A Quiet Week in the Manihi Lagoon

It was a quiet week in the Manihi lagoon. Last Sunday, our catamaran “ile de Grace” arrived to the kind of anchorage that would have seemed crowded to the long-ago sailors that passed through these islands. Seven boats, and it forced us to anchor a bit further out than normal, in about 60 feet of water. The next day, no fewer than three of the locals came by to extend a greeting to these interlopers, setting off a chain of events that left the locals chattering amongst themselves on Thursday, when the M/V “Dory” arrived at the supply dock with the usual weekly run of groceries, diesel, spare parts, and appliances.

That Monday, Fernando, the local baker, fisherman, black oyster pearl farmer, and head of the local Mormon church, swung by in his 20 foot skiff, introducing himself and his services. A few minutes later, Jean-Paul arrived on his pirogue – a large man by any standards, and seemingly even larger jammed into the narrow cockpit of his tiny outrigger. Finally, the commune’s introduction was made complete by the pulling alongside of the local gendarmerie, pointing out that we had anchored too close to the channel by which the children were ferried to and from school each morning and afternoon.

Fernando gracefully intervened, and offered to help us move our boat back about 10 meters, an offer which I (fatefully) accepted. As I began to start up the engine to power the windlass, so as to let out more chain in a controlled fashion, Fernando gestured that we could do this by hand … in the course of which I managed to catch the tip of my left ring finger between the now-tight chain and the steel windlass. The flesh at the tip of my finger was no contest for the steel, and I pulled it back, bleeding and numb. Our on-board medic, the famous Dr. Jennifer, reached into our first-aid kit, wrapped my now-bloody finger in gauze and bandages, as Fernando loaded me into his skiff to take me to the town’s small clinic.

The clinic was in the small town hall, through a door on the left just up some stairs and a few dozen yards from the tiny boat basin. I was greeted by Tereva, a seriously-tattooed nurse practitioner on a three-week rotation from Tahiti. I was his only patient at the time, but as I was to learn, he is a busy man. After introductions and a recitation of the underlying events, he did an extraordinarily-professional job at cleaning, dressing, and bandaging the wound. After tetanus serum (immediate inoculation) and a handful of analgesics and antibiotics, I was on my way back to the boat, my hand swathed in a bandage and aluminum split (to protect the now-raw tip of my finger).

Health care in France and its Polynesian territories is a public good, and the care was free. The mayor of the town helped Tareva work on my hand, and she seems to have a hand in many affairs, as we read a notice on the town hall’s bulletin board inviting comment on the need for no alcohol zones in and around the town center, over her signature.

Earlier that day, we had asked a few of our anchorage companions over for dinner, and that night, bandage and all, we hosted 5 other sailors for a wonderful evening of food (homemade chicken soup) and drink. In addition to our new friends Joel and Rob from “Alobar,” we were joined by the gang from “Horizons,” Marcy and Joseph, a do-it-yourself couple from San Diego, and their son, Steve.

The following day, we followed up on a dining/diving tip from Joel, who had spotted large numbers of clams and oysters strewn about the coral reefs that lined the shore. With help from Fernando, Jennifer and Joel donned their snorkeling gear, and swam off, only to return in an hour with a bagful of clams. Working with Fernando, they cleaned the clams, after which Joel and I went to Fernando’s house to meet his family and help in preparing fresh coconut milk for clam seasoning.

Fernando introduced us to his wife and children, reached under the kitchen counter for some coconuts, and, using a chef’s cleaver, expertly split the nut in half, draining the water. He took the halves to a grinding machine attached horizontally to an adjacent work surface, and ground out the white meat form the lining of the shell into a large bowl. Once complete, we took a cheesecloth, wrapped it around the white shavings, and squeezed hard as a steady stream of rich coconut milk poured from the tip of the cloth into a plastic jug.

The clams were pressure cooked for an hour, after which Jennifer and Joel added white wine, garlic, curry powder, and then, the fresh coconut milk. Dribbled over linguine, the meal was to die for, and Jennifer took special delight in knowing that she had pulled the clams from the sea just behind our boat just a few hours earlier.

By this time, we were becoming good friends with Fernando and his family; his son, Vetea is a well-trained outboard engine mechanic who managed to get our motor working, and his wife, Stella, is an amazing cook, and runs a small walk-up/eat-out window outside their kitchen, along the town’s waterfront street-cum-boardwalk. That afternoon, Jennifer and Joel went with Fernando to his black pearl farm, where black lipped oysters are raised over a three-year period from larvae, to small oysters, to cultivated oysters, and then, finally to harvest, where only 7 in 100 yield high-quality saleable pearls. The next day, Jennifer and Joel joined Fernando for a spearfishing expedition. It’s grouper season in the atoll, and they were determined to get their share.

Grouper season. The excitement around the atoll is palpable, as every villager with a boat is anchored in 30 feet of water dangling fish lines with octopus-baited hooks to a bottom swarming with egg-laying grouper. Since I am out of commission for diving (or any wet sports) for a while, Jennifer, Joel, and Rob grabbed their spears and fell overboard, looking to penetrate the tough skin of a grouper with the tines of the spear. All around, the locals were bringing flapping groupers to the surface almost as fast as they could lower and raise the lines by hand. The numbers are incredible. Fernando has a small crew, consisting of two close friends; the previous day, they loaded multiple 55-gallon buckets filled with grouper. At the dockside table with a thatched roof, located just in front of Fernando’s front door, they filleted these fish all night, yielding 140 kg. of clean white meat. These are bagged, frozen, and then shipped to Tahiti for use by Chinese restaurants. The going rate? 700 fpf (French Polynesian francs, worth about $0.11 each, or about $8/kilo). Revenue for the day? About $1000 US. Other fishermen were enjoying similar success, and, when queried, were incredulous that overfishing might be a problem – apparently, the numbers were too large to imagine ever running out of grouper. As Joel pointed out, abalone were once as numerous as these grouper appeared to be, only to fall victim to over fishing. In any event, the dog stands watchful eye, escaping the heat.

It seems that once a year, the grouper come into the atoll to spawn (all grouper start their lives as egg-bearing females; only later do some of them morph into males). We had arrived at the peak of the season, but alas, the fish were too deep for us to reach without scuba, and their skin to tough to penetrate from afar. No matter; Fernando gestured for us to follow him and to leave his crew and the safety of the lagoon behind; we were headed out through the pass to the reef just outside the atoll.

There, our intrepid spearfishers were rewarded with water so clear it appeared invisible. We’ve been to a lot of so-called clear diving waters, but the visibility here was out of a dream: 40-50 feet, as clear as air. The gang managed to snag a few reef fish, and spotted dozens of needlefish, eels, and other coral denizens before calling it a day. That's Jennifer with a blue fish against a blue sea. Returning to Fernando’s house, we all took a turn at cleaning the grouper, including your faithful scribe. Cut behind the fin, pull along the spine, turn the skin-covered filet over, and then pull the knife along the tough skin, yielding a delicate filet. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Note the plastic bag covering my bandage :)

Having hosted others for two nights running, we took the next night off, after watching Fernando (man of a million trades) free dive to 40 feet to free others’ anchors that had become snagged on coral heads.

The next morning, the weekly supply ship arrived. As regular readers know, this a big deal on these small islands, and Thursday was no exception.

Alain was expecting his bi-monthly shipment of meat, ordered from Tahiti at half the price in the local stores. He was not the exception; most locals ordered their food and such from Tahiti. Xavier Michel, a retired captain in the French navy, and who runs the ham radio station on Manihi used by yachts (including this one) to email from sea, was waiting on his 200 liters of diesel and a new freezer. Forklift operators carted crates of fresh vegetables to the two small stores (“magasins”) that serve this small island. And a wizened old Tuomotun, short, squat, and with a flower placed delicately behind his ear, hauled a dozen dolly-loads of oil to the supply room behind the dock. A woman sold cold coconut water from a cooler (the young nuts are filled with sweet water, for many years and for many islands, the only source of water on these rather arid atolls – nip the top off, and drink away; each nut has about a pint of delicious liquid inside). That's Rob and Jennifer, enjoying the water.

Bags of copra were brought to the dock for shipment to processing plants (7000 fpf/bag), and the iridescent shells of the black-lipped oysters whose cultivation produced the famous black pearls) also went on board at 11 fpf/kilo, to be used by Chinese factories to create baubles, belt buckes, and the like.

We also visited Fernando’s bakery – which, despite its inauspicious location, has all the modern breadmaking equipment one might find in Paris: a $50,000 US oven, large industrial mixers, and kneading machines. On Thursdays, when the ship arrives, they bake 1000 petite pain and 900 baguettes to supply the neighboring island of Ahe (next stop for the supply ship, and lacking a bakery). Fernando’s granddaughter appears to run the bakery.

That afternoon, having provisioned with fruits and vegetables and the all-important Sprite, Jennifer and Joel dove our anchors to reconnoiter the location of coral heads. The chain used to attach the anchor to the boat is essential in these waters; the sandy bottoms are punctuated by columns of coral rising dozens of feet to the light above. As boats swing, the chain slides along the bottom, and is often wrapped around these coral heads. We unpacked our snuba gear – basically a Honda engine and an air compressor, sending pressurized air down two linked 60’ air hoses, each with a regulator.

Down they went, pulling themselves along our anchor chain, and descending to about 40 feet, from which they could see that our chain had fallen on the side of one of these heads, but had not wrapped around. Getting off will be easier with this knowledge. They also dove Joel’s chain, and, as events would prove, his was in a good shape.

That evening, Joel, Rob and Jennifer went to the 4-star resort hotel tucked discreetly on the western edge of this atoll (bungalows on stilts over the lagoon’s turquoise waters) for a drinks and dinner (I needed to rest; my finger while healing nicely, still sucks some energy out me).

The next day was the birthday celebration for one of Fernando’s crew: the grouper could wait, and we spent time helping him clean the coconut shells of the husky fibers that would otherwise gum up the grinding machines used to make the coconut milk. Later, we met up with our friend Jean-Paul, the larger-than-life pirogue rower who sold black pearls from his tenuous perch. Jennifer picked out a lovely necklace, and we managed to trade for some extra pearls (tools and wine for pearls).

A short way from our boat is an other-worldly stretch of coral, awash and pock-marked with small outcroppings, and Jennifer and I took our dinghy to explore. Lots of coconut palms, some sheds, and nothing but sand and rock and water.

That evening, we were treated to the weekly practice session of the island’s dance troupe, working on their routine for the annual July contests in Tahiti between all of the islands in French Polynesia. With no lights, under a cloudy but moonlit sky, and to the tightly-orchestrated beat of 4 drums and percussion instruments, a group of about 30 girls and your women and 30 boys and young men danced in a tightly-choreographed routine.

Polynesian dance is a study in contrasts, with rapidly-shimmying hips (women) and rapidly-shaking calves (men), juxtaposed against the slow and sinuous movement of arms, all the while keeping the head and chest stock-still. Some of the movements defy description, and later, Jennifer received some private lessons from Poa-Nuie, Fernando’s adopted 18-year daughter. She’s one of six kids, adopted by Fernando 12 years ago, even as her birth mother still lives on this small island of about 600 people.

The birthday celebration was a feast for the eyes and the stomach – Stella had outdone herself, and we enjoyed the singing, toasts, and delicious spread.

After dinner, we hung out outside his house as Jennifer took her hip-swing/sway/shimmy lessons, and I bemoaned my inability to pick up the guitar sitting there. By 10 pm, we were all tired, so we took our dinghy out into the dark lagoon and threaded our way back to ile de Grace across the mile of gentle wavelets rippling atop the atoll’s coral heads, its breeding groupers, and the succulent clams. It was a quiet week in the Mahini lagoon, and we were looking forward to a peaceful night of delicious sleep.