Open the below photos in a full-screen slideshow in Flickr
November 22nd, 2009 – At Sea, 05 08N, 051 31W
by Herb McCormick
A few days ago, before Ocean Watch’s crew made their tentative, unsure arrival in French Guiana, a place they’d come to appreciate for its enigmatic, beguiling ways, they were briefly approached by an exotic-looking craft making bizarre course changes and generally engaging in strange behavior. Offshore racing sailors have a term for the erratic turns boats make when they’re being steered by helmsmen seemingly under the influence: Crazy Ivan’s.
Let me explain. If you’re on a race boat and someone says, “Man, the new dude on the wheel’s got to lay off the Crazy Ivan’s,” he is not offering high, complimentary praise. In fact, due to his wavering, unsteady course, his time at the helm will soon come to a conclusion. The derivation of the term, we believe, goes back to World War II, and was used to describe the evasive maneuvers employed by German U-Boat skippers when in the sights of Allied forces.
Anyway, whoever was driving the boat headed towards Ocean Watch was spinning some serious Crazy Ivan’s. And I have to admit, though in most matters at sea I consider myself a rational, level-headed individual who is difficult to rattle, the first word that popped into my mind was: Pirates.
Truthfully, for the most part, particularly for relatively small-boat sailors of cruising boats like Ocean Watch, the entire notion of Pirates of the Caribbean – in fact, pirates anywhere – is every bit as fictional as the colorful character played by Johnny Depp in the movie franchise of the same name. There are, however, exceptions, as we were reminded this past weekend catching up on the news in a Cayenne Internet café and learned of the plights of English cruisers Paul and Rachel Chandler, recently abducted by Somali pirates, and Michigan sailor J.P. Del Solar Goldsmith, who just last week was the victim of a pirate attack on the Honduran/Nicaraguan border.
So, yes, generally speaking, you always want to give Somalia, certain parts of Central America, and such notorious parcels of water as the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea, an exceptionally wide berth.
In recent years, there are two other areas where “pirates” have been known to operate: a very specific stretch of Venezuelan coastline, and the mouth of the Amazon River. The legendary Kiwi sailor, Peter Blake, was shot and killed there earlier this decade when armed bandits boarded his boat, though it turned out his attackers were poor, petty thugs who bore not the slightest resemblance to Depp’s Jack Sparrow.
So where, precisely, was Ocean Watch when the first truly funky boat we’d seen in quite some time appeared on the horizon? You guessed it: Directly between Venezuela and the Amazon.
 |
| As the night progressed, more and more boats materialized until it was very clear that Ocean Watch was in the midst of French Guiana’s very active fishing fleet. |
As it happened, the boat that approached Ocean Watch eventually bore off, but then lined up a couple of miles off our starboard side and, unsettlingly, shadowed our movements for the rest of the afternoon. Some of my fellow crewmembers laughed about how they were setting a trap, jokes I wasn’t finding too funny. My over-active imagination shifted into high gear at dusk, when another boat mysteriously appeared out of nowhere, just a mile or so directly ahead of us. We had our navigation lights on at that point, but when one of our new neighbors failed to show theirs as darkness ascended, I suggested to skipper Mark Schrader that we douse ours, and he seconded the idea.
Of course, moments later, the boat switched on its lights. And as the night progressed, more and more boats materialized around us, until it was very, very clear that we were in the midst of French Guiana’s very active fishing fleet; soon we’d come to recognize the very same type of vessel as that first Crazy Ivan boat as representative of that fleet.
On Sunday, Ocean Watch was again under way from the pirate-free waters of French Guiana, bound now for, in order, the Equator, the Southern Hemisphere and the Brazilian port of Natal. In the days ahead we’ll address all those places and topics in greater depth, but for today, we’ll recap our adventures in French Guiana. For they may not have pirates there, but they sure do have spacemen.
Yes, spacemen.
The other night, our Northwest Passage onboard scientist Harry Stern – who continues to be as valuable a contributor to the Ocean Watch expedition ashore as he was at sea – dropped the following note: “I just noticed that thirty miles northwest of Cayenne is Kourou, French Guiana, the site of Europe’s Spaceport from which the European Space Agency (ESA) launches its satellites into orbit. According to the ESA website, they have invested more than 1.6 billion Euros in the Kourou site.”
The French, of course, are the driving force behind the South American Spaceport, and in turn, they serve the same role in the economy, culture and politics of French Guiana. Much has been invested in both the Kourou space station and the country in which it’s based, and the French have no small interest in maintaining the current status quo. The point is underscored by the three daily flights to and from Paris every day…this in a country of about 200,000 people.
Getting things done in French Guiana was, frankly, not so easy. Clearing customs was an adventure in itself. During the process, wrote the skipper, “We found ourselves in the wrong office on the third-floor but happened upon exactly the right English-speaking French ombudsman willing to help confused sailors. We apologized for the intrusion and he said, ‘Never mind – I’m being paid by France for whatever it is I do, and helping people visiting this country is important.’”
That person turned out to be a man named Tristan, and before all was said and done, he’d invited the entire crew to dinner at this home, a saga we’ll return to in a moment.
We tried to rent a car and were told in one place that it was impossible with a U.S. driver’s license – an international version was required, said the agent, unsmilingly – and the next day easily found another rental company that happily gave us a car on the skipper’s Washington license.
Finally, the reason we’d come to French Guiana in the first place was for fuel.
“Fueling in Cayenne was not going to be an easy process, of that we were warned via many emails before we
 |
| Fueling in Cayenne was not easy. It took several trips in a dinghy loaded with fuel cans and a car for the 15-minute trip to the Texaco station. |
arrived,” the skipper continued. “Most yachts found a spot and tied up in the very small and crowded ‘marina’ or anchored a short way away, took their dinghy loaded with fuel cans to the dock, borrowed or hired a car, filled the cans at the Texaco station about 15 minutes away and then did the reverse. Most boats traveling in these waters are small and might need 25 gallons or so of diesel, so although the process is a little complicated, it works.
“Ocean Watch arrived in Cayenne needing about 300 gallons (1,100+ liters) of fuel (which equates to 60 five-gallon jugs). We’ve done this a few times but never while anchored in a river with a 4-knot current zipping by or without a car. While walking through the commercial port I’d noticed several diesel tanks used for fueling smaller boats and heavy equipment, so I thought maybe we could make an arrangement with the port to buy or have delivered by truck 1,200 liters of fuel, and get permission for Ocean Watch to come along the ship quay for an hour or so to take on the fuel.
“However, the fuel truck wasn’t available because they just aren’t on a Friday. The next opening would be Tuesday and everything was set for that to happen. Given our schedule I had to decline the offer and opportunity to stay that many more days in Cayenne. Back to plan B, hand-carried jugs of fuel transported by rental car. The fueling process then started in earnest. I gulped when I saw the fuel price, 1.1 Euro/liter at the pump, which equals US$6.41/gal. Even though it was a political world away I was thinking about the $0.17/gal Venezuelan fuel just to the north and wondering how we could find some.”
 |
| The energy and noise of the bustling street market in downtown Cayenne was remarkable. |
On Saturday, the laborious task completed, the crew drove into downtown Cayenne for a look around. The street market was bustling, but the old harbor was silted over. The energy and noise was remarkable…until mid-afternoon, when everything…just…stopped. First mate Dave Logan has visited Vietnam, and he remarked that Cayenne reminded him a lot about the place, particularly the French aura, and “the slight whiff of colonial decay.”
But the city sights aren’t what we’ll really remember about French Guiana.
For as so often happens on our voyage Around the Americas, whether in scientific, educational or cultural realms, our window on the immediate world around us is always, without fail, opened by the good people we meet along the way. And in French Guiana, as mentioned, a funny, kind-hearted soul named Tristan Blanchard; his wife, Josy; and their immediate family and friends threw the window wide open. On Saturday evening, Tristan invited the crew of Ocean Watch to dine at his home with them all. It was a memorable evening.
Before anything else, Tristan wanted to clarify my depiction of the waters in French Guiana as the color of “cappuccino.”
“That is the outflow of the Amazon River,” he said. “That water is perfectly clean. There is not pollution in that water.” And the sharks I’d referred to in the same crew log? “Very small,” he said. “They will not bother you.”
I asked Tristan what he did, exactly, and the question truly gave him pause. “I used to know, but I don’t anymore,” he said. When I blinked once or twice, not quite getting the point, he tried again. “I am a functionary of the French government.” I sort of got the idea that he was far from alone. And while a native of France, like his friends, and a Frenchman through and through, he made one thing perfectly clear: French Guiana was now home, a paradise in many ways. His mates were of the exact same mind. No one was going anywhere.
Skipper Schrader slid a DVD into the player and, with the aid of a translator (!) gave a brief presentation of our trip to Tristan’s friends and kids. Let’s just say it was one of the more unique, humorous shows to date.
Back on the patio, it was a long, languorous meal, several courses in all, enlivened by wonderful, witty
 |
| Tristan Blanchard, in the yellow shirt, and his wife Josy on the left, opened their home to the crew of Ocean Watch for a memorable evening. |
conversation; lots of laughter; and sensational food. In a word, and I mean this in the very best sense of the term, it was very, very French. Frankly, it left the crew of Ocean Watch a little more bewildered than we usually are, which is truly saying something. We’d come to South America, we’d prepared for South America, we were psyched for South America, and suddenly we were in France.
And it was great.
At one point during the festivities – after David Thoreson leaned over to me and whispered, “This is what Around the Americas is all about…” – I in turn leaned over and thanked Tristan for everything he’d done for us, as sincerely as possible. Honestly, he’d been charming and helpful on about a dozen different levels.
And he said: “You give me a lot of pleasure. And these people…” – he waved at his pals – “they are just like me. Wherever you go on a trip like this, you encounter people like us. But we very rarely encounter people like you, who are doing what you do. You are special.”
Well, we reckon Tristan was at least half right. French Guiana turned out to be a special, surprising place, and there were certainly some very special folks at his gracious, open home on that lovely, tropical night.
But none of them were sailors from North America.
- Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson
This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos
To add a comment to this story click on the comment link below the post title. Please direct your messages for the crew to crew@aroundtheamericas.org instead of submitting them here. Thanks for following the Around the Americas Expedition.
