The Society Islands

SOCIETY ISLANDS

Bora-Bora Island

We set off for Bora Bora Island, 1,300nm. to the south west.  We skirted the edge of the Tuomotu Group of islands, previously known as the Dangerous Archipelago for its many coral reefs and poorly chartered waters. This is an unspoilt group of islands, the locals making a living from making copra and fishing.  One enterprising person flies a light plane to several of the Tuomotos each day to pick up the catches of fish to take to the restaurants of Papeete, Tahiti.

We were anxious to reach Bora Bora as soon as possible as our gribs. were showing a front due to arrive just as we reached the island.  Given that we had to enter through a channel in the reef, we wanted to be inside the reef when the strong winds reached us. We arrived early  in  the morning 

Arriving in Bora-Bora

and anchored in front of the Bora Bora yacht club, just around the promontory from Vaitape, the main town.

Bora-Bora yacht club

The island was named by the author James Mitchener as the world’s most beautiful island.  Today there are exclusive resorts on the outlying motus of the fringing reef. Cruise ships also arrive at the island from Tahiti. As a result, the island has boomed but has also become spoilt by the usual tourist  trappings. 

We had some lovely meals on the waterfront of the Bora Bora Yacht Club.  The kitchen is run by an excellent French chef who includes Polynesian flavours into the food.  The setting was superb with the distinctive twin peaks of Mount Otemanu as a backdrop and in the foreground the lagoon and the fringing reef and, of course, Artemis V lying moored just offshore.

Children played and splashed off the Yacht Club jetty and youths with beautiful physiques paddled outrigger canoes for sport.

Most of the guests at dinner were fellow yachtsmen and there was a lot of traffic with dinghies coming and going in the yacht club’s tiny dinghy harbour.

Our dinghy at the Bora-Bora yacht club

Vaitape, the main town has a sheltered harbour where cruise ship passengers are offloaded from their transfer boats, tourist boats leave for diving and snorkelling tours and where yachtsmen tie up their dinghies.

At night we heard drums and singing as the Polynesian locals entertained the tourists in the resorts on the reef.

We left Bora-Bora at last light, with its distinctive twin mountain silhouetted in the setting sun.  We wanted to reach our next stop, Raiatea, early the next morning.

Raiatea

The island of Raiatea and it’s sister island Tahaa are surrounded by a common reef and it is possible to sail around both within the reef. Both are mountainous with high peaks and dense emerald green vegetation on the slopes of the mountains.  They arise from a common sea mount. The shore is fringed by coconut palms and beautiful white, sandy beaches.  There are many lovely holiday homes along the shore, complete with boatsheds, jetties and speedboats.

Raiatea was the ancient Havaiki and was used as the base of the original Polynesian migrants for their later dispersal to Hawaii, the Cook Islands and New Zealand. It was the last of the French Polynesian islands to be taken by the French.  It is not as popular with tourists and remains mostly unspoilt by tourist trappings.  It has an airport and the main town of Uturoa has a good supermarket and fresh produce market. We saw quite a few people with hiking packs.  Mount Orotaio would be quite a challenge to climb.

There are two yacht charter companies on Raiatea and the little harbour was totally full.  We picked up a mooring just outside and for it we were charged a six-pack of beer/day.

While there, we discovered that a weld had broken on our mast and that had to be fixed for the safety of our rig.  We spoke to an ex-pat. American who lives on a boat for six months of the year, making a living as a shipwright.  He spends the rest of the year back in America with his wife.  He arranged for a welder to come down to the dock next to the petrol station with his gear to do our job.  All went well until he tried to use our generator to power his welder.  That immediately shorted our fuses.  Try as we might, we could not get it to work.  He went home to collect his generator but the welder shorted that out to.  As a last resort, we asked the petrol station to give us power.  The welder shorted that out too, but after several attempts, he managed to complete the job.  We filled up with fuel while we were there.

In the meanwhile, while the welding was taking place, Arti made three visits to the customs office, to see if our  clearance documents had arrived from Tahiti.  We had requested our clearance early on the Thursday morning when we arrived in Raiatea and were told that it would take five days to get it from Papeete as their internet was down!  We needed these documents  before we could go to the bank to get our bond back.  We managed to get the documents and get to the bank just in time before they closed for the weekend.  We filled up with fuel and went back to our mooring, passing the beautiful Club Med. sailing ship tied up on the outside of the little harbour.

We had made friends with a couple on a New Zealand flagged vessel on the next mooring, he Canadian, she from NZ, who had found out that  a nearby Polynesian centre with restaurants, a small amusement park and large tent- like hall was having a Polynesian festival on our last night. We collected some wine and glasses from the boat and joined them for the festival.  There were only a few non-Polynesians there. It turned out to be  an amazing night. The performance was by several large dance groups with their accompanying bands, drums etc, doing traditional regional dances in traditional  dress, ranging from brief grass skirts to Mother Hubbard dresses. The dancers ranged in age from 5 years to grandparent age! Entry was free and everyone had great fun. The performance lasted three hours.

 

Next morning, we woke with the sun, set the boat up for a long passage, and once again took to the sea.

We had entered the lagoon inside the reef through the Paipai Passe, half way along the length of Tahaa so we decided to do a half circumnavigation of Raitea to the Rautoanui Passe. It was a beautiful calm morning as the island sheltered us from the wind and we enjoyed the passage down the shoreline of Raitea.

Once outside the reef and out of the lee of the land, it was a different matter.