Humble Pie

Welcome to Ua Pou, the Marquesas, where the ocean is eighty-six degrees, everyone smiles “Kaoha!” (bonjour) on the street, and yesterday we grownups (a.k.a. grown downs) did everything wrong.

The day started out well enough with me working ashore, Graeme on an epic mountain run, and the girls doing self-directed schoolwork on Dogbark in the morning so they could play with another kid boat, Slingshot, in the afternoon.

At least that was the plan.

But the pop quiz of the day, it turned out, was radio etiquette, and the lesson du jour was how to anchor. As in, not in the way of large ships, not too close to other sailboats, and not over your own stern anchor line—which is now stuck in our prop.

So here’s how our day of humility progressed. I was just about to hit send on some important work emails in la bibliothèque ashore when I got the VHF call from our girls: “Squirrel! Squirrel! This is Dogbark on seven two.”

I grabbed the handheld—“Dogbark. Squirrel.”—and hustled to the shade of the bougainvillea outside the library.

GIRLS: Up one?

ME: Up one.

[Switching VHF to channel 73.]

GIRLS: Squirrel. Dogbark.

ME: Go ahead, Dogbark.

GIRLS: Mommy! There’s a big cargo ship coming in! I think we’re in the way!

ME: Uh. OK. I’ll come right away. Your dad has a handheld too, so maybe he’s listening in. Graeme? Are you there?

[This is where that figure of speech radio silence comes from.]

ME: OK, he must be out of range. Tali, turn on the engine and be ready to back out of their way. Savai, keep a lookout on the bow. I’ll be there soon.

GIRLS: OK, Mommy! Come quick! The boat is coming in now!

ME: I’m on my way. Squirrel back to seven two.

GIRLS: Dogbark back to seven two.

So I hightailed it down to la plage where I could see a large, red interisland cargo ship nearing Dogbark’s bow. Then her midships. Then her stern. Phew. The Taporo had passed and Dogbark was clear. But now I could see that the Taporo was bearing down on our dinghy, which was tied to the quay.

Note to self: Just because everyone warns you about the big ship coming Wednesday doesn’t mean there isn’t also one coming Tuesday.

Other note to self: Don’t tie dinghy to that end of the quay regardless of if you’ve heard a big ship is coming or not.

Heureusement, the dinghy was fine. The girls were fine. Dogbark was fine. Both girls kept their wits about them, executed their tasks, did exactly what needed to be done. All while maintaining proper radio etiquette. A+.

That evening, on the other hand, we grownups would weigh in at D-.

We were coming back from playing a vicious kids v. grownups game of pétanque—Team Kiddon’ts: 8, Team Grown Downs: 3—when we noticed that we were way too close to our neighboring sailboat, Seayousoon. (Admittedly, we’d been noticing this all afternoon; the lovely French couple aboard had laughed nervously, or perhaps perplexedly, when we’d asked if they had any Grey Poupon.)

But we, along with half the sailing fleet, had had to re-anchor when the Taporo had prepared to leave earlier that day, and while other boats had tucked into tight spots with apparent ease, we had not nailed the placement. All day long, we tried to avoid re-re-anchoring—we adjusted the bow anchor; we fiddled with the stern anchor—without doing the real work of picking either up. Now we were paying the price: Re-re-anchoring in the dark, sailing by braille, our scurrying crew under the glare of the spreader lights, a spotlighted show for the entertainment (horror) of the entire anchorage.

And that’s when I mis-tended the stern anchor line, lassoed our prop, and the engine died. End of show.

Thankfully, though pretty close to Slingshot and very much askew of the other sailboats, we were far enough out of the turning basin for the Wednesday arrival of the massive Aranui—a combination cruise/cargo ship designed like a mullet: business up front, party in the back. And this morning, Graeme went over the side and cleared the prop of my handiwork.

“You hog-tied that thing with a triple clove hitch! I couldn’t have done it better if I’d tried,” he said.

“I have my skills,” I demurred.

One of them is gorging on humble pie.

My parents, lifelong mariners, have always said that boating is a lesson in humility. They are not wrong. No matter how long you’ve been a sailor, there are always mistakes to be made, lessons to be learned, humble pie to eat.

To which I say, only half-sarcastically, “Yum!”

Because when I’m hiding my head, licking my wounds, and feeling like a total numbskull, I meditate on the work of the very best baseball players, who, Graeme tells me, specialize in failure. They strike out twice for every hit they make. The best aren’t the best because of how gloriously they succeed, but in how they doggedly manage the preponderance of mucking up.

And so, if I’m not biting into humble pie regularly, I assure myself, I must not have enough pie on my plate.

Though I do apologize to the folks in the cockpit next to us who, through our obvious and obnoxious screwup, have to take their pie with ours—with a side of Grey Poupon.

In other news . . .

We’ve loved hanging with the kid boats in the Marquesas and will be jumping to the Tuamotus soon, where other kid boats await. The internet isn’t great here (uploading photos takes eons), and I suspect it won’t be much better in the Toots, but we’ll be back in touch when we can.

In the meantime, enjoy a couple photos (I tried more, but it takes too long to upload) and enjoy your pie—whatever kind of pie this day brings.