You still have to do a double-take sometimes when you realize the world has been on the COVID-19 rollercoaster for a year now. By this time in 2020, closed or limited borders and business shutdowns weren’t widespread but the virus itself was coming into our consciousness. You could see its physical proof boarding international flights with more and more people donning masks in airports around the world, still months before it was mandated in many places. The global economy was gearing up for a fall. You know how the whole thing played out.
“Tahiti has been closed to tourists again almost exactly a year later,” C.J. Coetzee told The Inertia. Coetzee is a South African captain of a sailing yacht who’s lived by a “home is where the anchor drops” mantra for the past decade. And when the pandemic struck, he found himself in the thick of Tahiti’s initial 2020 border closures and restrictions, ranging from curfews to banning the sale of alcohol (and for him, the duty of sticking by his boat in Tahiti).
For the locals, that meant lineups were suddenly locals only when swells pushed through waves like Teahupo’o in May, and the people who lived there turned the place into their own stage — no more jostling with the typical crowd of traveling pros.
“Not good for the income but good for the surf,” Coetzee says now.
Government officials in French Polynesia announced new restrictions on February 1 after having reopened for tourists back in July 2020. The first round of lockdowns in 2020 helped diminish Tahiti’s case count to just 62. But since reopening they’d recorded 18,000 new cases, leading to a decision to lock down once again. So France has suspended all travel to and from non-European Union destinations, including Tahiti, with exceptions for emergencies.
In the water, this means empty lineups again — this time during Tahiti’s offseason. A recent run of swell meant locals scattered to other parts of the island to score. A sneaky south swell just rolled through and “only a few got to enjoy it,” according to Coetzee.
