Evanston: Tahiti
Evanston: Tahiti
Last week’s transit of the sun by Venus caused NASA to run the above preternaturally clear satellite photo of Tahiti.
In 1768 Captain--then Lieutenant--James Cook was sent to the island, recently ‘discovered’ by Europeans, who sometimes forget that the Tahitians did not know they were lost, to observe a transit of Venus in an attempt to determine the size of the solar system.
Cook’s measurements and those taken at seventy-five other places around the Earth were not precise enough, and it wasn’t until the next pair of transits of Venus were photographed more than one hundred years later that the problem was solved. Cook took his observations from the northern most point of the island, which he named Venus Point.
For me the photograph is filled with memories.
I’ve sailed to Tahiti six times: in 1974 and 1976 in EGREGIOUS; in 1979 in CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE; in 1985 and 1990 in RESURGAM; and in, I think, 2004 in THE HAWKE OF TUONELA.
My last time through French Polynesia on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA in 2009 I avoided Tahiti, which has become far too crowded and lost its charm, although Paul Gauguin thought the same thing in the 1890s and moved on to the Marquesas Islands where he died. Papeete, six miles to the west of Venus Point now has a population of 130,000 with roads suitable for perhaps 10,000 and is known for traffic jams, noise, dirt, and ugly buildings.
You can clearly see where we as a species live. We’ve turned a naturally green island brown.
In the 1970s it was not so bad.
I became a circumnavigator upon sailing into Papeete Harbor in 1976, though I have always counted that voyage as San Diego to San Diego; and I wrote most of STORM PASSAGE anchored at Papeete, with stern lines ashore off the Protestant Church. Suzanne flew from New Zealand to join me, and after I finished writing in the morning, our big decision of the day was whether to catch Le Truck, the cheap local mode of transportation, east to Venus Point or south to Maeva Beach. Venus Point was farther away, but had better snorkeling.
I wrote two of my favorite of my own poems that year, Old Man With Blue Bicycle and The Tahitian War Dead.
Those of you who have read THE OPEN BOAT: Across the Pacific may recall that after I hove-to off Venus Point in CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE, waiting to enter Papeete at dawn, I was caught by a fifty-five knot gale, driven clock-wise all the way around the island, and did not reach the harbor for four days.
Most yachts now anchor not in Papeete, but off Marina Taina, about four miles around the northwest corner of the island. It is, in fact, just past Maeva Beach. Unless things have changed, there is no room in the marina itself, but you can land your dinghy there, shower and get water. An excellent, but expensive--as is almost everything in French Polynesia--super market is nearby, which is, if you can afford the prices, one of the best places between Hawaii and New Zealand to provision.
The anchorage is deeper than I like. THE HAWKE OF TUONELA’s anchor was in 55’ of water, which is a lot of chain to bring up with a manual windlass, and while protected by the reef from waves, is open to west and north winds which sometimes create havoc. However, as can be seen from the first photograph on the Moorea page, which was taken there, the view is sublime.
The farther you move away from Papeete, the quieter and more pleasant is the island. The two distinct parts of Tahiti are often called Tahiti Nui, ‘Big Tahiti,’ and Tahiti Iti, ‘Little Tahiti’; but for the smaller I find Presqu’ile, or ‘almost an island’, more charming.
The littoral road does not run all the way around Presqu’ile, and anchored in CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE at the southern end, which can only be reached by boat, Suzanne and I seemed for several days to be on a deserted island.
About thirty years ago, surfers discovered one of the world’s greatest and most dangerous waves at Teahupoo on Presqu’ile’s west coast, which had been breaking unobserved for several million years.
If you are sailing through the South Pacific, you should see Tahiti. Once.
Monday, June 11, 2012