Week 89: Tahiti to Moorea (21nm)

Despite having been in French Polynesia for six weeks, leaving Tahiti for Moorea gave us our first unrestricted experience of what this sailing paradise truly has offer and justified all our efforts in taking Serenity First more than halfway around the Earth to get here.

Captain’s Log

18th May: Got an early start to try to avoid the queues at the fuel dock and thankfully there was only one fisherman in front of us, which made the process nice and quick (especially compared to using jerry cans in Nuku Hiva). Then motored the 20nm across to Moorea as the wind was perfectly on the nose and we couldn’t be bothered to try to sail (unlike John on S/V Tao’nga, who we’d first crossed paths with in Panama and we overtook on the way). Arrived in the reef inlet that our friends on S/V ZAN had recommended in time for a late lunch and found a true slice of paradise – anchoring in less than four metres of water and then meeting our various neighbours (Aaron and Natalie off S/V Catherine Estelle, Ryan and Nicole on S/V Kiapa Nui, as well as Matt and Sydney off S/V Influencer who happened to be passing through in their dinghy).

19th May: Got a bit lost when trying to visit the nearby Stingray City (a place where you could feed the rays), but stumbled across a local turtle hotspot instead, where we discovered the pacific turtles are far more nervous that their Caribbean counterparts. Laura then spent the afternoon fighting a weevil outbreak in the rice (we aren’t as accepting of them as our nautical forefathers), whilst I respliced some rope handles on the dinghy. Finished the evening on Catherine Estelle for a BBQ and enjoyed meeting Aaron and Nat’s beautiful Mexican rescue dog Malvo (who has received more surgery than most humans we know).

20th May: Spent the morning working on some boat jobs and helping Catherine Estelle and ZAN with some of their own issues (to varying degrees of success). Then went to explore the nearby underwater Tikis in the afternoon and finished the day on ZAN for celebratory drinks – it had just been announced that the lockdown had been entirely lifted in French Polynesia, so we can officially go cruising across all of the Society Islands!

21st-22nd May: Polynesian Tattoos! See Story of the Week below

23rd May: Being careful to protect our new body art from any exposure to sun and sea, we made plans with ZAN and Catherine Estelle to have a group dinner on ZAN where conch would be the key ingredient – there were huge numbers of spider conch in our anchorage and we were keen to introduce our cruising friends to the conch cooking club. Aaron and Nat collected them, and I then developed a modification on the Carribean extraction method with Aaron that got all them all out of their shells, after which Laura and I took them back for cooking on Serenity. We had an amazing evening of which the highlight was certainly Laura’s beer battered conch fritters – we will certainly be cooking these again!

24th May: Visited the nearby island restaurant of Coco Beach to have a fun lunch with an assorted group of cruisers, including introductions to Celtic Star and Amazing Grace. Feeling stuffed, we discovered the wind had picked up significantly and had the experience of being in a permanent log flume for our return journey with the added challenge of dodging kite surfers. Finished the day on Catherine Estelle swapping some movies and helping them set up their sewing machine before we parted ways the next day, but with a promise to reconverge over the coming months. 

Story of the week: Polynesian Tattoos

For almost as long as Laura and I had been planning to visit French Polynesia, we had decided that we wanted to take advantage of being in this tattoo world heritage site and get lasting mementos that would help us celebrate all we had been through on Serenity First. From our initial experience of the vegetable delivery man with his face tattoo, we have been amazed at how integral tattoos clearly are to the Polynesian culture. The vast majority of people that you meet here have a visible tattoo of some form (and those who don’t may just have a less visible one?), and it is clear that whilst the colonial French repression of the Polynesian language was somewhat successful in driving it out of common usage, the banning of tattoos by missionaries in the early 19th century that continued until the 1980’s hasn’t prevented a return back to it’s prominence today among modern Polynesians.

In fact, there are still some tattoo artists out here that offer tattoos in the traditional style (with a sharpened piece of bone or wood), but Laura and I decided that we wanted to limit the authenticity of our experience to just the design and work with an artist that used modern equipment (for reasons of time, hygiene, pain and cost to name a few). Laura had identified a number of candidates on Mooorea, of whom two appeared to be well regarded within both the local and tourist communities. With no other means to differentiate them, we decided to first visit the closest artist to our anchorage (still a 40 minute dinghy ride away) and see what he was like in person.

Taniera was excited to meet with us, but not entirely sure how to respond to our question of whether there was a suitable place that we could land a dinghy near his studio. We eventually agreed to try and meet at a nearby public beach, which should have a place for the dingy. We landed on the beach without any issue, but having heard stories of locals being frustrated at cruisers ‘exploiting’ public spaces we didn’t want to chance leaving the dinghy unattended. “No problem” said Taniera, “we can do the interview and design here in the park”. It was a great suggestion, as even though the public setting was initially a little off-putting, it helped emphasise the links to the natural world that are so prominent in the Polynesian design and the limited interest the other park users were showing suggested that it was far from an unusual occurrence.

We spent the first hour with Taniera explaining some of the basic design elements and meaning behind tattoos in Polynesia. He had brought his French girlfriend Meg along to help translate, but his language skills were more than sufficient for us to converse freely and we were immediately won over by his warm personality and jocular nature. We then started to discuss the ideas behind our tattoos and he seemed pleased that whilst we had clear ideas on the relative locations of our tattoos, we were looking for his input and inspiration on the design. Without intending to, we had approached the process in the spirit that he preferred, as this then allowed him to explain the cultural significance behind the locations that we had chosen and then test the compatibility of his various ideas with our life stories. 

By choosing the left shoulder, I was making a public statement about protecting and supporting the women in my close family, and preparing myself for the growing responsibility that this would entail. By contrast, Laura’s selection of her inside right ankle was a personal location that was a tribute to influential male figures in her past. We both wanted designs that reflected our link to the ocean, but I wanted to achieve this with something abstract that bridged the gaps with my existing tattoos, whereas Laura was keen to tie her design to something more tangible. After pausing to consider for a few minutes, Taniera suddenly announced he was ready and then without another word began freehanding his proposed design using a gel pen directly onto my shoulder. 

The shock of this novel hands-on approach was quickly surpassed by my admiration for his drawing skills, and within thirty minutes he had sketched out a design that perfectly balanced all the requests I had made. I was still in the process of admiring the less accessible parts of the design though phone photos when he started on Laura, and even more rapidly generated a compact and complex whale design that contained all the Tahitian design elements within it. This ability to translate our inputs into such controlled beauty convinced us that Taniera was the right man to go with, and so we discussed the timing options and agreed to return the early the next day for what he warned would be the majority of the daylight hours.

He left the pen designs in place so that we could reflect on any changes we wanted to them and after returning to Serenity First, Laura and I decided on a small list of tweaks that evening before getting an early night to best prepare ourselves for the day ahead. We then returned the next day to the same beach, but this time with a better plan for mooring the dinghy out of the way so that we could leave it unattended (with Meg kindly volunteering to check-in on it a couple of times throughout the day). We then made the short walk down to his studio, and started off talking through the design changes over some coffee.

Taniera proposed that he start on Laura’s tattoo first as it would take the least amount of time and allow him to then focus on my larger design without the pressure of another tattoo hanging over him. Laura was keen to get hers done with as she had heard her choice of location was particularly painful, and so Taniera then got all of his equipment setup (in exactly the same manner as the super sterile Western studios that Laura and I have visited), and then he was ready to go. Watching Laura stoically deal with pain of the needle was a good example for me to follow and in fact it was her twitching reflexes that are probably linked to her ticklish feet that were the problem she struggled with most. Taniera became fully absorbed in the tattooing process, so I did my best at providing some light hearted distraction / Taylor Swift music for the 90 minutes that it took before Taniera suddenly broke from his trance and announced he was finished and needed a cigarette. Laura was relieved to see that all of her self-control had yielded a perfect replica of the pen design that she had so fallen in love with, and especially impressed by some of the small flourishes that he had improvised along the way. However, the time for appreciation was limited as Taniera was restored once more and keen to get going on my design.

This was my first experience with a tattoo on a non-meaty part of my body, which I was aware would be more painful, but hadn’t fully considered the implications of combining this with such an increased area and volume of dark shading. I tried to let my mind settle into a relaxed and accepting state, but muscle cramps from holding myself stationary and the raw sensations as he built up the solid blocks of colour repeatedly jolted me back to an agitated state. Taniera meanwhile had no problem remaining in his flow state, and it took a number of attempts after he had already been going for two hours straight before I could alert him that I needed a break to stretch my back and eat some food.

Restored by a veggie burger from the nearby food truck that Meg worked at, I was ready for Taniera to begin again and he completed his work across a further three one-hour stints that brought the total tattooing time up to five hours (or six and a half for Taniera including Laura’s tattoo). His energy levels and concentration never wavered and his ability to lose himself in his work was a fascinating thing to be part of. As I was admiring his finished work with excited relief, he explained that he struggled to retain any memories of the process itself as he was so lost within it, and I resolved to try and find more activities in my life where I might also access these kinds of states. 

By this point, Laura and I (and we assume Taniera) were utterly exhausted, so we happily paid him for his time and made our way back to TJ (who was sitting exactly where we had left him). The wind had eased off during the afternoon, which allowed us to keep our tattoos mostly dry on the return journey, although doing this for the next two weeks would be more of a challenge. For the time being we were happy to crawl back aboard Serenity and reward ourselves with another early night. 

Parting thoughts

We find the sailing life does a far better job at highlighting the ripple effects of decisions you make, and we’ve certainly experienced this to a large degree in recent days. Whilst we decided to focus our remaining time in French Polynesia on the Society Islands, most of cruising boats elected to return to the Tuomotu archipelago to give themselves some time to discover these beautiful atolls. Since we are now in the more stable weather season (but before the trade winds strengthen) it should be the perfect time to cruise anywhere within French Polynesia, but sadly a major depression in the Southern Pacific has provided a painful lesson that you always need to be paying attention.

We felt a small increase in wind strength and swell in the Society Islands, but the Tuomotus were much closer to the centre of the low and therefore felt far more of its full force. To make matters worse, the different forecasts disagreed on the wind direction, which is vital to understand in the atolls as if you are not on the side closest to the wind direction then you can still experience big waves, as the stretch of water to the other side of the atoll can be quite large. The boats in Fakarava fared worst because it is such a large atoll, with 40 knots of wind and 2m waves, and two were actually blown onto the reef (thankfully there were no serious injuries). Our friends on Influencer (who provided the photos below) described the scariest night of their extensive sailing experience, sure that they too would end up dragging or losing their anchor, but just making it though with only 3m of room to spare. So far, the boats that we know personally all seem to be okay, for which we are grateful as much as we are for our fortune at choosing to remain up here.