Moonshine

When I left off we had just returned from our visit to the States and were working hard to get the boat ready to leave for the Gambiers. The Gambiers is one of the more remote archipelagos in French Polynesia. Almost 900 miles southeast of Tahiti, it’s location makes it outside the usual paths of any cyclones that may occur in the South Pacific in the summer time. That makes it a great place to spend a couple of months during the summer. And, it is one of the places in French Polynesia we had not yet been to.

Due to the remoteness of the islands in the Gambiers, supplies are a bit limited. There are only about 500 people that live in the archipelago, with most of them living on the main island of Mangareava and the village of Rikitea. The Gambiers have an interesting history. There was a unique culture here at one time, but it was destroyed by the Catholic missionaries who enslaved the people and caused the deaths of thousands. Some of the original churches erected in the early 1800’s still stand on the islands as a reminder of this history.

Unfortunately, the French didn’t do much better in more recent history. Several atolls only a couple hundred miles from the Gambiers served as nuclear testing grounds through the mid-1990’s. The locals will tell you of the destruction of their agriculture and the extremely high cancer rate that occurred here.

Today, the small remaining population in the Gambiers mostly work in the pearl farm industry or are mainly subsistence based on the outlying islands. There are supply ships that arrive twice a month to deliver goods and take back pearls and oyster shells. There are also flights that arrive twice a week that keep the Gambiers connected to Tahiti. With such a small population and only periodic supplies, you can imagine that provisions would be limited and more expensive. So, in order to get ready to leave, we needed to make some serious grocery runs in Papeete.

Papeete (the main city in Tahiti) has the only large grocery stores in French Polynesia. Food is hit or miss in price. Some things are reasonable, but others are quite expensive. There is a lot of imported food from France, the US, Australia and New Zealand. Interestingly, all of the frozen chicken we have found has come from the US. But, you can get duck breasts from France and lamb chops from New Zealand. Produce is sometimes locally grown and sometimes imported. The local stuff is much cheaper. If you want oranges from Florida, its going to cost you.

Our friend Dan on Kini Popo and his new crew Staci were also preparing for the passage to the Gambiers. So, we rented a car together to make several runs back and forth to the Carrefour (grocery store) and the marina. I always think the locals must think we’re crazy when we have a grocery cart piled so full of food that we can barely push it. After putting some damage on our credit cards and stuffing every available compartment on the boat and topping off the freezer, we felt pretty good about our supplies. But, there was still one thing we were missing.

Booze is incredibly expensive in French Polynesia. Think 3-4 times what you would pay in the States. Aside from Hinano, the local beer, and one local Tahitian rum, everything is imported. You can find lots of French wines, but any other liquor is imported and a ridiculous price. Cruisers are a social bunch, and every time you pull into a new anchorage someone will invite you over for sundowners which then gets reciprocated and then another boat invites you over…You get the picture. And, we like our cocktails out in the cockpit enjoying a beautiful sunset with a palm tree lined island next door. So, to not purchase some alcohol was not really in the plans.

Our friend Marcus gave us a tip that there was a guy in Tahiti that made bootleg rum at a reasonable price. He found the phone number for us, and Mike and Dan immediately called the guy. I think there was something about the fact that they were doing something illicit, that a guy had a homemade still concocting a secret rum, that made this seem like an exciting thing to do. The next thing I knew, Mike and Dan were each emptying and consolidating old liquor bottles. Then, they ran off to make a cash deal in the parking lot of the post office!

They both came back laughing with a ten liter water jug full of rum. They had to return the jug, which was the reason for the empty liquor bottles. The two of them sat on the dock at the marina with a funnel filling up all the bottles as various people came traipsing down the dock to check out the action. They filled up the last bottle as the sun was setting, and it was time to try out the goods. The rum seller had given them a bottle of vanilla syrup and explained that the way to drink the rum was a little ice, a shot of rum, a splash of vanilla syrup and a squeeze of lime. It was similar to what the French call ‘ti punch. And, it was delicious. After several rums with a few other sailors we attracted on the docks, we returned our full bottles to our boat and to get some rest for the seven day passage to the Gambiers.

p.s. We are now in the Gambiers with zero internet or phone service other than the sat phone. What little phone/internet there was here has been down for weeks. So, its going to be a while until I have any photos I can share. But, I’ll work on getting up more text updates about our time here in the Gambiers.

-Katie