The Hour When The Ship Comes In

Last night, sleeping restlessly in the swell-heavy harbor of Havahake, Ua Poa, a bright light played against our hull, shining through the uncurtained window of our bedroom.  In harbors where I’m worried that our anchor will drag – or where dragging means rapid danger, I’ll leave the curtains open, so that I can check our position without leaving bed.  We also have an alarm on our GPS, which I can set to go off if we move a pre-determined distance from our anchoring point.  With the current accuracy of GPS, this lets me know if we’ve swung as little as 20 meters from our position.  A good thing, except when it’s windy, and the danger lies astern at 20 meters – setting the alarm at the most sensitive means it also rings when we swing (safely) forward or to the right or left.  Oh well; better awake and safe than sleeping through a crashing rendezvous with the rocks.

The bright light was a searchlight and it brought me to my feet -- once I realized it was not the tugboat that had been overseeing the locals’ dredging operation in the small harbor over the past few days.  Captained by a long-bearded Kiwi, the tugboat had brought me no small amusement with the skipper’s dry wit.  The night before, the local operators of the dredge had tried to un-ground their barge from the shallow beach, against the advice of the lean but pot-bellied skipper.  As their efforts unfolded, our New Zealand captain, bare-chested and drinking slowly from a large bottle of lager, watched laconically from the stern of his oceangoing tug.  Eventually, he let the three sailboats in the harbor know that:  “Having exhausted their efforts, unsuccessfully, I’ve instructed them to secure the barge to a coconut tree and to get some rest.”  To which an equally-laconic British sailor replied, “If that barge swings free, it’ll sweep us all to oblivion, so I’ll keep one eye on it and one eye on my vodka and tonic.”

But it wasn’t the Kiwi tug’s searchlight that woke me; instead, it was the searchlight from an unheralded 200’ combined supply/cruise ship that plies these islands on a circuit run from Papeete, Tahiti, through the Tuomotus, the Marquesas, and then back again.  It carries all the non-air freight supplies to all of the islands, and to those without air strips, it carries everything, and, apparently, arrives anytime.  It was 3:30 in the morning.   (In a rare kind of joint occupancy, it also carries tourists, who pay for reasonable accommodations and a slow water-borne amble through these remote isles.  It sails between the islands at night, and arrives at daybreak – or just before! -- to offload containers, fuel, and sun-burned tourists at a steady succession of ports-of-call.)  The ship had come in.

The ship was pointed directly at our fair boat, not 100 meters away, and I watched with bleary and lessening concern as it began to turn slowly to its port, moving across my boat from left to right.  After overcoming my fear of being struck broadside in the dim hours of morning, I watched in fascination as the large ship, without benefit of tug, slid gracefully into a 180 degree turn inside of a harbor about 300 meters in diameter, and settled noiselessly along the concrete pier that just the day before had been the object of the dredging operation.  Just in time shoveling I guess.  The by-now- 4 am silence was broken once, when a deckhand on the stern saw me standing on my boat, just 75 meters back, and gave a loud shout of hello and an upraised fist.  I kept my silence, in deference to Jennifer, but lifted my hand in reply – acknowledgement of a job well done.   I looked around for the Kiwi tug; it had (laconically, to be sure) been taken a mile out to sea, safe from any mis-steering on the part of the intrepid cruise-cum-supply ship.

The following day, I saw again how close we were to danger; not 30 yards behind us were breaking waves, the product of a rare northerly swell that brought out the local surfers.  Unfortunately for my sleep, the main protected harbor was taken up by the tug, the barge, and now this supply ship!  We decided to wait it out anyway; our anchor was secure, and the alarm was reliable.

The next morning, the large palm thatch roofed pavilion on the beach had been transformed, and there were more 4-wheel drives and trucks on the pier than I had seen in all of these islands.  Under the pavilion, with its pillars dressed ceremoniously in palm leaves, stood dozens of tables of fruits, breads, carvings, cloths, and jewelry, each attended by its respective cook or artist, dressed to the nines.  A small combo – keyboards and ukulele, coupled with the by-now routine beautiful multi-part harmonies – played in a corner.  The ship had come in, and there were tourists galore – at least those that hadn’t joined a trek to the white cross that adorns the highest spot overlooking many of these Marquesan villages.  Most seemed French, and you had to admire their adventurous spirit:  no skeet shooting, saunas, or multi-level pools on this cruise ship!

At the pier, a different scene was unfolding.  There, dozens of containers – each about half the length of what you’d see on a US highway – were being unloaded and dispensed to a seemingly disorganized but polite crowd of Ua Poans.  Freezer containers spilled forth frozen cases of meat and shrimp; others pushed out crates of sodas, a washing machine, the odd flat-screen TV, and cases of canned foods.  Each was destined for someone on the dock, and it was hard to see if anyone was in charge of distribution.  Under a dockside shelter, dozens of toddlers ran around, barely supervised and well-behaved, and the whole scene – from the dock to the thatched pavilion, took on the appearance of a large festival.  The ship had come in. (That's our dinghy, in the foreground.)

When we were in the Galapagos, we witnessed a different take on the same scene.  There, lacking a dock against which the supply ship could unload, the ship would anchor in the harbor.  Laboriously, a crane from the ship would unload palettes of freight (no containers there) onto engineless barges.  Pushed by rubber dinghies, these barges would find their way to a common dock, shared by water taxies and small ferries, and be unloaded by hand, palette by palette, box by box, case by case.    The process would take several days, so there was none of the excitement occasioned by the Ua Poa arrival – either that, or the residents of the Galapagos are too jaded to get excited by the arrival of more supplies.

On Marquesan islands, excitement abounds, not least because these ships carry the tourists that buy the crafts that provide no small amount of money into the local economy.  With only a few thousand residents on even the most populated islands, currency is a valued thing.  Barter seems a way of life, and other than copra and noni (used in a medicinal juice), it’s not clear what these islands produce in the way of economic output.  According to a local guide, the annual economic growth rate is around 1 percent, which, judging from the number of babies we see everywhere, is clearly less than population growth. Plus, there are no department or appliance stores or car dealers on these islands.  Everything has to be ordered and then shipped from Papeete, Tahiti.   Thus, to be sure, the excitement.

After visiting the handicrafts pavilion and the pier’s mad distribution schemes, we took our leave of Ua Poa, raising anchor easily in 20 foot water, and leaving behind the tiny harbor with its tug, the dredge, the barge, and the cruise ship.  Turning north, we sailed the 25 miles to Nuku Hiva, to a small deep bay just east of the bay where the island’s main village lies.  It’s very quiet here; no stores, few paved roads, and we anchored in shallow brownish water, since the normally clear water is discolored from the recent rains running down the adjoining steep banks stippled with hundreds of coconut and vanilla trees.  We’ve got some chores to take care of on the boat, and we plan to take a hike up to a large ma’ae with many tikis.  It’s a steep climb, but we need the exercise.   We’re thankful for the quiet; no anchor alarms tonight, and no searchlights.  Our ship has come in.