Tahiti Tourisme Cup 2006.

When the Soren Larsen was alongside in Papeete, she was spotted by Stephanie Betz from Tahiti Tourisme. She's organising the first Tahiti Tourisme Cup, a great event to be held every year in the Society Islands. Not only does it include a sailing regatta, but also a paddle race in local va'as and a great food & dance feast in the evening.
She must have spotted all the muscular people on our ship, 'cause we were invited to participate.
And we did!

Barry made sure in his passage plan that we were in Raiatea on the 1st of July to show our mettle.
Adrian, our loyal VC for over 3 months, represented the ship at the Captain's briefing the evening before. Handy to know was that the sailing regatta was postponed till noon because of France playing Brazil in the World cup (soccer...). And since we are in French Polynesia this all makes sense...

We were all briefed about what we were expected to do, when, where and how. The watches were organised on different tasks on deck. On the braces, handle the square sails, the fore- and aft sails and... last but certainly not least... a team on the catapult. 'Cause we might not have a cannon, but when sailing on the Soren everybody's pirate blood starts bubbling up. And water balloons do the job.

Of course we were there to win! And we did. In our class, the Tall ships category. Overall, we were 14th. Which was not last! So we did well.
We had just dropped the anchor in Tahaa, when we had to get ready for the next sporty event. The paddle race.
Just to show how fit and well trained we all are... after sweating lines, coiling, hauling etc etc all morning in the race, the Soren came up with no less than 6 teams to participate in the paddle race. We can do it!

Every team consists of 3 local paddlers (who know what they're doing...) and 3 of 'us', the tourists/amateurs/nitwits. In 5 seconds you get explained how to paddle in a va'a and what command to listen to (whoeah!). It really all comes down to paddling.... and paddling... and paddling. There's one shout when you have to get your paddle onto the other side, which turns out to be difficult enough (or was it just me who was able to mess this up?).
Personally I thought I would probably die more or less about three times before the end of the race 'cause the circuit looked veeeeeeeeery long. The Soren at anchor had to be rounded by the va'as (us...) which was great of course since there were still people on board the ship who enthusiastically cheered and shouted when we came close. And this helps. A lot.

Not without pride, actually just really proud, as a member of the '3 Non Blondes' I can say we left two canoe's with only men behind us and we became a glorious second. And I stayed alive, which was also good.

It was one of the Soren teams that became first in the race! Absolutely great... Michael, Randall and Iain brought (even more...) fame to the Soren. They are the Tahiti Tourisme Cup 2006 paddle champions and they got honoured in the evening during a wonderful feast. They won a beautiful prize, a model sailing canoe and a stunning black pearl (...) which they donated to the Soren Larsen. They'll get pride of place, for sure.

After dinner, a local dance show and a Soren dance show (starring Adriana) we all went back to the ship. It truly was a great day.