Words by James Frederick | 2024 Charter Issue
Tales of a casual criminal sailing in beautiful place
I think it is important to begin this story with a description of its main characters. Triteia is my beautiful 1965 sloop rigged sailboat which safely brought me to the remote islands and atolls of the South Pacific by way of Hawaii, by way of Los Angeles. My name is James, people who don’t know me and see me from a distance might describe me as looking part hobo, part LA hipster and part ex-convict. Those that do know me, well they might describe me in the same way or maybe worse.
As I sat drinking my morning’s coffee while anchored in the lagoon of Tikehau Atoll in the Dangerous Isles, the Tuamotus, Triteia was lying still surrounded by waters whose colors graduate from deep blue to sapphire to aqua marine as they reach the blindly white coral sands of the motus. The tropical resort of “Pearl Beach” lays just off to starboard, with its villas snaking out of the palm trees onshore standing delicately on stilts over the brilliant blue waters of the lagoon. On this day I was to take my dinghy ashore and sneak onto the resort in search of a very rare resource on Tikehau; The Internet.
I dug through my clothing trying to find a few articles that look 1. Clean, 2. Rich Tourist-esque, and 3. Smells the least like mold. I settled on a pair of brightly colored swim trunks and a long sleeve lightweight tech shirt that would make a casual passerby see me as either a serious near shore fisherman or someone who is very nervous about the sun while vacationing in a place generally visited for its abundance of sun. Throwing my camera and some cash into a tote bag I was ready and off. I drove my dinghy through the clear waters, dodging the easily seen coral heads that lay just below the surface. I took care to beach the dinghy well off the resort so as to not draw too much attention to my intended crime of trespassing.
Read the rest of James Frederick’s story and see more great photos – Click Here!
