The South Pacific 1982-84

~ Max Fletcher

In September1982 I left Orr’s Island, Maine with wife Honnie and son Chris, who was 9 months old at the time. Our boat was a stout 32 foot Westsail named Christopher Robin. We spent the next two years sailing to Panama and downwind with the trade winds across the Pacific.It was easier than I expected having a baby aboard, and wonderful to be with my child 24×7.  From New Zealand I returned to Maine by way of a non-stop 5,600 mile passage to Cape Horn and the Falkland Islands. My shipmate was Canadian Rob Andrews. During the passage we sailed by so-called “Point Nemo” which is the point on earth furthest from any land. An article describing that passage is in another blog entry.

Maine to New Zealand Sept 1982 – Nov 1985, New Zealand to Cape Maine Jan – June 1985
Chris makes a friend in Antigua
Kuna Indians, San Blas, Panama
Panama Canal, about to be lowered to the Pacific
Isla Balta, Galapagos
Land Iguana, Galapagos
Seals couldn’t care less about our presence
Trade wind sailing. Chris had recently been back in Maine for a visit. My dad checked on him one night and found him standing up in his crib taking a leak over the side. All my dad could do was laugh, it’s exactly what he was taught to do.
Below decks of our Westsail 32, Christopher Robin
Arrival at Fatu Hiva, Marquesas after a passage of 21 days from the Galapagos.
Replenishing water for the ship’s tanks
We made friends with cruisers from all over the world
The famous Robinson’s Cove, Moorea, French Polynesia
Chris became adept at shipboard living
Tied up at Manihi, Tuamotus
The pass from the ocean into Bora Bora
Christopher Robin (L) and Wanderer V

In an anchorage in Bora Bora we were joined by Wanderer V, owned by my childhood idols Eric and Susan Hiscock. They had written several classic books of their circumnavigations in the 1959s, long before anyone else was doing it. They were most gracious and unassuming.

Tricky pass at Morelia, where the current always boils out and coral heads line the edge of the narrow pass.

Once inside the pass, Morelia is spectacular. Only 11 Polynesians live here, and their only communication with the outside world was a supply ship which came periodically and bought the copra (dried coconut) they had harvested.
Schoolchildren in Aitutaki, Cook Islands visiting the foreign boats
The cruisers hired a Cook Islander to do a pig roast

The gentle Cook Islanders loved holding Chris. At a rugby game he got passed all through the crowd. We met a young woman who was one of the island’s three police officers. She told us they had a single jail cell, but it had never been used during her lifetime.

The Starkist tuna factory (lower right) at Pago Pago, American Samoa

The majestic gravesite of Robert Louis Stevenson, overlooking the gentle Pacific far below at Apia, Western Samoa. Engraved is the poem “Requiem” he had written and placed in a desk drawer:

“Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die
And I laid me down with a will.
Here may the winds about me blow
Here the the clouds may come and go.
Here shall be rest for evermore
And my heart for aye shall be still.
This be the verse you grave for me
Here he lies where he longs to be.
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.”

After brief visits to Tonga and Fiji, I sailed singlehanded down to New Zealand and made preparations for the return to Maine vis the Southern Ocean.

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