We were really starting this journey - I was finally aware of it and it was too big a thing for me to get my head around. Being twelve years old, I just couldn’t get over the fact that we had left New Caledonia for real. As we moved further and further out to sea, I could see the New Caledonian landscape fading away. No... I still believed that we would eventually turn around and go back... It took me a good day or so to get used to the idea that this wasn’t the case. I remember the lights of Efaté in Vanuatu as we made our first night arrival: tears rolled down my cheeks without me even realizing it. I can’t describe what they were for: there was joy, sadness and fear of the unknown all at the same time.
The great adventure was finally beginning...
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It was somewhere in the Pacific Ocean that the teenage Johnathan started to develop a passion for photography.
Bartering in Vanuatu
Vanuatu is a great stopover - the first one that allowed my parents and I to get our bearings on board in cruising mode. In New Caledonia, we only went out at weekends and so were never without anything. On a long cruise, it’s completely different. You always have to find a place to stock up, fill up the water cans or find diesel. Here we learnt to barter - Vanuatu is one of the few countries where this practice is still common. It’s great: fruit and vegetables against notebooks and pens, fish against a sculpture... the negotiations can be long, and I started to take a liking to it, especially when exchanging local handicrafts against my toys or clothes.
The contact with the population is great in Vanuatu, especially in the villages, where the inhabitants rarely see boats, even less with a mast and sails! As a twelve-year-old, I didn’t like going ashore to meet people at all, preferring to play on my game console on the boat. I was wrong, of course... The kids were surprised to meet a young boy with pale skin and straight hair, they kept touching my hair and face - you can imagine my reaction!
Vanuatu is a wonderful stopover where we progressed and learnt a lot about our catamaran. The French home-schooling courses are going very well: I managed to only work in the mornings so that I could have the afternoons free.
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Our first stopover in Vanuatu, in the southern Pacific Ocean. The country is made up of around 80 islands spread out over 700 miles.
Enchanting Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea is the second country that we visited on our trip. The similarities with Vanuatu are numerous but we were in a more remote territory. The villages are even simpler, but the human contact is more intense. At the anchorage in Putu Bay, a hamlet remains etched in my mind. We arrived in the middle of a bay, on a body of water that somehow managed to moderate the breeze. In front of us, nature is king. A village blends into the mass of greenery. Alone in this anchorage, you might almost believe that we were the first boat to stop near this shore. Very soon, dozens of pirogues surrounded the catamaran. Grandparents and children were waiting on the shore. We knew that this moment was unique. It is just our moment. I do not feel the event in the same way as my parents. The attention that we are getting makes me feel embarrassed. On the beach, the young people surrounded me as though I were a curious animal. The whole village crowded around us. The word was given - as far as we could understand - that we should be taken to the chief of the village, the holder of authority. We listened intently, even though we understood absolutely nothing. The scene was set: we moved forward with the crowd. We did not know where to, but we were going there. The plot was gripping! For a moment, we thought that we were extras for a documentary channel. We reached the center of a large clearing. Huts mounted on frail stilts clearly indicated that the modern world had not yet arrived in these lands from another time. The scene that we witnessed became - for us - both hilarious and disturbing. The three of us were sat at a big table, in the middle of the living space of the natives who had welcomed us. I started to wonder exactly what was going to happen to us... Let’s not forget that until a few years ago, cannibalism was a common practice in Papua. With their teeth stained red from betel nuts, our hosts certainly looked like cannibals. But our suspicions were ill-founded. The chewing of betel nuts is certainly not very enticing, but the people are not at all threatening. It does not take long for the proof of this to arrive. In turn, each one rushed to parade in front of us with their hands full of fruit and vegetables. We were offered yams, coconuts, breadfruit, watermelons, pigeons, beans, pomelos, carambola, bananas... There is too much, and all given without expecting anything in return. This ceremony is as touching as it is spectacular. As a token of our gratitude, we end up finding a gift that is worthy of their offerings: photo prints of them and their village. Papua is still very much preserved from the modern world. This country is full of very interesting places to visit.
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A wandering, makeshift aquarium in Sangat, Philippines. - Working internet in an anchorage. This is Coron, Philippines.
50 knots from behind
We continued our journey and headed for Palau, only three months after leaving New Caledonia. It took us four days to sail from Papua to Palau - with an unforgettable experience along the way. This time it was a bad experience. It was the middle of a calm night and we were under just the genoa. The sail was flapping sluggishly above the deck. My mother took her night watch, and I went to bed. I was reading a book and I could hear the light trickling of the water on the hull and could only guess at the soft and calm atmosphere outside. Suddenly, Pirates.com went off like a washing machine. The catamaran started to vibrate and the noise became frightening. I rushed outside to find my parents in a panic. My father tried to roll up the genoa, pulling with all his strength. I looked at the plotter: we were going at 15 knots. A glance at the wind instrument: 50 knots from behind...
We were in a squall, and it wasn’t a small one. It was a white squall, with phenomenal power. By this time, there was only 200 square feet of genoa: my father gradually managed to reduce the sail. The sheet cars came out of their tracks and the rudder lines broke like sewing thread. We no longer had a helm, but the genoa was finally rolled up. My mother, despite being an atheist, prayed to every god that she had ever heard of. We grabbed everything that could come loose on the boat and locked ourselves in. The catamaran was laying ahull, left to its own devices, for more than 5 hours... Never had we experienced such violent winds, and it even made us wonder whether our trip, our adventure, was a good idea.... But something told us to keep our heads up, to keep going: it’s all part of the game!
Water sports in Sangat.
An Encounter in the Philippines
We took full advantage of Palau, one of the best diving spots in the world - it’s here that I took my first scuba dive. We stayed there for only one month before heading to the Philippines, one of the longest stopovers on our world tour. We stayed there for eight months. Why so long? Because of a wonderful encounter... During a show, we exchanged a few words with Rosie and Armand, a Filipino couple in their forties. Our way of traveling fascinated them. Impressed, they asked us about our journey. The answers that we managed to formulate in an approximate English were very rudimentary, but it created a kind of intuitive understanding between them and us. We were staying for four days in Bohol and they offered to take us to the Chocolate Hills, a remarkable geological formation on the island. We could not refuse. Like the flap of a butterfly’s wings, one thing happened after another and we embarked on a serendipitous relationship, sharing unique moments. One day we were driven to Danao, where a remarkable lunch awaited us. We were invited, as were Rosie and Armand who were eagerly awaited. Our new friends seemed to be well-known personalities, probably in politics. While dozens of dishes were passed around, we were asked about our strange life. Rosie and Armand took us everywhere with them and the bonds of friendship grew stronger. We ended up meeting their entire family in the provinces of Manila, where we stayed for several days. My parents wanted to contribute financially for our activities, but received a polite but categorical refusal... Rosie and Armand’s hospitality knew no bounds.
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Discovering Thailand.
A young teenager
At that time, I started to get interested in photography - and a little later, it became a real passion. As my 14th birthday dawned, my «shy and awkward « period was over. I was now fully enjoying the journey. We set off for Borneo and Sumatra. Buckets of brown water on the deck, fishing nets everywhere and squalls as black as they are scary on the horizon: this area made an impression on me but did not really make me want to go back there... It also marked the end of the Pacific. We were officially going to change oceans and head into the Indian Ocean. My mother started to go back and forth to New Caledonia to sell jewels and cosmetics that we had found in the countries we’d visited. So twice I sailed two-handed with my father - it was at this time that I became a full-time sailor. I became interested in sailing, navigation and weather... We stayed for a year between Malaysia and Thailand to replenish the ship’s coffers. As for me, I alternated between classes in the morning and photography in the afternoon - I spent five hours a day in the jungle taking pictures of dragonflies and monkeys. I will never lose the taste for travel...
