Blue Water Sailing magazine, Fatu Hiva
16 January 2011 | Fatu Hiva, Marquesas, French Polyneasia
Blue Water Sailing, February issue , 2011, has my article "Exploring Thor Heyerdahl's Fantasy, Fatu Hiva". Thor Heyerdahl and his wife lived on Fatu Hiva for one year in 1930. Decades later he wrote a book about his adventure, "Fatu Hiva, Back to Nature". It bacame a classic; but a calssic which I was to discover had serious credibility problems. In 1980, on my first circumnavigation, I had stopped at Fatu Hiva for a few days. A friend from another yacht and I tried to enlist a native to guide us up and over the mountains to Ouia Valley, on the east side of the island. Heyerdahl wrote that he had lived in that valley for a while. "Tikis tikis" the native said while shaking his head in fear, declining our offer. I did not stay long in Fatu Hiva. At the age of 30 it seemed more important to catch up to a friend I had met in the Marquesas who would be spending a few days in Tahiti before she flew back to Canada. Too many nice options all at the same time. I chose one day to return to Fatu Hiva and then walk more extensively in the steps of Heyerdahl. But it took a bit of a long while to return.
"Exploring Thor Heyerdahl's Fantasy, Fatu Hiva" was a difficult article to put together since I wanted to tell about the island and aspects of Heyerdahls account. To have any hope of getting it published the 4,500 words would have to be trimmed down to 3,000 words. After many rewrites I still had a plate of spaghetti which needed to be straightened. Two professional writer friends were kind enough to look over the work and gave me valuable suggestions. Finally, version 16 was ready to send to Blue Water Sailing. To make it fit the February issue, Valerie, the editor, did a nice job of cutting another 500 words from the manuscript. I have seen articles destroyed by editors but this bare bones article survived.
There are far too many images for a magazine article so I have decided to put more of them on this blog site, to give a better feel for the place. Also I have added a few pertinent comments. In time I might post the whole unedited article on our list of articles for sale. ( See link on right side of this page)
2,500 words is certainly a faster easier read than 4,500 words but for someone interested in the island of Fatu Hiva, much information landed on the editorial floor.
Just keep clicking [ Older ] on the bottom left of the blog to scroll through the images.
Patrick