The Society Islands are mostly mountainous islands formed by volcanic events some millions of years ago with a mix of small coral atolls. There are about 13 main islands, including Tahiti, Moorea, Huahine and Bora Bora, made world famous by the paintings of Paul Gaugin and the words of James Michener.
Bora Bora - Pearl of the Pacific
Leaving the Tuomotus, we hit fierce winds and big waves as soon as we got outside the pass and had an extremely fast sail to Tahiti – so fast that we arrived in the middle of the night which had not been our intention at all.
Papeete Harbour is theoretically easy to enter at night, so we did, though we found it scarily confusing and were convinced we were about to hit rocks until the very last minute. We called up the authorities on the VHF who advised us to anchor where we could and come into the port in the morning. We anchored a good way up wind of a French yacht in an area marked on our chart with a little anchor sign. We were the only two yachts so we figured it would be OK. We tidied everything up and then went to bed, only to be awoken a few hours later with a horrible loud crunch. We shot up the stairs, both stark naked, to find the French boat bumped up against us and a furious wind howling. The wind had swung around and the French boat was now upwind of us, and had dragged onto us. The French couple were also on deck, also stark naked. There we were - four middle aged, naked yachties, yelling a mixture of French and English obscenities, trying to fend the two boats off each other. It didn’t help that they were convinced that we had dragged and were trying to get us to get our anchor up; with them pressing down on us heavily, that would have been impossible anyway. We finally persuaded them to lift their anchor and they moved off and anchored elsewhere, but in the meantime they had badly damaged our pulpit, cracked the teak toe rail supporting it, and broken the port light. Mike was furious, but we went back to bed, only to be awakened early next morning by these same folk wanting to swap phone numbers so we could pay for their damage! I politely put them straight and they sailed away quickly before I started about them paying for our damages.
The next day we moved round to the main anchorage, Maeva, which was very full. The hard winds we had felt out at sea had hit Tahiti badly and many yachts had dragged anchors and suffered damage during the storm. The weather continued to be awful; storms raged for days trapping us all on our boats and poor Forever swung and bounced uncomfortably, inches away from a very rocky reef. However, we had Globitou as neighbours and spent happy hours socialising with Jocylene and Ruedi. When the weather finally calmed we could get into the town of Papeete which was quite charming, very cosmopolitan. The largest city we had seen since Panama, there was great shopping to be had, but expensive of course. We went a bit mad on French cheeses, baguettes (about the only cheap thing to be found) and good wine. The much missed green vegetables could be found, but at a price. Most importantly, the 4th of July was our wedding anniversary and we bought me the black pearl. I decorated my boat with Gaugin post cards and bright cushions.
Mike’s hair was extremely blond by then and even I had developed fair-ish ends from the sun. Our friend Huub came and stayed with us a few days before joining a boat going on to the Cook Islands. He was lightening his luggage and generously passed all sorts of treasure on to us, including another black pearl which I saved for my sister. We stayed in Tahiti for three weeks, meeting up with many old friends, then we moved on through the group, firstly to the lovely Moorea, only 12 miles away and easily visible from Tahiti.
The island of Moorea from Papeete
Moorea is like a tropical garden with silver pineapple fields and a beautiful lagoon. We anchored in Opunohu Bay in nice shallow water outside a children’s holiday camp. The sunsets were glorious – not like Africa of course - but breathtakingly beautiful.
We took a long, wonderful walk over the mountain to Cook’s Bay on the other side and Mike joined Peter and Irene from Catspaw and walked to the Belvedere at the top of the island. There were manta rays in the anchorage at Moorea and various yachties bravely went swimming with them.
Huahine was our next port of call. Like Tahiti, it is divided into two islands – Huahine Nui, the large, and Huahine Iti, the small. It is actually a coral atoll with a fringing reef. After a horrid bumpy night’s sailing, we entered the pass and cruised down the lagoon heading for the recommended Baie d’Avea. By chance, we decided that was too far and stopped rather in the bay of Haapu and were very glad we did. Anchored in solitary splendour we met a charming local family, Enoch and Josyanne and their kids, traded for mangoes (made delicious chutney) good eating fish, some very chewy sea snails and a few containers of drinking water.
We took a long walk down to Baie d’Avea, getting a lift part of both ways fortunately, and passed many vanilla plantations. Other boats came into our idyllic spot so we moved up to the main anchorage and picturesque little village of Fare where we stayed for seven days, socializing with Catspaw and HiC’s. The snorkelling was not bad.
Our next stop was Raiatea which is enclosed in a huge fringing reef with the island of Tahaa. It was lovely there, but we didn’t stay long and moved on to our favourite island - Bora Bora.
Captain Cook baptised Bora Bora ‘the pearl of the Pacific’ (I totally agree with him) and its lagoon is considered the most beautiful in the world.
We spent three magical weeks here and this was probably our happiest and most memorable time in the Pacific. By this time, the wind had totally died and our time there was blissfully tranquil. The anchorage was good, the waters crystal clear and calm, the weather balmy and we bumped into many of our friends including Des and Ali and their boys on Ali Nuii whom we had not seen since Isabella. The snorkelling was brilliant.
Pot luck barbeque on the beach - Mary, me and Irene
Mike and I took the usual long walks and scavenged a whole hand of bananas from a felled tree, some of those divinely tasty pamplemousse and a couple of excellent mangoes.
Broken-hearted, AGAIN, we finally left the Society Isles on 21st August and headed ever westwards towards the Cook Islands.
Note: Our video camera had given up the ghost in the middle of the Panama Canal, and I was now running out of film for the camera, so many of the pictures in the posts from the Galapagos to the Cooks are from the libraries of other cruisers. I hope they do not mind that I use them.
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