Vaipo Waterfall

Walked up the Hakaui valley to the waterfall. There was a small settlment at the head and several _old_ abandoned villages in the forest along the way. There were also bits of stones that used to comprise of a "Royal" road. Got my archaeological fix as well as flexing some muscles for the first time in a bit. Parts of the forest walk actually reminded me of Algonquin (seriously) but you would have to ignore the odd palm tree, the ruins, and the goat that Walter and I rescued from entanglement. The waterfall was a bit of a bust (I guess not enough rain) but the end of the valley was striking, although a bit gloomy. Well worth the effort in my opinion.

6 Miles. A world apart. (Taioa Bay, Nuku Hiva, Marquesas)

08 56.621 S
140 09.805 W

Had a great moment in our new anchorage. It is pretty rugged with a sliver of a beach and the palms. It has 1000? foot cliffs and land mass all around which gives the impression of no way out. Stood on the deck at midnight with the glory of the southern hemisphere above and listened to Death Cab for Cutie "Transatlantism". Wow. Been a socially tough day on the boat and it was a fitting and reflective end.

Apparently the third largest waterfall in the world is 2 hours up the valley. Not sure about the ranking though (it is 350m?). Might be a bit of local pride coming through, although I have no idea how high other waterfalls are. Should be good in any event.

Influence

Couple of snippets from someone else:

Four quotes from "The Water in Between" (great book):

I actually identified with the author quite a lot. The jacket says that he is trying to burn away his failings, but although we might have shared the intent, I don't believe either of us was / is striving for that in the end. I think anyone who goes on a long trip and is somewhat introspective goes back and forth a bit. I know that I have been.

"This was precisely what I had longed for, those winter nights in the little army house. The days were bright and beautiful, the water streamed under the boat, the sails swelled out in a broad reach. I looked at the sea and saw a grey haze on the horizon. It was that haze that I stared at. A thousand miles ahead was the end of the ocean. The grey on the edge of the water was where I was going and what I thought about. I was aware even as I was doing it that it was a mistake to disregard the accessible beauty in favour of the distant and unseen, assuming it to be lovelier than the immediate. But the logic of escape is premised on this error."

That's me.

"It is so hard to abandon the sense of schedule - until it abandons you in the face of large and implacable settings. The ocean just goes on and on and contains its own momentum, a rhythm unimpressed by anything else."

"Languor is underrated. It is not possible to be immobile in modern urban society except by dint of constant effort. Holding on tightly to the riverbank and fighting the current is not languor. Nobody likes that. But bone-lazy idleness. hours and hours spent staring at the sky and remembering books and birthdays and great kisses: this is a pure pleasure that eludes the productive in all their confident superiority. Languor is sunny and hot. It is at home near the sea and is best appreciated in environments of beauty and limited promise. It contains within it the idea of boredom, but is also coloured by idle fancy, and the understanding that some things proceed best with limited attention. Fishing, for instance. If you're always reeling in and checking your bait, you'll worsen your chances. Relax."

"But an aspiration begins with the conceit that things could be better, and the first step in realizing that aspiration is pretending that they are."

There was also a great quote about him tying the anchor with rope instead of chain. He didn't realize the importance of such things. Good lesson, literally and figuratively.

Ani DiFranco has been on heavy rotation. She doesn't disappoint. "Decree" From the album Reprive:

"and Cancer, the great teacher
has been opening schools
downstream from every factory, still
everywhere fools are squinting into microscopes
researching cells
trying to figure out a way we can all live in hell.

Well step back, look up, you'll see I'm dimming the sun, but you wont really know - thats a good little one.

Cuz Daddy knows best here
This is the news
In 90 second segments, officially produced
and aired again and again and again
by little black and white pawns of the network yesmen.

While the stars are going out
and the stripes are getting bent."


And the brilliance of Negativeland. (Whose samples don't really translate to written form, but apparently I have nothing but time.). "The Gun and the Bible" from the album Free:

"Out of the Wilderness.
He said.
carved this nation.
out of the wilderness.

The bible and the sub machine gun.

The sub machine gun. brass knuckles. knives. bayonets. pistols. axe handles. shotguns. carbines.

America was built on a gun

Its good to see you all of you there toting guns he said. America was built on a gun. The gun. The gun and a bible carved this nation out of the wilderness.

Mayor Dukes, if you want our guns come and get them.

Your bullet can't see red. You are the eyes, the mind and the will of every bullet that you fire. Reason enough to take great care. And reason enough to remember again that liquor always comes later... after the guns are cleaned and racked. Thats the time to relax with a drink. The only time.

This is the wild side of life isn't it Wilkus?
"

bbye

Tomorrow we are on our way to the Tuomotos via another Marquesas island and an additional anchorage on Nuku Hiva. Repairs are as good as they are going to get and its time to move on out of here.

Been enjoying the Internet glut, sitting on a boat with my feet up and catching up on the happenings. Still haven't read any news (which is surprising), I would have thought that that would have been the first thing I would do. It is a little bit unnerving though - surprising how quickly you fall back into being disappointed that there isn't any mail waiting for you. The good thing is that I am excited to hear from people, not fearful and peeking with one eye about what new tortures my inbox holds. The worst ones from soulless machines.

Read Garth's blog. Got hooked up against Google Analytics. One more example why Google will take over the world one day. I come from a place and time where people used to pay _massive_ amounts of money for a site license for such things. I know Google will be selling consulting on it and I am sure that an integration with a Google appliance or similiar enterprise will be in the works. (free, managed Google firewalls and gateways in exchange for anon usage information would be a nice fit - why not?). Someone from Valdivia (Chile) visited yesterday. Strange.

I am also reminded that tech ebbs and flows (but mostly flows) over your head once you swim to the bottom to see what that shiny thing is. I will have to start treading again at some point before I run out of air and the tech in me dies.

No more real Internet until Tahiti ("real" is subjective. 128k DSL serving a couple dozen yachts isn't what I would call blazing). Probably for the best. Back to not being able to check my email, but borrow someone else's one byte at a time over the SSB.

Have to keep reminding myself about where I am at.

If anyone has any info on taking a train from China to Europe, please drop me an email. Plans change ;)

With a Capital T (Taiohae Bay, Nuku Hiva, Marquesas)

08 55.000 S
140 05.864 W

Spent a bunch of time doing a bunch of stuff. Not feeling particularly verbose a the moment.

Everyone had a day at the one resort like place on the island drinking proper coffees and catching up on reading / writing.

Provisions / repairs / showers / fighting and socialization are all a byproduct of civilization. Poisson Cru for breakfast is tough to get into but it is tasty. Most yachties out there have more money than you and like to let you know that fact. Freehand Tattoos by non English speaking dudes are a tough thing to get your trust behind. Repairs are necessary on any boat. Time is chunky. As much as you think its not possible, life goes on outside of your crucible. French emergency wards are superlative and free. Internet and baguettes are addictive like crack. You can actually think too much. 2 months without wearing shoes is a luxury. I understand more French than Spanish, but still not enough. Coconut tree wood looks pretty cool when carved. When securing anchors, make sure you actually secure them. 100 CFP does not equal a dollar i.e. don't cheat yourself in mental equivalency exercises (88 CFP = 1 USD bankrate). 4am markets are early. Fresh and simple food cannot be overrated and always remember that most French food is rich. Everyone has something to teach, and sometimes the lessons suck.

Blogging

One of the things that I've been working through on long lonely nights is the idea of the worth of a man (this is not an invitation to rail on me about my gender insensitivity - the worth of a human sounds ridiculous and you know what I mean). The worth of a man is a summation of his experience. Experience exists in either your mind, the minds of those who shared it with you, or in some physical testament to the happenance. To exist in ones mind boils down to memory, leading hopefully to a changed and improved pattern of thinking, leading to improved and increasingly robust experiences. Memory is a lossy compression (i.e. information is irrecoverably lost during the process). Compression is intolerant of uniqueness (i.e. compression efficiency goes low as uniqueness goes high) although not in all compressions, but I believe this is true in memory's case.

Through publicizing my diary, I am: creating an experience that can be shared; creating a physical testament, a literal mile marker of the event through pictures and description; and improving the chances that I will remember (uniquely) the 100 or so thin slices of time that will, in future, characterise this excursion ("thin sliced" not in the "Learn How to Prejudge Those Around You in 90 minutes" bible sense, but in the "small slivers of the whole cake" sense). I am imprinting what would otherwise be fleeting and highly compressible memories into my indelible stack of experience through translation and sharing.

Blogging is good for me (rather the act of expression is good and it happens to be convenient). It improves my worth.

There are some caveats that clearly need to be rationalized which I may get to. One might say that there is no worth to 1 million unique experiences of a scoundrel. I would have to disagree. A larger topic to be sure, but I believe that we are on this planet to learn. I do not believe in a higher power, but in a higher order ("something going on", spirituality and energies can fit into an order that we do not currently understand). I do not believe in an omniscient being that created the heavens and the earth, nor a greater organization requiring daily mental or physical servitude. If the summation of my entire life compresses to almost zero (say that I lived a million minor variations of one experience) then my worth is less than a scoundrel who has learned, adapted and internalized through every step of his reprehensible life. Now, someone can have unique experiences every day on their way to work, watching a hockey game or digging a ditch. Don't get me wrong - I am not saying they aren't worthy experiences or enjoyed by people of no worth (and in fact am saying there is the potential for quite the opposite), but (however it happens), we had all better survive memory's compressive vice or we run the risk of running into trouble at the end of the day. I am also a strong believer in being a good person, which adds an additional dimensional quality to the preceding statements which might not rightly fit. Further, if I truly believed this working definition, then the whole idea of worth boils down to a retention model and I would never lose an hour of sleep, certainly wouldn't taste a drop of alcohol and shun the metallic food container and aluminum infused deodorant conventions that I frequent so often. (again, it needs some thought).

Speaking of modelling:

Thinking of how to describe ones experience as vectors and the volume they could subscribe as someones "worth". The idea being that adding orthogonal experiences to an existing plane of experience gives you the most bang for the buck (an orthogonal experience to another experience gives a plane). Any point within the resulting volume can be interpolated based on your experience - it becomes "familiar". The more experiences that you add, with long vectors jutting out at weird angles, the better. 1,2, and 3D personalities as well as being "well rounded" or "focussed" takes on a visual representation.

Can't you then give that volume a notional mass and model "attraction" through Newton's universal law of gravitation? (it is universal after all :) I.e. any two bodies of mass exhibit a mutual, attractive force which is governed by their masses and their distance between them. In this case, two bodies (personalities / worth / experience) will attract each other based only on the distances between their respective centre of "gravity" (the location of their core) and their mass (the amount of space that their representation of experience in a 3-d vector space takes up multiplied by the mass of one unit of worth). It would take a lot of doing in terms of definition of the axis et al and boy would I ever need to pull out the old textbooks. Also, it would become difficult to apply when the shape isn't a sphere and it would run into some serious problems when the two shapes melded. So, not sure if this idea would fall to pieces quickly and it probably is only valid in some very narrow "opposites attract" situations. Besides, isn't making a bigger resultant shape through relationships what it's all about? Although, how the shapes intersected, how the familiar was replicated in each shape and how the "cores" moved towards each other regardless of the model of attractive force would be interesting to think about. For this stuff though, it would likely make sense to add more dimensions which will preclude the use of Newton's law (I believe).

[Editors note: Right brains on. Nothing beats a good kiss and this is prob a load of crap. If its not then I am sure to not be the first to think in such terms, such is life - take it for what it is.]

This town needs an Enema

Of course I am ready to dive. Let's do it.

Decided it was time to try that Scuba diving thing that I've heard so much about. I wanted to test, yet take it easy on the eardrums after Honduras last year and figured this was an ideal situation. It has always taken me a bit to equalize and I had a couple of problems at various levels on the way down, but it worked out and I took it slow. The kit that I was diving with was average, but had no depth gauge (I don't know why this was, maybe everyone is expected to have dive computers these days?). There were only a couple with me and the dive master so it wasn't the end of the world, but uncomfortable. The depth was a bit deeper than what I would have preferred for my "trial" as I was told that they never dive deeper than "open Water" specs (that would put it at 60ft). As it turned out, we hit 90ft early and stayed there (we were all qualified to do so and nobody pays attention to these things anyways, just that I was told one thing and I ended up in quite another situation).

After spending so much time puffing my chest out to the sea, trying to take up space and fight the feeling of insignificance, it was a strange feeling to want to roll my shoulders forward and slink back into my shell. The landscape is harsh with big basalt monoliths all around (some will get that reference), not great visibility and eerie colours. Saw some smaller fish (Lion and stone fish are interesting mostly because they can hurt you), some smallish groupers, but no big predators. 40 minutes later is When all the fun started. As we went up, I got what was called a "push" in my right ear. I had heard about such things, but this was the first that I had experienced (high pressure on inside of ears, unable to equalize with the pressure that is lessening on the outer ear). hmmm. It fucking hurts. Same thing as problems equalizing on the way down, you retreat slightly and try again. No luck. As I describe the remedy, you will likely have an idea of how much it hurts by the fact that anyone would actually do such a thing. Close eyes (I wear contacts) inhale salt water through nostril, gag, repeat, wretch, repeat, projectile Sinus explosion, ahhhhh. I am not clear on what the published "by the book" procedure on this is, but it was time to take an active approach to the situation and it worked... and it was absolutely vile. Another vile experience is watching the other two divers do their second tank dive (with Hammerheads and Mantas) while I sit on the surface contemplating my navel (another first.. the waiting for divers thing, not contemplating my navel of which I have some experience).

I'd rate the dive 5/10. Everything else was a -9/10. I would say that I have something wrong with the old ears... and a cold perhaps? Don't rightly know, but diving is off the to do list for now.

It's easy to look crazy and unwashed.

Step 1: You cut a hole in the box
Step 2: Go more than slightly crazy



(and this was only after 10 days at sea or so)

I am actually on the Internet for the first time in a long time. I will be trying to update some stuff, generally do some blog maintenenace and hopefully send in some photos. So, anyone out there who cares, take a look down through my old posts for hopefully some photos and comments in a few days.

And now! I sleep.

The Ocean IV - OCeanessy McBlasé (Tahuata -> Niku Hiva)

Yup - Overnight'r again to Oa' Huka. I like hand steering, but it gets tiresome after a while and especially at night. Not sure if it was the way of the winds, but we arrived to the anchorage and it was "untenable" (good word) and overall looking decidedly grim. We would have been better off laying up in the middle of the ocean. Got the call to secure anchor and we were going onwards another 10 hours to Nuku Hiva. Turning a 13 hour into a 23 hour sail is tough under any circumstances and it took a bit to change the mindset (for me) and head off again at 6:00am. Right decision all around from even my feeble sailing perspective. Nuku HIva is the capital of the Marquesas with a nice holding anchorage and lots to see and do so it is not like I am being punished or anything. Another tropical rainstorm to greet us to the island (just like every single island that we have made landfall on so far). Snuh.

Time to get some repairs and some fresh food.

Buffy, Chad and Lance (Hanamoenoa Bay, Tahuata, Marquesas)

09 54.481 S
139 06.251 W

Today I did nothing. Woke up at 5:30am. Did... nothing. Well, I read a book in one sitting for the first time in a decade. Swam a couple of times and hung on the anchor chain like I was 7 years old. Watched as Buffy, Chad and Lance went ashore in a dingy and then secretly snickered as they all fell over trying to launch from the steep beech. Oh well, tonight they sleep in air conditioning and I don't. Chris delighted in pouring flaming brandy on over-ripe bananas (damn fine and dangerous) and we had our daily confab with Klos. Klos has been good to us.

This bay is beautiful and deserted. There are a few neighbors of the nautical kind (and they even provide the aforementioned free entertainment). Me likey.