Travel with Indigo

Following a memorable Christmas celebration with the crew, which included a Cruella Deville impersonation by our esteemed stew, Darcie Callahan, I returned to Florida for a much awaited reunion with the family, attended to various business matters and caught up with old friends. During this time the crew addressed a list of maintenance issues while also taking the short cruise (just two hours) to the island of Moorea for a brief respite from their normal routine.  When I returned to Indigo on January 21, they were fully rested and ready for the next leg of our journey.

While tied to the cruise ship docks in not-so-beautiful downtown Papeete, we watched many vessels come and go. Among these were numerous cruise ships that were doing a brisk business even though this is the off season. These included the Paul Gauguin, Tahitian Princess, Spirit of Oceanus and Celebrity ships, among others.

On one memorable day, we looked up from our daily routine to spot the Peruvian Navy training ship, actually a smallish freighter, arriving in port with full ceremony. Decked out bow to stern in flapping signal flags, her railings were lined with all the crew in dress uniform singing what I suppose is the navy’s anthem. A few days later a Russian Navy training ship arrived, she a three masted, square rigged sailing vessel (tall ship) whose name in Cyrillic was indecipherable. The motor yacht Golden Eagle, a handsome 110-foot Feadship tied next to us for awhile awaiting her return to her owner in Texas. And Laurel, a newish 212-foot Delta, tied up across the pier from us. The 130-foot classic designed schooner, the Robert C. Seamons from Woods Hole, Massachusetts, was in Papeete for a few days to pick up a load of young oceanography students.

Surely the most picturesque of these visiting ships was the Star Flyer, a steel hulled, four masted, square rigged sailing ship of something like 350 feet built in 1912 and vastly modernized for the cruise ship trade. At night with all her rigging lit up she is a magnificent sight on the harbor waterfront, a glimpse into the last days of the clipper ships.  Most recently, the world famous German-built (by Lurssen) 295-foot yacht, Ice, pulled into port and docked next door to us. Next week, the stunning, hypermodern 220-foot sailing yacht, Maltese Falcon, is due here.

But by far the most common vessel in Papeete’s harbor, and the most common in all the lagoons of French Polynesia, is the modern version of the outrigger canoe. These are not the heavy hollowed out log variety but are modern, super lightweight and streamlined for efficient hydrodynamics. It seems as if every male and quite a few females on the islands owns one and paddles it about often, though especially in the late afternoons. They do it for fun and to practice for regular competitions among themselves and against other islands. The boats come in one-, two-, three-, and five-man version and employ single bladed canoe paddles rather than the more efficient two bladed kayak paddles. The craft are so narrow—not much wider than a human’s hip—and sharply pointed at both ends that they would tip over easily were it not for the stability provided by the outrigger. The one-man versions are the most common and are about 12 to 14 feet long while the outrigger, sited amidships, is about 5 feet long. To propel the things in a straight line is no simple task. Without the proper paddle stroke, giving a deft twist of the wrist at the right point in the stroke, they will go in embarrassing circles. But with some practice, these subtleties are learned and a more or less straight course achieved.

One day Mate Bobby and Deck Hand Tomas and I hopped into a rental car and drove the circumference of Tahiti (90 miles on a single, mostly two-lane road) in what may be a local record time of three hours, another of Phil’s High Speed Culture Tours (no museums, no churches; only select attractions, bars and topless beaches). Surfers crowding black sand beaches and dense jungle crowding the highway were memorable sights. But mostly we liked the Tres Cascades (three waterfalls)  that crash to earth from jungle encrusted peaks.

The crew and I explored in considerable detail the nightlife of Papeete.  Our favorite beer joint was Tres Brasseurs, which I thought was French for three bras, an odd name to say the least. The captain, a patient man, explained that no the name is not a reference to intimate wear but refers to the three micro breweries it houses. So much for my French. We also spent far too many hours at the Club Paradise and some fewer at Club 106,  Montmartre, Morrison’s, and Ute Ute (meaning red in Tahitian), all of these just a few blocks from Indigo’s dock.

On a particularly active night, young Deck Hand Tomas Miranda and I, among others, were seated innocently at Tres Brasseurs when we were joined by four charming and very attractive young ladies. They were clad in the barest necessities of clothing, midriffs fully bared, long lissome legs exposed to the high thigh, eyes and faces made up to a flawless perfection. They flirted and cooed and oohed and aahed until poor Tomas was about to go mad. It was at this point that the bar manager, a friend of the Indigo crew, came upon the scene and whispered to Tomas a caution devastating in its implications: “These are not girls, Tomas!” The visions of sugar plums that moments before had danced gaily in his head now turned to nightmares of Brussels sprouts. Welcome to the sexual bizarreness of Tahiti.

One night I left Paradise early and, I thought, alone leaving Engineer Seann and Deck Hand Tomas to occupy the later hours of the night (after many years of training, I’ve learned to spot trouble looming ahead). A few blocks from Paradise, while walking along the main harbor front street, I hear loud shouting behind me and turn around in time to see Seann and Tomas confronting and chasing off  a teen punk gang of would-be muggers who had been about to jump me from behind. Comforting to know the crew looks out for my welfare. They also have the habit of hiring the local club security to keep an eye on us and run off the sloppy drunks.

Warning: what follows is PG-13.

On our way to Club Paradise, we could see the flashing blue lights of emergency vehicles and the glare of flood lights immediately at the front door of the club. Just an hour before, a young lady, blind drunk, had driven her small car at very high speed into a curb causing it to go airborne, roll in midair, crash onto the roadway upside down crushing it flat, then go airborne again, landing finally on its side leaning against a tree in the median. When we arrived, the rescue crews were hack sawing and jacking the twisted and flattened steel in an effort to extricate her from the wreckage. They had partly succeeded.  The back of her torso, from shoulders to knees, protruded from the tangled mess, unclothed and bloodless. It glistened the waxy sheen of death in the glare of the lights. A small crowd of onlookers stood agape, silent, stunned into shock at the macabre scene. Never have I seen anything like it before and I dearly hope never to see such a sight again.  The memory of it is seared in my mind.