Goodbye French Polynesia

 Date: 20th July 2023

Location: Bora Bora Yacht Club

Bora Bora. Another of Gilly's must visit locations. We arrived here from Taha'a island in a downpour with zero visibility as we came through the pass. It quickly cleared and there it was ahead of us, the famous Bora Bora Yacht Club.

Bora Bora Yacht Club

We've been here a week now. It's another social whirl here. All the boats we arrived in French Polynesia with have now reached their 90 day limit and must prepare to leave. Viridian, Cloudy Bay, Cerulean, Athena, Change Up, the list goes on.

Three highlights here plus the two day check out process.

First we were off to the last night of the Bora Bora Heiva (festival). It was the drumming contest. As in every event the six villages of the island entered a team. Most of the village took part with some "orchestras" comprised of more than 50 drummers. There were rules.

1. The team must include children (some only looked about five) and women.

2. The orchestra members must rotate several times so they all play different drums.

3. There must be a hint of modern in each performance.

Grand entrance to Bora Bora Heiva

A great evening out with the audience being almost entirely Polynesian. No roudy teenagers, no alcohol just a load of happy smiling faces. A delightful evening.

Then the boys decided to climb one of the three iconic Bora Bora peaks. Glen (Cloudy Bay), Greg (Viridian) and I set off early one bright clear morning. Three hours up and three hours down. 600m+ climbing involving a lot of hacking through undergrowth and numerous fixed ropes. We had an amazing day. At the top there was no wind and the clearest sky you could imagine. Down below us we could see right around the island, the reefs, the passes, the lagoons and the sea every colour of blue. What a day!

The final pull.

What a view!

Looking across to the two higher tops.

Back home. Looking back to the top.

Then a couple of days ago it was girls' day out (sorry Jane!). They went dress shopping. After all it is French here. They found a little shop selling surplus stock to his main shop run by a cool gay guy called Laurent. They spent a lovely hour with him ending up buying one frock each. Apparently when adjusting Gill's bra he said "you need not worry, I am safe". Glen came over too for our sunset photoshoot and took some drone footage of them on the bow playing at being famous models. I have to say they do look pretty stunning (am I still allowed to say that?).

New frocks.

Bow angels.

The last blog had us on Huahine. This turned out to be my favourite Polynesian island so far. It was where we met our new crew member Sally, from New Zealand. She arrived on the ferry from Pape'ete and was welcomed (along with one of Pape'ete's best dancing troupes) by the Huahine drumming team.

After Huahine it was across the water to Raiatea island. We anchored in a windy anchorage on the east coast and paddled the dinghy up the river at the end to see Andre a local farmer. Over the last 30 years he has turned 2 hectares of riverside land into a fruit and veg farm. He cleared the jungle and slowly planted it up using only a machete. Coconuts, mangoes, ginger, breadfruit, turmeric, nonis, vanilla, pamplemouse, apple, lime, pineapple, pumpkin, lychee, he had it all. A fascinating guy and a credit to all his hard work. We took some vegetables in return for some rum and a screwdriver and adjustable spanner that Sally donated.

Up the river to Andre's place.

Turmeric. Great anti cancer veg.

Just a few coconut rees. 11 years to maturity.

And very tasty too.

Then it was the short hop to Taha'a island. Another windy east coast anchorage and here we had bad news. Not only were both dinghy engines out of action but when I was checking the steering chains in the aft lazerete we found termites. Now that's not good. Luckily it seems we have caught them early and by repeated smoke bombs and poisons we hope we have got rid of them. We will need to let the Australian biosecurity team know about them though when we arrive there.

Our final stop in Taha'a was on the west coast. Much more sheltered. We had hoped to take a mooring ball but they were all taken so we had to anchor in 25m of water using most of our nice new shiny chain. We had the Yamaha mechanic look at our dinghy engine there but he just checked the same things I had and it's no better. So we moved out of the bay and out onto the exposed reef. Somehow the dinghy engine kept going enough to get us to the Coral Garden a shallow area of water with corals and fish. Sally, Gill and I snorkelled around for an hour or so. I thought it was quite good but the other two thought it "overpromised and underdelivered". We did see loads of fish species including a big stingray though no sharks this time.

Taha'a anchorage with the Coral Garden out on the edge of the reef.

Bora Bora in the distance.

And so here we are in Bora Bora gearing up for departure towards Tonga tomorrow. This is a 1,300 mile trip but we will likely stop off in Suwarrow a tiny atoll belonging to the Cook Islands and manned only by a couple of wildlife rangers. Finally it looks as though we may be able to avoid the nasty depressions that have been sweeping east out of New Zealand. This year, an El Niño year the lows are further north than usual. Of course that means there will probably be too little wind instead now. We've waited till tomorrow to let the big southerly swell from one of these depressions die down a bit. We shall see.

Sally our crew seems to be fitting in fine. She is experienced in these waters and knows the weather patterns better than we do. So we've spent many happy hours looking at the PredictWind forecasts trying to work out our best strategy.

Rough weather (reds)down south. Black line is our rough passage path.

During our engineless time here we've relied heavily on Viridian and Cloudy Bay to ferry us around. In return we've made meals on board Mehalah and hosted some famous games of Shithead a new card game.

Polynesian girl.

Great friends at the Yacht Club.

Yesterday was our 43rd Wedding Anniversary. We were going to go ashore but with the dinghy out of action and a big depression passing over we opted to stay on the boat. Thank you Sally for cooking us dinner on the boat!

We will be blogging on passage again though maybe not every night. You can still follow our progress at www.noforeignland.com/boat/mehalah/journey