A Moorish Sail

It’s bad luck for a sailor to begin a passage on a Friday. Rooted in maritime history, the source of where such superstitions stem is of little concern as sailors will take any and all such ideas as an invaluable contribution to getting to the next port in the safest and quickest means possible. I recently worked a delivery trip to the Island of Futuna, considered some of the most remote islands in the South Pacific. The Futuna island group is nearly 240nm north of the Fiji Islands (1 nautical mile = 6,076 ft) (1 mile = 5,280 ft). We only spent two hours on Futuna before taking off for Fiji again. It was a short visit but nonetheless left impressions. The pace of life is slow. Take the lifestyle of Southern France and slow it down even more in a Pacific setting. There you have it. And the people, Polynesian despite being located in Melanesia, speak French that even I understand unlike those posh Parisians. The trip was a huge success and the weather couldn’t have been better – waking up at 04:30 Saturday morning to set sail was worth while rather than departing Friday and facing bad luck. The name of the yacht is Apagee, a 42’ sloop, and quite nice. Curly, the local harbor master, dive master, weather and radio guru and all around legend to cruisers coming into Savusavu, skippered the five day round trip while I crewed. We had a blast deciphering each other’s New Zealand and American English words. For example one would use the word “Moorish” to describe the addicting nature of say a cookie or potato chip. I thought he was referring to the Moors of Islam.

The sailing was close to being exceptional and the seas rather moderate if not gentle, and thus we were constantly tuning the sheets to obtain maximum performance around the clock. The film documenting the voyage will be posted in sections as there are connection speed issues on this end. In the meantime enjoy part 1.


PLAY Part I (12MB .mov)

PLAY Part II (13MB .mov) - Posted Oct 20 - 05

A trip to the Wallis and Futuna Islands: The bureaucracy of yachting.

A yachtie is more than just a sailor, seaman, or old salt but also a student of international relations. As the wind and fish are free at sea going to a port is not. Let me digress into the basics of international sailing.

There are two key terms to understanding the yactie’s bicameral world – offshore and shore. Offshore denotes the open ocean, international waters, where the ability of one government, state, or country to exercise its sovereignty simply does not exist. Thus, people can do all kinds of crazy stuff in the open ocean – like sell their yacht to evade excessive tax or even attempt to clone human beings. The other term is shore or inland waters. Rivers, lakes, bays, channels are all considered inland waters. As a matter of fact, inland water can be just about anything. Fiji is made up of over 300 islands and all the water between and surrounding could be considered inland for our purposes. Inland waters are governed by a country and thus laws can vary greatly depending on the country.

Typically the yactie is unconcerned about the legality of sailing through a large island group such as Fiji. However, if the yachtie wishes to stop and stretch their legs on a virgin beach for a few days or perhaps go into town for a loaf of bread, then that’s a different story. The yacht must first sail to a city that’s designated as a “port of entry” within the country. Here a customs, immigration, and quarantine officer check the crew and yacht. Again it varies depending on the country, but typically the Captain pays a fee to the officials and then receives a paper indicating the duration the vessel can remain in the country’s waters. This again varies – in Fiji it’s 12 months and then you must leave or pay incredible fines and even risk the boat to confiscation.

Some adventurous spirited sailors come to Savusavu and are pulled into its contagious charm. They live here on their yacht moored along the shore for years, paying only the minimal mooring fee, and basic living costs. But how do they do this and not pay
enormous fines to the Fiji Government? My friends, it’s called sailing to Wallis and Futuna once a year, a French territory some 300 miles north of the Fiji group. That’s a 5 day round trip sail. You see, once a yacht “checks out” of a port of entry – they are considered an international bound vessel and the regulations are no longer effective. In order to return, the vessel must sail to a different country, check-in and out, and then it can come back to our enchanting Savusavu or another port of entry. Not bad eh! It’s the quick and dirty way to maintain a residence in what many consider paradise. It gets better friends. Some yacht owners have thrown in the towel when it comes to actually sailing the vessel and instead hire a captain and crew to take the yacht out of the country and back again. This is a brilliant idea for us crew who love to sail and Captain’s who love deep-sea fishing.

So to the sea again – I’ll be crewing aboard a sloop called Apage, with a very experienced Captain by the name of Curly. You guessed it! We’re going to Futuna and back. Apage’s owners are busy at the moment and the clock is up on the vessel’s stay. It should be good fun. Look for part two “The Voyage” to be out near the end of September. I would also like to thank those who’ve submitted comments and suggestions about what they’d like to see. Please feel free to make requests and I’ll do my best to tell the story. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the following nonsense video. Just a bit of clean beach fun!

Click to play beach video


LINK has been fixed. Thanks for the heads up!

Navakaka

An hour bus ride on an orange clay road, myself Bob and Eronny find our way to Navakaka village on a Sunday afternoon. We wanted out of town - Cabin Fever was setting in and I needed a change of pace.

The village Navakaka has a population of roughly 100 and just 1 telephone. Kids, dogs, and chickens roam the village along the paths connecting homes and dalo fields. Electricity is by a diesel generator that runs daily 6pm-10pm. My first impressions were - the "garden of eden" might have looked something like this - camping with my family as a kid at Indian Lake State Park- and simplicity.
Play Village Video