A Very Flash Yacht

Life on Huahine-Ite

IT HAS NOW BEEN OVER four months since Anna arrived at the island of Huahine, in the north-east sector of the Society island group, French Polynesia, and our freshwater tanks have remained topped off solely on rainwater. It is one of our favourite pastimes: catching rainwater while at anchor for extended periods of time; harnessing solar and wind power, to keep up with our energy demands has proven itself to be high on our short list of favourite pastimes too. We use approximately 1.5 gal/day per person, of fresh water. We do conserve freshwater by using seawater for washing dishes but otherwise, our conservative usage of freshwater is not a challenge when it comes to having enough for drinking and cooking and washing. In fact NASA's manned space missions allocate 1.5 gal/water/day per person. The difference is that in space they recycle their urine into potable water. We simply collect rainwater; one advantage of an atmosphere. The other advantage of an atmosphere is wind; important, of course, for a sailing vessel, but also for generating electrical energy to supplement the solar array. The other interesting fact, according to NASA, is that the average US family uses 115 gal/day per person of fresh water. We know cruisers with reverse-osmosis water-makers that have a rated capacity of 200 gallons of fresh water per day. It's an impressive output, but really...way overkill.

We tend to get periods of abundant sun and wind, interspersed with shorter periods of abundant rain every few weeks or so, and an over abundance when a tropical depression or cyclone releases energy near by. This weather pattern has proven to be rather utilitarian in many ways, as it helps us to keep up with two out of three of our essential needs for self sufficiency: fresh water and energy production; food of course is the third critical essential. 

We can provision locally, at the market in Fare, at the north-west corner of Huahine once every couple of weeks. What isn't grown here, on small farmsteads, is brought in once a week by a small freighter from Tahiti (about a hundred nautical miles away to our south and east). We never know what we will find at the market since there seems to be no consistency in what arrives on the ship. But if we do see something we like, we try to stock up on it and stow it away.

There are remote areas on the island, most of the interior is uninhabited. One of the places we like to anchor is lined with dense jungle. Every so often we row our small Zodiac to the shoreline, where a profusion of coconut palm trees grow. Behind the band of palms there are also papaya, banana and pamplemouse (a Polynesian fruit similar to grapefruit). We occasionally cut a stalk of green bananas, transport it back to the boat and hang it out of the way:  our wind-generator's support struts, which are fastened above the aft end of the cockpit make a good cache; we hang the banana stalk just below the mount for the radar scanner that lives on the pole, just underneath the wind generator. It takes about a week to ten days before the bananas begin to ripen. They all ripen fast once the deep green color begins to gradually mellow into yellow, and this is when we turn into primates of a different sort: monkeys. For about a week we become monkeys and load up on bananas and overdose on potassium until the yellow skins become freckled with brown specks, which become brown blobs and ultimately too soft and too sweet to eat: beyond baby food.  At this point we revert to the other type of primate.

The thick green-skinned yellow pampelmouse that we snatch from near-by trees, hold up longer (for weeks) and provide an alternative to orange citrus that is expensive when imported from Australia. We can also find mangoes and pineapple growing in the jungles and along the perimeter road here, in season. There are plenty of boisterous chickens running around everywhere and fresh eggs are always available, at the local farmers' market, which is located outside the front door of the local supermarket, where prices are reasonable (considering that we are located in the middle of the South Pacific in a hard to get to place). There are lots of food items that are stacked on the shelves, much of which we don't eat for one reason or another, but there are also enough items that we do eat to make a trip to the grocery store a happy outing.

To cook we use a propane stove. And this has its own set of issues in French Polynesia, and elsewhere, where butane gas is the norm and where the tank fittings are not the same as the that of our US tanks. Propane and butane bottle fittings are not universal. Also, propane and butane gas have subtle differences when it comes to regulating the output from the tank to the stove-top. We have propane bottles and a propane regulator and that is a benefit if you have to switch to butane gas. The propane regulator and tank can handle the pressure difference between propane and butane gas, so that we can use either gas type (as long as you don't mix them) without concern for pressure safety issues. Not true if starting out with a butane tank and regulator. Butane can't handle the higher pressure of propane gas and would be unsuitable if you wanted to refill a butane bottle with propane. So, starting out with a propane tank and regulator is a more flexible arrangement when travelling internationally on a voyaging boat The other problem, as mentioned, is with non universal tank fittings. In most countries the fittings for tanks and supply hoses and regulators are threaded and sized differently than that used in the US. This means that we need to have an adaptor that will connect our US propane tank and regulator fitting to the foreign tank's fitting, so that we can either gravity feed the gas from the foreign tank into our own propane tank, or fit the foreign tank into our existing system (with an adaptor hose that connects the foreign tank to our system's regulator). This is all pretty mundane stuff but comprises much of the life of living in foreign countries. Unlike in the US or most major cities and towns in first world countries, when a quick visit to a speciality shop or mega hardware-plumbing supply will have you up and running in short order, life on a small boat, anchored off an island nation is, well, less convenient and requires a bit of innovation most of the time, just to complete the simplest job - what most of us take for granted.

Switching back to energy:  on occasion, we run our small auxiliary gas generator for a few hours, once every few weeks or so, to keep our AGM battery banks from dropping below 50% of their rated capacity. This can happen when the sun retreats behind steely gray clouds, in a balmy calm, during the precursor of a tropical depression. These severe low pressure systems tend to form when the South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ) spreads its tentacles from the Equator in the south-west Pacific toward the south and east, to French Polynesia, where we happen to be located at: 17 degrees south latitude and 151 degrees west longitude.

These specific weather conditions, which produce little sun and little wind have the effect of ramping down our solar and wind energy production, and draining our house battery banks:  an arrangement of four, 100 amp/hr 6v AGM golf-cart batteries (set in series to produce 12 volt DC output - which is what we use to run everything on the boat),  When alternative energy isn't enough (and that's rare in the Tropics) we take the opportunity to run our Honda auxiliary portable gas generator and give the batteries a fast boost, and while we're at it, give the generator a little workout to keep it happy as well. Same goes for Anna's Perkins 4-108 diesel engine; we run it once every couple of weeks, when we go to the market, at Fare, to re-provision. It is a one-hour ride, each way along the lagoon channel, from our storm anchorage, and back. This occasional motoring excursion tends to keep the diesel humming happily along. We've found that never running an engine, while it puts no wear and tear on it, has a tendency to dry out the seals and gum up the works and cause other troubles that come from disuse. Our Perkins 4-108 diesel likes to work hard, and running its four cylinders once in a while, under a load, keeps it from getting 'bored' (i.e., rebuilt).

Switching to the subject of weather: the laconic reports from the Meteorological Office, tasked with providing us with matter for consideration and further  calculation, appear rather cogent at first glance, until we find ourselves wrapped up in a discordant 40 knots of breeze with a tympani accompaniment of torrential rain beating a ferocious rhythm on the deck in accordance with the intensity of the squall, on a day that was forecast to be calm, sunny. Or vice versa. And it is at times like this that we marvel at the extraordinary fact that some people, actually get paid to know nothing about everything.

A tropical depression had arrived at our doorstep, it was a spinoff of yet another cyclone that had arrived in the Fiji area in late April (usually considered the tail end of the cyclone season in the S. Pacific). We could see it approaching on the meteorological charts. Cyclones and severe tropical systems look like swirls or flying saucers of concentric circles traversing the narrowly spaced isobars across the boundaries of the SPCZ. A torrential rain was ricochetting off the deck and spraying liquid shrapnel down Anna's open hatches with no regard for the waterproof Sunbrella cover that was generously slung over the openings, to insure that this sort of thing didn't happen. A white-out had reduced visibility to within a boat length. And a sinister crack of thunder undulated histrionically through the heavens for twenty seconds, preceded two seconds earlier by a series of flashes of screaming white light that had cranked up enough energy to register a level of lambda waves usually reserved for the likes of the sun. Our solar panels' charge-controller regulator could relate to this. It didn't discriminate. After all, intense light was intense light, be it sunlight or sheets of high-voltage lightning, it simply didn't matter. But it did matter, because the wavelengths of lightning are the wrong wavelengths for acceptance by solar panels - different part of the spectrum. It's called a 'smart' regulator, but 'smart' is often overrated. That incongruous, blindingly bright light that had arrived in the middle of the night was not within the regulator's parameters of understanding. We did understand what was happening, however, which triggered a petulant train of four-letter, one-syllable profanities in anticipation of blown circuit boards and other such havoc. But in the end, our electronics survived and our nerves were only slightly ruffled.

An ill-lit day followed a well-lit night and just the reverse had occurred; our clever solar-charge-control regulator had failed to register enough light energy to turn itself on. An inky atmosphere had subjugated the solar controller; it was as if the sun hadn't yet risen, there was a pre-dawn darkness at noon, resembling a charcoal-dark Rothko painting. We have seen brighter skies at the Arctic circle, in February, under the coruscating northern lights. The thunder slowly rolled. And it down-poured, heavily. And it howled and growled. And there could be no doubt that our fresh, rainwater reserves would be overflowing for while to come; the SPCZ had a positive side!

Sitting in an active convergence zone, such as the SPCZ - at the boundaries of high- and low-pressure systems at the wrong time of year, where lightning storms and cyclones breed - will at times, rattle us. This is the flip side of what many like to call 'paradise'. Now, as we understand it, and to the best of our limited knowledge as it relates to the enigmas of the universe: where you happen to be, in space-time, determines your observations and perceptions. Maybe this is the theory of relativity. Maybe we need to change our position and get the hell out of the SPCZ, when it eases its grip on us a bit, so that we can observe something else, somewhere else, other than severe weather systems on our six.  Both El Nino and the cyclone season will wind down soon. We anticipate that by the end of May, or possibly June, weather conditions will return from a severe state, to a neutral state, which should in theory open up new possibilities for Anna to get under way, once again.

In retrospect: anchoring out on the island of Huahine, during this year's intense El Nino cyclone season, has been a soft touch compared with what our neighbours in Fiji had been dealt (the worst category 5 cyclone in the recorded history of the S. Pacific). In fact, in-between tropical systems, the weather on Huahine has been superb. The water is warm and clear to a depth of fifty feet; when the winds are light and the water not rippled, we can see our anchor buried in the sand, from atop Anna's deck. There are places along the reefs where we can snorkel in five feet of crystalline, minty blue-green water and float just above hundreds of reef fish of innumerable types and colors and patterns and sizes, swimming through the pink anemones and coral canyons. Sometimes we walk for two miles through the current, in the shallows, and ride the flow back to where we started by simply flying, as if in zero gravity, through the current stream just above the coral and schools of fish. With a mask and snorkel we never have to come up for, or run out of, air; fins aren't necessary as the current propels us along. We just steer a course with our arms guiding the way, like superman, and the underwater world flies by.

The end of the off season has become more apparent in recent days. Anna was only one of just three boats that had chosen to ride out the cyclone season on Huahine, as opposed to other islands in the Marquesas group, where there were a hundred or more boats, convinced of the merits of being further away from the traditional path of cyclone activity. Too many boats in one place for our taste. We certainly have had no regrets about our decision to stay put on Huahine, it has been ideal. But with the prospect of better weather on the way soon, we can already see a bit more traffic developing as the snow birds return to where they left their boats for the cyclone season. The boatyards are busy splashing boats back into the water once again, and the weekend sailors from Tahiti and charterers  from Raiatea are beginning to slowly trickle in and out. This is usually our first signal that it's once again time to become a salmon and begin the reverse commute.

We've seen virtually no other boats in our storm anchorage for months now, except on the rare occasion when a boat strays off the beaten track and wanders our way, checks the depth sounder, determines that it is too deep to anchor where we are and turns around and drifts away to a shallow sandy white beach somewhere out of sight.  Anchoring in 85 feet without a white beach at your doorstep has its advantages, if you're like us, and would rather be out of eyeshot and earshot of, well, anything. On a boat, it is still possible to accomplish this sort of isolation, but it's particularly easy to do during the off season in an out of the way place, where the weather is highly questionable and where services and conveniences are almost non existent.  Well, that pretty much describes where we've been positioned for the past four to five months.

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A very flash yacht.

A strange thing happened just the other day:  in our little out-of-the-way storm anchorage, tucked into Huahine-Ite's western side, a ginormous, very flash private yacht (really a small liner by any standard) slithered into our anchorage and dropped the hook a little under a mile from where we were anchored. This ship was at least 200 feet long with a 40-50 foot beam and it had five levels of top-decks. It had a chic black hull and white house and bridge and two enormous, black stealthy satellite domes with an array of smaller domes and disks and antennae for communications and entertainment. It was equipped with its own pilot boats (two of them) - the away team, garbed, like penquins, in a matching color scheme to that of the ship's exterior of black and white. From the topmost deck an inflatable water slide was fitted to launch its passengers into the warm sapphire water 40 feet below. From its cavernous stern six jet skis had appeared, in addition to a high-speed power boat dedicated to towing a raft that looked like a hydrofoil. And it seemed there was no end to the amusement that would follow. The jet skis buzzed around the mother ship as if it were a hive, non stop from 8 am to 5 pm, with a break for a hard earned lunch, on the lower veranda, under the telescoping, color-coordinated shade umbrellas, where the adults dined on flambé. Sundowners on the bridge-deck would occur after five, when the excitement of the day had settled a bit. When the jet skis were craned back on deck and covered for the night and when the kid jumping off the swim platform like a yo yo was sent to the hot tub to wind down. These were the sort of people who had devoted a lot of time and expense investigating the subtle differences between which color of seawater looked more elegant when lit up at night, by the underwater halogens - mint green or aquamarine; perhaps that was part of the rationale for selecting a suitable anchorage. In an unparalleled plethora of idiocy this went on for three straight days. At night the ship was lit up like the Queen Mary with generators running 24/7 to supply the weighty electrical load for relentless comfort. Golden lights at every porthole twinkled. This was a luxury liner for discreet people who were in the know. But the most remarkable thing about this boat was that it appeared to have only about twelve people aboard and this included a crew of at least six. The boat could easily accommodate, and luxuriously, a hundred or more. When they hauled anchor, three days later, the two pilot boats stood off the bow and stern as the six-foot radar arm began to rotate, A puff of diesel smoke belched from the stack and drifted casually over the aquamarine reef and close-by motu, hung for a while and then dissipated. The lead pilot boat cut a path through the narrow entrance back into the lagoon and the big-little ship complied; their screw bit the sea and pushed the behemoth into the trailing wake of the lead boat, while the second escort boat brought up the rear. And as we watched this little procession - a parade of opulent extravagance - disappearing around the headland and out of sight and then out of earshot, we thought at that moment, that we had heard, Anna, squeal with glee, as that curiouser and curiouser devil boat vanished.

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