Swept Away

Ian likes to plan and he has a knack for thinking through the details, even when the boat he’s planning for is not his own. He’s also devilishly persuasive. Long before we’d given any real focus to the question, he’d figured out that we needed to know where Maddi would fly in and out of when she came to visit in December. His suggestion turned out to be Fakarava, where by incredible coincidence, Makara (Ian and Erika) and Starlet (Jennifer and Mark) both intended to be for Christmas. We regretfully explained that while we didn’t really have a plan, per se, we would be much too far east by then, well on our way to the Gambiers. But every once in a while, he’d gently ask if these poor, confused American sailors had a plan yet. After luring us to join them in Moorea for an unplanned (by us) detour, we burned up enough time that, as predicted by Ian, Fakarava actually did make the most sense.
Lo and behold, we found ourselves Christmas eve, faced with an unusual northwest turn in the weather, sailing upwind and backwards (as in north and west), to get to Fakarava according to Ian’s plan, for a delicious Christmas dinner with Makara and Starlet. 
This was only the beginning. Jennifer and Mark had their own devilish ways of derailing our plans, mostly involving Mark’s boyish grin and sentences like,”Let’s sail to Kauehi, dive the pass!” Why not? More north. Then all voices raised the call, “On to Toau!” West.
Ian, meanwhile, had been doing some more scheming. He was willing to concede that we did indeed need to start logging some south and east miles but… rather than sail back to Fakarava in April after visiting the Gambier (as planned?) it would make much, much more sense for us to sail north and meet them in Hawaii to join them for a northwest cruise up to Alaska and down the coast of North America. Back to our beloved Baja and from there, almost a year later than planned, we could hit the Palmyra and the Line Islands on our way to Tonga.
We actually got out Jimmy Cornell’s World Crusing Routes to check it out. Ian’s plan was diabolically clever (it sill sounds a little tempting).
It was only an extra 12,000 miles.
It was difficult indeed to finally turn southeast (as planned?) and leave our friends to continue their northwest journeys. This is the very hardest part of sailing. These goodbye’s feel so sudden and irrevocable. We will almost certainly see Starlet more, which is great, as they are circumnavigating along the same route, more or less, that we will be. But after Alaska, Makara is headed back to the Caribbean and then home to England.
And that’s a long way around for Starlet and Allora.

~MS 

Galeophobia? Galeophilia?

 

 

 

 

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Diving the pass at Kauehi

simple panga, a piece of plywood covering the collapsed fiberglass foredeck

a couple of stops to for the finicky gas outboard, a rag so the fuel cap can be left open to vent

the churning pass looks so much better in 10 rather than 26 knots of wind 

as when we entered, pitching over the standing waves

the usual nervousness, gear, getting it all on

Gary says make the drop quickly to get out of the current

Visibility that transcends imagination, 

a long sloping garden of coral, the vividness of the ocean outside

white-tip sharks cruising the edge above 

out in the unreal blue

fish like butterflies along the reef’s edge, healthy and alive

we regroup and then descend to 27 meters

it doesn’t feel deep, the water is so clear and light

we float along the coral to the beginning of the pass

a narrow canyon, its like flying, whisked along with the current,

sharks passing so near overhead swimming against the inflow 

slick rock and only a little coral, still teeming with fish

parrotfish, triggerfish, dark fish with crazy horns

unnameable tropical fish that will become a part of our dreams

how little aware we were, floating above this galaxy of wildlife beneath our keel

a single tuna shines like it is made of polished stainless steel

we drop into a small depression, caves on one side

the bowl is filled with grouper who have gathered before the full moon in July to mate

they battle mouth to mouth for breeding rights, 

allow us to face off, too, with their glowering jaws

the sharks swim by, poised for something, 

an unexpected moment to seize upon, 

How many fish does it take to keep all these predators fed?

We wait and marvel

then up again over the shallowest rim of the reef

and down into the cirque below, our French dive-master calls the circus

an amphitheater, another dimension

like a poster of the marvelous underwater world that you cannot believe

gray sharks now circle at our level, perched above the silvery cirque

we breath our sparkling air and watch as they come to peer with dark eyes

they demand our attention because they are the biggest, 

but there are so many fish everywhere still by the thousands

we are privileged witnesses to a dream

breathing deep underwater with this bounteous cornucopia of sea-life

dazzles the mind and eyes

like Robert Louis Stevenson’s jeweled pass a century and a half ago

Its hard to imagine this has diminished even a little since then.

~MS

 

 

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