A Brazilian captain, a Tahitian Frenchwoman diver, and a Czech captain’s daughter. Plus Jules Verne, a dream, and the Mystery of the Pacific Ocean.
We sat around the campfire until dawn, As if we were brother and sister. And we parted so casually, so easily. — Do you live far away? — Far away. (Yuri Zykov)
Where can you find the greatest concentration of colourful characters and stories? In international mountaineering and travellers’ camps, and at anchorages far from Europe.
Our campfire burned on the godforsaken eastern shore of Fatu Hiva. I can count on one hand the days we have spent sitting around a fire with friends and acquaintances. The stories of their lives, like exotic flowers, are woven into the fabric of our voyage.
In the Las Perlas Archipelago, we grilled fish with a Russian aeronautical engineer who services helicopters for the Colombian government. On the island of Tobago, we sang around a campfire with the family of a Swedish writer and some French circus performers. And on Fatu Hiva, we are having dinner in an abandoned native village with Santiago, Kristina, and Violette.
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Kristina, 22, Czech Republic
Kristina comes from Karlovy Vary. Fourteen years ago, her father set off across the ocean on a yacht. Her mother did not support the project. But a couple of years ago, Kristina decided to go and live with her dad.
The twenty-year-old captain’s daughter quickly mastered the simple routines of life aboard and learned to handle the romance of sailing. Six months later, she wanted some independence. This was in Panama, in the San Blas Archipelago. She went to work on a charter yacht, where a year later she met the hot-blooded Santiago.
— We’ve been together for five months; we’ll see what happens next, — Kristina says in English.
She switches to Spanish with Tiago, speaks a little Russian with Lada and teaches her Czech words, and tries to pronounce French sentences correctly with Violette.
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(San)Tiago.
In the morning, the long-haired Brazilian with the physique of Mowgli comes out to the ocean surf to do a few yoga asanas. He twists his unruly curls into a ponytail and goes into Downward-Facing Dog.
Barely out of school, Tiago somehow quickly figured out that he wasn’t cut out to be an Einstein, but he was drawn to adventure. Shedding a solitary tear for his native soil, he pointed the tail of an aeroplane towards Brazil and found himself somewhere on Europe’s Atlantic coast with a surfboard tucked under his arm.
He taught juniors and adults to ride the waves, completed a freediving course so he wouldn’t get himself killed in big waves, somehow acquired an Italian passport, and generally didn’t worry too much.
He had no family, had never read any philosophy—or, really, much of anything at all—but he was open to everything new.
— Why do you do nothing but surf all the time? — the guys asked him. — You should get into yachting instead. You won’t get far on a surfboard.
So Tiago set his surfboard aside without regret and walked along the shore, peering into every boat and asking:
— You wouldn’t happen to need a deckhand, would you? The sea and I are on first-name terms.
That was how Tiago found himself aboard a seriously fancy motor yacht. He spent about five years working as a deckhand and captain around Europe, then invested his savings in a handsome 39-foot ketch with the fitting name Good Run and sailed her off to the bluest sea in the world, the Caribbean.
Among the coral reefs of San Blas, love swept over him and Kristina. And so successfully that they decided to cross the Pacific Ocean.
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Violette and the Pearl Divers
Thoughtful Violette is a Frenchwoman from Tahiti. She went to university in Paris, and the profession she qualified for was also more suited to France. Violette stayed in metropolitan France to work as an architect.
Somewhere along her travels she became interested in diving, then in freediving (diving without scuba gear), aaaaand... she was hooked.
— At one point I tried to go back to my old life, with an office, projects, and a dress code, but I couldn’t.
Her route from France to Tahiti was no ordinary flight. After reaching the Caribbean, Violette joined the yacht Good Run. Then the four of them—Tiago, Kristina, another Brazilian named Andreas, and Violette—set off for the Pacific.
On Fatu Hiva, Andreas transferred to another yacht, while Violette will reach Tahiti via Hiva Oa by ferry and plane. She can’t wait to get back to her home island, where her friends and freediving await.
Her personal record for a dive without scuba gear is 36 metres. Violette does not consider this depth—the height of a twelve-storey building, mind you—particularly great, and she wants to go deeper. I think it’s seriously impressive. My own diving record is, I think, forty-six metres, but with scuba gear))).
All limitations are in the mind, Violette is sure: people are capable of more than they think they are. I find myself seriously reflecting on her words.
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In return, we told Our story too. Through the prism of children’s literature :). After all, Jules Verne and his 37th parallel were indirectly responsible for our ending up with a life like this.
— You see, — on a dark night among the shaggy palms of Fatu Hiva’s uninhabited eastern shore, this story seems more real and closer than it did on a February afternoon on the sixth floor of a building at the meeting point of Europe and Asia. You see, if it weren’t for Nastya’s categorical “No way,” we would already be mentally preparing to leave Tahiti and head south into the great unknown.
Because there’s something wrong with their charts! Specifically, with Maria Theresa Reef. We need to go and check in person whether it exists or not.
And that is two thousand nautical miles south of Tahiti, where there is no land at all. Just the solitary island of Rapa, after which there are another 600 miles to slog through. And if Maria—excuse me—Theresa isn’t there (what are we supposed to believe in, then?), that means another three thousand miles to Cape Horn through the Roaring Forties. Because the climate makes it impossible to return from there to New Zealand or Tahiti.
The guys listen open-mouthed and decide they absolutely must read In Search of the Castaways. It really does make for a terribly romantic story. And we are very sorry that only our youngest sailor has the taste for adventure in our family.
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A brief explanation:
On Maria Theresa Island, the heroes of In Search of the Castaways found the very captain they had been searching for. One wall of my childhood bedroom was covered by a map of the world on which this island was marked. And in our Gingerbread House in the Altai, a wall in the children’s room is also covered by a map—and Maria Theresa is on that one too.
Is Maria Theresa Reef shown on your charts—paper ones, not electronic ones—friends? Please write in the comments. Its coordinates are 37°11′ south latitude and 153° west longitude.
In any case, we’ll have to look for it on our second circumnavigation. Because if not us, then who? There aren’t many truly crazy ones around :).
May all of you have a dream!