This second part is dedicated to Moms because she said that reading about warm sun make her feel less iceberg-y.....:-)

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If you have read my previous blog.....it ended with puke...lol....and so I will start with puke again....

When I wrote that, usually, after one day I would start to feel better, this doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be sick anymore. It was just a matter of time before some of the most hated kind of waves would have hit the boat....the infamous “long waves” ...

To me it looked like they were generated in the faraway Sea of China and would travel all over the world only to hit Pago Pago and make ME suffer again...stubbornly, intentionally, maliciously. They would hit the hull with slow, long exasperating motion that seemed lasting forever and then ...woosh.... the boat was on top of another wave  and then....woosh....down......and then....woosh...up again on top of the third one ....and on and on and on....slowly, constantly.

Didn’t I make you throw up again?...lol...

The sea would become an endless torture device. My only help was fixing my stare at some point on the line of the horizon, or choosing a cloud and stare it without turning my head as much as possible. Even laying down in the cabin wouldn’t help with those damned waves...I told you I was an “epicurean sailor’...I didn’t move a muscle some day but mostly not for laziness, it was a skilled survival instinct.

Then.....not every day was like these ones.

And when the days weren’t like those one, it was simply paradise.

There was a string of many perfect shining days where Pago Pago was cutting the waves like butter proceeding with the right motion, rolling steadily and shortly. And the rhythm was just right, and my stomach and my brain were dancing with the waves. I was in heaven. I could walk, go up and down the cabin, talk, smoke, eat, swim and play cards on the deck, laugh, listen to the music and read. My favorite spot was on top of the cabin, under the mast, in the shade of the sails. Long hours dozing surrounded only by liquid blue, around me and on top of me.

I could also assist in the kitchen. Small enough for two people, it was carefully packed in her many little nooks with the essential; not even in the Shuttle they would have create such amazing use of micro space. My uncle was the cook and his spaghetti and tuna with tomatoes sauce were the drooled meal of any day...I was his assistant. My specialty: “panzanella”, an explosion of flavors delivered by old bread broken in big pieces layered with tomatoes, beans, tuna, boiled eggs, olives and basil, and sprinkled with olive of oil.

We would buy the fresh vegetables and the fruit anytime we would stay anchored in some port or off bay but close enough to reach land with our tender, a medium size inflatable dinghy. That was a trip of its own.....usually i would always try to remain onboard.....it was nice to have the boat all for me for a little while...but some day I was simply told to go and fetch the food.

We were proud to belong to a specific tribe of sailors: as I told you Pago Pago wasn’t accessorized or wired up in any way. The most electronic equipment was the radio to listen tot the nautical bulletin warning for some storm. The other boats were like Paris Hilton compared to us. And like Paris Hilton equally detested by us. The people living on that yachts were the kind of annoyed rich people using their boats only to show off  their properties more than immersing themselves in the experience of sailing. Their boats were perennially anchored in port, rarely seen spreading their wings in open sea, their owners would just seat on the deck dressed from head to toe sipping cocktail or expensive wine and watching us with a disgusted look.

My father hated these people and any time he would find some of these useless sailors on his way we were ready for everything. And he would have killed us if we would make a mistake in front of these people during the most delicate action of all sailing: docking.

My duty was taking care of the side inflatable devices that would have protected Pago Pago from be scratched by other boats and by the dock itself. I would have to flip them on the outside of the boat and tied them up according to the height my father would have required them to be.

I hated docking. Everybody hated it. Because my father who, generally, was a very well mannered man, would turn in a real pirate. Screaming orders to us, cussing and flipping his fingers. He generally was right.

But for me it was painfully embarrassing. And not only for me. I knew that all our friends who experienced this "docking nightmare" for the first time were astonished.

I remember one episode in particular: one day we were approaching one pier in Bastia, a wonderful but small port in Corsica. It was Sunday evening so the place was packed. We spotted a space between two other boats. My father pointed there. When we arrived close enough to the pier he noticed that a mass of rock would not let him arrived as close as we need to the pier. The waves were really agitated down there. It was arriving a storm. We had to stay safe that night. My father started to cuss so loud everybody were turning their head and looking at us. I was dying. My sister was ducking pretending not to see anything. My brother was a pack of nerves. My uncle was ready for everything. Then my father screamed. “Fu, got tie the prow”. Fu was so scared to disappointing him that he didn’t even think twice: he took one rope ......and just jumped in the water. We all run to the side of the boat to look. “What are you doing?” we were yelling.

There were very sharp rocks where he jumped, I thought he would have died down there. And then he reappeared after few seconds with the rope literally in his mouth and started climbing the rocks. He did it. He tied the prow at the pier. My father was shocked like us. He was shaking his head. And I heard him say “Unbelievable. I didn’t mean in that way. That boy is nut’. But he had a new appreciation of him since then. Nevertheless to say, he became our hero too.

But I promised you to talk about the nights...

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Oh, the nights aboard Pago Pago were simply magic.

Especially I we were anchored off port, like my father loved to do when the weather allowed such accommodation. The heat of the sun would slowly give away to the cool of the evening. You can’t really say of having seen a sunset if you didn’t see it from a boat in the middle of the sea. It was a Cinemax show, free and perfect each evening. We would eat at sunset...my father would seat close to the helm, his back relaxed against the boat’s shrouds, his yellow sailor coat on and his blue shorts on...... he was always tanned and on board he was leaving his beard grow longer than usual...he would always hum after some jazz music coming from his stereo (Louis Armstrong was his favorite), watching the sunset and drinking some wine. Pago Pago was always home of good wine. We all would seat at his sides. All of us tired of sailing, sun, wind, swimming. Finally relaxed. At sunset everything was ok. I rarely felt sick at night, or example.

My uncle and I would make the portions and pass the plastic plates from the cabin up to the deck. Somebody had the duty each dinner to sit close the hatch and pass the plates around and pass them inside the kitchen once the meal was finished. While we were eating, the night was falling down on us. We would switch on the lamps, one on top of the cabin and another one hanging at the helm. The mast and the prow had 3 bigger lights to signal our position to other vessels.

It was pure magic.

The night was a wonderland for me. And growing up, when I would have some boyfriend with me, I would have even better appreciated her sensuality

We would lower our voices automatically, even if we were alone in some lonely bay.

And we would start pointing our noses to the infinity of that starry sky.

The sky was deep velvety blue, dark in some far away corner, more close to vibrant blue velvet in the proximity of our mast lights. The eyes seemed never tired of taking in the shining and the beauty. August in our hemisphere is the month of the comets. “Stelle cadenti”, as we say, the falling stars. I can’t count how many falling stars I have seen in nights like those. It was breathtaking. Sometimes the white would last so long it made you believe the end of the world was happening.

We showed to each other the constellations: Cassiopea, the Milky Way, the bright Sirius....you couldn’t help feeling a speck of nothing floating between sea and sky, equally dark and in motion, while you were in motion with them all: boat, sky, stars and sea waves and the phosphorescent fishes in the depth of the sea fluctuating in the water, vibrating at the attraction of the moon, the perpetual currents underneath the water and the sand and the fragile sea horses trembling between the rocks. All of us moving in circle around a center, around a Sun that gave room to the Moon casting her sensual, white, liquid, smooth and magic light on us. We would go to sleep only until the last strand of our energy was gone for the day. I felt asleep many times watching that wonder on top of me.

Tomorrow would have been another glorious day. I was young. My father and my sister, my best girlfriend K. and my friend Fu were all there, with me, on that boat, safe and still alive. Pago Pago was containing us together. It was like she was protecting them from their future deaths, their illness, their tragedies, their disappearing.

The land, the world looked safe from that distance.

It was possible and easy to believe that I would always have that endless summers.

Even if it wasn’t true.

Pago Pago will always remain my shining pirate ship, the flying boat of Peter Pan. I was Wendy and everything was fine.

I will have to write tons of other posts to describe the many adventures we had during those summers. Specially the ones involving some sex....