Settling into the Gambiers took a little longer than expected. Answering questions such as, “What grocery stores are open at 2 PM?”, “I know this is France, but which restaurant is good at making something other than French fries?”, and, “How do I cook daikons?” took a while. Fortunately, with a combination of information sources such as French-speaking cruisers, Soggy Paw’s compendiums, WhatsApp groups, and locals who took pity on us after we walked around with confused-emoji faces, we have finally assembled the information necessary for our survival in a new country. Thusly acclimated, the Burnetts (and Jeremy) were finally able to explore.

The Intrepid Jerry recently visited the beautiful anchorages around the islands of Akamaru and Taravai. While dodging submerged pearl floats, Jerry traveled through waters striped in shades of luminous blues, as if he was gliding along the hide of a beautiful but dangerous blue tiger. Sometimes the dark areas meant coral. Sometimes, deep water. Sometimes, clouds. Translating the color coding of the Gambiers lagoon is almost as challenging as translating French or Mangarevan. Fortunately, the most important signals the sea sends us – shallow floats, lines, or coral, have come through perfectly clear through the crystalline water…so far.

Jerry’s crew has hiked, kayaked, and explored gorgeous coasts. They have met lovely locals and cruisers, ate wonderful food and played pétanque, and enjoyed lively dancing, drumming, and community at a Mother’s Day fashion show. While Mel has taken almost 700 photos in recent days, during our adventures the entire crew shared the same sentiment: it is hard to capture what it is like to finally be here exploring this beautiful place after such a long journey. It is all so…ineffable. A photo is taken, a video is shot, a caption is written, but on review, it is all disappointing. The experience of the place goes beyond the limits of language. Even the “1000 words” of a photo doesn’t do it justice. Since Mel finds herself speechless (a rare phenomenon), these photos will have to suffice. Enjoy!

Contrary to the inclinations of most cruisers, Jerry’s crew recently enjoyed staying put for a while. Hand-steering through beam seas for days on end will do that.  Over the last couple of weeks, they have explored Mangareva’s beautiful land and people.  They are getting used to life at anchor again.

Mel will provide for you here a glimpse of some recent thoughts in an attempt to convey what it is like to finally be in French Polynesia after their extended sea saga:

Arriving in a place as remote as the Gambiers archipelago after 28.5 days offshore poses some challenges.  The biggest challenge is not falling into the trap of “Provisioning Regret” as the Panamanian groceries dwindle. Mel must occasionally make an effort to abolish these thoughts from her mind: “I regret not buying more cheese. And yogurt. And relish. And Gochujang. And jalapeños. And canned black beans. And crunchy peanut butter. And root beer. And refrigerators. And spare autopilots.” “I regret not buying more recognizable cuts of meat.” “I regret not buying even more Fritos…”

One who visits French Polynesia should not be fooled into thinking they are visiting France. As beautiful as this place is, it is shockingly bereft of cheese and bread. Sipac.pf, where you can order food from Tahiti for delivery via the supply ships, gives you an “No products found” when you click, “French wine”. Sacre bleu!

Wow, there are pretty flowers here. They grow wild, and yet the locals in the houses along the main road also cultivate beautiful gardens. Mel has considered starting a hydroponic flower garden in bilge #4.

The older Mangarevan women we have seen around town are quite classy. They put flowers in their hair and walk with a slow, upright, regal cadence, even when gardening.

“Thank you” is different in Mangarevan, the local language, than Tahitian. “Maururee” instead of “Maururu”. It’s a full language, not a dialect, that is sadly being eclipsed by French and Tahitian.

We tried to do an AllTrails-rated “easy” hike up the peaks of Mangareva. Mel’s fear of heights kicked in and they had to abort the ridge-walking part. (To be more specific, Mel has a fear of falling off a height but also a fear of impulsively hurtling herself off a height just to see what it felt like – which is a thing.) Just in case you are thinking less of Mel for this weakness, she will now list some things she is not scared of: offshore sailing, drowning, learning new things as she ages, hotdogs in a can, diagnosing rare neurological diseases, and sharks.

Our fellow cruisers here in the Gambiers are absolute…pearls. Like Hatty on Drishti, a fellow cruiser and retired British military trainer, who runs sailors of ages through well-attended yoga and circuit-training sessions during the week. Meeting other cruisers is the best part of cruising, and in French Polynesia boats tend to twine their paths together so there are many intersections.  We are hopeful to cross paths again with the many kindred souls we have met here.

In addition to kindred souls, we also have encountered characters, like Ted and Mia on Serengeti. Never seen a guy so happy to be both hanging out by a concrete mixer AND wearing those shorts!

There are a lot of Australians here.  In retrospect, Mel should have realized this would happen, given the ocean they were exploring and all. For a while, Jerry was nestled in between SV Lorikeet and SV Kookaburra. It was shockingly quiet.

The locals of the Gambiers are famous for their warm hospitality. So far, despite not being able to make Herve and Valerie’s pig roasts or BBQs on Taravai, we have met a delightful family that runs what appears to be the takeout restaurant for the entire island. However, as Americans, our complete lack of French can be a barrier. Not helpful is our lapse into Spanish, which rises to the surface of our brains after so many weeks in Panama. One can appreciate the impact the ocean crossers originating from Latin America have had on the local culture and economy by observing that some of the younger Mangarevans seem to understand Spanglish almost better than English.

A conversation sadly generated by us at one of the local “Magasins”, or shops, where you order things over-the-counter, which is cool, like in an Old West pharmacy:

Mel: “We would like whole milk. Leche.  That one. Si!”

Older Mangarevan: Blank look.

Younger Mangaraven: “Okay, How many you want?”

Mel, trying in French: “Twaaah?”

Younger Mangaraven: “Hmmmm…I will get you tres.”

Like all beautiful things, there are minor flaws in the anchorages here that make the gorgeous parts more precious. Jerry is occasionally deluged with swarms of wasps, jellyfish, and the worst thing of all: coconuts. The wasps try to pollinate our bright yellow EPIRB, the jellyfish get sucked into our raw water intakes, and the coconuts?

Don’t trust the coconuts! Eye them with suspicion!

The beautiful lagoon of the Gambiers is the worksite of what a local estimated was at least 100 black pearl farms. Sailboats transiting the lagoon have the most success if they understand that they basically have a guest pass to tour an industrial sea farm. Hard hats on, folks!  The dangers here come in the form of pearl floats that mark submerged lines, nets, and other structures, scattered in between shallow patches and coral heads, all of which threatens our hull integrity and saildrives. Sneaky, liberated coconuts stealthily look like pearl floats, causing Mel’s heart to race as she stands at the bow, directing Jerry through all these obstructions. She can hear the coconuts snickering at her as they slide harmlessly under Jerry’s keels, the bastards!

Speaking of plants with nefarious plots against humans, Mel is pretty sure the Pitcairnian passionfruit she has yet to figure out what to do with also has it out for her. They stare at Mel with their crinkly skin and crunchy seeds, giving her guilt about her low Fruit IQ that is only partially compensated for by AI and YouTube videos in which she watches people identify the edible parts of the things she used to walk right by in Trader Joes and Whole Foods as she beelined for the dark chocolate peanut butter cups.

In her recent efforts to improve her Fruit IQ, she learned a new word: Pamplemousse. You can eat it. The Pitcairnian Pamplemousse was amazing. Easy to eat without an instruction manual, not too sweet, and not too tart. A fruit you can trust. Pay attention, coconuts!

Perhaps Mel should make a picturebook as one of her assignments for her self-taught Tropical Fruit University.

Enjoy these pics of beautiful Mangareva!

Mel’s habit of minimally researching her destination to preserve some surprises backfired this time.  She forgot that surprises can be both good and bad. Jerry’s crew originally selected Pitcairn Island as a port of call given its famous remoteness and their exposure to the romanticized history of the mutiny on the Bounty.  After their autopilot failed and the crew learned that beam reaching down Pitcairn way was a better angle to hand-steer, Pitcairn morphed into a necessary rest stop. Stealing a few moments in between hand-steering shifts and sleeping during their ten days of obligatory rudder micro-management, Mel used their Starlink to put together the story of Pitcairn Island.  What her research revealed prompted her to have mixed emotions rather than unencumbered joy when she first set foot on land after 26 days offshore.

She will start with the positives. Pitcairn is stunning. As the photos below hopefully show, it has quite the dramatic geography. As the volcanic land juts out of the sea, it takes on a variety of hues, including black, grey, beige, and brown. On top of this rugged rock grows a wild assortment of greenery, surprisingly including both tropical palms and flowers but also evergreen Norfolk pine and shrubbery. All of this is encircled by a seascape so complex that the islanders were inspired to name every nook and cranny, including several nods to the poor souls who fell off the island at the more treacherous spots.

A visit to Pitcairn provides one with one of the best perks of traveling: experiencing up close a different way humans can get along in the world. Our many unique experiences began when we were picked up in a modern version of the historical longboat, used by the Pitcairnians since the 1800’s to get supplies on and off the island through the rough and jumbled seas of their Landing. Unfortunately, the seas were too rough for us to take our own dinghy ashore, where it would have been spared being bashed to pieces on the rocks by being lifted up to rest on land by a crane.

Once landed and checked in, we were each assigned a tour guide on a quad bike, an ATV capable of going up and down the narrow, rubble-y roads winding along the edge of the steep hills without killing us, a conclusion Mel reached only after she survived the journey.

During this tour, Mel was struck by the fact that the island’s population owed their existence to a single edible plant: the breadfruit.  For a ship filled with rascals who were much “tatowed” (see below), the Bounty was on a presumably peaceful science mission, complete with two botanists, to gather these plants to feed the slaves toiling in the Caribbean. Jerry’s crew was thrilled to be fed this breadfruit with historical lineage in the home/restaurant of the tireless Darralyn, who was also a nurse and the island provisioner.  This meal solved the mystery of why it was thought that a fruit was hearty enough to sustain people: breadfruit is nutritionally beefy and tastes like potato.  A vitamin-C- packed, complete-protein-filled, high-fiber potato. It makes good chips!

Pitcairn smartly offers many souvenirs to commemorate the considerable effort it takes visitors to get to such an unusual and secluded place, which is over 3000 miles from both New Zealand and South America.  Pitcairn even peddles its own dirt, which it delivers in buckets to the occasional 3000-passenger cruise ship that rarely wanders by, allowing people a photo-op and passport stamp to memorialize their proximity to a speck of an island not capable of supporting the entire throng of visitors going ashore. While we were thankfully able to acquire Pitcairn’s valuable soil in our shoes the natural way, Mel noticed that their ATV tour did not include the much-anticipated gift shop.

During lunch, we solved the mystery of how one shops in Pitcairn:

Darralyn: “Here is our online store. Which T-shirts do you want?”

Mel: “These.”

Darralyn: “That one is Carol’s design and the other one is Dennis’s.”

Mel: “Okay. How do we get them?”

Darralyn: “Carol’s house is up the way and Dennis’s is around the corner.  Just head on over there.”

Moments later we found ourselves being escorted through Carol’s long, narrow, patchwork-constructed house to dig through bins full of shirts in her attic, leaving 30 minutes later laden with bags and bags of breadfruit chips and enough T-shirts to clothe our entire extended families.

In addition to stamps and dirt, Pitcairn is also known for its honey, but we did not get a chance to buy any.  That night the weather decided to demonstrate the reason for its reputation by sending large waves and conflicting winds through both Pitcairn anchorages, making us feel as if we were underway on a rough passage despite being anchored.  We took the hint and began a stressful downwind hand-steer to the Gambiers.

Speaking of hand-steering, here are the negatives that bubble under Pitcairn’s gorgeous surface. The single day we spent exploring Pitcairn was not enough time to process this complex and unique island. Despite the natural beauty of the land and the friendliness of the people we met, a cloud will always hang over our memories of our time there. The possibility that at some point we interacted with under-punished and unapologetic child rapists will do that.

In 2004 and 2005, a total of 9 Pitcairnian men, a significant fraction of the male population of the island, were convicted of numerous counts of under-aged sex as well as rape. Details are better explained elsewhere on the internet, but Mel recommends not doing the deep dive into the events like she did unless you are prepared for some sleepless nights filled with dark thoughts about the flaws of humanity, the scary wisdom of dystopian novels like Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm, the way society defines what is right and wrong, and how “freedom” from traditional authority must mean different things for men than it does for women. Sleep is also repelled by anger that anyone gave more than two seconds of consideration of the bullshit excuse that all the child rape was a harmless local custom.

After learning all of this, and before their landfall, Mel tried to talk herself into being excited about visiting Pitcairn.  After all, the court cases went down more than 20 years ago, and what travel destination is free of similar sordid stories that are swept under the rug by marketing that we tourists are all too happy to ignore while we try to escape the realities of our own worlds? However, some further facts about Pitcairn make putting such blinders on difficult.  For one, only a tiny minority of the convicted men have issued public apologies. In addition, the community seems to have rapidly moved on, recently honoring one of the rapists by re-electing him mayor. Since there are no hotels on the island, some locals have opened up their homes for guests.  A glance at the vacancies reveals that visitors can even stay with another rapist, the mayor’s dad, if they want.

Perhaps the Pitcairnian’s own words about the crimes will help dispel this outsider’s reluctance to visit, an outsider perhaps unfairly wearing the backwards-looking “Me Too” goggles of a different time and place? A plaque commissioned by the community to acknowledge the events, not part of our tour, was placed in the graveyard in 2016:

“’To say we’re sorry does not seek punishment or blame,/ it doesn’t say they were right and we were wrong,/ just that we have learnt and understand the error of our ways.”

Soooo….this essentially reads: “Sorry/Not sorry.”  I mean, wow. Just wow.  One is left interpreting this attitude as evidence that Pitcairn is a small community under the thumb of a few powerful, unscrupulous individuals, a situation sadly not so uncommon in the world.

The end result of learning all of this was that the only way Mel was able to step foot on land and tour around with a smile on her face was to tell herself she was visiting a prison.

Having treated all kinds of folks as a physician, she knew that day-to-day interactions with criminals were likely to be pleasant, as one was unlikely in casual conversation to encounter any potentially disturbing deviant worldviews. And indeed her experience of Pitcairn’s people was a positive one, of a people proud to live in such a unique and beautiful place, a place many dream of visiting, and proud to be part of a small community with such a fascinating origin story. Perhaps not accidentally, the majority of the individuals Jerry’s crew encountered were women, gracious and curious, content to be kept busy with the large number of physical chores and logistical provisioning maneuvers required to survive in a place with limited modern conveniences.  During our pleasant interactions, Pitcairn’s shameful 21-st century history remained an undiscussed undercurrent, and frankly, it was nice to be able to ignore it for a while. You were left wanting to help them, give them books for their library, volunteer in their clinic, fix their broken solar panels.

And so it is that Pitcairn’s human landscape is just as complex and varied as its physical one. At the end of the day Mel was glad she visited such a fascinating place, a unique experience for some unanticipated reasons. She was not, however, sad to leave Pitcairn in Jerry’s wake, bound for the black pearl farms, baguettes, flowers, outrigger canoes, and relaxing drum beats of French Polynesia, where she could submerge herself in the crystalline blue waters, look at pretty corals and fish, and not think about rape anymore.

After leaving, we learned that, possibly during our time on Pitcairn, a person exposed to hantavirus on the MV Hondius cruise ship was “isolating” on the island. This brings up an interesting thought. Perhaps, at least until all the perverts die off, Pitcairn could downplay tourism and put some good back in the world by reinventing itself. It might just be the perfect global sanctuary for biocontainment, isolating dangerous contagions to protect humanity.

Pacific Crossing Day 21. Hand steering Day 7. Less than 200 nm away from Henderson Island.

Mel heard dolphins sleep by turning off half their brain at a time so the other half can watch for predators. After a week of fractured sleep from hand-steering shifts, she thinks this has happened to her.

Science has figured out one reason why we sleep. It turns out there is a whole sewer system in the brain called the glymphatic system. At night, fluid leaks from our blood vessels and fills up the spaces around them, creating tubular rivers, washing out all the brain guck of the day, eventually draining into the lymph node trash collectors in our neck.

This means that, after days of an erratic watch schedule, extra trash is floating in Mel’s brain river. And so she figures her brain has put half itself to sleep in an attempt to clean house.

Unfortunately, the half that is asleep seems to be the hand-steering half. The heading readout is hypnotic – 205 206 208 214 215 222 – turn the wheel! 203 204 203 205…

The other half of Mel’s brain is busy bubbling up weird thoughts and memories. Such as this memory : the video she made of an Elvis song starring her kids. And this thought: She really hopes that she doesn’t give a tuna botulism from the toxic carrots she disposed of today. Are there vegan tunas?

Today’s earworm: Boom Boom, Cat Empire. Mel feels like a zombie and so is rocking out the her zombie playlist.

Song to perk you up when energy flags while hand steering: Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani.

“This Sh$t is bananas – B-A-N-A-N-A-S!”

So true, Gwen. So true.

Pacific Crossing Day 10

Tonight’s post is all about the pretty, pretty Pacific. Flattery may get us somewhere.

With the engines off after four days of motoring through the ITCZ, it is finally just us and the sea. It’s a similar feeling to when you are at a crowded party and finally sneak off to an upstairs bedroom with the one person you wanted to talk to the whole time anyway. Ahhhh. Now I have you all to myself!

All of our senses note the difference. Touch is the only sense that hasn’t changed for the better. With a 7-8 ft wave rolling every 7 seconds right across our hulls, first lifting one and then the other, the simple task of walking across the saloon, legs akimbo, evokes aching in every sore ab and leg muscle, every bruise.

However, the salty sea wind has put the stench of diesel far in our wake. Without the diesel tang in our nostrils, we can finally taste our food. The malevolent rumbling of the engines has been replaced by the pulsing sibilance of the waves breaking under our hulls. But it is our vision that is most enhanced with the uptick in winds, as throughout the day they are treated to a variety of sights both above and below the stark division between the sky and the sea.

Our view is dominated by a multitude of variations of the color blue. The sea and the sky rotate through all possible mixtures of blue with white and black every hour, as if King Neptune cannot stop playing with filters in Photoshop. Watching the changes at twilight especially is akin to listening to a symphony, with movements changing with time characterized by different cloud cover and light.

To be completely surrounded by this versatile color is likely one reason the sea calls to people. Neuroscience has shown that looking at blue activates arousal networks in the brain, focusing attention. Yet at the same time, psychology research has demonstrated blue’s ability to trigger a sense of calm. This odd mixture of focus and calm is rare these days, as typically we are called upon to concentrate when under pressure. Usually there is no room in the mind at that time for a sense of peace. Yet Mel has noticed that this meditative state is exactly what settles in about 15 minutes into her watch, as she scans the sky and the sea. It is an appropriate state to be in when crossing oceans, when the ability to respond quickly to calamity in a calm and thoughtful way is crucial. For a doctor previously pushed to focus for 12 hours a day, always with an un-calm background concern that she would be unable to meet the overwhelming demands on her mind and her time, this calm is healing.

Oh look! Mel just figured out why they call it The Pacific!

Boat stuff: We are over 1500 nm out of Panama. Our current target is Henderson Island, in the Pitcairn group, a little over 2000 nm away. At this rate, we might get there in 10-11 days. The trade winds are between 14-18 knots apparent, but at the moment they are on our beam. We are making 7-8.5 knots to our target.

Today’s calamity: We had to restart the autopilot and chartplotter after a blip of some kind that put steering out of our control for a minute. All is well now. On the morning rounds, Greg saw the ring for our first reef was about to tear off the sail, as the straps that were meant to secure the ring better to the main had not been reattached by the sailmaker in Sint Maarten when we had them modify the reefing system. We broke a rule: always double-check someone else’s work. Now we are double-reefed and a little slower, but the ride is smoother, so we’ll take it!

Dinner tonight: Chicken pot pie, using a rotisserie chicken that Mel shredded up and vacuum-packed before we left. Next time Mel will get 8 rotisserie chickens. It is so much easier than cooking chicken from scratch!

Entertainment: Rocking out to Mel’s Sailing playlist, which is probably the main reason Spotify thinks she is 77 years old.

For the nerds, this article about the impact of color on the brain via studying EEG waves was researched by physicists and neuroscientists and gives you hope that humanity is not entirely doomed, as clearly there are still some smart people left.

Here are some recent photos. Look at all the shades of blue!