Sunshine on Tahiti

We video called a couple of friends this morning, and they both said the same thing – is that backdrop real or one of the fake ones from Microsoft? You can see what they mean – the sky is so perfectly blue, with palm tree silhouettes, that you could be forgiven for thinking it was computer generated. However, when they saw people moving in the background (including two familiar and not-so-small-anymore blond boys learning how to skateboard) they were, convinced that we are, genuinely, docked in the centre of Papeete (the capital of Tahiti, and of French Polynesia – the population is only 26,000, but it’s the biggest place we’ve been since Panama in January, so it feels huge).

We are in a marina, rather than anchored, because we really need to be tied on to something secure to calm our nerves for a while. A couple of days ago we were out shopping (oh my word, there is (relatively speaking) so much stuff to buy here – a wetsuit for Roo, a skateboard for Kit, birthday lego (surprisingly hard to find – we are in the Francophile world of Playmobil here), shorts and underpants for all the men folk (what do they do to them to make them wear out so quickly?), an electric toothbrush, fabric with a Polynesian design and blackout backing for curtains so we can watch the projector in the saloon in the day time, a replacement Switch controller – the list has been building since Panama – probably one big Amazon shop would’ve done it back home, but we won’t be here that long (the supply chain is a bit rusty – we can see from tracking that our new windlass started out in Germany two weeks ago, and has traveled to the UK, then the US, Canada, Australia and NZ and it’s still not here yet), so we have been on several sweaty in person shopping excursions instead – the stuff to buy is not in convenient air conditioned malls – it’s in hot, lively streets where people wave and smile and women wear flowers in their hair). After splitting up to tackle the shopping list more efficiently (Charlie had to deal with getting the alternator welded, I had to get new underpants for the children – this blue/pink division of labour irks me greatly, but was much more successful than me dealing with the welding and Charlie buying the pants), we reconvened at the dinghy and I was considering nipping into one more shop for yoghurt and apples, when Maggie texted to say it was getting windy. We are so grateful she did, and that Charlie’s Captain’s spidey sense said we should get back to LG asap, because, when we got to her, she was not where we had left her. She was about 200m from the rest of the boats in the anchorage, and only about 50m from the reef. Speeding towards her in the dinghy, hoping she wasn’t going to drift further before we got to her, was one of the most stomach churningly awful experiences any of us has had since we left home. Thankfully cruisers are a good sort and some kind soul had spotted her, whizzed over in a dinghy and dropped her other anchor to stop her drifting further. We’ve done the same for others before, because we know what it would be like to lose your home, but we definitely owe the karma bank now and will be continue to pay it forward in future. (We will, I hope, also be reverting to our trusty never-dragged-in-two-years-despite-gusts-of-50-knots Rocna-and-chain combo for future anchoring – the flimsy aluminium, I-can-lift-it-with-one-hand Fortress anchor and rope pairing is not very confidence inspiring now).

Sadly that is not our only tale of woe since the last blog update. We also very nearly lost our mast. (I can hear someone paraphrasing Oscar Wilde – to have one boating mishap may be regarded as misfortune, but to have two looks like carelessness). In technical terms, what happened was that the tangs holding the lower shrouds to the mast suffered from metal fatigue. In layman’s terms, the metal brackets holding four of the six big metal wires that keep the mast from falling down, broke, so the big metal wires were no longer holding the mast up. Thankfully our mast is keel stepped (it goes through the deck, and through our living room, to rest on the keel) rather than deck stepped (some masts literally just rest on the deck), and the two top shrouds (the thick metal wires from the top of the mast) stayed put, so, although the mast was alarmingly wobbly, it didn’t come down. Another seat-of-the-pants, praying-to-a-God-I-don’t-believe-in, moment. (It’s hard to pinpoint the reason for the failure – we didn’t crash into anything or get hit by a big gust – Charlie’s best guess is that the rig just hasn’t been tight enough for a while, and every time the shrouds tightened and slackened over months and months (years and years?) the metal of the tangs flexed a bit, and this weakened them until they broke with a huge bang. Suddenly the shrouds were on the deck rather than up the mast. I made a panicked call on the radio to Selkie, and Nick and TT came to the rescue. Can’t thank you enough for being there for us (again) guys.)

All this was particularly alarming as we’d spent the previous 3 weeks in the calm waters of Fakarava lagoon just chilling out – walking, cycling, eating pastries and french bread for breakfast, skateboarding with the local kids in the basket ball court, and snorkelling (the south pass is the best snorkelling I’ve ever done – no need to scuba – SO much to see – as long as you time it right – the tide runs fast). We were not expecting the washing machine waves outside the pass. When the rig broke we turned round and limped back into the safety of the lagoon to wait for parts – which is always frustrating, but, if you have to wait, Fakarava is a good place to do it.

So, we missed Charlie’s tattoo appointment in Tahiti (it was literally the only fixed date we had in the diary for months), but he managed to reschedule – when we were here 14 years ago, we both got tattoos from Efraima on the day we visited him, in his studio in the main market – he now has a bigger studio across the road and a waiting list to match. Initially he told Charlie he was totally booked up until August, but when Charlie gave him a sob story about how he’d been waiting 14 years and sailed half way around the world to see him, he agreed to squeeze him in. I went to see his brother Simeon instead, who gave me the most beautifully detailed tattoo ever – the only problem with it is that it now makes all my other tattoos look a bit rubbish! We will continue our cultural tour of Tahiti later in the week at the Heiva festival (traditional dancing and singing competition), followed by the Polynesian games (imagine Highland Games with coconut tree climbing, fruit carrying, javelin throwing and rock lifting instead of caber tossing) and a road trip to the Botanical Gardens for my belated birthday celebrations (my actual birthday turned out to be a public holiday, so no cars available to hire for a road trip, and it was also when we had, yet another, anchoring related incident that meant Charlie and Nick missed dinner, so we all agreed to re-run the festivities on another day).

Best of all, we can enjoy all this gallivanting with a clear conscience, as it’s officially home school summer holidays! We decided the boys (and their teachers) deserved a holiday, so we are following Scottish school hols, from July 1st to Aug 17th (although I’m not sure we’ll last that long if the teenage ‘I don’t have anything to do’ flopping about doesn’t stop soon). Actually, the ‘holidays’ will be more like ‘summer camp’ – they will still have to do an hour of either touch typing/coding/sailing/boat jobs every day. (Kit could do with the sailing practice – he very excitedly took our inflatable catamaran out by himself for the first time…and capsized it within 30 seconds. He was suddenly very grateful for the lifejacket he’d been refusing to wear 2 minutes earlier!)

Both boys are actually really excited about the prospect of a longer break from home school – we are planning to enroll them in a real bricks-and-mortar school in NZ and they are looking forward to having pals to play with (and, let’s face it, to not having mummy teach them). I’ve been working on meeting the criteria to become a midwife in NZ too (I am finally on their register (woo hoo!) but all overseas trained midwives have to complete courses in cultural competence, prescribing, newborn examinations and NZ systems of midwifery – it’s great to be learning again, and the prescribing/newborn courses are extra skills that will be really useful to have. I wasn’t sure what to make of the cultural competence course to begin with – surely it’s just about treating everyone equally? Isn’t that just a given in midwifery, whatever your background? But it’s actually been really thought provoking so far, taking me out of my comfort zone, particularly when talking about White Fragility – the defensiveness that white people (this one included) have when it’s suggested that, just by being white, and without ever being deliberately mean to people of colour, you are still part of the problem in our systemically racist society. On a cheerier note, I read something else that really resonated with me – the idea that all communications with women (and to be honest, with everyone you deal with in all aspects of your life, children, parents, clients, colleagues, strangers) ought to be based on the the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, NZ’s founding document – Partnership, Participation and Protection. It’s very simple really – all negotiations between people should enhance the mana (power) of the other participants – I like this much more than just saying ‘treat other people with respect’ – it means you should actively make sure you make other people feel good about your interactions.

So, with all this planning about schools and jobs going on, we’ve been having discussions with an immigration agent about our stay in NZ. He said thinks I will get a job (good news) but that I would be unlikely to get a work visa for less than a year (unexpected news), so that is now our plan. Which means, as we’ll be in NZ longer than expected, we’re going to come home for Christmas! And to celebrate this, we watched Sunshine on Leith tonight with the boys, and seeing Edinburgh gave us all a warm fuzzy feeling inside (as well as plenty of opportunity to debate where this or that scene was shot, and whether it’s possible to get from one place to another in the time allowed on screen). And yes, we were all singing 500 miles at the end!

A motu in Fakarava

Family walk on Fakarava with flowers in our hair

Kit insisted we took Stitch the giant blue stuffed toy on the walk too…

Charlie got the camera out to take a photo of Kit’s maiden solo voyage in the Guppy…sadly he didn’t stay upright long enough to get a picture before he capsized. He was shaken but fine and with a bit of cajoling came back out with me that afternoon so as not to be scared of it

Moorea, as seen from the airport anchorage on Tahiti. Before we dragged

Can you spot the difference? This is the exact same view but from 14 years ago…

The most painful thing he’s ever had done, apparently

My birthday present to myself. (That’s my concentrating face, trying to take a selfie)

My 44th birthday – carrot, apple and raisin cake – yum!

Games in the park (it’s a great Finnish game called Molkke, that we first played with Paul and Katie in Bedfordshire, and then found in a shop in Tahiti. Each skittle has a number on it, if you just knock down one skittle you get the number of points on it, but if you knock down more than one skittle the number of points you get is the number of skittles you’ve hit. The skittles are put upright again where they fall. First to 50 wins, but if you go over 50 you go back to 25. And if you fail to hit anything 3 times in a row, you’re out. All clear? Good!)

No cruiser ever wants to see a message like this!

Safe and sound tied on to a dock!

Two blond boys learning to skateboard (to prove it’s not a fake backdrop!)