La Gazette du STEVE N°14

Translated by Craig Castellanet for Laurent LHERMITTE. Août, Décembre 2000
Email: lhermittelaurent@yahoo.fr

Gazette 14anglaise
July December 2000

SOOOOO Good !

 

The bon voyage, the navigating, sailing, throwing the anchor in a new mooring, fishing in a corral garden, tied to the dock of a little harbor, discovering the island, spending the night under the moonless sky until a small sliver of the moon rise in the morning, admiring the rising sun, feeling the boat slide over the wave.. All that is soooo good! After a lot of efforts, discouragement, difficult moments, I had forgotten this exquisite felling of freedom. I had spend 6 months repairing the boat and making money for the trip without taking time to read, write or play guitar. I didn't even have time to surf. I caught my first wave the day before leaving Honolulu. After a little tour around the Hawaiian's island, I'm heading back to the south pacific. This time with crew: my aunt Mireille and my friend Craig. Our adventures will certainly be in the gazette N°15 but for the moment I'm going to talk about the life in Honolulu. It was hard for me to writ this gazette because I lost one of my principal motivations, my friend how was tailing my stories to her elementary class in France, has taken a year off to go back to school.




 

The repair

They started by a long tour around Honolulu with my bicycle. As soon as I arrived, I began looking for different ways to fix the mast. People around give me quick some advice. There is a rigger here, he wants $15,000 . there probably not competition. The two marine recycle shops in Honolulu don't have good equipment. One is an alcoholic, the other one is an ex-hippie, very nice, but whose prices are so exorbitant that I only bought a 10 dollar Windex (wind direction indicator).  There are two small boat yards, where the cost of a crane for the mast, for example, is $300 per hour for the yard near the yacht club and $150 at Keehi lagoon near the airport's runway flight path and industrial recycling factories which encrust your boat with black dust from the plane exhaust and factory emission . there are a few bridges I could try to use to put up the mast.  After a day of searching which bore no fruit, quite sad, I went to the maritime museum to see how the Hawaiian ancestors practised their navigation to cross the seas. With a large piece of my rigging (a 4 foot section of my spreader) sticking out of my backpack, I probably didn't really look like the rest of the tourists. Especially so when I explained to an employee that I was carrying it because I needed some help to weld the spreader back together. Another woman overheard y problem, leaned over the railing from the 2nd floor office where she was working and said:


"my husband is a welder for 34 years in the coast
guard, but he hates welding"

The woman, Nancy and her husband John turned out to be great friends and a great help. At the time, I thought, great, more promised help like the guy who told me:

 

 "if you ever need any tools, just ask, I've got everything you need"
a few days later I say to him,

"I really need a rivet gun"
"sorry I don't have one"
"no problem. I'll work something out".

So it went.  It was already nice from him to offer, but also useless, and I had so much work to do. This was not the case with John.  He really had his act together, and could work with my budget.  He understood and delivered the goods when I wanted to use pieces of scrap aluminium to fix the spreaders and stanchions.  While he worked with me, Nancy was like a mum to me, and in return I helped them discover the good life on a boat in Waikiki marina. Thanks to all my friends, I was able to repair Le Steve as cheaply as possible. After looking at all the possible solutions, I finally decided to buy an aluminium sleeve to put inside the mast. $600 for a piece of aluminium ¼ inch thick and 8 feet long, ouch! That's expensive.

     

Transport du mât sur le pont.

OH hisse... hisser haut!

 

On the 800 dock, where all the transient boats stay in Waikiki, I reassembled my mast, putting in some 200 rivets.  I put in the electric cables, and all new halyards. The night between the 12th and the 13th of August was very short for me, because I finished the mast at 4 am. Finally, everything was ready. My friends Achim and Tom brought their boats and put them an either side of mine to use their masts to haul up mine! This operation was all the attraction on the 800 row, there were almost 10 of us well organised and working, other onlookers giving their advice, friends taking pictures, the atmosphere was relaxed Achim and Tom turned hard on their winch to lift the 3-400 lb. mast in the air! Once the mast was in place we hurried to tie ropes to hold it in place. About 1 p.m. everything was done, time for a drink! 

John soude l'entretoise du mât...

and he had fun, fun, fun...

I had brought some 10 mm cable from France, fittings, and tangs made by my cousin Didier. I completed the reconstruction of my rigging in the following weeks. At the beginning of September, John the acrobat went up to weld the mast firmly back together, then we went sailing for the sea trial.  All the repairs were not finished, but I didn't have any more energy to work on the boat.   I continued to work jobs around town, and make more friends.  In the beginning of December my aunt and Craig moved me along to complete the repairs.   Finally, 21 December, we left for a tour of the Hawaiian islands of Lanai, Maui and Molokai.

Miscellaneous thoughts !

During the crossing from Tahiti to Hawaii -

Alone in the middle of the ocean, I admire nature, the stars, the clouds, and I wonder why being surrounded by the grand spectacle of the universe, we become contemplative.  One night of the crossing, on April 6, I ran across a squadron of fishing boats and I was nearly jealous that the fishermen could see this wonderful sunset.  I was beginning to think that it was only for me.  During the 26 day crossing, my thoughts were not always happy: It's a long crossing of a desert, but a deadly and always changing one which always looks the same: if you fall off the boat, you die.  Being so close to death makes you truly enjoy life.

A thought of Henri Hiro (film maker who helped preserve the Tahitian culture) on a little piece of paper:

 


"All the country is lost without a compass, on the road to disaster

The only hope is that this sacrifice will fertilize the spirit of the young
Give the next generation the will to achieve what it wants."

My very useful saying while making all the various repairs:
"Learn to do with what you have, and you won't miss what you don't have."

Funny story or a Freudian complex?
The sailors on the Steve are comfortable because when I show them around the boat we talk about pee pee and ca ca . . . and yes how you have to do it while sailing.  There isn't a flush toilet like in the house, and no sewer either, it just goes right outside the boat.  You have to know how to pump the water closet . . . why is there so much shame about doing something so natural and common?  Is it a cultural problem?

Slice of Life...

Work.

 
To make a little money I did a few "little" jobs, painting a building, gardening, carpenter, security guard, grind the bottom of a sailing boat and finally welding a tug boat.  I learned what it was to have a boss, and what it's like to work hard to do a good job and not have any recognition for your work, and in silence have you ego reduced to nothing.  Too bad, after all that I have studied  to come to such a place where I have to bow down and feel so small.  For a couple of months it was interesting, instructive and lucrative.  But all of the them were not ass holes, and I learned what a pleasure it was to have a great employer in the tug boat owner, Jim.

Lanai Maui Molokai.
The 22nd of December, we had a picnic in the beautiful small port of Manele Bay, Lanai, with this menu: freshly caught fish from my spear, potatoes and vegetables cooked in tin foil on the BBQ, salad, cheese, and a little red wine.  During the tour of the islands we swam near the hump backed whales that came from Alaska.  It was an impressive sight!  

 

After seeing the other islands, we returned for final repairs and final farewells.   It's hard to leave after staying in the islands for 7 months, you make strong friendships which you're not ready to give up. We were awaiting parts for the rigging which we ordered from France, and they had arrived.  We welcomed in the New Year with John and Nancy back in Ala Wai marina and enjoyed more time making a final visit with Erika, Achim and Antonia on Pangaea.  On 2 January 2001 we left Ala Wai and made our way slowly, with no wind blowing, on our way to Kauai where we eventually arrived on the 5th.  Upon our arrival, I declared to Craig "The adventure begins today".