There Are Plenty of Real Wild Ones… New Yachtsmen Blown to Easter Island. Losses and Finds. More Bucking at Anchor. And the Ancient Moai Giants

There are plenty of real wild ones! New yachtsmen have been blown to Easter Island. Losses and finds. More bucking at anchor. And the ancient moai giants Farewells and new neighbours In the morning we decided to invite our catamaran neighbours on a trip around the island, but they started saying their goodbyes—they were heading to Hanga Roa to complete their outward clearance. “At least we’ll get some rest out in the ocean,” Jonathan says. “There’s no chance of resting off Easter Island.” Lady Mary’s crew saw them off both over the radio and in person—they came right alongside so the boats could embrace, while we stood on deck waving our bonnets. Jonathan and Jemima And then: A sail on the horizon! Well, well! There may not be many real wild ones, but they’ve all gathered here ). It looks as though, of the average 30 yachts that visit Easter Island each year, the greatest concentration arrives right now. Hurricane season has just ended in Polynesia, and that’s where most boats head after Easter Island. Half an hour after the catamaran left, a little 8-metre yacht with an outboard motor anchored beside us. William and Ilias, mere boys, left Sweden 10 months ago. Their passage from Panama to Easter Island took 31 days. They must be exhausted as hell. Their light little boat gets tossed around something fierce! So we took them a welcome bag of fresh fruit—the first thing to run out at sea. The lads rested for a day, slipped ashore as illegal visitors, and that evening Andryukha downloaded the weather forecast and told them they could head to the village in the morning. And so the boys went off to complete their formalities. The captain bearing gifts Encounters with non-Russian Russians ) Meanwhile, we went ashore. The moai statues in Anakena Bay already feel like family to us. Every day we have a picnic opposite them. The young sailor even brought her sketchbook and paints. And the captain has learned to open coconuts the native way—with his bare hands against a sharp stump, without knives, nails or any other machetes. “Can we go for a walk already? What if new guavas have grown out there while we’re sitting here?” The young sailor appeared and roused everyone from the picnic for a walk. We made it as far as the road and saw some people walking towards us who looked Russian. I’d spotted them some time ago. The young sailor and one of the ladies stared intently into each other’s eyes for quite a while, and then she said: “Mum, why aren’t you saying hello?” “To whom?” “Well, to her.” “Hello,” I say. “Hello,” the woman replies with an accent, smiling. I thought perhaps they were our fellow Slavs. They turned out to be Germans. From East Germany. The older lady had studied Russian at school, and they all admitted that this was not the first time they had been mistaken for Russians :). Fancy that! Something in people’s expressions must once have been subtly altered by the socialist system. We bade our German brothers a warm farewell and went to harvest guavas. Green guava On the way back to the dinghy, the young sailor took off running along the beach and then went and planted her forehead straight into the sand—luckily, not into the rocks. We scrubbed the ground-in pinkish sand off all her clothes, face and hair. And somehow, in the process, we even managed to lose her striped little jacket. It would have been better to lose a windbreaker—it’s already dirty, and Lada has three of them. But the jacket was lovely, nautical and useful. The next day we couldn’t find it on the boat. Nor could we find it on the beach or at the security post. A find in an unexpected place At sunset, some mysterious force led us off in a completely different direction from anywhere we had been before. The young sailor and I went to the cliff to examine the ritual stone huts and the triangular platform where Māori shamans came to work their magic in ancient times. We were also keeping an eye out for Nastya—she had gone up the mountain alone while it was still light, but now “midnight draws near, and still no Hermann.” And there he was, the darling, lying on the ground. Not Hermann—the young sailor’s striped jacket, trampled into the reddish dirt. We bellowed songs all the way back to the yacht for joy. And for dinner we made a delicious pumpkin stewed in cream with chipotle mayonnaise (chipotle is Mexican smoked chilli). And we watched Wedding in Malinovka—also out of sheer joy. Now we sing the song about Popandopulo meeting Marusya: “…A-pfff. A-pfff. Waist in a corset!”—… Seryozha Irinin, I immediately remembered you and Lyokha on the Himalayan trek beneath K2. How you sang that song on the glacier at Concordia camp while I photographed you and laughed :). Once I find some internet, I’ll find that very photo and attach it here, all right? While we were at it, Laduska and I also learned another of your immortal classics: “I met a gyurl, her eyebrow like a crescent moon…” Ahh… Yesterday, while reading the tale of Buratino aloud, the young sailor said to me: “Mum, Malvina is so beautiful!” “Yes, darling, very.” “And you’re beautiful too, Mum… For a forty-year-old.” …—I crack up. Let’s have a flower here. This is how guava blossoms An onshore wind at the anchorage For two days, off the north coast of Easter Island, everything was calm and smooth, but by the evening of the third day it began blowing in from the ocean. The wind was due to shift again within 24 hours, though, so we decided to ride out the strengthening breeze without leaving. And since this morning we’ve been shovelling down all the delights of 25 knots from seaward. The waves are tossing the boat up towards the clouds. Neither children nor adults managed an early start, and some of us even got seasick in our sleep. The pears in the net were churned into compote by the rolling and leaked all over the long-suffering sofa. Books and dolls are flying around the galley, while the laundry bag and oil paints are airborne in the aft cabin )). And the waves coming in are so huge that I’m frightened of them even through the wheelhouse window. It looks as though a breaking crest is curling into foam right astern. We’ve turned the boat into a reading room. It’s still too early for us to leave for Pitcairn Island—we haven’t completed everything we set out to do on Easter Island. Rano Raraku volcano and the giant statues on the Tongariki platform, viewed from the yacht To be continued!