I do not keep a diary. Never have. To write a diary every day is like returning to one's own vomit.
-
Enoch Powell (1912 - 1998) -
British politician.
It was supposed to be the perfect anniversary dinner...if only the service was as nice as the surroundings.
WEDDING ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL:
Celebrating our roots
(We are vegetables?)
My rule of thumb: A week is not enough, 3 weeks is too much. After that it's time to move on. To the best place. And the best place is the next place. (who's quote is that?)
We are all living creatures. Apparently we're closely related to monkeys and apes. Yeah, I know, they too masturbate, throw shit around and work for peanuts. But perhaps I'm more closely related to plants? Maybe I am becoming a vegetable. I can't help but noticing the similarities.
I wasn't born on the water, nor did I grow up near water. My childhood and my family did not have a close connection with the sea. No sailors, no fishermen, no boat builders and no-one living on the water.
A good start for the morning scrabble session on our anniversary. "Darling, let me be your lobe, love." "Oh yeah, I'll be your love-lobe anytime..."
Fact:Under normal conditions the growth of roots is influenced chiefly by gravity and by the presence of water. Roots tend to grow downward into soil, unless water is more readily available at the surface.
Despite growing up into a very ordinary, orderly and predictable suburban life there was always something unsettled in me. One could try to explain it though astrology, numerology, chacras or perhaps a thousand other pseudo scientific methods of studying the human existance in the astral plane. The psychiatrists have their own suggestions: ADHD, manic-depression, anxiety disorder and various "inbalances" in the properly standardised human chemistry. Phychologists may want to add their own expertise to the soup: regressions, projections, dysfunctional families and early childhood traumas.
Like any young human, my origin is my parents but I had to cut myself away from them to live my own life. Like they did in their youth. Maybe the suburban life had too much concrete and not enough soil to put roots down. Perhaps I just didn't have enough hormones to stimulate my root growth into the status quo.
Kite surfer in Huahine
Fact:Root formation can be stimulated on cuttings by the application of the so-called root hormones.
I eventually left the status quo and found a life on the road. It was a watery road, starting in the Pacific Islands and ending up taking me onboard yachts. Despite settling down in Cairns, Australia, the winds and the seas were still calling me to wander around. My life on land became obsessed with setting out to sea. I abandoned Finland as my home country. I will always have Finnish blood in my veins. Veins get the stuff from my tissues - the soil of my spirit. I have some other blood in my arteries though. Arteries get their stuff from the air I breathe - the air in my wings. I love the Australian air, hence (in the citizenship ceremony) I held my hand against my heart and pledged loyalty to the country I call home. But roots? I have tried and I have failed. I remain out in the wild, roaming free, eating from the great buffet of life spread out across the planet. The world is my oyster. (More about oysters later)
Wild peppers on the roadside in Huahine
Fact: The wild forms have much smaller roots than the cultivated forms
So what now? Australia is gleaming under the western horizon. I am traveling with another cutting from Finland. One who has walked away - at least for now - from her place of origin. But we're not drifting aimlessly and the miles across the planet have not gone to waste. We are taking root. We are rooting each other. Oh, sorry. How rude. I mean, we are taking root to each other, growing together. We celebrated our third wedding anniversary on 14 July 2010. For the last 800 days we have been together for almost every hour of every day, almost every minute of the hour. At the same time we've been soaking in many different places. Almost 150 of them, in over 30 different countries. Usually no less than a week, no more than three. And we are growing stronger. We are evolving.
Even in the most beautiful tropical paradise, the ghosts of suburban life are looming in my head, reminding me of our inevitable future of work, laundry and shopping trolleys.
Fact: A population with diverse traits is more likely to survive changes in the environment such as emerging diseases, or climate changes. While environmental fluctuations may kill some, those with the necessary adaptations are able to survive,... resulting in the evolution of new species with traits different from those of their ancestors.
Cheers to our 3 years of marriage and almost 4 years of blissful togetherness. Two cuttings sent adrift. Pushing roots together. Into eachother. (Facts were from the Encarta Encyclopaedia's section on botany.)
Huahine
Huahine. "The Garden Island". Main village Fare is the left dot. Avea Bay is the other dot. There are many dots unmarked and unexplored. By us, anyway. Oh, and thanks to the Google guys for the image.
Talking about shopping... she won't mind. Here I finally find her after she's deployed some of the best of her tactics for losing me in the supermarket and gaining more quality shelf time for herself.
Arriving in Huahine was a shift to the country-side. More laid back and relaxed. Quiet. Very quiet. The effects of world economy were showing very strongly. Resorts were either shut down or operating with skeleton staff and hosting only a few guests. It's supposedly peak season. We dropped anchor in front of the main village of Fare and went for a walk. Despite being only two streets wide, the village had two banks, two service stations and a massive supermarket. "Massive" is relative, of course, but the variety was good. From Swedish crisp bread and Thai coconut cream to automatic welding helmets and Epiglass 2-pack epoxy. Not to mention everything in between. That's pretty good. (We bought everything but the welding helmet. I've already got one of them...)
Fresh baguettes in Fare shop.
We pulled anchor next morning and headed south to Avea Bay, 8 miles along the narrow lagoon between the island and the reef. While Annina was helming, I changed our main anchor. The old fake-CQR was now about 20-years-old and close to 1/3 of it had fallen off in the form of rust. Over the last 13 years the QCR type had served me well. But recently we had started dragging, twice in Moorea. I don't like dragging. It's embarrassing and it takes all the fun out of being at anchor. It takes all the fun out of sleeping through a squally night. Having lost our better CQR in Easter Island, my only option was our 20 kg Danforth which had spent all its life as a stern anchor, never used.
Volleyball with the locals in Huahine
I'm happy with the change. Avea Bay was windy and the weather turned worse. While a mild current kept turning us slightly off the wind, the gusts hit us hard, pushing us against our side. Holding was good and Aliisa was dancing her boogie-woogie to the rythm of the 40+ kn bullets. The bay was lovely, though, and we decided to stay for our wedding anniversary, originally planned for Bora Bora.
I hope to get to Australia and find a job before we end up in this situation. We're not far from it...
Fly Screen. It had spent 4 hours stuck against a day-old, drying piece of fly paper. After working its way free, the stupid thing landed on my PC, where the warmth of the screen helped to revitalise the glue it carried in its wings. You see, even the life of a geek can be full of adventures from the natural world!
How do you watch an ALMOST total eclipse of the sun without looking at it? With binoculars, of course...
Ah, there it is, projected on to a white sheet of paper. Yes, I know. Not very exciting, is it?
While a wedding anniversary dinner might be seen as a romantic event, only occasionally interrupted by a softly spoken waiter offering more champagne, we weren't quite newly wed anymore and cruising had provided plenty of intimate candle-lit moments, including the champagne. Annina's home-cooked meal enjoyed with a bottle of sparkly and a game of Scrabble would have been a better option, had we not had the pleasure of good company. We met Andy and Rhian from Sy Zephyrus briefly in the Gambiers and the dynamic duo's idealism, energy and youth instantly became a magnet pulling us away from the 55+ retired American cruising talk. (Maybe we'll hang out more with retirees in the future, when we're retired too...)
An unspecified archealogical site.
It's amazing! A pile of rocks MUST be amazing if it's an archealogical site. Yes, I know. Not very exciting...
.... exept that this rockpile seemed to have native Polynesian rock art, possibly telling the story of Captain Cooks arrival.
We invited Andy and Rhian to join us. Amazingly enough they had their wedding anniversary only 2 days ago. Double whammy. To cut a short story even shorter: the service had no smile and was the slowest and crappiest I've had for a long time. Fortunately both the surroundings and the food was very good, the company even better. Topped up with drinks back onboard Zephyrus the night was as good as we could have wished for.
Okay. We came, we ate, we had a good time. How boring is that to read about. Yeah, I think that's enough "blogging" for a month. Let's talk about something else, shall we?
Bonus featurette: THE FORMATION OF ATOLLS
BOOOOOM! A volcano erupts. (I'm still waiting for my own kingdom to erupt in international waters, close enough for us to have time to put our flag down and claim it. I've already designed the flag!)
After the volcano sinks and erodes (or is left in rising water levels such as after the last ice age 8000 years ago), the fringing reef will start to grow, keeping pace with the rising sea level and forming a barrier reef around the island.
This is the norm in the Society islands, representing a variety of stages between 1 and 2. The water depth in the "lagoon" between the volcanic island and the reef tends to be around 20-50 meters. Anchoring is possible either in very deep water almost anywhere in the lagoon, or on the shallow sandy areas near the inside edge of the fringing reef, away from the main island. Not surprisingly marinas and moorings are a popular when wanting to be close to services while the outer reef edge provides a great escape into the world of snorkeling, diving, kite surfing and whatever turns you on.
Finally the last stage. The volcano collapses, leaving a deep lagoon with various amounts of coral pinnacles scattered in the lagoon. Being the last of the sequence of events, this represents geologically the oldest form of a volcano. ("Tuamotus" = "Old islands") The distance across the outer edges ranges from a few miles to over 30 miles, nautical of course.
Bonus featurette: TAHITIAN BLACK PEARLS:
The oyster is forced open just enough to make an incision and insert a "seed" into its gonad. The oyster will grow "mother-of-pearl" over the seed. The seeds are known as "nuclei". For the lowest amount of rejections, the nuclei from the shell of a Teneesse oyster from Mississippi river is used for all "Black Pearls". One oyster = one pearl.
The white shiny hard surface inside the shell is called "mother of pearl" but when the same coating is forming a pearl it is usually called "nacre". The white pearl-looking balls on the table are the "seeds", commercially manufactured and rounded from square pieces of Tennessee oyster's shell.
The oysters are lowered down to a depth between 6-30 meters. To maximise the quality, oysters are lifted up, checked for rejections and cleaned from impurities every 4-6 months. Not a small job, considering that the smallest farm we visited had only 100 000 oysters, the largest farms may have well over a million oysters. In addition the farms cultivate new oysters for future pearl production. The success rate for getting a reasonable quality pearl out of one oyster is about 30%.
The oysters keep growing the "nacre" around the "nuclei" for about 18 months, sometimes up to 3 years. After that the oysters are being harvested. The operation is quick but only because the person doing it has gone through several years of training. If the oyster has produced a good enough pearl, it will receive a new "seed" immediately. Each successive nucleus is larger than the previous one, the goal being producing the largest possible pearl. When quality and size are high enough, a single Tahitian pearl can fetch $30 000 or more. This is very rare.
If the quality is not good enough, the oyster is not injected again. Each oyster either has or has not the talent to grow smooth beautiful pearls.
Out it comes...
Only the giant blacklipped oyster (Pinctada margaritifera) produces the so-called "Black Pearls". The size of the oyster allows the cultivation of large pearls. Dispite the claims of many local pearl dealers, the oyster is not entirely endemic to French Polynesia and similar pearls are produced elsewhere in Pacific too. No doubt, the worlds finest "black pearls" come from French Polynesia.
Shells that don't produce good quality pearls are not injected again. But they don't go to waste. The muscle is removed for eating. More importantly the mantle (shown with arrow) is used in small grafts together with the nucleus to produce the colour of the pearl and avoid rejection. The mother-of-pearl is then used for cheaper jewellery. When the oyster rejects the nucleus but grows mother-of-pearl only around the mantle graft the result is called a Keshi pearl. Keshi pearls come in variety of shapes but are almost never perfectly smooth or round.
Buying pearls is tricky for the beginner. Mostly because a good salesman can smell the beginner from a mile away. Tourists in French Polynesia buy pearls almost as a duty. It's just not right to go there and NOT buy one. If looking for a good deal, it pays to get off the beaten track and away from the fancy pearl shops in Papeete. (There are no pearls produced in Tahiti) High quality pearls can be purchased directly from the farm in the Tuamotus and at least in Huahine and Taha'aa islands. The Champon family in Taha'aa (picture) showed some of the highest quality pearls we had ever seen. Not that I'm an expert, though.
The thickness of the nacre around the nuclei is only visible in x-rays or by cutting the pearl in half. The French Polynesian government x-rays every exported pearl and if the nacre is less than 0.8mm thick, the pearl is destroyed. The matter is not trivial, as quickly grown pearls with a thin nacre will wear off in a year or two, while high quality ones will last a few lifetimes.
The term "black pearl" is misleading. The pearls come with a variety of shades ranging from green to purple to blue to metallic grey. While green will always be green and blue will always be blue, the visible color of the pearl will always be its reaction to the changing lights and colours surrounding it. If you want to examine the quality of a pearl, ask for a bright light, which will reveal imperfections on its surface. If buying pearls is not what you normally do, search the internet and read a little bit before walking into a show room.
LAST BONUS:
(The word Bonus makes me miss Thor and Sigrid from Norway. Are you guys reading this? If so, Email us now! I mean NOW!)
Home made Dijon Mustard. Picture on the jar. Under the picture: "Serving suggestion". How far could you go?
We see "serving suggestions" on every packet and tin. No matter how trivial or boring the content, it is dressed up for the occasion - for the photo that covers the package. The manufacturer is hoping that you buy the promise of a good meal and don't stop to think about the words: "serving suggestion".
Please send me more ideas. I might create a whole page of deliciously ridiculous "serving suggestions". Don't limit yourself to tins and food. It's all about sales and marketing. (email me at Lauri @ Aliisa . net)
