Watching Outriggers

They collapse their backs almost caterpillar-like. A forward fold at the hips, then the lower back, mid-back, upper back in a wave. Bowing to power with each stroke. This is the most striking part of the movement when an outrigger glides by. Six bodies folding in unison to a primal rhythm. Not missing a beat even to switch paddles to the other side.

The extended lower arm also catches my eye. As paddle enters water, the arm is not just straight. There is hunger in that reach. Joints of elbow, shoulder, and wrist almost appear to separate bone from bone in a grasp for another inch of water. It is just that difference that will win the race. It’s reaching not only from the shoulder. The body reaches too, from the hips, with the upper torso rotated.

Then the caterpillar power-wave. The strongest paddlers finish with the top hand still shoulder high, and driving straight forward in a salute to the finish line. Lower elbow bends, pointed straight astern, to power the blade out of the water still perfectly parallel with the keel.

From the back of a 6-person team, you see torsos leaning out on both sides, like a colorful, muscled fan. The lower shoulder stays out there, joined by the top hand to make the paddle shaft vertical through the stroke.

The 6th person steers, as there is no other steering mechanism. Some steer with power strokes. Some pry. I saw one team with an exceptionally large steersman enjoying his ride while occasionally dipping in a rudder stroke here and there. Perhaps an outrigger version of weight training.

I know that when I kayak long distances and begin to tire, the finer awareness of direction begins to suffer. Subtle strategies for taking best advantage of conditions give way to slogging. Stubbornness takes over from technique. The brain is the first to go, while the body can continue on autopilot for a long time. In the 6-person outrigger, the steering brain is literally separate from the power body. I can see advantages in this. In competition I’d think you want a lightweight one with enough strength and experience to give the power bodies a course to their advantage.

I haven’t watched solo outrigger paddlers with such raw interest, mostly out of shyness. Do they get their shoulder out over the water on the side opposite the outrigger? It must shift back on the recovery part of the stroke at least.

Today I got my chance to try. In my sea kayak, playing on the shoulder of a reef break full of Tahitians enjoying their Saturday, I met a couple outrigger paddlers. One eventually offered to trade boats for a try, in the calmer water. No matter that we hardly had a few words in common. We had paddles in common, and sign language.

I demonstrated a kayak roll. He pointed to his green outrigger and shook his head. I promised to try not to flip it. Fine when you’re paddling on the left, the side with the nearly weightless outrigger. Twice on the right, at the end of a stroke, the outrigger lifted from the water. Twice an instinctive low brace and a shift of the hips brought it back into submission.

He said I was doing well. “Good! Maitai roa!” He had to work to keep up in my Romany. His learning curve was equally fun to watch. From twitchy hips to playing with edges in 10 minutes. Straight arms were a natural. Rotation initially less so, but his pace got to be more of a challenge to match once his rotation became fluid, about 15 minutes. The Romany had a distinct lift to the bow as he tried to exceed hull speed. Velocity really is a key ingredient to paddling around here.

Historic Polynesian Canoes

Polynesia is the birthplace of the broadest-reaching paddling culture on the planet. The last habitable dots of land to be populated by humans were done so over vast stretches of sea on multi-hulled sailing canoes. So why can’t I find a sailing canoe anywhere in French Polynesia today?

Technically the birthplace wasn’t just Polynesia, but Micronesia and Melanesia as well, together known as Oceania. The movement originated in Taiwan, and eventually populated Madagascar to Hawaii to Easter Island to New Zealand. There is strong evidence that they made it to the Americas in their thorough exploration of the Pacific. Finding it already inhabited, they settled for adopting the sweet potato.

Technically, the exploration and migration was done by sail power, not paddle power, as was theorized at one point. Two experiments, one with Hawaiian paddlers and one with Tahitian paddlers, proved that the human engine is such a hungry machine that not enough food can be carried on board to fuel a month-long journey on muscle-power.

However, today, muscle power is all you see. The strong paddling and racing culture is evidenced by the vast numbers of solo outriggers, 6-person outriggers, and surf skis beating the waters with their paddles. Every waterfront house has some form of watercraft in the yard. Paddling clubs decorate the NW shore of Tahiti with long, slender hulls of every color. Every kilometer less is another club. Even on remote Makemo atoll, there were outrigger races, with what must have been all the young men on the island out to compete.

The other offspring of the canoe culture is the local fishing outrigger. Sometimes cobbled together of tree branches and rebar, these are practical, hard-working craft.

The sight of another small sail caught my eye in Tahiti so I paddled over to investigate. Hobie, read the side of the red plastic craft. It used to be a trimaran, explained the local owner, until a powerboat trimmed it to a single outrigger. It was foot-pedal powered, no paddle in sight. He said there was one other such craft on the whole of Tahiti, and knew nothing about the renaissance of traditional canoe voyaging. So the only sail-equipped paddle vessel I’ve found so far in Polynesia is an American-made import powered by foot pedals. The ironies of history.

Kayak Sailing

Living on a sailboat without a kayak would be like being on land without legs. I slip the paddle into the water and am free. Flip up the sail and I’m dancing with the elements! Sometimes to a beach, to explore a coastline, or just to feel muscles flex and air fill my lungs. Kayaking is more than an activity. It’s a way of being. And kayak sailing is a way of celebrating!

Sailing rowdy downwind, spray flying. Then the long paddle back through heaven-blue water, among coral heads of the Makemo atoll. A mellow black-tip shark cruises the reef. Crested terns hover overhead. Palms bow before the relentless trade winds. I’m lost for a moment in the color of the wave that’s about to break onto my kayak. Translucent turquoise. Or was I imagining it had a color at all, being just a brief shimmer and a splash? Salt spray refreshes, and I paddle on into the next one.

On Fakarava atoll, Henrick sailed my kayak and I paddled his downwind to a little island with a cabin and a sky full of seabirds. I had to work for my surf rides, but he just cruised along, surfing anything he wanted to with the push of the sail. The grin on his face was worth every paddle stroke it took to keep up!

A kayak is freedom in a water world. Sometimes I forget to mention it in the stories, but it’s like forgetting to mention that I’m breathing. Do I have to say it? A kayak and sail in the atolls of Polynesia: I have died and gone to heaven.
Flat Earth Kayak Sails

Lobster Walking

Cruisers mention “lobster walking” on the reef at night, and it sounded as easy as picking coconuts. After one extensive reef prowl and several subsequent observations, we decided that lobsters are actually fictitious creatures, conjured by experienced cruisers to sent the rookies wandering in a harsh landscape at night while they sip their rum and giggle, snug in their yachts. Like a snipe hunt.

We did not yet know this, so one night we kayaked into the lagoon through the broken light of moon on the water; through the waves that had kept Misty pitching on anchor all day. Noddies croaked and terns sounded their high note of alarm as we pulled our kayaks up on the edge of the motu and organized ourselves for the trek. Perhaps they knew the joke.

We trekked out through a strange world of crunchy dead reef and shallow pools of water. Henrick armed himself with a 4-pronged spear that he made with his angle grinder. I carried a net I’d constructed that afternoon on the motu of black netting, cordage, and palm frond. Of course we saw neither claw nor tail of a lobster, but we did observe several small eels.

The eels prowl shallow pools. They are light grey with a darker pattern, as if somebody decorated them with a miniature sponge. One slithered its way from one pool over the sharp crags, and into another pool. It poked its streamlined head into tiny hiding places, sometimes with an open-mouthed lunge. Terrified little fish darted away. Some of them wiggled over land as well, coiling and springing themselves like frogs. A strange world indeed.

Way out, where the relentless ocean swells trip over the reef and pours itself through fissures that become channels that fill the lagoon, I netted a small grouper in my palm frond net, and we killed and gutted it on one of the few patches of ground that was not under water.

On our way back to the kayaks, I spied some strange creature and clomped the net over it. “What is it?” I asked Henrick.

“I think it’s a coconut crab,” he said.

It did fit the description. Something like a giant hermit crab without the shell. We plopped it into Henrick’s bucket, which was barely big enough to contain it. It rode in his front hatch back to the sailboat, and we had it for lunch the next day. The meat was good, tender, almost sweet. A layer of “crab butter” lined its shell and was soft enough to spread on bread.

Tahanea Coconut Expedition

Best of all, there were coconuts on the palm trees in Tahanea! Henrick sharpened his machete and brought a long-handled gaff to hook the coconuts down from their roosts. The nuts were tougher than they looked. One short palm bent itself picturesquely out over the white coral sand towards the water.

Henrick shimmied up as far as possible, and reached out with the hook. He tugged. And tugged. And swung. Finally he threw down the gaff and asked for the machete, which I handed up. He whacked at the stem, and again. The angle was difficult, while gripping the trunk. He hit the husk of the coconut, and tried to twist it from the tree. Said something in Swedish that I’m not supposed to understand.

Eventually, with a lot of sweat and thumping around up there, a coconut plunged into the water. I grabbed it. He repeated the process on another three coconuts and we headed back to Misty delighted with our success.

Detour

We rode the wave train out Fakarava pass about midday on July 28, and set the sails for Tahiti. 255 nm. We were making five knots with a tailwind. Keep that up and the trip should take 51 hours. Estimated arrival: afternoon 2 days out.

Within minutes, the wind dropped. Our speed decreased to three knots. Estimated time: 85 hours, or 3.5 days. Then it died. Estimated arrival: never.

A front of dark clouds sat over our heads. Decision time. We didn’t want to bob around for days, longing for Tahiti. Fakarava was still close enough to see individual palm trees. Henrick didn’t want to go back there, and besides, we had slid out on the beginning of the ebb current and we’d have to wait to the tide change to reenter.

Then the wind changed 180 degrees and blew from the west. Tahanea, an uninhabited atoll to the east we had considered but passed by, was no longer upwind from us. It was our second chance, and that’s all the excuse we needed to point our bow east for the first time in months.

Rain poured down. Waves jumped, colliding from different directions. Looking towards a storm-darkened horizon, I saw a wave leap up, grow, bend itself to a 45-degree angle, then splash down, all in slow motion. That was no wave; that was a whale! A flurry of sea birds carouselled about above the spot. I shouted to Henrick and we both stared at the horizon for a while, but it didn’t repeat the performance.

Squalls came and went. Raindrops pounded the waves in to a soft texture. Orange curtains of rain hung from the low cloud ceiling and bracketed a setting sun. A gibbous moon flirted with our rigging. When the stars came out, the southern cross was on the starboard side, opposite of where it had been since April.

Eventually we sailed ourselves out of the storm front, and back into SE winds. So we started the motor and motor-sailed and tacked to get around an intervening atoll. With the daylight and a cooperative breeze, we glided into the atoll’s middle pass under sail. Henrick looked out from the ratlines and I guided the tiller.

To our surprise, 5 boats anchored just inside the pass to the north, and another one to the south. We headed south, and anchored a respectable distance from the boat, just to catch a nap and let the sun come up to a good angle for seeing the coral heads inside the lagoon before continuing on to another recommended anchorage.

By the time we awoke at 10, two other boats had joined us. I dropped the kayak in the water to check out a promising lagoon. The lagoon was a bust--couldn’t even get in it, so I followed the coastline to the southern pass. My kayak perked its ears up when it saw the wave train from the flooding current, so we went to surf the mini tide race.

I rode the ratlines to watch for coral heads and Henrick steered our way across the atoll later in the morning. Neville on Dreamtime (whom we met in Fakarava) was right that each boat gets their own motu on Tahanea. We saw three vessels in the eastern end, spread out at least a mile apart. We picked a long motu that looked like it had a nice beach for running, and dropped our anchor. Paradise. How could it have gotten prettier than Fakarava? Is it the nature of each place to look even better than the previous? Or did we really save the best atoll for last?

Fakarava Dive

From July 27
Fakarava’s south pass is famous for its congregation of sharks. People often drift through the pass to see them. There are even a couple of dive centers located there to assist in the feeding of divers to the sharks.

It’s been about 13 years for me and over 20 for Henrick since we last dove with SCUBA gear. We thought we’d check out the pass before committing to the depths. The first day I paddled through the pass on a mellow incoming tide and onshore wind. I paddled out into the swell, and sail/surfed back through. Exhilerating!

Even more exhilarating was the third trip out the pass. I was windmilling my way into the blue swells when I felt my kayak move in a strange way. Then again, the stern did a funny little twitch. I looked back to see 3 sharks, all less than 2 meters, but still curious. They were bumping the kayak. One swam up beside me when I stopped paddling and I poked it with the paddle blade, just a little tap to encourage it to depart. It’s a strange feeling to be within petting distance from a shark. I didn’t have the guts to reach my hand out.

The sharks moved on after I lost momentum, and I sailed back in a little subdued.

The next day we kayaked to the pass together. With our masks and snorkels, we leaned over on each other’s kayaks and dipped our noses in. Sharks seemed to keep their distances when we did see them, and the reef was bursting with life! Soon we were hanging comfortably under the kayaks for long drifts. Never have I seen such a place. Every crevice was alive. Colorful coral, little fish darting in and out of it, needle-nosed fish surrounding us on the surface. Groupers, triggers, butterfly fish, wrasses, damsels… every color of the rainbow.

A few days later we signed up for the big dive. Down we went, up the bubbles went, and I reminded myself to relax and trust the tank. A flock of rays met us as we descended, winging their ways off to sea. Henrick and I followed our guide Fannie through valleys of coral busy with life. A black tip reef shark lay on the sand ahead. Reluctantly it moved away as we approached.

Remoras look like something between an eel and a shark, and are equipped to attach themselves by the back of their heads to other floating or swimming objects, like sharks or whales or boats. Or divers. One knew Fannie by name and danced around her as if trying to give her a fishy hug. They are harmless and curious. On Makemo atoll, 8 remoras called Misty their home for a week, eating our scraps and watching us head out to snorkel without alarm.

We drifted into the lagoon and slowly upwards as the coral got shallower. The current increased. A huge barracuda watched us go by as it held its place. They don’t eat them here, because of the ciguatera poisoning that accumulates in predatory fish. Two bright triggerfish chased each other around a little pocket in the coral. The occasional peek underwater reminds me how little I know about all that goes on down there, and how much there is to know. Ah, another lifetime for that study. For now I’m content to watch and wonder at the great colorful mystery of it all.

Fakarava Coconut Expedition

From July 25
After a lazy day in the boat, reorganizing our computers, we went for a short exploratory mission to the nearby motus, islets, and water mazes. We pulled the kayaks up into a coconut grove and went walking. Henrick kept a sharp lookout in the trees for the wild coconut of his dreams. I pointed out a dried-out looking one I’d seen on an earlier jog. It didn’t look promising, but it was low, so I suggested he throw a coral “rock” at it and see if he couldn’t dislodge it.

It only took him 3 throws, and the desiccated nut tumbled to the ground. It was too lightweight to have anything in it, but we carried it around for a while as a show of success.

Soon he spotted a green coconut high in another tree. “Try, try!” I encouraged, and snapped photos of his limbs in tangles of impassioned effort. He did come remarkably close to nailing that coconut, but in the end, it stayed where it was. Reviewing the photos in the camera’s viewfinder doubled us over in laughter, so we ended up satisfied anyway.

Piecing the Great Sky Puzzle

From July 22.
The upside down cupcake of a moon wears the thinnest cap of frosting on its downward dome. The bowsprit reaches up to gobble it, but the moon remains just out of reach, even on the biggest waves. A town glows to the right, from an invisible atoll, the only human-made light around other than the faint red speck atop our mast. Overhead, Scorpius curves his majestic tail into the Milky Way.

I clip my harness into the safety line and install myself atop the hard-topped dodger. Lying on my back, I can fully appreciate the heavens. The mast with its double-reefed sail does a windshield wiper action across Corvus, Spica, and Saturn, and reaches longingly for Arcturus.

The Southern Cross and Alpha Centuari lie roughly between Scorpius and Corvus. I’m trying to figure out how that works with the celestial movements I know from the Baja sky, but the puzzle pieces are 3-dimentional, or 4 if you consider the involvement of time. My insufficient brain is in a quandary, albeit a pleasant one. The Southern Cross is now roughly two spread-hand widths above the southern horizon, a testament to our southern progress as we meander through the south Pacific Islands.

What are those stars in the Milky Way below Crux? I’ll have to look them up. Above Crux, another group with many pairs of stars just a finger-width apart.

The Leaps of the Gazelle, they call similar pairs of stars near the Big Dipper, who is now so deeply plunged into its great vat of ice cream to the north, that only the last 2 stars of the handle show above the cloudy horizon. But those gazelles came south, it appears. A whole heard of them is frolicking about above Crux tonight.

It’s easy to get caught up in surviving, even on the cruise of your dreams. Eat, clean, navigate, set anchor, repair things, sleep, take photos, process them into the computer. As anywhere, a routine can take the consciousness out of living. It’s easy to take the special for granted. I don’t want to, but I find myself doing it anyway. Looking back at photos I’m processing after we’ve left a place, I feel the specialness of that time and place, but sometimes not during the time there. It’s a good lesson that specialness is in each moment. The trick is in not being too distracted to see it. To be present.

The cupcake moon disappears into the great cupboard below the horizon, frosting first, then the darker, unlit portion, clearly visible in the deep Pacific darkness.

The Dramamine begins to wear off and the windshield wiper motion of the mast loses its appeal. I crawl inside for the 30-min catnap portion of my watch. At 30-minute intervals I check the stars for progress. Up come Cygnus and playful little Delphinus, a diamond with a tail that hints at a leaping dolphin. Eventually, Aries.

Once, I start heading back inside without remembering to check the horizon for boats or other hazards, as if the star progress were my only reason for coming on deck. My only impetus for climbing out of the comfortable floor-bed. When it’s rough, it’s the only place I won’t fall out of. Henrick is in the sea-berth, which is like a cradle.

Venus and Aldebaran herald the coming of morning, and Henrick’s watch. We trade beds and I dump myself into the sea berth and into childlike slumber, rocked on the sea, dreaming of stars and glowing galaxies.

Exploring the Motu

From July 20
From our private anchorage in Makemo atoll, we explored the palm forest and paddled into mini-lagoons between the motus. I jogged along the beach in the morning and took long picture-taking walks. We snorkeled together. Henrick repainted some rusty bits on the boat and I scrubbed the galley until it shone. We walked to the ocean side of the motus to scavenge among wave-tossed trash from the world over. Garbage lines the craggy beach, a stunning amount of it.

Plastic bits and bottles, intact light bulbs, a TV set, a metal cooler rusted almost beyond recognition, scientific equipment, fishing equipment, a truck tire, rope. Deodorant from Equador. Laundry soap from Japan. Shampoo from someplace with curly Sanskrit-looking letters. Something round from Spain. Rum bottles, empty of contents or messages.

Hermit crabs rule the motu. Fist-sized crabs with red legs, covered in bumps with short yellow hairs sprouting from the bumps. They inhabit every shell. They claw round holes in fallen coconuts and dig out the innards. They climb up into trees and young palms and wave their little antennae at the world.

We walk through their domain in the shadow of the palm forest. Fallen palm fronds crunch underfoot. Mounds of split coconuts attest to the copra trade of the area. Natives harvest the coconuts, split them, shuck out the meat, and send it out by the burlap bag on the supply ships that periodically pass. Copra is their main economic mainstay, along with tourism. The pearling industry has essentially collapsed.

Palm forest is maintained by burning. Charred trunks and patches of ground tell the tale. When we reach the ocean side of the grove, the wind picks up and we think we hear coconuts falling. Repeated thumps vibrate the ground. I put my hands over my head and look up. Not a coconut in sight. They have all been harvested. Two palm trunks colliding in the wind are making the ground vibrate. Still, we gingerly make haste through the maze of coconut husks and fallen branches back to the lagoon. Henrick wants to harvest a wild coconut, and becomes disillusioned by all the empty trees. It isn’t until the next atoll we visit that we find any coconuts still in the trees, but that’s another tale.

Sailing the Lagoon

On July 11, we sailed down the inside of the Makemo atoll, about 16NM with a brisk tailwind. We took turns climbing up the new ratlines Henrick installed so we could look out for the coral heads. In fifteen knots of wind, whitecaps broke all around, imitating the waves on a coral head, so the lookout needed to keep scanning with a discerning eye.

A couple hours into the exercise, I ducked inside to slap together some sandwiches. Henrick looked out and steered. I ate on the run, a few bites, and another scramble up the ratlines. Henrick gobbled his sandwich with one hand on the tiller. I don’t know how he can ingest food so quickly, but it was lucky he exercised that talent on this day. Just as the last bite went into his mouth, a fish hit the line we were trolling. I took over lookout and steering as he went into fish-slayer mode. We didn’t recognize the fish so he took photos so we could look it up later. Then he filleted it and I skinned it.

I was bagging the fillets as we approached our target anchorage. Henrick jibed to avoid a long reef, and the solar shower flew off the dodger and into the sea. It’s normally tied on, but this time that detail had been overlooked in our departure preparations. Henrick uttered something expressive of the situation, and I offered to swim after it if he would turn upwind. The coral heads would just permit the operation.

In a fine show of teamwork, he cranked the motor on, turned upwind, and approached the bag as nearly as possible. I stood on deck and pointed at the copper-colored bag so we wouldn’t lose sight of it. We couldn’t reach it from the boat, so we agreed that I swim for it. In I went, retrieved it, and headed back through the waves towards Misty, who was moving ahead just enough to hold position in the wind. To swim better, I set the bag on my back, and held the shower tube in my teeth. I felt like such the retriever dog, which was more amusing to think about than the freshly killed fish smell on my hands and all the hungry sharks about, a thought that only occurred to me once I was in the water.

With the solar shower secure, fish fillets in the cooler, and my lunch finally finished, we wove our way between coral heads to an anchorage off an uninhabited, palm-studded motu, or strip of land along the atoll’s perimeter. A motu is the part of an atoll with any elevation at all. An atoll is mostly a ring of coral reef, which breaks up the ocean swell and protects a lagoon on the inside. Like a necklace of pearls with some missing, the motus string themselves incompletely along the atoll’s circumference.

Here we spent over a week in fun, work, and worry over navigating the passes in 20kts of wind, which wouldn’t let up. So we just stayed put. The longer we stayed, the more we liked it, which is a lot because we liked it from the moment we arrived.

Rejoining the Voyage

On July 8, I rejoined Henrick on Makemo atoll, in the Tuamotu group. He had sailed on from the Marquesas while I flew back to work in the states for a few weeks.

From Tahiti, my flight to Makemo passed over several atolls, which look like hollow islands with the thinnest strip of green and white land around the perimeter, or sometimes just a line of reddish coral breaking the sea. Inside the atoll, coral heads polka-dot a blue lagoon. Some atolls have inlets permitting passage from sea to lagoon. Many of the passes show a long stream of whitewater through and beyond them. Around some ends of islands, impressive tidal races are also visible from the air. The Tuamotus are called the Dangerous Archipelago partly for that reason.

The landing strip on Makemo was almost as wide as the land itself. Henrick met me in the one-room thatch roofed hut that functions an airport and showed me the new tattoo on his forearm. He had arranged a ride with the owners of the grocery store in the village, who were going to the airport anyway to pick up a box of mostly green tomatoes.

We spent a few days anchored by the village, and passed those in snorkeling among the coral heads, kayaking the lagoon, and visiting the store to purchase tomatoes and marvel at just how far some of the goods had come to end up on a shelf in the South Pacific. Danish ham. New Zealand milk. French cheese.

A Few Days at Home

I awake in the loft beneath the Great Circle Sailing Chart of the North Pacific Ocean, which actually extends to 30 degrees south latitude. Its freckles of islands were abstract dreams last I slept here in October. The hollow dot of Makemo, in the Tuamotus, is where Henrick waits with the boat now, and I have actually set foot on the steep wet green speck of Nuku Hiva and paddled along the rocky coast of the unlabeled Ua Huka pinprick with its startlingly blue water, slanting light, and curious sea birds.

The constellations of Societies, Cooks, Samoas, and Tongas await our interstellar exploration capsule, Misty. I return to her and Henrick in a couple of days.

After the 25-day crossing from Mexico to the Marquesas, it took some time to fathom what we’d done. To develop a framework for understanding it. That framework still feels rickety at best. It gets reduced to a few sentences to answer “How was your trip?” or “What have you been up to?” If I can’t understand it myself, it becomes that much harder to convey in any depth to someone without even that rickety framework.

Back on the islands, when we met other cruisers, at first it seemed amazing to share that background with other people. The long, solitary journey. But of course, we all had to get our boats there somehow. Conversation would turn to swapping details: winds and calms, fish caught, things broken and how we fixed them or got by without.

I returned to the farm about 3 weeks ago and had one afternoon to get ready for a series of kayaking courses. One afternoon to walk among the tall grass, look over my tenants’ pastures, and feel the farm’s changes of directions without me. Feel my own changes of directions without it. Lament the loss of the dream that guided me here in the first place: hosting kayaking events. Wonder where to go from here.

There’s nothing like a stint of intense work to focus the mind. How easily I fall back into the groove of hyper-busy! How quickly the instinct to care for plants grabs me again. Thin raspberries, prune apple trees, mow. Sun passes by. Showers come and go. The plants look cared for, and I feel more settled.

The perspective of absence deepens the heart’s nest for home, and lines it with new soft feathers. Yet the flight continues, as the fresh breeze will always bring with it the temptation to explore.

photo by Freya Fennwood fenwoodphotography.com

Inter Tropical Convergence Zone

From May 9

The 150-mile wide eddyline between northern hemi weather patterns and southern is called the ITCZ (Inter-tropical Convergence Zone), and last night we found it.

The wind died. The sea was a swell stew, thick with lumps going every which way. Little sailboat Misty twisted and bucked. We started the engine and headed south.

Squalls punctuated the horizon. Fuzzy sea beneath an approaching cloud. Rain sheeted down and we quickly stripped naked to let it cool and rinse our sticky bodies. The reefed mainsail became a spigot, filling my mug in seconds with rainwater infused with the funk of 3 years in a Guaymas boatyard. We left the desalinator running with its shy voice like a windshield wiper hiding below the engine’s bass drone.

Lightning astern, dark skies ahead. We took turns hand-steering through the night. Dawn put on its orange rain suit too, then quickly changed to grey.

The ITCZ is where waves and clouds convene. An inter-faith revival. Clouds of every level and denomination brush fingertips. Waves from all directions merge and pass through each other. The swells bring news of storms and sailors down, births of whales, the taste of coastlines; of glaciers calving, ice flows shifting, and the progress of undersea volcanoes.

Clouds talk of convection currents and winds aloft, the high-altitude migration of impossibly tiny things, the shine of cities on their bellies and the feel of coal smoke between their toes. They gossip of Skamokawa, where all clouds pass to drop a calling card or two. They whisper rumors of deserts seldom seen.

The convention is a masterpiece in greys and whites and subtle steely blues. Dark on light on dark, complex and ever shifting. Sea and sky fill the giant circle of canvas. Swells and clouds, clouds and swells, they feed each other, and the long-winged sea birds hang in between.

Starting Out

April 29, 2012
On April 24, Henrick and I left the lights of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, in our tortured wake and headed for the Marquesas. The 2,700NM crossing should take about a month. It’s the first Pacific crossing for both of us, though Misty is a veteran and bounces us rambunctiously along. Since catching the trade winds, fifteen knots of wind and 8-9’ seas have been the average, on our tail, which is good for progress but makes Misty roll gunnel to gunnel, about 60 degrees, in less than 2 seconds per side, day and night.

In a kayak, hips are the shock absorbers when the seas get fun. When your vessel is 10ft wide, weighs 10 tons, and has no thigh braces, the poor stomach becomes the shock absorber. Green is the reply.

First, there’s rolling, the side to side rocking around a longitudinal axis. The 360-degree kayak roll is the ultimate example. Pitching is forward and back over a horizontal axis, where pitch-poling is an extreme case. Yawing is a side to side pivot around a vertical axis, such as getting broached in a wave. There’s also bobbing, the up and down that leaves you weightless with your paddle clutching air, or very heavy and shoulder deep in the wave next to you. If you’ve ever paddled in clapotis, you know what I mean.

Misty is just another closed-decked, double-ended, seagoing vessel, but big enough to fit two Romany sea kayaks on the wave-pounded deck. She does all of these movements in eternally varying combinations, constantly. I retreat to the forepeak berth to close my eyes. Now I know what a vegetable in feels like in the front hatch of my kayak, and I understand why some come out looking as they do.

If sailing is romantic, then wearing a floppy nylon spray skirt to a formal event is fashionable. Unless of course you like haggard faces and matted hair, vomit-breath, the baggy orange Grundens look, and sleeping in separate sea berths so you don’t clobber each other with the violent movements of the boat.

Far beyond romance, though, long distance blue water sailing is the ultimate teamwork. The common goal of arriving alive unites your efforts. You become passionate about each other’s safety. Just when you think you’ve given all the energy you have, the whisker pole breaks, or the wind rises, and you find some more energy somewhere to deal with it. You see your partner pushing himself past normal endurance, and you are inspired to ease his comfort, take longer watches to let him sleep, let him know how much you appreciate him. During the intensity, when the sea is challenging your skills and stamina, the reassuring brush of a hand on an arm, or an appreciative smile, are as rewarding as a passionate embrace is in it’s moment.

As we adapt to the lack of sleep and the movements of our new environment, we begin to appreciate the textures of the sea, its amazing blue color, and the aerobatics of seabirds.

Shearwaters wheel and swoop and skim through the troughs, turning dark and white in turns as they maneuver their backs or bellies towards us, hardly flapping. Masked boobies circle the boat with stiff wingbeats, turning their raccoon faces towards us. With a tern-like screech, the white-tailed tropic birds announce their visit, usually in pairs or threes. A thread of a tail trails their wide-bodied flight. They splay their comical black webbed feet to balance themselves in flight. They hover close to the rigging and look curiously down, black eye patches on a white head.

Stiff white torpedoes of flying fish flee Misty’s ponderous approach. Each morning we find several of them stiff on deck, misguided in the night.

We should cross the equator later this week and reach the Marquesas in late May. From there we begin exploring, by sail and kayak, some of the most remote areas of the planet that were originally settled by oceangoing canoe. Polynesia.

Shakedown, or How to Catch a Kayaker

(written in late March)
We left Guaymas at sunset as a 2-day north wind began to mellow. I steered while Henrick saw to details of the rigging. Once we were out of the bay, the residual swell lifted and rocked the boat.

I guessed our speed by the passing bubbles. They moved slower than a normal kayaking pace. Two knots, I guessed. One point nine, said the GPS. We unfurled the genoa and Misty jumped ahead. Looking down, I guessed 4 knots, a good kayaking pace. Four point zero said the GPS. Yes! Our speed continued to climb, and we soon left my imaginary kayak far behind.

Little games fine-tune the senses. Refine awareness. For fun. For survival. To see what other areas of life the awareness might affect.

Hold this course, said Henrick, after we cleared the wide mouth of Guaymas Bay. Two-one-zero, said the compass when I shone my headlamp on it. Canopus, the star, hung just to the left of the mast, and Sirius higher up to the right, on average, since the mast swayed through them both. Every ten minutes or so I checked the compass, and it was consistently within 5 degrees of our course. Yes again!

Maybe these are skills so specific as to be useless in other settings. Like recognizing the grit of sandpaper by its face, or the grit last used on a kayak repair by the texture of the repair. But there is satisfaction in it anyway.

A fitful night’s sleep, fully dressed, in separate beds would be no cause for celebration on land, but out sailing, any sleep is a luxury. Henrick was catching a catnap when I awoke at 6am and saw it was light out. I tiptoed past his sea berth, avoiding the noisy hatch covers, and greeted an orange sunrise. A white moon hung gibbous and oval in the west. Flat horizon, only sea. Glorious sea! I tried on the view, and decided I could take a lot more of it.

As the rainbow of dawn colors in the west gave way to the sun’s light, I made out mountains in the distance. The Sierra la Giganta behind Loreto, some 60nm ahead. My heart sank. Despite their beauty and distance, they marred a perfect horizon.

“A good traveler has no plans and is not intent upon arriving,” says the Tao. Something about being underway before the wind seems eternal. Certainly timeless. Sailing satisfies the spirit’s urge to move.

Eighty-three nautical miles into a 128nm crossing, the decreasing wind reached nothing at all. Mainsail and genoa stretched on their tippy ties with arms spread wide to catch any breath that wafted, and harvested about a knot of speed from the air. Water barely rippled, so the fact that we moved at all attests to the marvel of engineering that is a sailboat.

The sleek blue surf ski on deck noticed the calm seas too. It begged to play. Under full sail, we dropped the ski overboard and I hopped in over the railing. I paddled in circles around the Island of Misty. Forty-five miles away, the mile-high Giganta mountains scratched the sky, but the rest of the horizon lay flat and pure. Besides the mountains, only Misty and the surf ski existed, and a few long-distance pelicans.

For fun, I connected a thick line from the bowsprit to my waist, and attempted to tow the boat. I dug the curved wing paddle into the water, and put the weight of my body behind it. The ski lifted with each stroke but flopped back down every time, tethered by the steel mass behind it. Henrick took a few photos, laughed, and said something about catching a kayaker.

How to Catch a Sailor

1. Listen to his dreams
2. Help him work on his boat
3. Carry a sturdy line

Leaving Guaymas

Along the arteries of Guaymas flows a stream of white busses. The winding and changing of their gears is a sound that floats out over the water to our anchored sailboat. Staccato punctuation of barking dogs comes in stereo from many points around the bay.

The evening’s light breeze corrugates reflected lines of light into a trail of dashes. They reach for us from all sides. A full moon rises yellow over the late workers at the shipyard whose amber welding sparks fly from the silhouettes of fishing boats. Nearby the masts of sailboats on the hard at Marina Seca pierce the sky. Ours was among that forest for almost 3 years.

We enjoy dinner in the cockpit and talk under the stars. How many last trips to town have we made this week? Last hamburgers at Popeye’s? How many flights have I made from Loreto in the last 3 years? Guaymas feels like another home. The 5-peso bus ride is no longer a novelty. I almost know my way around the crooked streets of town.

We recall friends we’ve made with the long-timers in the boat yard and Mac the beer brewer. Earlier in the evening I went for a surf ski paddle and passed in front of Mac’s place where he and Richard were out enjoying the fruits of Mac’s labor. I paddled close to say goodbye let them know Henrick was taking his leave of marina friends with a final happy hour. Richard set off to join in.

During the night the wind comes up and a bumper we had hanging over the side to keep the dinghy from banging the boat is missing. I paddle downwind at first light and recover it from the beach, tying it to the back deck of the ski and trying to keep it balanced.

Misty floats proud on the slimy Guaymas waters as I return. Henrick has overhauled just about everything on her since coming here. Bowsprit, railing, aft platform, kayak racks, hull paint, and deck paint. That’s just what you can see from the outside. There are the invisible projects. Rust eradication and painting every metal surface, from the bilge (my introduction to boat work), to the ceiling of the cabin, to the insides of the cockpit lockers. In the cabin, he remodeled the chart table with built-in cooler, and the seating/table/bed. He added storage in the forepeak, the stern, and several places in between.

I return the bumper and paddle on for a final loop of the bay and its cactus-studded islands. The sun rises and ignites surrounding red peaks with its flame. Brown pelicans turn their bills down to look as they glide over my head. Three snowy egrets flap past and a pair of chatty oystercatchers bickers over something on their way to an island.

Misty shines in the morning light with her new wine-red paint. She’s a practical boat, full keel, double-ended, seaworthy. Her railings are 1 1/4” diameter galvanized steel. Something solid to hold onto. She looks less like a luxury yacht than a worthy travel companion with whom you can weather the storms. She doesn’t quite look Mad Max yet, but come by on laundry day after a few thousand more nautical miles, and she might.

A few more details: sails on, loose stuff stowed, waypoints programmed, and we’re on our way out of Guaymas, on to the rest of the world and whatever adventures lie ahead.

San Isidro Mountain Oasis

Four and a half hours after leaving Loreto and bumping along on a dirt road at 10ph through a dramatic landscape of volcanic debris and tenacious desert plants, we arrive at the edge of a precipice. Below us a few lights twinkle in a valley surrounded by mesas and peaks, and over all, the unique cone of El Pilon. The crescent moon and Venus shine above the last orange light of sunset.

San Isidro, one of the most remote settlements in the Baja peninsula, lies below us. Off we set again, the truck in front enveloped in its own dust and silhouetted beside the cacti.

San Isidro is an oasis in the mountains. Water flows from geologic faults forming fresh, cold lagoons. People have long tapped into that resource. Almost a century ago, the community created a low dam and an aqueduct that fed the fertile fields around the lagoons. Cultivating these fields and tending animals remains the way of life of the present inhabitants.

The fields grow typical garden veggies: tomatoes, onions, garlic, chilies, lettuce, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, and acres of favas. The favas are a staple. Cooked young, the pods and unpeeled beans make a delicious stew that spreads nicely on quesadillas, or complements eggs, or is eaten plain.

Fields corrugated by irrigation channels make patterns of light and shadow. Around their small, hand-worked dimensions stand native palms, date palms, and towering mango trees. Also pomegranate, peach, avocado, orange, lime and other trees. Grape vines climb trellises.

Almost every huerta has goats. Late January is the time for goats to be born, and the antics of the week-old babies provide hours of entertainment.

Most construction is hand made of local materials. Palm thatch roofs. Petate walls of woven bamboo-like carrizo stalks mashed flat. Posts and beams of palm trunk. Fences of stripped date palm fronds.

The sun rises and anoints the iconic peak of El Pilon which overlooks the better-known oasis village of La Purisima as well as San Isidro. Sunlight slides down El Pilon, gilds the tops of palms, and eventually filters down to the fields and orchards and a family of tent-campers preparing quesadillas on a folding camp table and a truck tailgate.

This is my business partner’s family. Ivette, Polo, and the girls Monse, 7, and Tita, 5, who are enthralled by the baby goats. Tita’s “Mountain Grandma” lets her into the pen with the babies. First she chases them and they go bounding away with their long silver ears flapping. Then Tita sits down and the goat kids come to play with her.

“Mountain Grandpa” in his white cowboy hat enjoys a cup of coffee with the family. His son Ramon is one of our interns at the Sea Kayak Baja Mexico center in Loreto. The youngest of 3, Ramon is about to graduate from the university where he studied Alternative Tourism.

The Mexican government grants land to communities who work that land, such as San Isidro. The government is now dividing that land into private sections. Community members decide which parcels they’d like, and do some swapping among themselves. Ramon’s parents have invited us up for our input on what sites would provide a good basecamp for visitors, tourists, or classes that Ramon will eventually host.

Even though I don’t understand everything he says, I know this is a heavy decision for him. He bends down and draws with his finger in the garden dirt to explain some possibilities. He takes Ramon, Ivette, and me on a walk across the street and through a neighbors huerta. They are burning some plant debris and the heat of the fire feels nice in the chill of morning. We jump across the aqueduct and suddenly enter desert. Cholla, palo adan, pitaya, barrel cactus. Rocky open spaces between. Up a hill we climb for a rewarding view. From here the little valley looks carpeted in palms. The lagoons run along the far side of the cultivation and reflect the green palms of the other bank. In the distance another lagoon reflects the blue sky. Over all stands El Pilon.

“I could trade for this,” says our grey-haired host. “Build a shelter, pump up water. A road can easily come up the side.” His eyes are clear and steady. It’s hard to guess his age. He is agile and fit with sun-weathered skin and the wisdom of time.

We pile into the front and back of a red pickup truck and visit another huerta that he owns. There is no view and we don’t like it as much as the one we’re camped at, which has access to the lagoon and goats to play with.

We rumble through town past adobe ruins, more goats, favas, palms, and people working in the fields. We leave town and climb a hill where the dirt road and the handmade aqueduct run side by side. We’re headed to the canyon, the source of the water.

The road descends sheer canyon walls. Red tailed hawks soar and cry out overhead. The road is mostly in the shade of the pale sandstone canyon wall, which makes the work of clearing rocks more pleasant. The truck follows us down carrying Polo and the girls.

The dam was made in the 1930s "on the backs of men and mules" says our host. He bends to clear plant debris from the intake grate of the aqueduct. The village came together to build this resource, with the help of government troops who had no wars to go fight. It’s been rebuilt after storms in the 1970s and 1980s, and is maintained by cooperative effort.

Below the dam Polo and the girls hop from rock to rock, playing at fishing with sticks they found. Across the canyon, grey basalt columns look like giant organ pipes carved out of the mountain wall.

A day hike up this canyon leads to the Ojo de Agua, or source spring. About an hour up is a band of marine sediment with fossils. It’s a journey we leave for another day.

On our way back we stop by Ramon’s uncle’s house, where the family processes the sugar cane into brown cones that resemble El Pilon’s peak each March. Once they have the sugar juice, they heat it over a fire of pitaya cactus ribs until it’s almost crystalized. Then it’s poured into molds carved of mesquite heartwood to harden. The process is an annual family gathering.

Beside the sugar processing equipment is a machine that warms my heart to see. An old truck has been converted into a mill for processing animal feed. Powered by the engine, the drive train turns the axle. Around the wheel rim is a belt, which animates the grinder. Ingenious!

Back at our camp after lunch, it’s time to clear the trail to the water. Cultivated fields and palm groves used to extend to the waters edge, along with a passable road, but hurricane Jimena replaced them with berms of sand and rock extending several hundred yards inland. Scrubby plants and some short palms have begun to grow. Around the waters edge bamboo-like carrizo makes a thick barrier. Ramon and his father clear it with machetes and we all roll rocks out of the trail so we can drag the kayaks on their little back wheel.

Ramon and I take the girls for a paddle up the lagoon. El Pilon peeks over the waving tops of the carrizo. Coots, a young cormorant, and several species of duck move aside as we glide past. Tita enjoys splashing her feet in the water while Ramon paddles. Monse hops out on a rock to have her photo taken. The strange combination of palms and cacti overlooks us from a hillside.

We pile again into the pickup truck to ride a couple miles to the legendary graveyard at La Purisima. According to the legend, a vampire was buried there in 1912 and is expected to rise again… We visit at sunset, with day’s last light on the tombs and piles of rocks painted white. Colorful artificial flowers decorate many of the tombs and rock piles. In the distance, El Pilon catches the sun’s final rays. No vampire appears tonight.

La Purisima was the site of a mission founded in 1720 that lasted in that site only 15 years. No ruins remain. From here the road is paved down towards the Pacific coast and the towns of Insurgentes and Constitution, and the junction with Hwy 1 which leads back to Loreto. It also connects with two towns on Madelena Bay: Lopez Mateos and San Carlos, both of which are hubs for whale watching in February.

Instead of taking the paved road back to civilization, we return the next morning down the washboard that we came up. There is a lesser rock art site along the way that we didn’t have time to visit on the way in.

We miss the turn, go back for it, then miss another turn, and I get one truck stuck in the rocks and sand of an arroyo. We dig and push, and finally get dragged out by a local rancher in a 4x4. Ivette, Polo, and the girls are too tired to complete the walk to the cave, so they head back to rest in the shade with other truck, which we left nearer the entrance because I feared we might get them both stuck.

Ramon and I trot to the cave to scout it for future trips and take photos. We arrive sweaty, panting, and smiling for the adventure of it. The cave paintings have suffered from graffiti, but include interesting creatures and patterns. The more subtle petroglyphs, carved into scattered rocks along the arroyo, are unmolested. They are mostly shapes of sea creatures.

If you’re interested in looking at the San Isidro area on Google Earth, put in the coordinates 29 12 03 -112 03 00. This is the huerta of Ramon’s family where we camped.

We are in the process of putting together a 3 or more day guided visit to San Isidro with host Ramon and his family. Stay tuned to the Sea Kayak Baja Mexico website, or email info@seakayakbajamexico.com. May timeless cultures like this continue to be an inspiration and a source of essential wisdom for our future. May the impact of our visits be supportive and not destructive.

Tasting Timelesness

I have just tasted another era. Somewhere back in time, another culture. Favas and comotes (sweet potatoes) from the huerta. Savor the sun, the rich earth, the mountain spring water filtered through ancient rock.

I am eating the garden gifts of Ramon’s family from a Baja mountain oasis. Everyday staples for them. A cultural and even spiritual experience for me. Eating from my home garden is one of the things I most miss when I am here in Baja. In this simple meal I have been transported!

Ramon is one of our university interns at Sea Kayak Baja Mexico in Loreto on the Baja peninsula. His family has lived for generations in the La Purisima-Comandu area. Currently they make their home in San Isidro, which is part of the same aquifer and is about as small and quiet and self-sustaining as a mountain oasis can be.

San Isidro is a step back in time. Food is cultivated by hand in small fields punctuated by irrigation ditches and palm groves. Animal fodder is cut with a simple curved blade and tossed into their pens. Fields for squash are fertilized with animal manure. Other fields grow green cover crops to replenish the soil. Favas are a staple, nourishing both soil and people.

When I saw fields of favas, which everyone has, I thought these people must have a lot of time on their hands to peel all those overpackaged beans. Then Ramon’s mom fed us a bowl of young favas, cooked with the pods. Delicious! How silly I was for so long to peel them and chuck good pods in the compost.

San Isidro lives permaculture. San Isidro lived permaculture before it was a word. San Isidro lives community as well, just to survive. They rely on a dam and an aqueduct for their water. They rely on cooperation for where that water flows when, and to keep it flowing. They rely on each other for labor, for sharing machinery, for trading food such as homemade cheese.

There are no restaurants in town. There is one store.

How does a kayak guide from Washington state get a personal tour of San Isidro? It’s funny where kayaking can take a person.

The Mexican government is dividing up the community lands into private property, including the San Isidro area. Ramon’s parents want to leave him a good opportunity to make a living. He came to Loreto to study Alternative Tourism. Since that is his interest, the family hopes to choose a good location for a basecamp for visitors or students so that he can offer tours of his hometown and the surrounding area, which is rich in many ways. My business partner Ivette and I have been invited to advise them and to brainstorm together.

The whole 4 hours up from Loreto is a geologists heaven. Ivette is a marine geologist, and gives us some mini-lessons along the way. Even up here in the mountains, there are marine sediments complete with fossils. Volcanic fields and peaks surround the valley, crowned by the striking El Pilon.

History merges here, of the natives and the missionaries, whose supporting military force intermarried with the natives and birthed the ranching culture that continues, slowly fading, in the Baja outback today. Natives, missionaries, and ranchers all made use of San Isidro’s resources, and the present culture descends directly from them. There are some simple petroglyphs on the way to San Isidro.

The freshwater lagoons supply water for birds as well. Ramon and I take Ivette’s young girls out to explore in sit-on-top kayaks. The peak of El Pilon watches us there as well.

Beyond the history, the geology, and the activities, it is the community itself that is the real treasure. A huerta is a place of sustenance that includes tended fields like a garden or farm, and fruit trees like an orchard. Often animals are part of the cycle as well. The huerta culture holds great knowledge in its hands: The tanning of hides and making of leather items. The processing of cheese, the making of tortillas. The alchemy of taking cane plants and making cones of dark sugar that resemble El Pilon, the peak that watches everything. The climbing of palm trees to harvest fronds that become roofs. The mashing and weaving of carrizo, a bamboo-like plant, into panels that are used as walls. The animal husbandry that breeds such healthy goats as the ones we are camped next to. They have beautiful coats, perfectly symmetrical horns, sound feet, well-shaped udders, and 2-3 frolicking babies apiece.

In the course of a few days, I felt like we went from advisors to family. Ivette’s girls call Ramon’s parents their Mountain Grandparents. Who can say where it will lead. Whom it may inspire. How the experience may influence the course of the little oasis itself. But I do know that eating the produce of their labors and the land and the sun and the mountain water, I feel reconnected. To all of it. To something deeply grounding and profoundly human.