Birthday on Bark EUROPA
Yesterday the 6th of August was my birthday. It was a day made very special by everyone else board. We are somewhere in the mid Pacific half way between Pitcairn Island and Fakarava, the small atoll where we next plan to land.
The weather has changed from rain strong head winds to sunshine and winds from the southeast allowing us to sail in the direction we would actually like to go. No long tacks and less setting and striking of sail. More time to soak up the Pacific sun and gaze at the rolling waves and empty, so very empty ocean. On watch we saw a white buoy float by - the first bit of flotsam I have seen on watch since Easter Island. Occasionally petrels dance over the waves - sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs. The very occasional a lone booby soars through the air. Once, I saw a small plump white bird with a long thin tail - the red-tailed tropic bird. We have seen nothing else on the sea and no planes in the sky.
Yesterday I did not see a single bird - a clear indication that we are very far from land. My watch (Blue) is currently 8am to 12 noon and 8pm to midnight. I had a magical first hour on watch on account of crew members hidden in unlikely corners, bursting into singing ‘happy birthday’ in German, Danish, and Dutch. Everyone wished me a happy birthday, and my room-mate, a master of carving and painting wood gave me a carved block with a whale painted on it.
The second hour, we were relieved from our duties to attend a fascinating lecture on how the Polynesians navigated and populated remote islands. Helming I have started to enjoy much more having overcome my fear of doing something stupid … spinning us into irons and stopping the vessel dead in its tracks. This fear stemmed from a close encounter with the Cook Strait ferry when I was at the helm of a small yacht and we were reducing sail in a storm and had no steerage. I appreciate, though, that the Cook Strait ferry is a very long way from here! Technically, we are in French Polynesian waters but I am yet to hear much French spoken.
At 12 noon our watch congregated in the deck house and, being 8 hours till our next watch, we celebrated my birthday sharing a chilled bottle of Chardonnay. What a treat first drink at sea… Lunch and then a sleep. 4 emails from my family, delivered through Bark Europa star-link - a crack in the total isolation from the wider world, but very welcome from family with birthday good wishes and no world news fortunately. One of the many pleasures of the voyage is the digital detox and lack of screens. The ship is also a floating library awash with books of all sorts mostly in Dutch or English. Heaven!
I was summoned for another lovely sunset. Dinner, then we voyage crew gathered in the deck house which was decorated in red white and blue flags awaiting the 8 oclockie meeting with the Captain but first a quiet hum could be heard from below decks. It got louder and louder and then the professional crew burst into the deck house. I was asked to choose 3 instruments … a guitar a grand piano and a flute. A virtual orchestra was conjured up in seconds and I was treated to a lengthy rendition of “The Birthday Song”. Dante was the soloist- the rest of the so very multi-talented crew the chorus. Magic!! This was followed by a birthday coffee and walnut pavlova with candles - very very yummy and appropriate for a Kiwi far from home (it being our traditional dish in New Zealand).
Then it was back to 2nd watch of the day - 8 till midnight. Venus is very bright and cast its light on the sea. The Milky Way was magnificent as the moon had not yet risen. On lookout I gazed out to sea and fell to contemplating what it must have been like for my father - a chief engineer on Torbay, a submarine in the Mediterranean, and later his 2nd submarine in the Pacific. The submarines had to surface at night and he was often on watch despite being the engineer because he had excellent eye sight. It would have been a great deal less relaxing in those troubling times 046but the stars and sea would have been similar. I also often think of what those long voyages in wakas would have been like for the Polynesians including Kupe and his family who discovered New Zealand.
Thank you to everyone on board for making my birthday so special.
