Author: cruisingrunner

Original Post

I didn’t run yesterday, because, well, Bora Bora sucks.

So, I channeled my negative thoughts and about 2/3 of a bottle of crappy Chilean wine into a semi-original poem.

With tribute to Rocky Dennis, I present

A Cruiser’s Poem

These things are good:
Sunrises on watch
Potlucks with friends
Visiting new places
And sunshine on my face

These things are bad:
Gale force winds
Poo in the bilge
No see um bites
And sunshine on my face

-D.

June 24 – July 16, 2014

Original Post

Oh, the irony. Bora Bora is one of the most famous resort destination vacation spots in the world, known for its turquoise water and overwater bungalows. People pay outrageous amounts of money to spend their vacations there, and I have found myself somewhere I would rather stay than go to Bora Bora. We will go there, of course, if for no other reason than to say we went there.

I find myself questioning whether this makes any sense at all. Is life really long enough to go somewhere, just so you can say you went? At happy hour last night I threw this out there, and a barrage of “you HAVE to go to Bora Bora” came back at me. I was even labeled “anti-Bora Bora.” There was general consensus that Huahine is amazing, and we’d all like to stay longer, and that Bora Bora probably won’t be that great, being all touristy and stuff. One person even said they wanted to go to Bora Bora just so they can tell people they went to Bora Bora and it was “meh.” I get it, and I can feel myself getting swept away in that mentality, but I’m trying to resist. Must. Resist. Do I really want to be motivated to do something just so I can say I did?

I’m reminded of something Merle from S/V Kenta Anae said way back in La Cruz as he was mocking the social media culture. I’m sure I’ll butcher the quote, but it went something like, “If I didn’t post it or blog about it, did it really happen?” The point being that we are so caught up in documenting and sharing what we do that we forget to really experience it.

So True. I take my camera everywhere, so I can share my photos. I write essays for the facebook page. I check for likes and comments as if that’s some sort of validation. I really need to back off and stop seeing my life as a script unraveling as the facebook posts rack up.

Hence, I started this blog.

But we really shouldn’t go to Bora Bora, just to say we did. I still stand by that.

-D.

Original Post

I made it back to the boat just in time to avoid getting caught in the rain. It is day 3 since I started running again, and this morning I went from Fare to Faaite on the West side of Huahine, but don’t get too impressed. It’s only about a mile in each direction.

Since it is day 3, maybe a little recap is in order:
Day 1 – 1 mile, had to walk most of the way back because Mother Nature was calling
Day 2 – 3 miles, running euphoria, I even opened up my stride the last half mile or so
Day 3 – 2 miles, dead legs, kept looking at my watch the entire time, had to suck down a gu gel. I mean seriously, who needs a gu gel during a 2 mile run?

So, I have a ways to go.

I didn’t quite run empty handed today. In one hand I had a VHF radio, because telling the boys to set a timer for 40 minutes and then look for me at the dock wasn’t quite working out. In the other hand I carried my bread bag, because I would stop at the Super Fare Nui (grocery store) for baguettes after my run. Baguettes have become such a staple for us since arriving in French Polynesia, and we’ve learned that all baguettes are not created equal. The best ones were in Atuona and Papeete. Atuona because they were the first ones we had after a 22-day ocean crossing, and even if they weren’t really that great, I remember them as amazing. Papeete, because they really were amazing. Just the right amount of crunch in the crust and softness in the bread. The worst ones were in Makemo. Way, way, way too much crunch in the crust and way, way, way too much softness in the bread. Anyway, baguettes are the new tortillas. That makes sense, considering we spent a year in Mexico before coming to French Polynesia. Adapting from tortillas and guacamole to baguettes and brie has been mostly a seamless process. We just sort of go with the flow. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, or some cliché like that.

OK, truth be told, there’s a lot of adapting the must be done when you live on a sailboat in foreign countries, and not all of it is as seamless as switching from yummy tortillas to yummy baguettes. And it’s amplified for us, because it would be fair to say that adapting is a skill I am having to develop as we go.

Take my drink of choice, for example. I was in love with good California wine. My preference was always a full-bodied red, like a Cabernet Franc or a Zinfandel. But I drank a lot of oaky, buttery Chardonnays too, because they were less expensive, and a wine habit can start to break the bank after a while. It is difficult to keep up a wine habit in Mexico, because quite frankly, the wine is crap. The best you can find is Chilean wine, which once upon a time after we visited Chile, I convinced myself was good, but really, it’s not. Cruisers drink a lot of boxed wine, because it’s cheaper and it stores easier than bottles, and I’m not above cracking a box of “California White” to mix with sparkling water on a hot day, but one can hardly call that wine. I still have a few bottles of red that we brought with us when we left home, and visitors have brought me the odd bottle of Chardonnay, but mostly I’ve had to adapt away from my wine habit. Being sailors and all, I’ve discovered sipping rum. It took a while to adjust, in fact, I can still remember my first sip as we toasted to a safe voyage at the beginning of the Baja Ha Ha. It burned my nose and lips. But now I love it. So, that’s what we do out here, we adapt.

Another change I’ve had to adapt to is being with my husband and kids all day, every day. Mostly I’ve adapted to that in the same way I’ve adapted to the wine thing. Rum. Lots of rum.

And on that note, I’d like to say Happy Anniversary to my love. Fourteen years and counting.

-D.

Original Post

Huahine is the Society Island no one knows about, but so far it is my favorite. It lacks the dramatic beauty rivaling the Marquesas that Moorea had, but it is much more removed from the tourism industry, and therefore, much more friendly and relaxed. This morning’s run followed the same path as yesterday around the southern tip of the island from Avea to Parea, but today I knocked out 3 miles rather than the single mile I could muster yesterday. Well, I don’t actually know exactly how far I went, since I didn’t take my Garmin, just a sport watch, so I ran for more or less 30 minutes. In my currently severely out of shape condition it was probably less than 3 miles, but who’s counting. I didn’t wear my Garmin because I’ve decided to simplify my running. No Garmin. No iPod. Today I didn’t even carry water, because it’s not too hot, and I wasn’t going very far. My entire life has been simplified in the last year, why not my running too? The only thing I carried was my camera. For obvious reasons.

I was passed in both directions by several people in cars, on scooters, and on bicycles. It’s nice to be on an island again where people smile at you and say hello (well, they say Bonjour or Iaorana). Throughout French Polynesia there has been a definite correlation between the exposure to international tourism and the probability that people randomly say hello to you. To be fair, it may not be just tourism, but rather simply how connected they are to the outside world. In the small villages in The Marquesas and The Tuamotus we met the friendliest and most generous people. Even though we speak barely a lick of French people shared meals with us, took the guys fishing, and loaded us up with as much pamplemousse as we could carry. I noticed a stark difference almost immediately in Papeete (The capital of Tahiti and French Polynesia). While walking from the marina to the super mega giant huge grocery store (hadn’t seen one of those in a while) we passed people on the street and most had their head down or were looking at their smart phones. Eye contact was avoided. It felt cold and impersonal. It felt like home.

-D.

Original Post

I am a runner.

It took me a long time to accept that. I kept trying to apply caveats like, “well, I’m not a natural runner,” or, “not that I run very fast or anything.” At some point I finally realized I really was a runner, and I just dropped all the caveats. I ran to feel good, I ran to sort out my thoughts, I ran to feel competitive (even if only with myself), I ran to see progress, I ran to feel strong, and a lot of the time I ran simply because I could. Sometimes you just have to do something, and lacing up a pair of running shoes always seemed like the simplest something I could do. I was a runner because it became part of my identity, part of how I viewed myself.

But then, for some reason, I forgot.

OK, well, not for “some” reason, but for a perfectly understandable reason.

I became a cruiser.

That’s right. My husband and I sold our house, quit our jobs, moved our family onto a boat, and sailed away from our home and the entire life we knew. It was something we really wanted to do. It was exciting. We had worked hard for so long, and now we were going to live a life we really wanted to live. We would become a stronger family unit. We would travel to places we’ve never been. It has been absolutely amazing, as amazing as anyone who’s ever wanted to do this could imagine it being. But after a year and change I’m able to look back and see that I’ve had ups and down as I have had to figure out how to redefine myself in this new life. Running isn’t the only part of my identity that I lost.

I lost my work identity. I was a respected engineer and manager. I was good at what I did, and it was well recognized by the people around me. Early on someone asked me what I missed most from home, and I joked, “I miss being listened to.” That wasn’t so much of a joke as the raw, honest truth. At work, people really did listen to me. Now I lived on a boat even though I know very little about sailing and even less about fixing boat issues. I simply wasn’t listened to anymore because it wasn’t apparent that I knew anything worth listening to. I had a hard time with that, even though I really didn’t recognize it at the time.

I lost my busy working mother identity. I was the mom who worked like crazy but still found time to be the Little League team mom. I was always busy and rarely took any time to just relax. I thought this was something I hated and was gladly giving it up to go cruising, but then there was just so much time. So much time with very little purpose.

Please don’t take any of this as complaining. I never wallowed in any misery; in fact I never actually realized these identities were lost or that I had any issues even if they were. I simply went about the business of redefining my identity. I am now a homeschool teacher, meteorologist, navigator, and licensed HAM radio operator. At this point in my journey, I certainly don’t want my work identity or my busy working mother identity back. I do, however, want my runner identity back. I have realized there’s no reason I should have lost that in the first place. Sure, we live on a boat, but most places we’ve been to have a place to run, I just need to remind myself it’s what I really want to do.

So, I’ve started this blog to document all of the places I will run, and how I learn and grow along the way.

Today, I laced up my shoes, got a dinghy ride to the dock, and ran about a mile along the southern point of the island of Huahine in French Polynesia. I can’t wait to run tomorrow.

-D.

Before we left home, I tried to research how people stay fit, and more specifically, how they keep running when they are cruising.  I came up with nothing.  It’s just not a topic that’s on the top of any would be cruisers mind.  Understandably, everyone is preoccupied with anchor size, heavy weather tactics, and provisioning.  Simultaneously, pretty much everyone at work that I told about our upcoming travels asked me the question, “will you have a blog?”  I had already decided to set up a Facebook page to chronicle our family travels, but I started thinking about whether a personal blog centered around running everywhere we went could make sense.  I set it up on wordpress, told a few people about it, and then left it to get all dusty and covered in cobwebs for over a year.  I ran a bit while we were in Mexico, but I was consumed with other things because the cruising learning curve was so steep.  Finally, while we were in Huahine, I decided to try to resurrect the idea of the running blog. If you’re interested the blog can be found at

www.cruisingrunner.wordpress.com