Blown Away by Herb Payson

Author:Herb Payson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 1979-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

Papeete, the major port and port of entry of French Polynesia, is located on the northwest corner of the island of Tahiti. We found the harbor itself safe in all but the most vicious of northwesterly weather. The main street ran along the south shore of the harbor. Midway was a tiny park, the De Gaulle monument. To the east of the monument was the quay, the high-rent district; to the west, the shore was a rocky embankment, the low-rent district. Yachts in the high-rent district tied up close enough to the quay that a gangplank served for going ashore (neap tides were 12in, springs 18in). They could, if they chose, plug into 110-volt or 220-volt shore power. Sailors in the low-rent district had no access to shore power, and because they didn’t tie up close enough to use a gangplank, they had to use a dinghy to get people on and off the boat. Sea Foam, with two brief exceptions, could always be found in the low-rent district.

Arriving sailboats disgorged crews that had been kept cooped up together for weeks. Often people exploded out of yachts like shrapnel, manic with gratitude that they’d neither gone crazy nor killed each other. They came from Hawaii, the U.S., Mexico, Panama, Canada. A few came up from New Zealand. Papeete was the scene of decisions, crew swappings, mate swappings, divorces, marriages, recriminations, congratulations, discoveries of pregnancy, fistfights, arguments, reconciliations, renunciations, and commitments. Things came to a head. Those who didn’t adapt to cruising, who didn’t find a satisfactory portion of the rewards they’d hoped for, went back where they came from, some of them sadder, some wiser. Many continued past Tahiti, feeling that the anxieties and interpersonal stresses caused by passagemaking were amply rewarded by what they found after they arrived. Tahiti was a threshold. Many who crossed it would decide that they’d be happy to cruise for the rest of their lives.

The Societies offered tremendous variety within a relatively small area. You could be entirely by yourself, or you could tie up to the main street of a town-becoming-a-city. You could tie up in front of any one of a number of tourist hotels, each with its own atmosphere, or, with a little initiative, you could find and visit a village that rarely saw a foreign yacht. We found places where there was no one, and for brief periods of abandon left all our clothing in the locker. Tiring of naked loneliness, we’d rejoin the social whirl and swoop ashore every night dressed to the nines. We met residents: Tahitian, French, expatriates from everywhere. We potlucked and fishfried on tiny, uninhabited Motu Tapu in Bora Bora; rafted up with several yachts for cocktails and dinner; and participated in Dutch-treat junkets to the Bellevedere in Papeete (a hillside restaurant that will collect you in a bus, feed you all you can eat and drink for a fixed price in a setting that commands an unparalleled view, and return you to your yacht waddling, weaving, and not too much poorer).

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