WITH "COCO LOCO" TO THE BLUE
LAGOONS
Coco Loco is the smallest Norwegian yacht to Coco
Loco to sail out to circum-navigate the world. 22 feet long, a Swedish-built
Maxi 68. My only experience with sailing was in a small dinghy when I was
about ten!
"Totally crazy, that tiny boat will capsize before you reach Denmark!",
was the most common comment. After two hurricanes and four tropical storms
Coco Loco had proved them wrong: Size is not the most important thing of
all! She had managed without problems where far larger wessels had to give
in!
27
days across the Atlantic, including a storm that was so strong that
I sailed in four knots speed without any sails set on the mast!
Through the Panama canal and into the Pacific, where I drifted about for
more than two weeks before the wind came back and brought me to the Galapagos
islands. Fun to swim with the sea-lions and chat with the enormous land-turtles!
Then followed 32 days, my longest crossing, of beautiful sailing until
I reached the Marquesas islands (some yachts have used more than eighty
days!).
I
then sailed from one south-seas paradise to another: Tuamotu islands, Tahiti,
Cook islands, American Samoa, Western Samoa, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Marshal
islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Papua New Guinea and finally the
Solomon islands. Here Coco Loco was run into by a ship while long-sides
a wharf - four and a half year after I left Oslo!
O'boy, what adventures I enjoyed those years: 
Dive for pearlshells, catch sea-turtles, spear-fish among sharks, swing
hips with the vahine's on Tahiti, sail oceangoing outrigger-canoes with
the last south-seas navigators, dance the local "te kamei"
for 600 laughing islanders in a Kiribati maneaba, bite octopus to death
with my teeth, eat roasted dog, find giant clamshells, be adopted on an
atoll where the girls wore loincloths and nothing else, be woken up with
a knife on my throat in New Guinea, catch bats in limestone caves, explore
the magical ruins of Nan Madol, get Coco Loco full to the brim of Ponape's
wild girls, party on the Rainbow Warrior in Majuro the day before she sailed
of to New Zealand to be bombed, climb the coconut palms for green
drinking-nuts...and so on, and so on!
Yes,
I guess I would have been sailing about in the South Pacific today
if Coco Loco hadn't been damaged beyond repair. I had found that a Norwegian
winter wasn't that much to sail towards, and decided that a circum-navigation
could wait!
I must admit I was fed-up of the sailing, for who can find any pleasure
in rolling up an down the waves days and weeks out of sight of land? And
put on the safety-harness when the clouds gather, or swear like a madman
when you can see nothing in the dark tropical night, knowing there is
a submerged coral-reef someplace just in front of you! But, to learn new
cultures, to meet interesting people, make new friends, encounter exiting
adventures - well, that is another story!
Want to know more about Coco Loco's adventure-sailing?
Click here!
Want to know what happened after Coco Loco was wrecked?
Click here! |
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