Maiden Voyage (22 page)

As Luc drove me back to the quay, we discovered that I had sent him the wrong date for my arrival and that he had been there waiting for me with friends and flowers a day earlier. He dropped me off at
Varuna
with his dinghy and when my bags were all in the cockpit, he asked, “Are you all right?” He looked at me, waiting for a smile of reassurance. I reluctantly gave it. Promising to come and get me for lunch once I settled in, he motored back to his family.

Unlocking the companionway, I pulled out the slats and stepped down into my dark, damp little home, which hadn't been aired out for two rainy weeks. Completely drained, I threw all the luggage up forward, curled up and went to sleep.

That afternoon, I finally hugged my buddy Dinghy, who had been staying on
Thea
. Luc introduced me to Tristan and Fabienne and we awkwardly sat down at the familiar table for the meal. Suddenly overwhelmed by everything that had happened in the past two weeks, and now seeing the lady and child from the pictures, I excused myself and went out on deck, not wanting to cry in front of them. Fabienne quietly followed and, without saying a word, put her arms around me and let me cry.

Several days later, we moved the boats to Arué, a quieter spot two lagoons up, and moored them close by one another. I had given Luc's office phone number to Jeri so she could leave a message and, every evening, I watched his facial expression as he came home to
Thea
. Every other day, I caught
le truck
to the post office in Papeete, or Luc would take me to his office, and I called my mother. Her voice was too weak to carry over the long-distance static, so these were mostly one-sided conversations where I rambled on about my daily doings, trying to sound happy and full of news I didn't have.

Day in and day out, I moped through the rituals of life in a torpid circle of waiting and despair. Loathing solitude, yet unable to muster the energy to make new friends, I opted instead for spending time with the only person I knew well, Luc, and his family. Fabienne took me under her wing during those joyless days and I accepted her friendship. She was charming and very kind and I liked spending time with her and little Tristan. We went to the market together, prepared meals and, occasionally, she tried to help me forget my problems with stories about her own.

Day in, day out, the bustle of Tahitian life whirled around like a cyclone while I waited quietly in its eye. Finally, Luc came home early one evening, his expression telegraphing the news. The phone call had arrived.

B
risk trade winds blew over the lagoon of Arué on Tahiti's northern coast, and processions of squalls brought cool waves of relief from the endless days of tropical sun. In the late-afternoon stillness, rhythmic paddling signaled the sunset, as heavily muscled Tahitians and French rowed their canoes up and down the lagoon in front of always another swirling backdrop of color. Along the quay, Tahitian families sat watching, drinking their Hinanos, the local beer, or fishing from the seawall.

As the rainy season wept its last tears over the neighboring islands of Mooréa, Bora-Bora, Raiatea and Huahine, an international parade of cruising sailboats came and went, lingering for a while on its way to other less traveled island destinations, unable to resist the siren song of Tahiti, the Pacific's most fabled waypoint.

Varuna
, secured to an abandoned mooring, became a peaceful haven. We had settled in to stay awhile. A new yellow-and-blue wind scoop rigged up on her forward hatch funneled a little of the trade winds down into the cabin like a natural air conditioner, a cheering improvement over the stagnant air that had kept her inhabitants in a perpetual sweat.

A channel separates the islands of Tahiti and Mooréa by only 5 miles, and the lagoon of Cook Bay on Mooréa was only 20 miles away from the busier Arué. For four months, I alternated between the two,
depending on what was needed and my mood. When working on the boat, I stayed in Arué, which was convenient to the city of Papeete and its chandlery and markets; when I needed some peace and quiet, I sailed to Mooréa and anchored where the clear waters were turquoise, lapis-lazuli or azure, depending on the depth, and where, 15 feet below
Varuna's
hull, the sandy bottom seemed close enough to touch.

After a couple of weeks in Arué,
Katapoul
, a boat I knew from Papeete, sailed into the harbor and her skipper, Claude, waved to me. After anchoring, he invited me over for a visit.

One month earlier, when I was leaving for New York, Luc had said that
Varuna
would be looked after, but things had turned out badly. He had detached
Varuna
from
Thea
, and then with some business associates, took off to Mooréa where
Thea
had gone aground on a reef. While they were stuck there, a storm had boiled up a mess in Papeete's harbor,
Varuna's
anchor dragged and she had ended up knocking against the boat downwind of her.

Claude had come to the rescue, Luc told me later, found a second anchor and secured her. He had also turned over the dinghy that was filling with rain, and retied the radar reflector that had broken a binding and was making a holy racket banging against the mast. Hearing what had happened upon my return from New York, I thanked Claude for taking care of
Varuna
and we chatted for a while, calling across the water. It wasn't until less complicated days that I would discover what good friends he and his girlfriend Margot could be.

Claude was a spry Frenchman, with dry wit and a resemblance to Crocodile Dundee, and he hopped around like a booby, his eyes twinkling, and told me about Margot, who was back in the States visiting her family.
Katapoul
, he said, named from a combination of his brother's nicknames, was 30 feet long. He had built her himself and, as most boats do, the craft with which she was constructed and the care she obviously received revealed much about the warmth and character of her owner.

Over the next few days, we shared our meals, walked around and shopped together. Claude got me laughing again, patiently trying to teach me to windsurf, and after many dunkings and aching arms from pulling up the water-laden sail, I finally gave up and opted for rides on the back of the board as he navigated around the lagoon.

On one of our first days together, Claude and I were walking past the Arué soccer field toward the main road where we were going to
hail
le truck
for a ride into town. In the course of conversation, I mentioned to him that my mother had died a week earlier, and he stopped in his tracks.

“My God, Tania,” he said. “You're so nonchalant. Your mother just died? You may as well have been telling me that you just bought a new dress.”

“We've known that she was dying for the past couple of years,” I said, also surprised that I had said it so simply. “Now that it's over, all I really feel is relief. She suffered.”

“Still, you're on the other side of the world from your family. This must be very bad for you.”

I shrugged and told him that I didn't mean to be nonchalant. So much had happened that, if anything, I just felt numb. Claude didn't push it.

It seemed that as soon as Margot returned to
Katapoul
from the United States, we instantly became best friends. She was a burst of energy, sensitive, intelligent and extremely patient and, best of all, she was twenty. The sailing world is so dominated by men that to find a girl close to my age, and American no less, was a rare treat and we latched on to one another like long-lost sisters. Together, we three worked on our boats and made daily treks into town on
le truck
to the post office, market and finally the
patisserie
, where we sat indulging in cappuccinos and apple tarts. Always joking and betting on our disagreements, we sat back in the shade and watched the splendid parade of people go by.

Margot and Claude were always spiffing up
Katapoul
, oiling, greasing, painting and scrubbing, which gave me incentive to do the same on
Varuna
. Even Lawrence, a quiet boy from a family boat neighboring
Varuna
, offered to help, and together we went about starting
Varuna's
first major refit project. We hitchhiked to the industrial section of Papeete's waterfront and bought some marine plywood, nuts and bolts. Measuring, sawing and drilling away, we enlarged my little bunk, made an extra cushion out of the ones in the forepeak that I planned to do away with anyway and finally there was a comfortable bed stretching across the width of
Varuna
.

One afternoon, Claude showed me how to tow
Varuna
to the quay with my dinghy. “Imagine that you are truly alone,” he said. “And there is no one around to tow you through a narrow pass into a harbor and you have no engine. All you have to do is tie a line with about ten feet of chain between
Varuna
and the dinghy, then row,
hard
. It may take a while, but it's possible to do it yourself. Try it. If
you screw up, I'll come to help.” Margot stayed in the cockpit while I got in the dinghy and pulled
Varuna
under muscle power a hundred feet across the lagoon. After all my apprehension, the feat was accomplished and I felt extra good about myself and my capabilities.

With Claude's brotherly teasing and dares, Margot and I were coaxed into doing things we would never have ordinarily considered. One day in Mooréa, we climbed
Katapoul's
mast and together jumped off the top spreader to satisfy Claude's craving for such a picture. We spent a good fifteen minutes contemplating the jump and conjuring up enough scenarios of our splattering all over
Katapoul's
deck that we froze in terror. Finally, making each other laugh, we counted to three and leapt. Unlike Margot, who kept her legs together, I made the regrettable mistake of going down with mine wide open. The impact with the water made me think that someone had shot me with a cannon on the way down, but after the pain passed, I acknowledged that the experience had actually been quite exciting.

Another day we tried spinnaker flying. Claude anchored the boat from astern, raised the colorful huge triangle of light Dacron, tied lines to the two clews of the sail and between them a board. There Margot and I sat as the sail filled with air and we were lifted and dropped with the wind. Up and down we went, screaming and plopping in and out of the water like tea bags.

Next, Luc found a mechanic who agreed to work on my engine. We brought
Varuna
to shore, unhooked all the connecting fuel and electricity lines and fittings, rigged a block-and-tackle system from the engine to the boom and lifted the disabled red monster onshore and into his waiting van.
Varuna's
waterline rose a couple of inches with the removal of the weight and, a month later, the engine was replaced in working condition.

The sound of the engine had become so alien that I turned it on and off for all my friends so that they could share my joy. In order to keep it in working condition, something had to be done about the water that leaked past the cockpit cover, which was also the floor of the cockpit, and into the engine compartment. Whenever waves filled the cockpit or, on land, when I took a sunshower or threw buckets of water to wash down my patio, the cockpit drains never worked fast enough to avoid major leaking down into the engine compartment.

Luc tried to help me solve the problem, and we had an aluminum frame welded that fit into another aluminum frame. With the smaller frame bolted onto the cover, the slightly larger one bolted onto the
deck, and a gasket in between, an impermeable seal was formed. Then, with the help of a family of missionaries on their own sailboat,
Varuna
was hauled out at a yard in Papeete, where we scraped and sanded her underbody and applied several new coats of antifouling paint to deter the growth of speed-impeding marine life.

One day Claude spied a notice on a bulletin board of a solar panel for sale. A man had salvaged it with several other things from his boat after it had broken up on a Tuamotu reef. Buying it brought an end to all my electricity problems. The engine could fail as many times as it wanted, but there would always be those cells slurping up the sunlight and transforming the rays into electricity that would keep the batteries permanently charged. To protect the batteries, originally lodged in the bilge, from constant submersion, I brought them up to the cabin, wedged the pair beneath the companionway steps and fitted stoppers to secure them in place, in case
Varuna
took a knockdown or a rollover at sea.

I was proud of my home; she had become very pretty and comfortable. The new bed was the epitome of luxury, decorated with sheets and pillows made of colorful Tahitian cotton fabrics. I removed the door to the toilet, which always managed to work its latch open and bang around at sea, and replaced it with a curtain. Claude made a new shelf for
Katapoul
from the wood of the door. Waste not, want not. Everything that was removed from
Varuna
was eventually put to use on another boat.

After I made friends with Claude and Margot, the stone stopped rolling and began to gather moss. I made lots of friends who helped to form beautiful memories of Tahiti. It reached a point where I rarely had a waking moment to myself. But I didn't mind. This was the last time until the end of the trip in New York where I could stay settled for a while without worrying about a departure date.

Through it all—the work, the fun, and, most of all, the friendships with people whom I cared about—thoughts of my mother were never far away. Margot and Claude were always there to listen while I talked their ears off, trying to sort out the past, my mother, my relationships with my father and Luc, and everything that had happened since I'd left New York. They rarely passed judgment, and Claude with his jokes, and Margot, with her serene calmness, always brought me back down to earth whenever I got too worked up. As time began to heal the open wounds, gradually my moments of depression became fewer, and the memories of my mother began to find a quieter corner in my heart.