Tahiti — Two Round-the-World Sailing Voyages with Children in One Place. How we kept the others from working, whether coral grows in a marina, and where flying saucers splash down Maxim came aboard Lady Mary. And we all hugged him. Well, no, not all of us. The girls got shy. At last you’ve arrived! At last we’ve made it to you! :). Anchoring near the others was not entirely straightforward. The local yacht club trains in this part of Tahiti’s waters, and they aren’t too pleased when new targets—in the form of anchored sailing yachts—are planted in the middle of their sailing area. Hoping to find a miraculous spot right in the middle of the empty space, but somehow remain unnoticed, we dropped anchor about 200 metres from Theophania. Maxim aboard Theophania Phew—standing out like a sore thumb in the middle of an open field, completely invisible! So, any plans? We can go for a walk, drop by Natasha’s office, drive around Papeete... what would you like to do? Mmm... we want to do everything! 🙂 On Tahitian PE And we started with Natasha. Ashore, we met their younger daughter Polina with her friends. The friends cheerfully shouted “Privet!” without an accent. “Are they all Russian, then?” No, Polina taught them. For the second week running, the girls have been hanging out at the yacht club instead of going to school. Don’t rush to call them truants—it’s their school PE: two weeks immersed in sailing, then back to their desks. Every morning, the class heads out into the lagoon in a long “train” of little Hobie Cat catamarans. Each crew has three people. Sometimes Polina sails with the girls, sometimes with the boys. The wind picks up, and the Hobie Cats dash along on one hull, tacking and slicing noisily through the water. The light craft look exactly like birds with brightly coloured wings. Though sometimes these birds accidentally crash into yachts at anchor. Children’s voices call out, “Mille pardons,” and we laugh: “No problem,” in flawless French, of course :). After the Hobie Cats, Optimist dinghies take the stage, with the children racing single-handed. And it all begins with the coxswains of the paddling teams calling a steady count in time with the strokes of the paddles. The narrow pirogues skim across the bay at cosmic speed. PE is pretty good in Tahiti! Of course, they have ordinary lessons as well—at the stadium twice a week. Escape from the Office and a Stroll through the Capital Max drove us to the office in an old car. The others are developing a website in several languages—Russian, English and Spanish—and launching a travel agency. Of course, no work got done after we arrived. Instead, there was tea, conversation with Natasha and Max, and Ksyusha arriving from school. Polina had gone to visit friends until the evening. The crew of the Blagovestie round-the-world voyage At dusk, in two batches, Maxim drove us to Papeete’s main waterfront—the capital of French Polynesia. People jog and stroll with views of the sunset and the yachts in the eye-wateringly expensive marina. Beside the park quay, where food trucks gather in the evening, a large flying saucer had splashed down. Its entire roof was covered in solar panels. The design was straight out of a film about the future. Some kind of mega-project involving green energy—we’ll have to ask the others. A floating saucer from outer space In one spot, the water in Papeete’s central marina on the island of Tahiti is filtered by a buzzing yellow-and-black barrel. The space between the glass fence and the first pontoon is occupied by several nets. Tropical fish, illuminated in the dark, swim among the coral. Just like the ones in Anaho Bay in the Marquesas, only captive. Andrey and Maxim found plenty to talk about, while Natasha and I talked about the children. At the end of the waterfront, the attractive roof of the Little Theatre and the metal framework of the Grand Theatre rise above everything. From this angle, the latter resembles a multi-storey car park or a stadium. Ladunya immediately took 12-year-old Ksyusha in hand and, of course, insisted that they visit the playground together. But we talked her out of it—it was time to go home. It was already late, and Ksyusha’s classes would begin at 7:20 the next morning. Russian girls of Tahiti . The Fateful Offer Would you like some internet? I happen to have some, Maxim offered. And our antenna, glitching only ever so slightly, picked up the Wi-Fi signal from Theophania. We were a little bewildered: internet right on the yacht? Is that even possible? :). We wrote emails, replied to messages, checked the website... That seemed to be everything... Oh, right! We still had to edit the posts from the passage to the Tuamotus and add photos. Only Nastya the sailor knows what else there is to do online that takes ages. Heavy artillery arrived the next morning: the others left a modem for us aboard Theophania. The junior crew member and I took to the oars as Lady Mary’s “high-speed internet delivery service.” On the way, we cleaned the yacht’s hull a little, just so we wouldn’t completely abandon the maintenance work. Meanwhile, megatonnes of information were already pouring along invisible aerial routes above our half-submerged heads. I, too, had to pour out of the sea and onto the deck, pulling off my mask and fins as I went, and into the flames of a working day at the computer. We had prepared the previous night—which sites to look at and whom to write to. Drawing lots for internet time )) We plunged into work and soon, among other things, discovered that we were taking part in the My Planet Awards, in the categories of best film and best travel blog. And we saw no more of Tahiti—the film had to be made in three days, after all :). We only saw the others in the evenings, when they dragged us out for a run at the stadium. The beginning, about our arrival in Tahiti and our search for the Blagovestie round-the-world crew, is here >>. To be continued! About Our Participation in the “Blogger of the Year” Award Strictly speaking, it’s a competition for the most interesting travel blog. But there’s one catch. Guys, it’s a public vote—a battle of AUDIENCES rather than content, alas. What do you think—are we an active audience? Can we beat Instagram bloggers with audiences in the tens of thousands? YES, if you cast your vote for us :). It all depends on you. Vote via this link: https://www.moya-planeta.ru/premiya2018/view/marina_klochkova_42614/ Marina Klochkova—that’s me, the expedition’s first mate and the principal author of our website. You need to click the red “CAST YOUR VOTE” button in the top right-hand corner. You’ll be asked to register; it doesn’t hurt 🙂 (and once you become a member of the My Planet club, you’ll be able to publish your own travel reports for the whole country to see). Photos from various moments of our round-the-world voyage On the Way to Senegal The Chief Cook in the Galley A Market in the Galápagos Islands The Whole Crew and Us off Easter Island On the Way to the Cape Verde Islands Galápagos Islands Dolphins in the Mediterranean Columbretes Islands Junior Crew Member on Passage Pitcairn Island. Christian’s Cave Easter Island Off Pitcairn Island Tuamotu Archipelago Are you with us? VOTE!
From the Travely-Family archive · Pacific Ocean
Tahiti — Two Round-the-World Sailing Voyages with Children in One Place
An original publication from the former Travely-Family website. This English translation was preserved from the technical-site archive without editorial rewriting.
