September 2002

Hello everyone,

I don't want to slander my long distance sailing colleagues, but I must say that lately, in Tahiti, I've found them pretty gregary, even sheeplike; all summed up, if one sails away to the other side of the world, isn't it for he solitude of deserted anchorages, an occasional encounter, and the deep peace that flows through you when you're on the only sailboat anchored in a wide bay, a tiny cove or in the lee of an offshore reef ?
Tell me, what complies them to keep all together, piled up in the "official", anchorages ? On Tahiti's western shore : they formed a small floating town, and yet, a few files further south began the succession of perfectly sheltered lagoons that spangle the south shore of Tahiti and its peninsula, all totally deserted, visited at most by another sail boat.

You know how I am, it's in that area that I've spent most of August, sailing alone or in the company of one of my children : Lagoons of Atimaono, Papeari, Port-Phaeton, the Peninsula, all the way to the cave of Vaipoiri, deep, dark, home to a lake of cool water where it felt good to swim in the dark to the end of the cave, imagining that some unknown creature is suddenly going in the dark to grab you by the feet.

Not forgetting Tahiti's sister island, Moorea, so beautiful it inspired Michener's Bali Ha'i; it too is much visited in its world famous bays, Cook's Bay, Opunohu, while the lagoons in its southern part are perfectly deserted.
And that's the kind of place where you make the most pleasant encounters; A native of the Marquesas, who had settled at the end of the Peninsula, where he bred fish in sunken traps in front of his house, as well as pigs in his small garden surrounded by a small river and a couple of underwater springs bursting through the salt water, between the vertical, paper-thin roots of Mape trees. He presented me with two small freshly caught jackfish.. they were delicious..

Or the meeting with those four pretty Tahitian girls, surprised to se me at anchor in a place where almost nobody anchors : they came back to visit , the following afternoon, their canoe loaded with fruit and vegetables from the garden they tend on the hills of the Peninsula.
Not forgetting the pleasure to re-discover the many flowers and plants of Tahiti : the tree ferns of Faarumai falls ; the incredible flower and fruit of the Nipa palm, in the Botanical Garden ; or the many colours of the bright bubbling hibiscus flowers.