Posts by Jim

As with most things in life, there is never a perfect time to embark on an adventure--changing jobs, changing cities, getting married, having kids, buying a house, starting a business, taking a sabbatical trip, or sailing the South Pacific. We often leave behind work opportunities, friends, kids, aging parents, a house that is slowly deteriorating. As Mark Twain famously said, "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." I'm good with that.

100 nautical mile overnight passage from Huahine to Tahiti. Tahiti is French Polynesia’s largest and most populated island. 200,000 of the country’s 300,000 citizens live on the island. Most in…

Raiatea and Taha’a are the big sister and little sister islands of French Polynesia. They share a lagoon. Raiatea is the second largest of the Society Islands. We visited them twice—once on our sail west and again on the way back east to Tahiti.   The common story about these islands is their role as the “birthplace of Polynesian culture.” What doesn’t get mentioned is their role as the heart of Polynesian resistance to French colonialism. That resistance came to an end in 1897 when three French warships showed up, killed a bunch of locals, and hauled Queen Mamai and Chief Teraupo’o—along with 200 of their followers—off into exile in New Caledonia. The event made the New York Times.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese Air Force delivered an attack on the US Naval fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Thus began World War 2 for the US. A month later, on January 22, 1942, congress authorized "Operation Bobcat," which transformed the French Polynesia island of Bora Bora into a strategic outpost for the US war efforts in the Pacific. The once sleepy island of 1,200 residents suddenly found themselves in the company of 3,500 US servicemen.

Huahine lies 78 nautical miles northwest of Mo'orea. It was a fast overnight sail for our crew of four. So fast, we outran our passage plan and arrived off the island in the wee hours of the morning. We spent a few hours motoring slowly back and forth outside the pass into the lagoon, waiting for daybreak.

If Papeete is Honolulu and Tahiti is Oahu, then Mo'orea is Kauai. It's the low-key, easy-going next-door neighbor to Tahiti. We stayed for a month.

One day in 1966, phosphate mining operations ceased on the island of Makatea in the Tuamotu archipelago of French Polynesia. Within a few weeks, the island's population dwindled from over 3,000 to less than 100. In the preceding 60 years, miners hand-dug over 11.5 million tons of phosphate sand from between the coral pillars atop the island. And left it that way.

A colleague at a startup where I once worked remarked that it would be better to start a religion than a company. His theory was that we'd have more loyal customers, better product-market fit, better tax benefits, and a faster path to profitability. Actress Mui Lee might have agreed when she founded the New Testament Church in Hong Kong in 1963. The church has many locations today, including this one: a small island in the Tikehau Atoll, Tuamotus, French Polynesia, where we are now. The locals call it Motu Ohihi. The island residents call it L'Île d'Eden or Eden Island, as in "Garden of Eden."

Fakarava is home to 837 people and the "Wall of Sharks." The sharks vastly outnumber the residents-- mostly black tip reef sharks and nurse sharks. People call the latter "sea puppies" because they are docile and will let you pet them (I am not making this up).

I learned to sail when I was 12 years old. My dad taught me. We checked out a Flying Junior from the University of West Florida recreation department, where he was a professor, and went sailing on Escambia Bay. I didn’t have a clue what was going on, but I loved it.