Author: cruisingrunner

July 16 – August 5, 2014

We had a long, uncomfortable, five-day passage from Mopelia (our last island in French Polynesia) to Suwarrow (our first and only island in The Cook Islands), arriving on Monday, 21 July.  Suwarrow was a packed anchorage, and we spent five very social days there before heading to Pago Pago, American Samoa.  In Pago Pago we had a lot going on, including massive reprovisioning, 40 kt winds, anchor dragging, and Alex’s 13th birthday. Admittedly, we were happy to leave Pago Pago bound for Tonga the morning of Tuesday, 5 August.

Originally posted on July 20, 2014 by cruisingrunner

Mopelia is about 4 days behind us now, and we have just under a day left to go in our ocean passage. French Polynesia was amazing in the diversity of experiences offered and in the intense beauty of some of the more remote places that sometimes you had to pinch yourself to make sure it was real. I will always have a soft spot for the island of Huahine, because it is there that I rekindled my love for running. Our next destination is the island of Suwarrow, which is in the northern island group of The Cook Islands. According to our chart, we have already crossed the international boundary, so we are no longer in French waters.

According to our guidebook, The Cook Islands are a self-governing democratic commonwealth “affiliated” with New Zealand. Apparently New Zealand handles foreign affairs, defense, and subsidizes finances. Cook Islanders are New Zealand citizens and can move freely back and forth between The Cooks and New Zealand.

New Zealand. That means they speak English. I must stop and prepare myself for this. For the first time in almost a year and half we will be in a country where we speak the language. Before we bungled French in French Polynesia, we spent a year in Mexico butchering Spanish. Yes, my Spanish is far better than my French, but that didn’t mean it still wasn’t a constant intentional effort to communicate. I’m so used to preparing for every interaction with a little studying of the phrase books and so used to dealing with the ad hoc interactions by feeling like a 3-year-old and usually resorting to asking, “Please do you speak a little English?” in the appropriate language. It seems so strange that we’ll be able to clear into the country tomorrow speaking the language we speak in our own heads.

Suwarrow is an atoll and it is also a national park, and my understanding is that our opportunities to go to the various motus will be limited, so I’m a little worried about running opportunities. I will make the best of it though, as we are supposed to have spectacular weather while we are there, good for much paddle boarding and snorkeling.

-D.

Posted on July 16, 2014 by cruisingrunner

After a couple days of wind and rain, we’ve got blue skies again, so I hit the motu for another trail “run.” Every now and then I’ll have to put “run” in quotes, because given the nature of where I find myself running these days, I will have the tendency to get a bit distracted from time to time. Today’s distractions were plentiful.

To start with I headed to the north end of the motu to say good morning to the family that lives there. Greetings included the French custom of cheek-to-cheek contact while making kissing sounds. I just can’t get used to that! They speak a fair amount of English, so small talk included more than my pre-canned French phrases of “I live on a boat with my family” and “Mopelia is very pretty”. After that I headed back south and took my first offroad opportunity heading east. And then I became distracted by the Pacific Ocean and the immense coral graveyard stretching far along the beach. I decided to run on that coral graveyard to stay close to the ocean and hear it roar at me. It felt a little like running along the beach at home, but I amused myself with the thought that the ocean was simply on the wrong side. Running along the coral was a challenge, and although I did complete my desired 3 miles, it was very slow going. I will not be sharing my time.

I even broke up the run a bit and sat down by the ocean amongst the coral. OK, I really sat down because the sock on my right foot was pulling too tight on my toes, so I needed to adjust it. But then, I was distracted by the coral and sat for longer than I intended. It’s possible I was sitting in a place that no one has ever sat. People are sparse on this motu, and the coral beach is vast, and I was distracted by this thought.

The final distraction was the kitty. A little white kitten with blue eyes crossed my path as I was making my final approach back to Harry’s house. I made the obligatory “meow” sound at it, and it clearly needed some attention because it was tremendously interested in me. I stopped and let it approach me, and it did what cats do, that is, it rubbed itself on my legs. Imagine his surprise and disgust when he realized he was absolutely soaked from my leg sweat, since I was pretty much drenched after my run. He was not a happy kitty. He kept shaking his leg, trying to get the wet off of him, and he would not come near me after that.

All in all I was probably gone from the boat for about an hour and a half (including the paddle from the boat and back). All that for a 3 mile run. But these distractions define the phase in my life, the phase away from civilization, away from running with my iPod.

-D.

Posted on July 12, 2014, by cruisingrunner

Sure, running is good for you, no one disputes that. Although, I have had the odd person, like my doctor, remark that I shouldn’t run because it’s bad for my knees, or something like that. That was right after she gave me my blood work back and told me I was the healthiest 40 something women she’d seen in a long time. But I digress.

So, most people, even within the medical profession, don’t usually dispute that running is good for you. But I’m finding, especially now, that it is providing me so much more than physical benefits. And I don’t just mean the obvious that it puts me in better mood and makes me feel better emotionally and all that, even though all that is true. What I mean now is that running is encouraging me to get out there and see more.

I enjoyed another trail run along the motu this morning before the wind and rain picked up. I parked my paddle board in front of Harry’s house again, bid him good morning, and headed in the direction of the pack of dogs that had previously intimidated me into turning around. When I asked, Harry told me he wouldn’t be working on copra today (maybe because of the impending rain?) but instead he would be working on a construction project, which looks like a pier or dock or something. I passed the same two people along the trail, exchanged names this time, and one of the men offered to open a coconut for me (with a machete, of course) if I would like some water. I (hopefully) politely declined and kept running towards the dogs. I got pretty close before they noticed me, and they aren’t exactly the best guard dogs, because when one started barking, another also started barking but also started running in the wrong direction. I solved the situation by heading for the house calling, “Bonjour, Bonjour!” And this is how I met Bowie, as in David Bowie (he said that, not me). He quieted the dogs, and he offered me coffee and breakfast and told me when he was done eating he would begin working on the copra. He told me how the “grand bateau” takes the copra to Tahiti, and he seemed quite proud of this. He also told me his dad is American. All this was in French, so don’t quote me on it.

See, I’m shy. Or introverted. Or something. When given the choice, I will intentionally interact with as few people as possible on a daily basis. If it weren’t for my desire to run, I would not be having these short, but not insignificant (at least to me) connections with the people who live here on Mopelia. In addition, I’ve seen much more of the motu than I otherwise would have. Since I run without music and podcasts now, I am quite aware and in tune with my surroundings. I rarely zone out, like I used to do on long runs at home. I noticed that there is still evidence of destruction both in the foliage and in the manmade constructions from past cyclones that have ravaged the atoll. I’ve run down little detours to the edges of the atoll, both within the lagoon and out to the ocean and taken in the varying sights and smells. I’ve run from dogs.

Running gets me to shore, by myself, for more than just errands.

Running is my outreach.

-D.

Posted on July 10, 2014, by cruisingrunner

Seriously, I love it. Tim bought it for me many years ago, in fact, I think I have one of the very first models, because the face of it is a large rectangle that covers my entire wrist. These days the new ones look no different than sport watches. I’ve occasionally looked at the newer models, and I’m sure even once or twice one has found its way into my Amazon shopping cart, but I always resist in the end. Mine is still in perfect working order and I’ve come to have a bit of affection for its obnoxious size. Like it’s some sort of badge of honor.

I love my Garmin because I love to know EXACTLY how far I ran and EXACTLY how fast. I also love to know EXACTLY my pace any time I want. I was always pretty obsessive about it in that I would pause it for things like traffic lights or any reason I was going to have to stop for more than, oh, about a second. I certainly wouldn’t want any bad data biasing my pace results.

When I started running recently out here on the islands, I intentionally decided not to use the Garmin right away. I knew I would be slow, and I didn’t want to get discouraged right off the bat before I fell back in love with running. It was a good strategy, because I know I’ve been slow. I finally couldn’t take it anymore and I used it for my two runs on Maupiti. The first day I ran just over 10 min miles, the second day just under. Slow, but not discouragingly slow. I wore the Garmin for yesterday’s run, but I understandably forgot to pause it when I was confronting the pack of dogs, so pace info for that run isn’t exactly accurate. I’ve decided I’m going to stick with about a 3-mile run for a while, maybe until I can run 9 min miles again. Three miles is a good distance since it’s short and doesn’t take up too much of the day, and I don’t have to bother myself with carrying water and snacks. It will be fun to watch my pace progress over time too.

There’s one more reason I love my Garmin. I found that buried in one of the menus it will actually display your current latitude and longitude in degrees and minutes. So, it’s now become our backup GPS device should anything ever happen to our electronics. It’s perfect since the battery lasts a very long time and it’s small and portable. It even has a home in our ditch bag now. So, there you go. Good for running, good for cruising emergencies.

-D.

Posted on July 10, 2014, by cruisingrunner

We arrived at the very remote atoll of Mopelia yesterday afternoon. Most of the Society Islands are volcanic islands with fringing coral reefs, but this one is a bit later in its island life cycle. There is no central island, and only the fringing reef and bits of land called “motus” are left. While still in Maupiti we actually met a man there who is from Mopelia. He had gotten a ride to Maupiti with another cruising yacht and would be staying in Maupiti for about a week, and then he would get a ride back. I quizzed him about what Mopelia was like, and I learned there are about 20 people who live here mostly harvesting copra, and there are currently no children living here. Bummer. He also told us if we had some tobacco, then one of the guys would take us fishing and lobster diving for sure. It doesn’t even have to be a lot of tobacco, he said. This conversation relied much more on his knowledge of English than my knowledge of French.

This morning I paddle boarded over to the motu to investigate whether or not I’d be able to go for a run, and the only sandy landing spot was in front of someone’s house. I needed a sandy rather than rocky landing spot, since our paddle board is of the blow up variety, and pointy rocks are bad for it. I walked up toward the house and saw a man working outside on his copra harvest. His name is Harry, and he does not speak English, so in my very bad French I asked if it was OK for me to leave my paddle board and if there was a road I could run on. He gave me a little stool so that I could sit down while I changed my shoes, and I told him how I live on a boat with my family. That is about the extent of my small talk ability, so the conversation pretty much stalled after that. I did ask if there were any children on the island, even though I already knew the answer, just to have something to say. He walked me over to where I could see the road, and then I was off. It wasn’t really a road, but more like an offroad trail for jeeps and trucks. Being an atoll, it was perfectly flat so the running was more effortless than on Maupiti. Well, except for the rats that I saw scurry from the path, and oh my, the flies. And the pack of dogs that wouldn’t let me pass one of the houses that they were obviously very protective of. I came across two more men working their copra, and again had a brief conversation using most of the French I know.

Oh, how I wish I spoke French. This is a very deep regret of mine. If you ever do what we are doing and cruise French Polynesia, take the time to learn basic French. I mean, spend a few months to a year studying, take a class, use Rosetta Stone, whatever. Don’t leave it for your on passage to do list, because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard of people intending to study on passage, and for whatever reason they don’t. My reason was that being at sea makes me lethargic. Of course, enough people speak English everywhere we go that we can get by just fine. However, just getting by is a little disappointing when I think of the richer experiences we are missing by not being able to converse with the local people. Today was a very good example.

-D.

July 12, 2014

Alex and I went with a local guy here outside the pass to snorkel on a WWII Navy shipwreck. Most of the ship is gone but you can still see some cannons, the anchor, and many big gun shells (brass shells last longer under water than the rest of the steel hull) embedded in the coral. Pretty cool. Heo, the local guy, said we shouldn’t spearfish near the pass since there are so many sharks there. I said, well, we can just take our spears along anyway, even if we don’t use them. (yea, sure…) We were only in the water 3-4 seconds before Heo says, “Give me my gun!” I look over and see a huge school of yellowtail-like fish. Heo shoots into the school, but misses. Within seconds, several sharks appear out of nowhere and start looking around… Good thing he missed. Later, he shot a small Jack and carried it back to the dinghy holding it above water so the sharks could not “hear” it struggling (vibrations, more than anything, of a struggling fish attract the sharks in a hurry). One fish in the dinghy, Heo saw a huge school of parrot fish, swam over and after looking around and seeing no sharks nearby, shot one. Hit in the belly, the parrot fish went nuts, swimming in circles on the spear. Within 2 seconds, three sharks appeared from behind the ridge of the reef and attacked the parrotfish. The first shark took half the fish, the second took the rest – no prize for third place. Within five seconds, 10 more sharks appeared in a frenzy. Heo had already let go of his spear gun and was swimming backwards but with no fish left to eat, the new sharks looked eagerly at anything moving in the water. I forced myself to relax and slowly removed my dive knife (I had just put my gun back in the dinghy, thinking we were done). As he kicked at a couple of small, curious sharks, I couldn’t help but smile in my snorkel, thinking that he should have listened to his own advice. Once back in the dinghy, his big smile made me laugh and he suggested that we go inside the reef to fish some more.

July 11, 2014

While Brenden and I were “just relaxing on the boat” the shift from NW to W winds brought a strong gust of 30+ knots and the two surfboards blew off the top of Exodus into the water.  We both jumped up, but Brenden once again proved he was a man of action.  The paddle board was down, so he yelled at me to get him a paddle, but I was taking too long, and then I said it might be too hard to paddle in this wind, so he promptly stripped down naked and just jumped in.  I told him to go for the board that was furthest away, and I would get on the paddle board to get the other one.  In hindsight, I should have just jumped in too, because once I retrieved the board, I was having trouble paddling, so Brenden had to take his board back to Exodus and the swim to me to get the other board.  All this time we are getting pelted by heavy rain.  Tim and Alex showed up with the dinghy about 5 min later.  I let Brenden take a much-deserved warm shower.