TALL SHIP EXPLORERS
Presenter: Patrice Franchesci
TALL SHIP EXPLORERS documents an extraordinary 40,000 sea-miles journey across the 5 oceans and the 7 seas in search of the “Water People” as they are faced with irrevocable changes. Presented by Patrice Franchesci.
Episode 1: They Call Themselves Yuhup
The tall ship La Boudeuse covers 15.000 kilometres of oceans, seas, rivers, and creeks to reach the Yuhup in the Amazonian rain forest of Colombia. This is where one of the last indian communities can be found still struggling to preserve their traditional nomadic life-style faced with an ever-changing environment and the influence of the outside world. Their identity is in danger.
Episode 2: In the Shadows of the Giants
Easter Island, a speck of land lost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is best known for its gigantic stone statues – the Moaï – and the mystery of their origin. But beyond the secrets of Easter Island’s ancient civilization, the crew of La Boudeuse focuses on a subject that is almost never spoken of: its people, a population today of nearly 4.000.
Episode 3: These Men of Paradise
For six months, La Boudeuse and her crew have been sailing the Pacific Ocean and sharing their lives with the populations of the most secluded islands in quest of the “Myth of the South Seas”, a legend from the 18th century when the Bougainville first landed on Tahiti. In spite of their isolation and the fight for survival, most of these islanders wouldn’t leave their homes for anything in the world. From the Tuamotu pearl divers to the kings of Futuna, all of them love their islands.
Episode 4: Those of Fatu Hiva
On her relentless quest for the “Myth of the South Seas”, La Boudeuse lands on the Marquise Island Fatu Hiva, where nature is bountiful, and the men and women are irresistible. They live from the fruits of the land and the sea, and they adapt to life in a makeshift way. Recently though, Fatu Hiva has been overcome by Noni fever, a social side effect of the uneatable Noni tree’s success in the pharmaceutical industry. The crew investigate.
Episode 5: In the Land of the Saa
On Pentecost Island, in the Melanesian archipelago of Vanuatu, there still live a few small traditional communities in which the men wear nothing more than a penis sheath and the women a skirt made of banana leaves. The ancestral tradition of land jumping persists there; it is part of the N’gol initiatory rite of passage into adulthood. These people refer to themselves as the Saa. Before inviting the inhabitants from the Saa village of Ratap on the ship and introducing them to life aboard, the crew of La Boudeuse live with them in their village made up of a dozen huts where they continue to resist the modern world.
Episode 6: The Builders of the Sea
In the distant Celebes Islands, La Boudeuse goes in search of the great Bugi ship-builders and navigators. The crew help build one of these ancient merchant ships called “pinisis” which are still made entirely by hand; work that requires constant physical effort.
And in the tradition of exchange that is part of the spirit of La Boudeuse, the crew accompany a pinisi out onto the Java Sea for a long sail side by side through the Sunda Islands.
Episode 7: The Jarangas Archipelago
After a difficult crossing of the Java Sea, La Boudeuse weighs anchor at the heart of the archipelago of the Sunda Islands to meet the Badjao. Living in huts on piles or in their “jarangas” (outrigger boats) the Badjao continue, as their ancestors did, to live exclusively from the produce of the sea. However, they have finally become sedentary. Unlike the families of fishermen who live in poverty trapped in the past, a rich landowner earns a fortune by farming pearl oysters. In the land of the Badjao, a thousand million rupees lie under the sea.
Episode 8: The Son of Sinbad
A 5.000-mile sea voyage during the monsoon takes La Boudeuse to the Sultanate of Oman at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Between the desert and the sea, the Boudeuse sets off on her last expedition from the ancient city of Sour that looks as if it came straight out of The Arabian Nights. It’s a pilgrimage in the footsteps of the caravaneers, and in the wake of the Arabian sailing dhows that used to trade their riches with India and Africa. Gold, silver, slaves, wood, dates and spices were exchanged in this way, transported by men such as the legendary Sinbad the Sailor. The crew of La Boudeuse discover the way of life of the sons of the sailors and caravaneers of yore. It is not easy to be a son of Sinbad in the land of black gold.