Loco

Since my last love affair with our friend the internet I have been back at sea for two weeks, at the mercy of the uncooperative wind and waves as we sailed the 1500 nautical miles from Tahiti to the Kingdom of Tonga.

Sadly, in this installment I have no stories of pearl smuggling or giant eels to keep you entertained but have been brought crashing back down to the day to day monotony of yachting; of reading books, cooking meals, and enjoying the many delights of salt, water, their close relative salty water, and the colour blue which is available in a range of shades and tones to suit your home.

However, before departing Tahiti I did manage to squeeze in a beer and impromptu sing-a-long with a friendly group of skirt-wearing, pot smoking, tattoo covered locals who made up with beards what they lacked in teeth. A lifelong supporter of the comedy beard I was pleased to make their acquaintance and so spent my last few hours on land in their company, playing along to their songs with the newest development in percussion technology: the pebble and bottle combination. Disappointed that they couldn’t offer me a lift home, and reluctant to see me try to hitchhike they kindly organised for me to be escorted back to my yacht on a jet ski. Talk about arriving in style. I only wish that the following two weeks at sea were as interesting.

The highlight (if you can call it that) of this week has been the arrival of cockroaches on the boat. While not an infestation of biblical proportions (the headcount currently standing at two), we didn’t want to give them the opportunity to multiply. So armed with a bottle of now illegal boric acid, and with the tune of ‘eye of the tiger’ reverberating in my ears I got to work, dousing all available surfaces with the noxious powder. I hoped to pre-empt their assault on our food stores by burning off their limbs. Ha ha, in your face disgusting only-thing-to-survive-a-nuclear-holocaust-evil-insect-of-doom. Survive this! It seems the pre-emptive strike did the trick and we haven’t seen any since. However, the threat to our precious food was not over yet.

Just as we were recovering from the cockroach fiasco we suffered the simultaneous breakdown of our fridge and freezer. This forced us into a race against time to eat as much food as possible before it spoiled. While I can’t really complain about being encouraged to stuff my face, this eat-a-thon, coupled with the distinct lack of exercise that characterises life aboard a 44ft sea-faring caravan, is rapidly accelerating my decline into lardiness,

After three days later all the food was gone, and we were left with 3 apples, a variety of tinned goods and a selection of just add water treats of the dehydrated kind. Thanks to the joys of pasta, rice and fake mashed potato (or faux-tato, as I like to call it) we did not starve. Nor did I develop scurvy which I happen to think is a pity, as it would be have been very authentic sailor-ish of me, but there’s still time.

The third disaster to strike our boat was the weather, which fluctuated wildly between total calm and no wind on one end of the spectrum, and too much wind and lots of rain on the other. Somebody once likened yachting to “standing in a shower while tearing up money”, and I have to admit that the last fourteen days fit this bill very well. The only saving grace in this situation, which comforted me as I was thrown from side to side during one of many small storms, or as I sat, staring through rain at an eerily becalmed sea, is the thought that as a trans-Pacific hitchhiker it isn’t my money.

Our arrival in The Kingdom of Tonga came just in time. The last apple had been munched, the fauxtato was running out, and my fellow boat mates were starting to look oh so tasty.

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2 responses to “Tattoos, Tahiti and Tonga”

1. Ed says:
   June 17th, 2008 at 3:49 pm

   Go Kate! Jumping ship in tropical island paradise – very Fletcher Christian…

   ; )

   Great to hear travels still going well – think I’ve just blagged a flight over London in an airship too…the slow traveller gets airborne for the first time in years…and the carbon footprint is negligible – woo-hoo!

   Bestest

   Ed
   x

2. HotPinkRenegad says:
   August 31st, 2009 at 9:28 pm

   Looks interesting. Anyone else have opinions?