Hello!

After acquiring a virus, my computing has been touch and go lately...so finally I am upand running again and here are the recent blogs all in one big...well, blogb. All is well...more very soon. LOVE, Landlocked Liz

PAPERTOWELS, TUPPERWARE, AND POTLUCKS: Chance rendezvous with 'Gaviota' in Polynesie Frances

Halfway through the rebuild of Swell in Santa Barbara, my friends Brandon and Jaime bought a Downeast 32' with intentions of sailing to New Zealand. In the flurry of boat projects, we'd see each other on the docks, swap stories of our current project nightmares and remind each other that there would be rewards at the end of all this complicated preparation. Somehow it was comforting just to know that someone else was trying to follow through with the same radical idea.

I left a year prior, and hoped, but never expected, that 'Swell' and 'Gaviota' would someday share an anchorage. Because I routed my trip north to Kiribati and returned to French Polynesia for another season, 'Gaviota' caught up!

Their tanned, smiling faces thousands of miles from our origin said so much. We hadn't all been together for almost 3 years, but just knowing we'd covered the same sea made me feel instantly closer to them than ever before. We celebrated aboard Swell the first night. Katie completed the world circle, as she lives close to where Brandon and Jaime plan to make their final landfall in New Zealand AND tie a different sort of knot than they've been tying lately--they're getting married! What better proving grounds for compatibility than crossing oceans and living together on a boat!?

We spend a week enjoying the islands. It was obvious that Brandon had grown quite comfortable with the reef as I watched him stand tall through a few thick tubes. It was Jaime, who truly impressed me, though. From their loss of autopilot that had entailed 6 days of hand steering to Jaime's persistent 'no reefing unless absolutely necessary' policy, she'd proven herself to be a tough and tried sailor. She even took a nasty reef wound in the surf, and shook it off like nothing. On our last evening together, we went to climb a coconut tree, and she shimmied right up on her first try!

We could all relate on a level that only sea travelers understand. Like when I offered them a whole paper towel as a napkin on our celebration night, Jaime replied, "Oh no, you don't have to do THAT!?" (It's almost unheard of to use a WHOLE paper towel for one person.) In the company of others, I don't adhere so strictly to my conservation policies, but I was happy to see that life at sea had certainly made them appreciate the little things. We joked about the cruising lifestyle in general."I swore if I had to go to another potluck in Mexico, I was gonna puke!" Jaime laughed.

On the night before they sailed west, we toasted to our rendezvous and to their marriage and to the sea that had delivered us safely thus far. We'd stuffed ourselves with a pile of delicious tempura shrimp and veggies that Brandon had whipped out, but when we couldn't eat anymore, Jaime proceeded to deal with the leftovers. She opened a cupboard and Tupperwares tumbled out. After selecting one, she couldn't get the others to fit back in. I watched with strange satisfaction as she struggled and then finally gave them a shove and slammed it shut.Anyone who has spent time aboard Swell knows that similar Tupperware wrestling matches occur daily.

So thank you, B & J.It was SO fun to share in the glory and the minor irritations of our floating lives! Cheers to our rendezvous far from Marina 4 and to forever tuning the fine balance of patience, humor, and determination. All love and best wishes from Swell and me on the final leg of your journey!!

WHO'S COUNTING?: Lacking luster on Day 2 as pearl farmers

"Did he say a thousand?" Katie whispered to me across the platform.

"Yeah, I think so?" I replied. Without more words, we knew exactly what the other was thinking. It was only our second day of volunteering on the pearl farm and we were already acting like anxious schoolgirls waiting for the bell to ring.

Katie's job was to insert the just-grafted oysters into a mesh bag and push a short piece of fishing line through a hole drilled in the corner of its shell. She then passed the bagged oyster to me and I tied it to a rope with an overhand knot. With 10 oysters tied to the rope, I walked out to the end of the dock, hung them off the side and pulled up the next batch to be grafted.

The first day we bopped our heads to the blaring Tahitian radio beats and gawked at the amazing view of the lagoon.Life as a pearl farmer was terrific! But by the afternoon of day two, we squinted into the bright sun and began to lack the luster that the pearls certainly had. Our fingers grew sore and hands nicked with cuts from the sharp shells. In fact, pearl farming is hard work.

"Nine hundred and 80.!" Katie proclaimed around 3:30pm. That meant I had tied 980 'forever' knots in the last 8 hours. At the end of the day, Ben, pearl grafter extraordinaire, coached Katie and I through the grafting process. It's a technical job, much akin to dentistry, except that if you screw up, you kill your patient--the oyster. Neither Katie nor I excelled at the task. Staring into the little mollusk's innards, its shell pried open with metal prongs, felt like a total violation of privacy. To complete the intrusion, a small incision is made in the 'pocket' of the oyster where a machine-rounded pearl from Mississippi is inserted. Then a tiny piece of a graft from an oyster with beautiful shell colors is also placed inside this pocket in hopes that the oyster accepts these two foreign items and turns them into a shiny black pearl. Despite our efforts otherwise, both of us killed a few innocent oysters.

"1,000! We did it! We high-fived our co-workers and agreed it was necessary to rinse off the day's worth of oyster juice at the pass...Allons-y!"

Merci beaucoup to the Champon family for diversifying our Tahitian experience, sacrificing your oysters to our inept grafting skills, feeding us, and letting us briefly pretend we were real pearl farmers!

MY NOT SO 'FOREVER' KNOT

On Katie's last night we wandered across town to the July festivities. For the entire month, this open air showground celebrated Tahitian culture and hosted local food, kids carnival games, gambling rooms, and the wonderfully bizarre auction (where it was possible to win everything from a 20 lb bag of rice to a 6ft tall, fake flower wreath from the cheery auctioneer in a palm frond hat who spoke faster than Cal Worthington). It was all rather entertaining, but Fridays were special, as dance groups from all over Tahiti came to perform.

Now, we're not talking 'Riverdance' here.Tahitian dancing almost defies description. The combination of the dancers' natural beauty and hypnotic movements to the rhythm of the drums while draped in the most creative assemblage of flowers and foliage, the energy, and.well, it's truly overwhelming. They smile like each dance they are reuniting with a lost love. Their thick shiny hair falls just above their swaying and gyrating lower halves, while their upper bodies remain still and erect, arms flowing around them like ribbons in a gentle breeze. Just when we'd thought we'd seen the best there could be, the next troop would appear with polished coconut bras or towering floral headdresses or some variety of choreographic delight that left us both awestruck again. When the show was over, we drifted back to reality, descended the stands and snuck out the back gate before we could get roped into staying at the nightclub.With only one more morning together, a dawn session was protocol.

We packed our boards that night and were buzzing along in the Ripple before the sun came up. A set peeled down the reef as we turned the corner at the pass and we giggled and gawked and shuffled for wax and sunscreen. We shared the first waves of this magical morning alone, and were then joined by our pearl farm friends. Everyone took turns and hooted each other on. I rode a wave too far inside and ducked through the back where the section was about to close. In the chaos of whitewater, my board tugged at my ankle but then I felt my leash go limp.

"Uh oh." I thought.

Sure enough, nothing was attached to the end of my leash when I reached the surface, but my leash wasn't broken? I was left treading water in the impact zone while my board rode the rest of the wave without me. Luckily, Ben, in true Tahitian fashion, saw what had happened and caught the next wave onto the reef to recover what was left of my precious J7. I swam under a few sets, worried that he'd be smashed by the whitewater, but he soon returned with my broken board. When I looked at the tail I cringed at my stupidity:
The knot in the leash string had come undone.

Now, even for a regular surfer this would have been an embarrassing mistake, but throw in the fact that I'm a sailor and practically tie knots for a living, and I felt even dumber.but the most humorous irony of all was the fact that only a day prior I had tied 1,000 of this exact same knot on the pearl farm. Yeah, I know.it's painful.

Thankfully Aymeric saved my session, as he'd brought two boards.I just hope his 1,000 oysters are still attached to those lines!

GUEST BLOG: BY KATIE ANTHONY

"Bye Liz. be safe. take care of yourself. I love you!" And that was it. That's how I said goodbye to one of my favorite people on the planet, 2 years ago in Oaxaca, Mexico, not knowing where or when I would see her again.
"Katie!" I hear as I try to focus, not yet knowing what time or day it is.
"Liz!" followed by a chant of "hi, hi, hi, hi" along with hugs and smiles. It had been 2 years, 8 countries and 10,000 miles since I had seen her last. At first glance she looked the same, but upon a closer look I noticed something very different. In her smile I could see the pride of her accomplishments, in her eyes was the confidence of a world leader, and in her sun bleached hair, the thousands of miles she had put behind her. Her accomplishment truly hit me as we rounded a bend in the road and I cast my eyes upon Swell, basking in the sun surrounded by a beautiful turquoise lagoon--a long, long way from the Santa Barbara Harbor. Because I had flown to see Liz, it was all very easy for the three of us to reunite in Tahiti, and for a minute it was just as easy to think Liz may have flown here too. But Swell certainly didn't get to French Polynesia on an airplane and neither did her captain.
The best part about good friends is that no matter how much time or how many countries have passed within minutes it was just as though we were back in Santa Barbara surfing together everyday. A lot has changed in both of our lives, but for Liz the factor that has remained constant since Santa Barbara is that Swell demands her undivided attention. Swell might have actually been acting out of jealousy the day the solar panel mysteriously stopped working. Liz had been spending all of her time with Nicole and I and I don't think Swell was happy about having to share her captain.
I am constantly impressed by how much knowledge Liz has acquired in these last two years at sea and the trials both mental and physical that she has endured. One minute she's a 12-volt electrician holding a pair of wire cutters in one hand and a multi meter in the other, grease on her forehead, climbing out of a space so small even looking at it makes me claustrophobic, and 3 hours later she is a free diver. Our dingy anchor got stuck in about 40 feet of water the day after heavy rains, so the visibility wasn't good. Without hesitation Liz had her mask on and was over the side. I said, "Liz, you can't even see where the chain starts after the rope." "That's okay," she replies, takes a big breath and goes down. Floating on the surface, I watched as she swam down out of sight, thinking to myself, "What the hell am I going to do if anything happens to her?" Of course 1 minute later she swam back into view--that was a long minute for me. She broke the surface and coolly hopped back in the dingy, anchor freed, it was time for lunch.
This last month aboard Swell has been everything I had hoped it would be. I will miss Liz terribly when I go, but have now seen firsthand how happy and confident she is. Many may think of sailing around the world on a solo handed surf mission as the best job in the world. It definitely has its moments, but it is also more hard work than you can imagine. The ocean doesn't tolerate the arrogant, the faint of heart, or the lethargic. Good thing Liz Clark is the most humble, brave, and diligent woman I know. Tomorrow, again, I will have to say "Bye Liz. be safe. take care of yourself. I love you!" without knowing where or when I will see her again.

BIG HEAD LITTLE HEAD AND MIDDLE HEAD

"Uh. my flight leaves at 2 instead of 3." Katie said casually after pulling her ticket from her backpack. I looked up at the clock; it was 10 after 1pm.
I rushed on deck and finished packing her boardbag while she shoved a few remaining items into her backpack.
Miraculously, we made it to the airport with a few minutes to spare and plopped onto the floor of the terminal after she'd checked in, laughing at what we'd just pulled off. She hadn't had time to shower and her hair was matted into stiff, salty golden clumps. It was the perfect end to the time together--sunburned, tired, late, and hungry.all the criteria that meant we'd had a successful morning. After almost a month of my dear friend's company, I didn't want to think about being alone. Making new friends has been one of the best parts of this trip, but there is nothing that can replace time spent with an old friend. As Mckenzie wrote in an email to me recently, "Adventure and mystery and solitude and independence and freedom are fantastic, but there's something about not having to explain yourself.about being around friends who know your story, your past, your family, your idiosyncrasies, and your secrets."

It was this exactly. With Katie and Nicole, it never mattered what we were wearing or if I had food on my face when we were eating or if my hair looked like an eighties rock star when I woke up or if I had a booger in my nose. They're the kind of friends who accept me completely for who I am without criticism. They know when I need a subtle compliment or a little hug, or when to set me straight about something. They'll help me recover from putting my foot in my mouth or find out the persons' name I should know but can't remember. They're the kind of friends who make you feel less crazy because they love life for the same reasons you do. We share passions and views and humor and can actually read each others minds pretty efficiently. There's no agenda, no competition, nothing covered over or left unsaid.

As I squeezed Katie in a goodbye hug, a pang of sadness hit me. Katie was the friend that always wanted the best FOR me and saw the best IN me. Through the joys and adversities we'd shared through the years--from our most unforgettable surf sessions to the boys that made us cry, or the car wrecks and family hardships-Katie's friendship was as solid as 10ft Teahupoo. Just knowing that someone would always love me (even with my mismatched tomboy outfits, splotchy freckles, radical leash tan, and bodybuilder shoulders) somehow made the hard days a little easier.
But as she walked away my sadness turned to pride-Katie was certainly as in love with surfing as the day we'd met on the rocks at Hammond's. She was strong in spirit and mind and body, always positive, overly generous, and plainly content with herself. Time can carry friends down parting paths, but it seemed that although separate for 2 years, we'd actually evolved towards each other.

I watched her plane fly out of sight and, momentarily, I felt as empty and alone as a plastic bottle floating out to sea. But I soon remembered that every time I duck dove a glittering turquoise lip, or found myself at the top of a line-up with a perfect set coming my way--Katie and Nicole are ALWAYS with me.

FYI: Nicole has a big head. Katie's is really little, and mine is somewhere in the middle.

A SINKING FEELING

In the wake of Katie's departure, Swell's poor condition has become an unavoidable reality. Not only is the headstay broken, but Swell is also taking on water. Last December, after my rough upwind passage in the Tuamoutus, I noticed more water than usual in the bilge. I finally traced the leak to a bolt directly under the engine--in what is possibly the most inaccessible place on the boat! An underwater inspection revealed a crack where a skeg (that a previous owner had added between the rudder and the keel) meets the hull. It appeared as though the force of the waves hitting the skeg from the side had broken the seal around the bolts that hold it to the hull. Water was seeping in around the bolts. I tried to seal the length of the crack with underwater epoxy, but it didn't help. I monitored the leak for the following month. It remained constant, so I decided to continue on to Kiribati. I took on about 3-4 gallons a day during this time, until the passage back from Kiribati, when I did more upwind slamming. After arriving in Bora Bora, the leak had increased to about 6-8 gallons per day.

Thankfully my bilge pumps have been working well. I had planned to put off the repair until after a visit from my sister, but her plans recently fell through, so I think it's time to face the facts. I can't force another long passage with a leak this bad. Plus, thanks to a friend I met in Kiribati, Selden offered me a break on a new Furlex roller furler (to replace the one that caused the chafe on the headstay), so I decided to go ahead and make the purchase. But this means I won't fix the headstay until the new furler arrives on a cargo ship coming from Los Angeles. I will then replace both the furler and the wire at the same time. Seeing that I'm waiting on the furler package anyway, it seems like the right time to pull Swell out of the water and deal with the leaking skeg.

So, Swell and I are booked at the local boat yard for haul out next week. Until then, I'll be soaking up my last few days of floating!!