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November 17th, 2009 – At Sea, 05 53N, 052 58W
by Herb McCormick
The winged visitor came aboard at sunrise, a delicate tern of some sort, and obviously one tuckered-out birdie. Over the course of our travels thus far, we’ve enjoyed the company of many a feathered hitchhiker, who usually alight in the spreaders or the mid-deck. But this fine fellow, clearly a long way from the nest, chose a novel new position, one we hadn’t seen before, right on the bow, atop the frame of the stainless-steel pulpit.
We’d been under power and mainsail during the night, dodging small fishing boats – another first in quite some
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| As Ocean Watch approaches Cayenne, it dodges small fishing boats which it has not had to do for quite some time. |
time – for much of the evening. But a zephyr of a breeze accompanied the fresh dawn, so we unrolled the genoa for a bit more horsepower, hoping to reach our next destination, Cayenne, French Guiana, in precisely 24-hours, right on the high tide. So we needed to add a knot or two to the proceedings to meet our timetable.
The tern found this rustling of sails and sheets a significant annoyance, and let us know by unceremoniously bidding us adieu. But in a few minutes, he circled, gauged the territory, saw no significant changes, and taxied in for a second landing, right back on the pulpit, and there he stayed for much of the morning.
He proved to be an entertaining passenger. With the new morning breeze came a rising, green sea (overnight, the water magically changed color, from a deep blue to a fine emerald…we’re nearing land and the outflow of the sediment-rich effluent of the Amazon River, as well). A rising sea means a gentle bow wave. A gentle bow wave means a foredeck awash in droplets of spray.
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| Up and down went the tern, in an unhurried, uncaring rhythm, like the breaths of a sleeping child. Photo: Jennifer Price. |
At first, this also riled the tern, but after awhile, he again adjusted to this second disturbance, too, lifting clear of the boat with a few mild flaps to avoid the nettlesome ingress, then floating back down to his perch after the aqua had settled. Up and down he went, in an unhurried, uncaring rhythm, like the breaths of a sleeping child, in and out, deep in slumber, inured, at least for a while, from the unending calamities of adults.
Along with the crew of Ocean Watch - alas, innocents no longer – he was headed for Cayenne.
By midday today, the entire salty lot was within a hundred miles of that port, bound for a boatload of fresh fuel. There’s no way around it: We need to top up the tanks, for along this rather desolate coastline, opportunities to do so are few and far between. How remote is out current position? After Cayenne, the next available gas station is 800 miles way.
Ever since we decided to stop there, Joanna Wehrwein, Dave Logan’s wife, and our shore team back in Seattle have been forwarding us information about the place. (Quick aside: We’ve been highly remiss of late acknowledging the support of our friends and family who are keeping the home fires burning in our absence and attending to all the messes we left behind. We miss and love you guys. Thank you. Thank. You.)
I have no idea where Joanna found the following information, so I’m not sure whom to credit, but some of this stuff is rather astounding. Here’s the lead to one little story: “Ignored by Spanish explorers, who found the region too hot and poor to be claimed, the region was not colonized until 1604, when a French settlement was founded.”
Whoa.
Let’s sum up what we’ve learned thus far. French Guiana was too hot for the Spanish! The bloody Spanish!!! And now we’re headed to Cayenne. Can you believe it?
Reassuringly, one sailor, a good friend of Ocean Watch who has our utmost respect, has sailed this way before, and has even called at Cayenne. We reunited recently in Miami with author and offshore voyager John Kretschmer, who some two decades ago rounded Cape Horn aboard his Contessa 32, and later wrote about the trip in the first of his several fine books, Cape Horn to Starboard. As we chatted about this current leg of the trip and pored over the relevant charts, John casually said if we needed to stop along the way, we should consider Cayenne.
“Very French,” he said. “Like a little Paris.”
“Kretsch” is a good man and a highly reliable source. We’re just really hoping he wasn’t suffering from heat stroke at the time.
One item that’s not debatable: Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana, with a population of just over 100,000, is certainly French. The country is an overseas region and department of France, and as mentioned, has had a French flavor since the early 1600s. Over the next fifty years, various countries and factions battled over its sovereignty, but in 1664, France finally succeeded at establishing a permanent settlement at Cayenne. Their authority remained very much in play, and the place again changed hands several times, until 1814, when it was returned to French control. It was used as a French penal settlement from 1854 to 1938.
I mean, we’ve all seen Papillon, starring that great French star of the Golden Screen – Stephan McQueen – a hundred times, right?
Today, the city, which has grown by leaps and bounds, thanks largely to high levels of immigration, is very ethnically diverse, with Creole, Haitian, Brazilian, European, and Hmong and other Asian communities. Its main commercial street, the Avenue General Charles de Gaulle, sounds like a remarkable, historical and arresting stretch of road.
Plus, there are several beaches along the coast, though the write-up sounds a cautionary tone: “The waters contain sharks.”
So, there’s that.
We’ll wrap this up with a brief recount of my favorite moment in Papillon, for it rings a special bell compared to the
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| Jennifer Price and Dave Logan look good as they approach Cayenne. |
scene on Ocean Watch today. Steve McQueen has been incarcerated for a long time, as has his cellmate (played with pathetic panache by Dustin Hoffman) next door. They’ve been subjected to solitary confinement; have subsisted on roaches and precious little else; they have not seen a razor in eons and their hair is matted and filthy; they have walked to the brink of death’s door and have taken a long peek through the crack.
Despite all this, after a long separation between the two, the prisoners reunite. The next-door neighbor needs to have some reassurance that he’s survived, some small hint that he’s maintained at least a semblance of his very self, his essential humanity. He is a mess, and his appearance, sadly, reflects it. But he still needs to know something, and he asks McQueen the one and only question that, at that instant, matters at all:
“How do I look?”
McQueen gulps. Blinks. Looks away. You know precisely what he’s thinking. Then he manages the one and only compassionate reply.
“You look good!”
The crew of Ocean Watch has not bathed in a week. We’ve been sweating heavily. The heat has gotten to us all. We haven’t touched a shampoo bottle in ages, we’re adorned in the same cruddy shorts and T-shirts we’ve worn for quite some time.
But, my brothers, as the immortal Steve McQueen would say: You look good!
So now you know just about everything we know about French Guiana. We’ll be there in a few hours.
- Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson, except where noted.
This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos
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