Ocean Watch

Picture a woman on the deck of a 37-foot French sailboat resting at anchor in a sparkling blue lagoon. While the woman swings gently in her wide, white hammock, the tropical sun warms her skin, and the southeast tradewinds fan it. One hand holds a Diet Coke on ice; the other, the latest Harry Potter novel. A box of chocolates rests at her side, and Jimmy Buffet songs issue from her new iPod.

That would not be me.

Yes, I'm back in Tahiti on my boat, but we're in a hot, noisy boatyard, I don't have an ice maker, Craig is still reading the new Harry Potter book, my gift of chocolates melted to mush and I can't figure out my iPod. Oh, and I don't own a hammock, either.

Still, I'm having a great time, especially when I remember the e-mail my devoted Texas readers, Shirley and Oscar White, sent me just before I left: "It is really a giddy feeling to know we have a friend who is actually sailing on so wonderful a trip; to be able to make such plans and then GO!"

How true. I'm in French Polynesia on my own sailboat with good friends and a job (this column) to die for.

I'm giddy, too. This was not the case when I left Honu to be hauled out of here last April. After losing my headstay on the way to Palmyra, living for three months with a dragging anchor and then sailing hard upwind for three weeks, I just wanted to go home.

Fly home. As sailors are fond of saying, nothing goes to weather like a 747.

I carried home with me a list of systems to fix, parts to replace and equipment to buy, but I decided not to think about those right then. I needed a boat break.

And I had a good one. I loved being home with my family and friends. When Craig learned my old outboard motor couldn't be fixed, he surprised me with a new one. ("Um, was that a good present?" my non-nautical friend asked when I told her about the gift. She's obviously never rowed a rubber dinghy upwind.)

I carried my shiny 2-horsepower motor to the guest room, and I added to it three pricey 12-volt fans, since the cheap ones I had bought broke on the beat to Bora Bora.

Fans didn't seem important to me until I sailed in equatorial heat with waves too big to open the hatches. Sweating buckets for days on end is uncomfortable enough when you have cool showers, clean clothes and fresh sheets. But without those ... well, there were times I wanted to rename the boat Hell's Locker Room.

When my guest room pile grew tall and intimidating, my skilled friend Gerard agreed to join me in Tahiti for two weeks. He's here now inventing systems and devising repairs. We'll soon test his handiwork in the channels and lagoons of these fantastic islands.

French-born Gerard is also talking for me, since "je suis mais un boucher de la langue sacré" -- I am but a butcher of the sacred language.

I'll miss Gerard when he leaves next week, and look forward to visits from other friends and family members during my two-month exploration of Tahiti Nui.

Maybe one of them will bring me a hammock.