnosis was switched to an obscure disorder of the nervous system. However, it didn't change the fact that M was still very ill. Being part of the US medical system, contracting a long-term illness meant financial ruin after all of the insurance ran out, not to mention near impossibility of finding an employer if a recovery sufficient to ever work again was effected. Some friends of M's suggested Rarotonga as a place where one could live a simple and inexpensive life where the weather wasn't particularly challenging; a prototypical tropical island paradise. Here, M could spend the time required to recover. I found this story an interesting contrast to one I heard from a fellow I met in Hawaii once. He was diagnosed with AIDS and decided to cash out everything and move to Hawaii believing it to be a nicer place to die if various drugs didn't work. M's story, of course, was different in that her purpose in moving to a tropical island was to live. An ironic thing about M and her decision to move to Rarotonga was that it didn't turn out to be the tropical paradise she thought. First of all, the weather is not unchallenging. Rarotonga is on the South Pacific cyclone path, and one came close enough to cause a lot of damage two years ago. M was living in a small house on the beach on the south side of the island. One would think that living on the beach with white sand and palm trees right out your front door would be a dream, but it turned into a nightmare when the cyclone stalled 20 miles off shore for five days and blew in all of the front windows. Even during storm-free years the southern winds, which carry air up from Antarctica, can make sitting on the beach or even outside anywhere something to avoid. This is not what you would expect from the tropics, but the truth is that the islands in the South Pacific have their share of bad weather. From November to January everyone is on cyclone alert, January and February is the rainy season when it can pour for days, not to mention the intense humidity, and the winter, despite being drier, can be downright chilly. Certainly, the water was almost too cold to snorkel for the entire time I was there (mid-September to mid-October). I went SCUBA diving one day (which was great; sharks and coral caves), and after 30 minutes my teeth were chattering so hard I could hardly hold my regulator in my mouth. Another problem for M in Rarotonga is that is was not inexpensive. At first it was--six years ago--but in recent years the prices have skyrocketed. M was lucky to find a house that was owned by someone who had left the island and allowed her to live there in return for keeping it maintained, plus a modest rent. But a tourist who last came six years ago would be shocked. There are beach bungalows that rent out at thousands of dollars per week (all prices in CAD). They are nice, but I could never afford them. They all have kitchens so you can cook yourself, but you probably don't want to when you are on a short holiday. In that case you would go out to restaurants where the average main course would be in the area of $20 to $25. A cup of tea and a piece of cake in a café is about $10. And trying to save money by doing your own shopping is difficult when a 250ml jar of peanut butter is $4. A normal-sized jar of mayonnaise is about $7. A loaf of plain sandwich bread is $4 and a slice of deli ham is $1. Most people drink UHT milk (in tetra-paks) because fresh milk is $5 per litre (the airfare thing again). The only things that are not expensive are papayas ($0.65/kg), cabbage, and fish (mahi mahi, tuna, and swordfish, all delicious, at $10/kg). For some reason that I never understood, bananas were $10 per bunch, despite the fact that they grew all over the place. It has been my profound disappointment on this trip to see how places around the world are transformed by tourists with too much money. A particular location will draw visitors perhaps first based on natural beauty. This brings the adventure travellers, looking for places off the beaten path. Eventually they get written up in guide books, which attracts more people. If there is jet service, visitors will come from all around the world, and many of them demand high comfort and are willing to pay. When this happens, the locals go crazy building high-end properties to make a buck off the people with the most money. There seems to be a never-ending source of these well-heeled vacationers, and this starts an inflationary spiral. I could never understand how it was that Rarotongans could afford to live in their country, but so many of the residents are connected with tourism or black pearls, which command artificially inflated prices, that there is a lot of money around. As well, everyone seems to have an uncle or cousin who fishes or has a farm and they get a lot of their basic food supplies outside of the normal cash system. But, I rant. I had almost daily tea-and-Internet dates with M while I was waiting for my next ship to come in and M was preparing to return to the US. After six years, M had finally achieved her goal of gaining back enough health to try a re-introduction to the work world. A lot of rest and a modest but determined exercise regime allowed her to try a normal life again. The hold-up for the past two years was due to a feeling of responsibility for repairing her cyclone-damaged house, which was difficult on her meagre monthly budget and the fact that trying to hire someone to help on the island seemed to be impossible. You try to track down someone who can do repairs by talking to friends, and then try to pin down a date. They promise to come in two months, but they never do, or start but never finish. M also had a very interesting take on her fellow expatriates. At first she joined the community of outsiders, until she found them to be a discontented lot. They seemed happy to have moved to a small tropical island, but the reason for the move was usually some profound dissatisfaction with their previous life, and it carried through to their present one. After a year or so, M preferred to avoid that group. By getting to know J and M I really felt that I was also getting to know Rarotonga. It can be summed up by the fact that it is a small town. Everyone knows everyone else, and like all small towns there is a lot of petty politics and fighting. J was constantly locking horns with government people over the expansion of her business empire, and she personally led a movement to force a former prime minister to resign after she suspected that he had tried to murder her! (A long story that I won't get into... she didn't succeed, but made his life hell.). I have no doubt that J herself would make a fine prime minister, and I would be disappointed if I didn't read that she had tossed her hat into the ring in a few years. J is someone who grew up in a small community, went to New Zealand for education, and returned to improve the lot of her countrymen, hence the fishing start-up. M is someone who came from outside, looking for a paradise to help her regain her health. What she found was new challenges, but she met them and is going back to try a modified version of her previous life. I was in Rarotonga mulling over my Picton Castle experience and wondering what would be coming up next. On my limited budget I shouldn't have kept my deluxe 125cc Suzuki scooter for the whole four weeks, but riding on quiet roads through taro and papaya fields was irresistible, warm wind whistling through your hair and all (no helmets on Rarotonga, but low speed limits). Having wheels gave me an intense feeling of freedom, which I needed at the time. That, plus J and M, is how I will remember Rarotonga.

Sat, 11 Oct 2003 08:56:42 GMT

Food You may have noticed that there has been a lot of discussion about food in this travelogue. Some might even think that I have a food obsession. But I am not the only one; at any time of day or night, someone on the Picton Castle will be having a discussion about food. Erik Newby writes of his experience as a trainee seaman on the Barque Moshulu in the book "The Last Grain Race". He also spends a lot of time talking about food: how people jealously guarded their private stashes of items brought or sent, and how ravenously they would devour them when a splurge was necessary. I have yet to discuss this topic with commercial mariners, or with yachtsmen, but perhaps it is just something about travelling as a working crew member on a sailing ship that creates an obsession with food. Certainly, the sheer amount of physical work creates an appetite. When the crew assembled in Lunenburg for this voyage, the professional crew were way behind in the pre-departure maintenance schedule because of a problem with the dry-dock. We were all put to work on very physical jobs for at least 8 hours a day. Within a few days, the amount of food that we were devouring to make up for spent calories was already obvious. At sea we work eight hours a day, but half of these is spent on night watch, where we mostly just try to stay awake. The other four hours is spent scraping, sanding, painting, chipping rust, scrubbing decks, mopping floors, cleaning heads (toilets), plus the people on galley duty make bread (quite a work-out to knead dough for eight loaves of bread), peel and chop vegetables, and wash dishes (or, in my case, cook everything). This is all quite physical work. The other issue regarding life aboard a sailing ship is that one expends a fair amount of calories just staying upright. The constant motion of the ship requires your body's "core stabilization muscles" to be in constant use, Standing, sitting, or walking a straight line is way more work on a ship than on land. What all this means is that working on a sailing ship makes you hungry all the time, and people eat a lot. We eat on a strict schedule in the day, and snack during the night. The food is quite plentiful--that is, with certain things--and no one goes hungry. My opinion is that the food quality was perhaps more variable than it could have been, and the provisioning was a bit unadventurous, but it is difficult to please the palate of 48 people all the time. Breakfast always offered a selection of dry cereal, which we ate with reconstituted milk (not bad if the galley person mixed it correctly). If we had eggs, there were also often scrambled eggs, and there were sometimes muffins and pancakes. The last two were made from rather institutional-type mixes and so I lost my taste for both of them rather quickly. Lunch was often soup and fresh bread, sometimes accompanied by leftovers from dinner the night before. The bread could be quite good, but because it was usually made by the galley assistants, the quality varied. Sometimes it was puffy and fell apart (too much yeast and not enough kneading), and sometimes it was heavy (started too late and not enough rising). The shapes were always interesting. The soups also varied a lot, and the cook had some novel recipes. The first time we had tomato, peanut, and canned peach curry soup it was an interesting challenge to the senses. The second and subsequent times it was avoided. Dinner was hearty student-dorm food: spaghetti, chili, roast meat, pork chops, stir fry in wraps, and fried fish if we caught some or had been given some by someone from one of the places we visited. For some reason, a lot of things had canned corn in them (tuna salad, meat sauce for spaghetti and pizza?) and canned pineapple (I don't ever want to see a can of pineapple again). There were always plenty of potatoes (fresh, and surprisingly good instant mash), rice, and other starchy things that would make me put on a lot of weight on land, but had no effect while at sea. During the night, there was an abundance of crackers and peanut butter, honey, and jam for snacking. There was also an endless supply of "Mr. Noodles" packages. Mealtimes were announced by the ringing of the galley bell. The crew would start milling around the area where the meal was to be served (the stern, for breakfast and lunch, or midships and the main salon for dinner). At the sound of the bell, line-ups would form immediately and the food was heaped on plates, followed by a display of devouring as if it was the first meal eaten in a long time. No wonder that the crew was easy to please; food was treated as fuel rather than as a pleasure. Oddly enough, conversations about food cravings (i.e. not about what was being eaten) would carry on right through meals, as though people weren't even aware that they were eating. Food conversations often concerned items that were not on board. If there was anything lacking, it would be fresh dairy products, since the Picton Castle did not have refrigerators (only freezers). Therefore, no fresh milk, yogurt, and limited cheese (though many cheeses do freeze well). Fresh vegetables were also a problem about a week out of port when we would run out of anything that could be kept in the vegetable lockers on deck (suitable only for root vegetables; even then, we had to constantly go through them to remove rotting potatoes, cabbages, carrots, onions, rutabagas). For this reason, one of the constant cravings of the crew was for ice cream and salads (not together). The lack of refrigeration also meant that there were no cold drinks, which explained why cold beer and soft drinks were also desired (crew members had stashes of canned beverages that they would occasionally sneak into the freezers, but this was officially forbidden). The other category of cravings--which I did not share--was junk food. At "mail ports", some of the crew received requested care packages of potato chips, various chocolate bars, and jujubes. If there was anything that I craved, it was to enjoy the act of eating, and to eat food that revealed its flavour. I have spent a lot of time studying the cuisines of various countries and have tried to replicate the beautiful simplicity of the Italian kitchen. I also have invested a lot of time in understanding various ways of cooking meats and vegetables, and recognizing when you want to roast, braise, sauté, steam, or poach to achieve a desired effect. We were not lacking many ingredients on the Picton Castle, and there was no attempt to cut costs by skimping on food. Every meal could have been an opportunity to delight the palate, but instead it was just a time to chow down. I suppose that what I really craved was to choose what I wanted for any meal, to select the ingredients, and to prepare it the way I thought best. Such are the privileges of being an adult.

Mon, 29 Sep 2003 02:30:19 GMT

Mon, 29 Sep 2003 02:26:20 GMT

Mon, 29 Sep 2003 02:24:16 GMT

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.

Mon, 29 Sep 2003 02:22:20 GMT

Mon, 29 Sep 2003 02:19:53 GMT

Mon, 29 Sep 2003 02:18:15 GMT

Mon, 29 Sep 2003 02:15:39 GMT

Mon, 29 Sep 2003 02:12:18 GMT

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.

Mon, 29 Sep 2003 02:10:18 GMT

Mon, 29 Sep 2003 01:46:38 GMT

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.

Sun, 10 Aug 2003 10:53:09 GMT

Galley Day The Picton Castle has a full-time professional cook. She works very long hours, starting at 6:30 a.m. for breakfast and ending at 6:00 p.m. when dinner is served. In order to make her job easier, she gets three assistants every day--one from each watch--to cart things up from the cargo hold, wash, peel, and chop vegetables, and to clean up the galley and wash all of the dishes after every meal. The cook gets Monday off, and she also takes a few days off here and there, plus she rarely works when we are at anchor. On these days, the galley slaves, or rather, assistants, cook as well as assist and clean up. There are a few crew members who know their way around a kitchen, and therefore we, since I am included in this group, always seem to work when the cook takes her day off. Galley days are posted on the notice board weekly, and I was looking for my name when the new list was up because I knew it was coming up soon. I was really hoping that my day would be later in the week rather than earlier, as we were sailing in quite hard conditions, with high winds and big seas. Unfortunately, since Monday was the cook's day off, and it was Sunday, it turned out that I was on the next day. That night I hoped that the weather would calm down over night. At 6:30 a.m. the wake-up person from the current watch came by my bunk, and as is usual, the first thing I did was to try to figure out what the seas were doing. We had been sailing for the last few days on almost a beam reach, which meant that the wind was coming from the side, and makes the ship lean over the most. I confirmed that this was still the case as I was definitely sleeping against the side of my bunk. I got up, dressed and stepped out into the early morning to see that in fact we were in the biggest seas so far on this trip! And I had to be in charge of feeding everyone in these conditions. Your day in the galley can be better or worse depending on who your fellow assistants are. Some people are more agreeable than others, some like galley day, and others hate it and sulk all day in the scullery, washing dishes. We had a great crew that day, so at least it was going to be fun. Breakfast was the usual assortment of dry cereals, milk, juices, and today, scrambled eggs. We make all of our own bread, but for breakfast the only thing is tortilla wraps, which people sometimes use for peanut butter and jam rolls. (Eating dry cereal in the conditions of that day is always a challenge. It is difficult enough to get your cereal to pour out of the bag without it being blown out of the bowl by the 25 kt. wind (we usually eat outside) before you can wet it down with some milk (powdered, reconstituted). Then you have to find somewhere to sit where you can anchor yourself with your feet or elbow or something so that you can have both hands to eat.) For the galley crew, all we had to do afterward was to collect dishes and wash them, and to put everything away. Next, lunch. The cook suggested soup. This may not seem to be too smart in such conditions, but it is easier to eat out of a bowl than a plate on such days. We discussed some options and decided that we would make clam chowder. One of the galley slaves went to the cargo hold to rummage for canned clams, one washed and peeled potatoes, and I started a batch of bread. At this time, I should try to describe, really, what the galley is like. It is small, about the size of an apartment kitchen. It has a large cast-iron stove that was built in 1870 and was converted to run off diesel a few years ago. The cooking surface has hot spots and cool ones and you just have to move pots around to find the correct temperature, but the surface never gets hot enough for me. It also has two ovens, each with 2 shelves, for a total of four shelves to bake in. The temperature of the shelves is: too hot, just a bit hotter than I would like, just a bit cooler than I would like, and warm, but not warm enough to actually bake anything. When the ship is moving, everything on the stove and in the ovens, of course, moves along with it. OK, so try to imagine the picture: you are in an apartment-sized kitchen, and today it is tilted to one side because of the wind, plus it is rocking back and forth (sometimes violently) and going up and down about 10 to 15 feet. And soon 45 people are coming for lunch and dinner and you have to feed them, and meals can't be late because they are timed to when the watches change. Making bread in these conditions wasn't too bad: Take a large bowl, add 8 cups of water, yeast, sugar, salt, powdered milk, some oil, and flour. Mix a batter and beat with a whisk for a few minutes, and then start adding flour to make the actual dough. The only challenge is to keep the bowl in one spot on the miniscule counter. Then you dump it out onto the kneading board and it stays put pretty well. At least you have something to hold on to as you knead, and somehow or other, you can tune out the constant motion. When the dough was ready for first rising we started on the soup. In two very large pots we browned some onions on the slow range. Everything takes at least twice as long to do as I am used to, so just browning about 6 chopped onions took about 20 minutes. Then we added cubed potatoes and got them just starting to cook, which took an additional 15 minutes or so. Then we added the juice from the clams and several pitchers of reconstituted milk. The milk we use is not "instant" skim milk, but full cream powder. It tastes OK, but is a pain to make because you have to start by making a paste and then thinning it with water; otherwise you get really lumpy milk, and in fact most people still don't get this and so usually it is lumpy. By using two large pots, and anchoring them on the stove with guide rails that have a special name like everything on a ship and I can't remember, we were able to keep the soup in the pots despite the fact that it was sloshing around. While the broth came to a simmer (which took about an hour), I punched down the risen bread dough and shaped it into loaves. Then we added the clam meat and worked on seasoning. This is actually a challenge because you have to multiply everything by several times as compared to how you would season even a dinner-party-sized dish (for, say, eight people). Instead of a few shakes of salt, you do ten. The bread went into the oven while the counters on the aloha deck (the lower deck at the stern) were set with bowls and cutlery. Because of the uneven temperature, the bread has to be rotated through all of the oven shelves to get even cooking and browning, but eventually I had 8 loaves of fresh bread. We carried the huge pots of soup, one at a time with two people so you have one hand for the pot and one for handrails or whatever else you need to balance yourself, and rang the lunch bell. People always seem to be starving on the ship, so everyone runs to get in line. People also get really excited about fresh bread, so lunch went down really well, except for the few people that never like what is served. Some even said it was the best chowder they ever had, which just shows what kind of an appetite you can work up at sea. OK, lunch was out of the way, so it was time to get ready for dinner. We had decided that we were going to something with chicken, and we had retrieved two huge bags of breasts from the freezer to thaw out over the day. How to cook them? And what would stay on the plate, and in the pot while cooking? I decided to try something Italian, which is always popular, and settled on something like Chicken Parmesan, or chicken baked in a tomato sauce with cheese on top, served with pasta. The three vegetarians on board could eat pasta with some sauce reserved for them with grated cheese. The first thing was to brown 45 chicken breasts, which as I said takes a long time because of the lack of sufficient heat to actually brown. That was easy, as they didn't slide around a lot. However, the huge pot of tomoto sauce was trickier. We had to make in all in one pot because we needed the other one for boiling the pasta water, which takes about an hour to get to simmering. Fortunately, with the lid on, the sauce stayed in the pot (mostly). One thing about a lot of pitching and rolling is that there is always one wave that comes along every several minutes that is larger than the other ones. So if you put something down and think it is safe from sliding away or falling over, eventually it will slide or topple. Over the course of the afternoon, more or less everything went for a ride. We decided to make dessert (peach crisp, made with canned peaches, since after about 10 days at sea you are completely out of fresh fruit), and we had peach halves all over the floor after they had stayed in their bowl for a good half an hour. The tomato sauce somehow or other managed to stay in the pot for a good 2 hours, but just as I was pouring it over the chicken in the baking trays, a wave came along and there was sauce everywhere. And baking saucy chicken was trickier than bread because the liquid would slosh around in the pans. Finally, I distributed the boiling (barely) water between two pots and dumped in pasta. We carefully carried the pans of chicken to the main salon (we eat dinner inside when it is dark, and in this part of the time zone in the equatorial winter the sun set at around 6:30, with only about 15 minutes of twilight). When the pasta was ready and dinner was complete, the dinner bell rang and the usual stampede ensued. Anything pasta-like is always a hit, and with dessert that evening, the galley crew were heroes. By the time we cleaned up all of the dishes, pots, and galley, it was 8:00 p.m. The captain came by and asked the galley crew to find him when we were finished. Shortly after, we met him on the quarterdeck and were led to the officer's mess, which is where the captain eats, occasionally with selected crew members. The captain produced a bottle of wine and gave us a commendation for exemplary service in challenging conditions. We shared the bottle, which was a great way to end that day, and then went below to fall into our bunks, totally exhausted!