Huahine, Society Islands

08. Jul. 2015
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French Polynesia
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Author: Pete

Location: Huahine, Society Islands

Date: July 3rd – 8th, 2015

So when we returned yet again to Papeete, we learned that we’ll continue waiting for our much awaited part. It needs a few days to come in, so we’re meeting it in Bora Bora and moving (the hell) on from Tahiti. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a gorgeous place. It’s just time to move.

We did a few things that needed doing before heading out, including fixing the in-haul mechanism on the main. It was jamming and Miranda had to hoist me up the mast with kitchen utensils to fix the problem. Thousands of dollars in tools stowed below decks and the most useful thing to get a jammed sail out is a smiley-face spatula. Somehow snippets of the Sweedish Chef on the Muppet’s Treasure Island came to mind. Byogen shmeyegerney-ah-nen!

Then it was off into the sunset heading west. We left in the afternoon for a 16-hour, overnight sail to Huahine, an island southeast of Bora Bora. We were without an autopilot still, so we hand-steered every dang second of the trip. You know how cars can stay in a straight line when you’re on the highway so you can dig in the back seat for that last french fry or take a quick snooze? Well you can’t do that with a boat! (kidding, kidding… I haven’t taken a nap while driving since last August!) Even when you balance the sails and lock off the rudders a tiny wind shift or wave slap leaves you scrambling to the helm. It really doesn’t work, so we were in the hot seat the whole time. Miranda got the good weather at sunset and I got the pissing down rain for the overnight watch. I probably deserve it though.

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Eventually the sun came up and the black turned to gray. The clouds parted here and there to reveal the low green of Huahine. It’s been neat to see the progression of islands from tall volcanic (Marquesas), slowly eroding away (Huahine) and eventually turning into empty atolls (Tuamotus).

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Had to wait out a squall to enter the pass on the west side of Huahine. The visibility was close to zero and the waves were throwing cresting waves right next to the calm of the pass. Charts aren’t great for the area too, so we took another squall square to the jaw and ran the pass after we stopped reeling.

GOPR0486 The anchorage was shallow and hard bottomed. We dug in with just the point of our good anchor. I dove the anchor and didn’t like the precarious hold on the bottom for the forecasted blow, so we took a free mooring that our friends on s/v Georgia spotted for us.

And blow it did. In the next couple of days a trough came over the Society Islands, which happens with more frequency, apparently, in El Niño years. We got winds up to 40 knots, the strongest we’ve ever been in. I only caught this on the anemometer though.

P1150201 Went in to town with the other self-exiles for some Fourth of July drinks and dinner! In true American holiday fashion it rained on our parade, but enough liquid sunshine and arriving home soaked from the dinghy ride doesn’t matter so much.

GOPR0491 After the brunt of the nasty weather came through we sidled south along the wild, lush, western side of the island and took a mooring ball one night in Motu Vaiorea and later anchored in Avea Bay where we did some island exploring and snorkeling in the clear lagoon. After a month in the metropolis of Papeete, it was nice to note the absence of buildings, cars, and big boats.

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Had dinner and drinks a few nights with our friends from s/v Georgia. Nothing like riding in the dinghy wielding a French baguette… “Have at ye!” Had a few gorgeous calm nights.

Our last stop in Huahine was in the town of Fare for their Heiva Festival dance competitions. Every July the islands in French Polynesia battle for glory in feats of island aptitude like va’a (outrigger canoe) racing, Polynesian dancing, and my favorite, coconut opening. They send the best town’s competitors to the inter-island competition to win French Polynesian bragging rights, one of the many things they acquired from the French. We went with our boat buddies to the festivities. This was not the standard tourist dance troupe. There were only nine white people in the stands. I counted. It wasn’t hard. The dancers came in all shapes and sizes. I didn’t know banana leaves grew in those particular dimensions. I had to hold Miranda back from donning a grass skirt and shaking her midwestern tail feather.

Heading farther west soon to the island of Taha’a….a .a…a.a.aaaa..a. Stay tuned.

Passage to Tahiti

04. Jun. 2015
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French Polynesia, Passages
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Author: Pete

Location: 16°54.429S’ 146°57.237W’

Date: June 2nd – June 4th

June 2nd saw the high wind which had previously swept the Tuamotus and filled our kites in the past days calming. It’s time to head to Tahiti. Liza and Felix have flights to catch and Miranda and I have a good deal of work to do on the boat that we’ve been neglecting. It’s been terrific ignoring minor problems in favor of diving and kiting and snorkeling all in the same day. That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? But the TO-DO list grows longer little by little as the salt air and general wear and tear take their toll on everything. We need a week of civilization, or more specifically, a hardware store. A grocery store wouldn’t hurt either.

Made a couple lunches and a couple dinners to have in the refrigerator so no one had to cook in the two day passage. Said goodbye to our friends on Namaste who we’d been kiting and diving with for the week. We pulled anchor without incident. Our three meter anchorage had low, scattered coral heads and we floated the chain to avoid them. We rounded the long shoal finger just inside of the Fakarava pass and exited easily even with 2 knots of incoming current. Outside the pass we put up the spinnaker and ghosted along slowly for an hour, then doused it and motored, then flew the spinnaker again just at dusk. So much work, this sailing life. Now we’re on the downhill run to Papeete. A little rain accompanied us along the way.

June 3rd, our second day on passage to Tahiti trailed behind us like our wake astern. At the end of my watch the wind died and the spinnaker sagged over the deck. I pulled it down and fired up the girls. We motored most of the day in zero wind. Really ZERO wind. The Pacific was glassy, and besides a few gentile rollers lifting the boat there was nothing but our forward motion courtesy of the diesels. The wind filled in come evening, and just before dinner we were again sailing, now on a beam reach. A cargo ship, the Chiquita according to the AIS, steamed by us off our starboard at 18 knots, coming within a half mile. We haven’t seen a real ship in months!

Liza and Felix caught a tuna and cleaned it for dinner! We put it with rice and veggies and sat on deck watching the sky afterwards. Miranda spent some time digging coral out of her knees from kiteboarding into and through the coral ‘bommies’ in Fakarava. Much easier if you just go over them.

Now it’s another gorgeous, cloudless night sailing under a full moon bright enough to put charge through the solar panels!

Sighted Tahiti the morning of June 4th. The tall green of the island and its massive dimension contrast starkly with the low, tiny motus of the atolls we’ve been frequenting. It’s pretty amazing to think that there were islands like Tahiti on all of those atolls, once tall and green, now ground into sand and swept out to sea as the coral reefs build into low motu and remain. Pretty neat geographical evolution. You can really see the scale of geologic time. Don’t blink.

The wind built steadily throughout the night. This morning I woke to the pleasantly rocky ride associated with good wind. We’re up to 15 knots of wind abeam and are nicely making way, topping out at 8 knots. The boat hums happily with a low vibration when we approach hull speed. Feels good to be moving fast; I’m humming too. Funny how one’s mood is so synced with that of the boat. She’s like another entity among us. Like I need one more female personality aboard! (kidding, kidding!)

Cumulous clouds cap the verdant peaks as we round the north side of the island. Eventually buildings spring into view and other boats bounce along the choppy sea. We prepare for making port. Just before we pass between the (backwards) navigational buoys we called the harbor control and were given clearance to enter the port. Were they going to fire cannons at us if we didn’t call? We sidled up to a finger pier in the new municipal marina that’s still under construction without incident, despite my rusty docking skills. I think we just sailed to Tahiti.

Raroia, Tuamotus

15. May. 2015
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French Polynesia
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2 Comments

Author: Pete

Location: Raroia, Tuamotus

Date: May 11th – 15th, 2015

May 11th: Spent a day around the town on Raroia. It’s an flat, open island with tall palms dropping toddler-sized coconuts and coral-rubble ground. A few streets crisscross the island, which takes about two minutes to walk across and ten minutes to walk the length of. Calling it ‘sleepy’ is an understatement of epic proportions. There’s a store, but it has no sign pointing to it and is in someone’s house on a dirt path off a side road. The locals are friendly, but not as ridiculously welcoming as the Marquesians. They pilot hand made wooden boats with the captain standing a hole in the bow deck, holding a joystick and throttle. They zoom up and down the motu, to where, we don’t know. On the north side of the motu there is a small pearl farm with Chinese workers who tend the myriad oyster cylinders, floated with white and red buoys.

May 12: This morning was a treat. After breakfast of blueberry scones and papaya we took the dinghy back to the pass north of our anchorage and out towards the deep, open blue. We arrived purposefully just before slack water at high tide, so the current in the pass was still flowing into the lagoon. We motored to the outside of the pass in 10 feet of water, just before the knee-quivering, courage-shattering, drop off to two-thousand feet and splashed in.

The visibility took your breath away and there was a collective gasp at the undulating coral, stretching as far as the eye could see. It almost gave me vertigo, the water was so clear, I felt like I should be falling. The current whisked us briskly back toward the lagoon. We screamed along, floating along side the dinghy. Someone each pass was in charge of holding on to the painter (bow line on dinghies). The others swooped along the bottom, arms out… it really was about as close to flight as it gets without an airplane, even coming from a couple of years of paragliding in Chile.

There were fish of all shapes and sizes. The swarthy Red Snapper, and the painted Emperor Triggerfish were highlights, but there were thousands and thousands of fish. It was incredible. Along with the fish there were sharks. Dozens of sharks. They were harmless and not too big, mostly Black and White Tip Reef Sharks. They cruised along with us, not coming too close. Maybe we’re getting desensitized to them. Or the lack of oxygen from the free diving is getting to our brains.

We must have made 8 or 9 laps, floating in, motoring out, each pass getting progressively slower, until we were at slack tide and the water was still. It only took about five minutes and the current reversed and started pulling us out to the deep blue. We headed back to Tayrona.

In the afternoon we pulled anchor and motored upwind to the pass, then turned east to cross the lagoon. There problem with these lagoons is they’re not surveyed, so we’re going in blind, but there’s a reward on the other side. The site where Thor Heyerdahl landed with the raft Kon-Tiki in 1947 proving it was possible for South American Incans to have settled French Polynesia. There’s a great movie recently made about it called Kon-Tiki about his 101 day float from Peru. Watch it! The sun was at our back and it was easy to dodge the coral heads rising up from 100 feet to just ankle-deep at the surface. They showed up pale yellow and green spots amidst the expanse of azure. We anchored off the Kon-Tiki island, the sun lighting up the sand and coral bottom. Speared two Camouflage Groupers in the afternoon and had them grilling by sunset.

Now I’m writing on the trampoline in the absolute flat of the lagoon. The roar of the sea breaking on the reef a few hundred yards east of us is soothing and alarming at the same time. The stars and Mikly Way are the only lights, even across the pond. I love being this far out… I love it.

May 13: Spent the day jumping off the boat and snorkeling on the coral heads around the anchorage. The two boats from the Raroia anchorage came over and we made a bonfire on the tiny islet, facing the crashing reef. We cooked foil packets of potato, onions, carrots, and sausage right on the coals, then played guitar and harmonica into the night. Okay, until 9:00, but that’s really late for cruisers.

May 14: Moved a few islets north today, only about 4 miles to check out a great spit of land with one single palm tree on it. Reminded me of Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoons. More snorkeling. More sharks. This place is full of them! In the afternoon I walked around one of the un-named islands. The palm trees give way to coral rubble that extends towards the open sea. The water is calf-deep, and punctuated by coral boulders.

I walked out into the shallow water, watching the dark blue sea heave wave after wave upon the coral reef, some 200 meters out from the islet. I was almost out to the reef when a fast moving form came scooting in towards my feet, a black-tipped fin cutting the twelve inches of water. I hollered and jumped bravely onto one of the coral boulders, like a 1940’s housewife balking at a mouse. In my defense, this mouse was a black tip reef shark. And he wasn’t alone. Four little sharks, between two and three feet long, circled my little rock, attracted by the splashing sounds of my shoes in the water. They were almost cute, being so small, aside from the fact that they were SHARKS. The “duh-DUMP” music from Jaws played in my head as their fins weaved around. I threw a few stones at them, and they spooked and took off, but didn’t go too far. I dawned on me that I was playing the age-old kid’s game, Hot Lava, where you can stand on certain locations, but in between you’ll be melted, or in this case, eaten by tiny sharks. Fun! I courageously bounced from boulder to boulder, standing like a meerkat on each one looking for predators. I did make it out to the reef eventually. It’s incredible, the reef is bright Peptobisthmol pink and is pretty much level with the surface of the water, but drop off like a cliff into deep deep blue sea. The waves pummel the reef, and the energy is absorbed and the water returned to the sea through narrow, evenly spaced channels. Really neat. I played the Hot Lava game back to the island. Despite the sharkies the area was so neat I brought the rest of the crew back later to check it out.