Raiatea, Taha’a and Bora Bora; August 25 through October 14, 2018

These three islands, all within less than a day’s sail from each other, represented the end of the rainbow for our sailing season this year.  Specifically, Bora Bora, the furthest northwest we would be heading, was our Bali Hai.  It called to us just like the song from Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific.  We could see it’s volcanoes’ silhouettes from our anchorages on the east sides of both Raiatea and Taha’a.  It’s dramatic profile, together with our anticipatory imaginings of a calm, crystal clear, wide lagoon surrounding the entire island, just deep enough for Cool Change to pass through and then lay anchor where we could see it as if it were a foot deep, were luring us to her.  

Bora Bora, calling to us from over the reef at Raiatea

Bora Bora, from the East side, up close

But the winds and our schedule required that we save what we imagined as the best, for last, so first we sailed to Raiatea.  It is on the way to Bora Bora and the place where we were to haul out for cyclone season, so we needed to firm up the haul out arrangements and get the lay of the land.  Besides, a big blow was forecasted that would last for days, and we wanted to be in a secure location, perhaps on a reliable mooring ball on the protected side of Raiatea, or better yet, in a marina.  Furthermore, Rick’s Mom was seriously ill with an undefined malady, keeping us on our toes every day to be prepared to fly home at a moment’s notice.  Fortunately, she has been improving since then.

We had been told that there were no transient slips available in any marina on Raiatea.  The Apooiti Marina, however, controlled some reliable moorings balls for a fee. We chose to use one of those balls, and when we went to the office to pay, they offered us a side tie in the marina itself, for no additional charge!  We were delighted.  This was the first marina we had been in for a month, and a great opportunity to wash the decks and do hand laundry with unlimited fresh water.  Not to mention, it was a much more secure location than any mooring ball for what was predicted to be 40 knot winds.

Cool Change at guest dock at Apooiti Marina, Raiatea

While waiting out the storm, we met Alfred and Adva on their small, tender 32 foot Dufour named Waterhoen. Small boats stick together, so we immediately were drawn to each other.  Alfred was a retired engineer, originally from The Netherlands, but having lived most of his adult life in the U.S.  He has a wife in Colorado.  He was pushing becoming an octogenarian.  Adva, on the other hand, was about 30 years old, an adventurer and world traveler from Israel.  What a pair!  He picked her up as crew in New Zealand twelve years before, and they have been seasonally cruising the world together ever since.  Their families have become close, his wife supporting Adva traveling with him so that he can indulge in his passion for the sea, and her family grateful that Adva has a wise older gentleman as a traveling companion.  She takes care of him and he of her, although after 12 years, she can single hand just fine.

Adva and Alfred

 We took advantage of the time in the marina to hire someone to fix our sink drain.  Our boat sits so low in the water that the salt water we use to prewash the dishes was standing in the hoses and coming up through the drains, corroding the tail pieces and disintegrating the hoses.  Rick had in mind a more complicated solution like replacing the sink with a shallower one, but we were unable to find on line, a shallower sink with the same footprint as ours, and we didn’t want to have to modify the counter as well.  The handyman we hired had a pretty wild solution of cutting down the existing sink to make it shallower and then epoxying it back together, but fortunately, a simpler and more rational approach prevailed and the handyman just replaced the tail pieces, hoses and fittings.  The drains work great now, and if we ever have the problem again, we will just replace the necessary pieces again.

Our repaired sink

Once the weather cleared, we were free to move on across the water, to the island shrouded in mysticism and luring us to her: Bora Bora.  She did not disappoint.  We enjoyed the company of other boats, like us, who hadn’t rushed  off to cross the entire Pacific in one season, but instead were hanging out enjoying the most decadent of the islands of French Polynesia.  We shared cocktails and meals with the crews of several other boats including Alondra, Freya and Dash, at anchor or at iconic places like the Bora Bora Yacht Club, the Mai Kai Yacht Club, and Bloody Mary’s.  

One of our favorite haunts as we first arrived in Bora Bora

Sunset cocktail deck at the Mai Kai Yacht Club

And the volcanic peaks of Bora Bora really are incredibly picturesque.  Every angle we saw them from just made them look more and more dramatic.  And yes, the lagoon does go almost all the way around – there is just one little section you can’t pass through with a five foot draft, so to get from the southwest to the southeast side of the island, you have to go all the way around.  Especially in the east side, the water is light blue and lovely.

The dramatic cliffs of Bora Bora in the background

The light blue waters of the east side of the Bora Bora lagoon. These guys were standing in the water inshore of us, digging white sand off the sea floor onto this barge by hand with shovels, presumably to add to the sand on the private resort beaches. We were anchored at the place I took this picture.

Of all the islands we visited, Bora Bora was probably not the place to do this, but we decided to buy me a string of black pearls in town.  Actually, we only stopped into the jewelry store because they also sold postcards and we needed some, but it turned out that the jewelry artist who made the necklaces was working that day.  He was so proud of his techniques and his designs, that you knew you were getting quality, and Rick and I had talked several times about buying a full necklace for me.  I am really not much of a jewelry wearer but how could I refuse, when Rick said that he wanted to buy it so he could enjoy looking at it on me?  Right answer!

My new black pearl necklace, shown with the charming jeweler who designed and made it

I think our favorite time on Bora Bora, however, was spent in the shallow, clear water anchorage on the quiet side of the island, anchored near the St. Regis hotel.  The St. Regis looked spectacular from the water: it is located on a motu that serves as the barrier reef, but one side of it forms a hidden cove with a white sand beach that is exclusive to the guests.  Rick and I had a very romantic sunset driving around in our dinghy exploring the resort while sipping our rum and mango cocktails one evening.  Speaking of exclusive, that is the one drawback of Bora Bora: nearly all of the resorts are isolated from the main island on motus and prohibit entry from anyone who is not a guest at the resort.  Exceptions can sometimes be made if you make reservations for their restaurants, but this is very different than all of the other islands, where cruisers are welcome additional patrons for happy hour or whenever.

It didn’t matter, though.  We were on the quiet side of the island for the reputedly great snorkeling opportunities, not for the meals.  And we had the best snorkeling guides ever:  Edith and Ken, who are both marine biologists, and their two precocious daughters, Zoe and Naomi, on their ketch Alondra, otherwise known as Biology Family Afloat.  We had gorgeous weather those several days, and each day, bright and early, they would swing by our boat in their dinghy and take us with them snorkeling.  They picked a different section of the huge nearby reef to explore every day, and tied their dinghy off to one of the many buoys planted for that purpose.  Edith was always free diving to the bottom to bring up some harmless, beautiful new creature to examine and tell us about, while Naomi swam underwater so much you thought she was a fish.  Zoe was a bit more reserved in the water, and Ken stayed the deepest, the longest.  The big draw in that particular reef, besides all the beautiful fish and some healthy coral that looked like forests of broccoli, was supposed to be giant manta rays.  We finally saw one, fairly deep, our last day with the Alondra.  We later discovered that a tiger shark had been spotted in the area, which preys on manta rays, and that might explain their scarcity, hiding from their predator.

Alondra

Alondra did not have long stay visas like we did, so Ken and Edith were trying unsuccessfully to get an extension.  That meant they had to go discuss their predicament with the authorities on the other side of the island.  So, Edith came by after the first day of snorkeling and asked if we wouldn’t mind being Zoe and Naomi’s “teachers” while they did their home schooling assignments the next day after snorkeling.  Meanwhile, Edith and Ken would dinghy over to the other side of the island for business.  While we were out of practice in helping kids with homework, we thought maybe we could help.  Sure, why not?  Well, we had a ball.  Those girls are SO smart!  I guess it helps that their parents are really smart too!  Anyway, I set up my Rosetta Stone interactive learning program on our projector so we all got to practice French together, and that was fun.  And we did math and reading together too. Luckily, the math wasn’t beyond us yet!  This tutoring continued for about three days, I think.  After those days together, it tore at both of our hearts to say goodbye to the girls.  They were so all-consuming that once we parted ways, we couldn’t remember how we had spent our time on the boat before Alondra – we were stumbling around lost for a few days!

Zoe, Rick and Naomi, studying reading

We decided to move back to the more active West side of the island for a couple of reasons: first, we wanted to be on a mooring ball on the protected side of the island for another wind event that was predicted, and second, the skin between my cuticle and my knuckle on my thumb had developed an ugly infection and we thought I should have it looked at by a doctor.  Well, the doctor was a French intern on one-month tours of remote islands as part of his training process. He was unsure of himself in lancing an abscess. But he did his best and prescribed the right antibiotics under consultation with a doctor on another island. Everything worked out ok.  Bad news was that I couldn’t snorkel for two weeks until the wound was completely healed.  Apparently it was a staph infection, acquired who knows how; there was no visible puncture wound or skin opening.  But they say that skin infections are quite common in the tropics.  Anyway, I was grateful it didn’t get any worse.

So the rest of our time on Bora Bora was not spent in the water, unfortunately.  However, we really enjoyed our time on a mooring ball near Bloody Mary’s, where famous people have been dining with chickens at their feet for decades, and tucking in behind the Hilton private island resort for free access to the staff’s WiFi.

Having one of their famous hamburgers at Bloody Mary’s

After almost three weeks in Bora Bora, it was time to start thinking about heading back to Taha’a and then Raiatea to prepare for our haul out. So on September 26, with a good weather window to guarantee a safe return, we set sail for the last time this season for the 25 nm hop back to Taha’a and then Raiatea.  

Taha’a’s most impressive feature, for us, was the snorkeling area they call the Aquarium.  It is a very shallow drift snorkel through a narrow opening in the coral reef, just enough for there to always be in incoming current, but protected enough that there are no waves or breakers.  You dinghy up to a motu, tie off your dinghy, walk up the motu to the reef side of the motu, and hop in.  It is so shallow that there is really only one way to snorkel through the coral, and the current is pushing you pretty fast.  Many guides showed up later in the day with paying guests, and they feed the fish. As a result, the fish have become accustomed to people and in fact, gather around you with the expectation of food.  You are surrounded by dozens of beautiful, colorful fish of all shapes and sizes from the moment you enter until you step out at the end of the run where it becomes too shallow to snorkel.  Unfortunately, the number of people coming daily has resulted in some pretty ugly, dying coral, but the fish still thrive there.

The anchorage closest to the Aquarium is also close to the Taha’a Rum Distillery and vanilla bean farm.  Of course, we couldn’t miss that.  Rick bought a T-shirt and we received a tour of the processing plant from a nice young Frenchman named, of course, Pierre.

Pierre at the Taha’a Rum Distillery

We circumnavigated Taha’a, partly because it is a small island within the same reef as Raiatea and we had a little time to kill before prepping for haul out, and partly because Rick was longing for a quiet anchorage in the shallows near the reef that is offered on the east side of the island.  So our last night before the dreaded haul-out prep began, we spent in an idyllic anchorage in 10 feet of light blue water near the eastern reef of Taha’a.  We dove off the boat and floated together in the 80 degree water with the late afternoon sun glimmering on the surface. Rick called me over to him, kissed me and held me in his arms, saying, “Remember this moment.”  Of course, sweetheart. Always.  In our deepest darkest moments, we will always be armed with the escape hatch of that luscious memory.

Another big blow was forecasted, and we desperately hoped that our good fortune would return with the possibility of a side tie at Apooiti Marina once again.  We needed the fresh water to wash the sails and lines and laundry and everything else on the boat before we put her away for the season.  Fortunately, we got the side tie with only one day’s wait on a mooring ball, and then the work began in earnest.

If you do it thoroughly, as we try to do, putting the boat away for the season is a huge amount of work in deteriorating working conditions.  As more things get taken down and put away inside the cabin, there is less and less room to move freely in the cabin, and you feel like you are living in a warehouse.  It didn’t take long for us to have to start sleeping on our settees because the v-berth was filled with sails, lines and deck equipment.  

Cool Change being hauled out

But nothing compares to the discomfort of living on the boat once it has been hauled out and on the hard.  You have to climb up and down a steep ladder to get to and from the boat; you can’t use the head on the boat and you must climb down that ladder at 3:00 am to go to the one toilet in the yard if nature calls.  If you use the sink, the water drips out onto the ground below, adding to the rainwater that has already made the bottom of your ladder sit in a pool of mud. 

The view as you are about to descend from Cool Change on the hard, only to arrive in a mud puddle.

I had tried to arrange for a short term rental while we were in the hard, but the cost deterred me until nothing was available.  So we had to live on the boat until almost the last day before we left French Polynesia.  Fortunately, we finished our decommissioning by Thursday, borrowed a car for a nice escape drive around the island on Friday, and rented a bungalow starting Saturday morning.  We were able to spend all Saturday and the morning on Sunday in a lovely nearby bungalow on the shores of the lagoon.  It was heaven.  When we return next year after cyclone season ends, I am booking that bungalow for a week!  It will make recommissioning a much happier process.

Rick with our sundowner cocktail at our rented bungalow the last night for the season in French Polynesia

Our first bed on dry land in over a year

Sunset over the bungalow

Cool Change is now put away for the cyclone season. Hopefully she will still be standing after cyclone season ends. We return to her, as of now, on March 21, 2019, or thereabouts, for another season exploring French Polynesia.  I miss her already!