We left Fakarava and headed to another atoll, Faaite, 15nm to the south with our NZ friends on Te Kinga. There was no wind and the sea was flat calm as we motor sailed towards the low lying atoll, entering the narrow pass on slack tide. Numerous small fishing boats created a slalom course for us as we approached the entrance, forcing us to slow down and admire the crystal clear water as we glided over healthy looking coral close to the land. We negotiated the entrance, meandering round boomies into an anchorage close to the small main town of Hitianau, except it really wasn’t an anchorage due to the shallow patches and boomies everywhere not giving us enough room to swing a cat, let alone a 43ft boat! Together with Te Kinga we circled around the bay numerous times, trying to find a clear patch of sand, big enough to drop our anchor and for us to circle around it without hitting anything under the water. Eventually we found a patch we hoped we suffice, dropped the anchor and floated all our chain so only 10m was on the bottom, the remaining 30m was floated using our fenders but fortunately no wind was forecast so we felt confident we would be fine.
The settlement of Hitianau has a checkered and interesting recent history. In 1987 a cult moved on to the atoll with the religious leader convincing locals that the devil was amongst them, resulting in six deaths when members of the community were burned alive by being thrown into a fire. The next time the atoll was thrown into the spotlight was a few years later when a yacht ladened with cocaine ran aground on the reef. Police were informed when a fire started on board and over half a ton of drugs were discovered, believing that more had been lost in the fire. In a scenario similar to Whiskey Galore, it was later discovered that locals had raided the boat and hidden the drugs. It only became apparent when the Mayor noticed a number of locals acting strangely and called in the police from Tahiti to investigate, resulting in the discovery that a number of the 250 residents were addicted to cocaine.
Walking around the sleepy town today, it is hard to imagine its colourful past. People mostly use tricycles as their main mode of transport, everyone smiles and greets you in passing, neat houses line the dusty roads and fishermen take their small boats out to catch just enough fish for the locals to eat. On the day we arrived the supply ship was in, so we joined a small line of locals on the dock and bought fresh fruit and vegetables from the boxes displayed by the ships crew. We even bought fresh eggs which was a bonus as we were fast learning to buy them whenever we saw them! We ordered fresh baguettes to collect the next day and were invited into a local home by a father and son who proudly showed us around there waterfront property. In exchange, we gave them the fishing line we had collected when crossing the Pacific and were very happy it was going to good use!
The weather forecast showed some significant wind and building seas were coming, so we decided to leave with Te Kinga and head back to Fakarava for a few nights. We had originally intended to stay another night and leave for Tahiti from Faaite but with seas building it meant the pass could become treacherous. As it was, we left with the outgoing tide and were swept through the pass at speed, waving to the fishermen at the entrance as we were carried past them. On the passage back Te Kinga caught a couple of tuna which they generously shared with us, donating a large steak which fed us for four meals!
Tahiti was calling us, so we reluctantly left The Tuamotu’s ahead of a front bringing strong winds and enjoyed a 36hr passage, arriving in Tahiti mid morning. My son, Jak and his wife Juliette, were due to arrive in a few days, so after doing laundry, a big shop at Carrefour and mandatory clean, tidy and sort of the boat, we moved into Papeete Marina. The marina operates on a first-in-first-served basis so securing a berth feels like winning lottery, particularly when you listen to others hard-luck stories and pleas for a space. We were lucky as our friends on Freya were leaving and we arranged a smooth exchange which, even though we did this with military co-ordination, another boat waiting in the wings almost tried to swoop into the berth ahead of us!
The marina is located in the centre of the biggest city in The Society Islands so getting fresh produce, doing laundry and preparing for Jak and Ju’s arrival was easy. While we waited I was invited by our friends on Cygnus Cygnus to attend Heiva, an annual festival of Polynesian Culture and we enjoyed a night of traditional dance and music with mesmorising drumming, fast knee knocking by the men and impressive bottom wiggling by the women.
While in Papeete we caught up with lots of friends. On one occasion we were meeting an Aussie/Irish contingent for lunch in a restaurant and were hidden away upstairs catching up on a couple of months news. On coming up for air, we noticed that a group of other friends were sitting at another table having lunch and we called them over. You know when you are with fellow cruisers when one of the friends walks over is carrying a bucket and, on noticing this, one of the Irish/Aussies says, “That’s a really nice bucket…”! I wonder what we will consider important in the real world!
Jak and Ju’s much anticipated arrival happened at 5am one morning, just as it was starting to get light, and I ran into their warm embraces with huge excitement much to the amusement of the marina security guard who was alerted by my squeals of delight! As we were having breakfast on deck a friendly turtle popped up beside the boat followed by a pod of dolphins that joined in the celebrations as we were leaving the harbour later that day! A great start to their visit with levels of excitement high which would continue for the duration of their two weeks stay with us. Together we explored Moorea where we swam with sharks and stingrays, went on long dinghy rides, explored some of the inland region, snorkeled in clear waters and introduced Jak and Ju to some of our friends. We did an overnight sail to Huahine in conditions that were far from the perfect seastate I was hoping for with Ju, always cheerful and positive, incapacitated with seasickness, only emerging from her uncomfortable looking cocoon curled up on the saloon seating, once we were safely in the blue protected waters behind the island. We hired bikes and circumnavigated Huahine, pushing the old one-speed bikes up the one steep hill on the island – Jak breaking his bike as he tried to pedal up the sharpest incline! We watched blue-eyed eels as they stared back at us in a shallow river, were mesmorised by brightly coloured fish from a dock and marvelled at the shades of blue in the bay. We sailed down to the most southerly bay and watched an octopus change colour to match the coral around it, spending a very windy night on a mooring buoy which we had raced to pick up ahead of another boat I was convinced would try to beat us to it, only to discover they had picked up a much better mooring further inland!
On we sailed to Taha’a, inside a large reef it shared with its neighbour, Raiatea. We enjoyed sundowners watching beautiful sunsets over nearby Bora Bora, drift snorkelled the Coral Garden, tasted local rum at the nearby distillery, listened to a local band play with local women joining in the dancing, visited a pearl farm and a vanilla plantation with processing plant, celebrated Bastille Day by visiting a festival in a small village, played games and laughed together. Finally, we sailed to Bora Bora – a place I had wanted to visit since the early 1980’s when I watched a TV show called Tales of the Gold Monkey set, apparently in Bora Bora and I was mesmorised by its beautiful scenery and handsome lead! When researching for this blog I discovered it was actually set in Bora Gora – wherever that is – and I must’ve been hearing the place wrong!!! Well, it made me look up Bora Bora, stick a pin in my imaginary map of the globe and dream of the exotic location! Now we were sailing there, and I couldn’t have been more excited. As we rounded the south westerly corner of the reef, Bora Bora presented itself in all its beauty and travel brochure glory! The emerald blue waters set against a dramatic crater rim of an extinct tall volcano was breathtaking.
We met up with Tomas and Corine who guided us through narrow channels to a stunning anchorage in Baie Tehou. We took the dinghies towards the reef and stood chest deep in water as numerous black tipped sharks and huge stingrays circled around us. In the evening we had sharks around our boat and we swam in the clear warm waters, soaking up the extraordinary sights and experiences of this truly magical island. Tomas’s friend, Corine, was leaving the next day so the six of us went into Vaitape, the main town, to explore and have lunch. There is very little in the town, which shows that even with the many luxury resorts on the island, very little of that money spills over into the local economy – yes, there are jobs for the locals, but most of those are menial with the majority of the well paid jobs going to French or other nationalities.
Having said that, The Societies have not been spoiled by large, ugly hotels. Most of the buildings we saw were single, or at most, two storied buildings which were built to fit in with the landscape although did restrict access to some beautiful parts of the lagoon. It is not possible to fully circumnavigate the island as the far south is not navigable, so we meandered our way to around the island and stayed in the south east corner, visiting a French Canadian who had established a Coconut Factory. It was really just a small shack where he lived with his local wife and two gorgeous young children and operated a press to extract oil from coconuts grown on Bora Bora. He added essence of other plants to the oil to make medicinal cures for burns, bites and increase energy levels. His property stretched the width of the motu from blue lagoon to the battered windward side and he allowed us to explore, walking through his tendered garden and tall trees to the thunderous waves on the Pacific side. We collected shells, watched crabs, waded in a huge rock pool where sharks hunted the trapped fish and coral broke the surface of the water.
All too soon we were preparing for Jak and Ju to leave us. It had been a wonderful, memorable and fun time together, laughing, exploring, playing games, doing quizzes, talking and sailing. We needed to get fuel so suggested we drop them at the fuel dock for an easy walk into Vaitape where they could catch a free ferry to the airport – the only way to access the airport is by water. Our attempts to get fuel turned into an unhappy series of events as the cashiers would only allow us to use our tax free certificate if we provided copies of the certificate, boat papers and entry permits. They didn’t have a photocopier, would not accept electronic copies and didn’t know of anywhere who would copy them, so we left without filling our tanks! That’ll show them! It was not the final goodbye I had pictured for Jak and Ju but at least they were able to have an unfiltered insight into the trials and tribulations of cruising life!
We waved to Jak and Ju as we motored away from the dock and headed out the pass, back into the rolly, unprotected waters of the Pacific Ocean. We were headed for Raiatea as we had an appointment with a tradesman who could try and discover what was wrong with our steering as I was very concerned about a grating sound that occasionally caused the wheel to jerk. We had unsuccessfully and frustratingly been trying to find the source to no avail and now needed to urgently have the steering assessed to see if it was safe to continue to New Zealand. So a few days later we had a shipwright named Fred scratching his head too, trying to find the source of the problem, resulting in us getting hauled out the next day to check the integrity of our rudder. We only just fit in the slipway where three men dived into the clear water and positioned slings under Cerulean. As we were lifted we were pleasantly surprised by how clean Ceruleans bottom was – Steve had done a great job keeping the growth off and while we could we scraped barnacles and weed off the harder to reach places, cleaned the propeller and shaft and checked the anodes – all looking good! The rudder was jiggled and wiggled hard, resulting in the noise becoming apparent, thankfully not from the rudder but, after a thorough check, found the offender to be our autohelm! We were happy to have found the culprit – an easy fix – and hugely relieved there was nothing wrong with our steering, in fact the opposite as it was given a big thumbs up as being in perfect condition! Our time in French Polynesia was coming to an end. We were given 90 days in the country when we arrived in The Marquesas and were told the only way to stay longer was to apply for a longstay visa prior to arriving in French Polynesia. As it turns out, getting an extension is easier than we believed, all you have to do is tell the Gendarmerie you have a problem with your boat and it will take a couple of months for the parts to arrive – bingo! Although we had all the supporting proof that we had an issue with the boat, we decided we would not ask for an extension as time was ticking and there were still lots of other exotic islands to visit.
We filled with fuel, reprovisioned and started the long process of checking out. French Polynesia has a quite antiquated check in/out procedure. We were told that, after checking in at The Marquesas, we had to complete the process once we arrived in Tahiti, which we duly did and were emailed a form as proof of this. We were then advised we needed to seek permission if we were leaving Tahiti/Moorea to go to the outer islands and intended checking out of those islands, which we also did and were sent confirmation back. We stayed the night in Raiatea’s main town of Uturoa on the town dock in the town centre, ignoring the advice we were given on arrival that we had to leave by 4.30pm, as we had been told we were allowed to spend one night there for free. On Saturday morning we headed to the gendarmerie, completed numerous forms and were asked to return on Tuesday to collect our zarpe – no one asked for the other forms we had been given in Papeete.
We decided to spend a few days exploring Raiatea and headed towards The Botanical Gardens which are located down a meandering river edged with palm trees. After walking through the gardens we crossed to the other side of the river and met Andre, a local man who has been creating a large fruit and vegetable garden on land he leases at a peppercorn rent from the government for the last 35 years. He has created a fabulous food basket, offering his hard won bounty to anyone who shows an interest in his garden. We came away with bananas, beans, ginger, turmeric, pumpkin and plenty of exotic fruit which Andre encouraged us to try. We gave him a donation which he accepted with a smile but he often feeds people who are unable to give money.
We received an email on Monday telling us our exit papers were ready so on Tuesday we returned to the town dock and completed our check out with the gendarmerie. It was quick and easy with them stamping our passports and presenting us with our zarpe. We were now officially checked out of French Polynesia and ready to sail west for the next leg of our journey back to New Zealand. We had been lucky enough to spend three months exploring French Polynesia. Every place we visited had its own special feel and memorable moments. To share these places with friends and family made them all the more incredible and as we sailed away from The Society Islands, we felt a mixture of sadness and excitement. Sadness as we would have loved to have spent more time in these beautiful (but expensive) islands, but excitement at the adventures that still lay ahead of us.
