We left Fakarava in high spirits but with sore heads, there was too much spirits involved in the previous nights celebrations. We glided out the crystal clear channel able to see all the coral 14m below the boat as if we were floating on air out into the pacific again. Happy days, a few good days sail with a steady beam wind and little swell. The trip to Tahiti took 4 days overall.

Tahiti is surrounded by a reef with channels leading into a protected harbour in Pepeete the capitol, we arrived in around 3 o clock, greeted by surfers, mega yachts, jet skis and divers and other people having some aquatic fun, some having topless fun too. Tahiti looked like a hive of activity to be enjoyed. The island itself is impressive rearing out of the sea over a thousand meters. Derry had been through before on his last circumnavigation of the globe and knew the place well, so clearing the reef and making our way through all the traffic to the marina was no hassle at all. We tied up with the rest of the fleet in our own very convivial corner of the marina conveniently close to the marina bar and just in time for happy hour too. We the crew had a friend in the area for those that know him it's Danny Reidy he's been living in Tahiti with his girlfriend for 4 years now. He was pretty happy to see us, poor guys been deprived of all things Irish for a while, no barrys, dennys, clonakilty , Guinness or the bit of Irish lunacy. He'd been given a carte blanche to go and enjoy himself.

We organised to go offroading in a jeep cherokee the next day, you know the car that Ken drives. As in Barbie and Ken. I thought it was great craic that he lived in a pink condo too with his blonde girlfriend with their  teal green vespa. We might have given him a little bit of stick over it.  Well anyway as soon as we were a few miles off the streets of Papeete the roads degraded to an absolute shambles worse than every boreen in Ireland put together, more like a miniature topographical map of Afghanistan than a road. And in the jeep we felt every bump with its rack and pinion steering. In all fairness the jeep got us around and up to a lookout over the centre of the island where we stood on a precipice and looked into an absolutely massive caldera with a plateau in the centre with groves of orange trees. You know the sort of scene you'd like to capture but you can't do it justice with a camera, it was quiet beautiful.

 Don appropriated Danny's vespa to take his girlfriend Helene out for the day the next day. Something about scooters gives me the heeby jeebies. Sitting on a scooter ergonomically that's not a position I want to be if I'm in a crash. I wouldn't like to end up going to St Peter like a pretzel with my knees and feet around my ears, and from what I saw of the French people driving there that was all too much a possibility. Anyway he had a nice day tootling around on the contraption while Cameron and I helped Danny repair his rib. With which I was duly impressed, serious boys toy, more Gi Jo than Barbie and Ken. It was an out of service customs delta centre console, fits 8 people and had a nice 75 hp mariner engine at the back. And a sound system and a chilly bin for those days you want to drop an anchor on the sand bar and go to the sand bars.

The sand bar in Tahiti is a bit like ronseal it does exactly what it says on the tin, the whole weekend people go out there with their boats anchor up and wade around in hip deep water either visiting the tiki bars which are large catamarans of tribal design with floating parties onboard, or they make their own parties. Well unfortunately we couldn't put Danny's boat in the water as the tubes didn't hold enough pressure to do it safely so we got a few of the world arc crew together and bumbled out in our yellow croc proof dinghy with Cian as the skipper, sober driver and babysitter for us simpletons. Unfortunately Cain's eardrum which he perforated in the Galapagos had gotten infected and still hadn't healed up properly. Cameron dressed for the occasion wearing pink lycra tiger shorts and a luchadores mask with an Australian flag as a cape  standing on the bow drinking a beer. As soon as we arrived at the sand bar we realised that we were motoring through a paddle boarding competition, the whole thing was being sponsored by red bull and televised. They had the go pro copters in the air and photographers on boats and there was a serious crowd on the sand bar. We had a good laugh egging Cameron on while the photographers turned their cameras on us.

The day after that we got up early to cast off and travel around to the far industrial side of Pepeete to hoist the yacht out of the water. We had maintenance to do on the prop, and we had to anti-foul the hull for the entry requirements into Australia. Doing antifouling in the tropics is a maniacally fiendish torture, or it was just Irish of us to be doing it at midday. It  involved us getting into overalls in the screaming heat and looking like the telly tubbies la la , dipsy and po. By the end we were thoroughly dehydrated and clinging to any bit of shade we could find under the boat, I fancy I saw ants through the shimmering heat popping on the tarmac and my boots catch fire. We stayed there that night and the next day the crane gang got us up at 7 and we were plopped back in the water and we were back in Marina Tahina before 9.  

Don and I organised to do some free diving lessons one of the days as Danny's girlfriend Perrine is a dive instructor with a local dive company. It's quiet an involved thing free diving it takes a lot of control, meditation and self restraint. I definitely recommend it. Also Perrine hooked up Don and I with a Tiger Shark feeding dive. This is one of these situations that you get yourself into without really thinking about it. You really don't know what to expect, 'is it a good idea is it a bad idea' sort of scenario. Well we were to find out.

 We weren't without apprehension when we made our way out there to the dive site. I mean come on, I felt like we were going to be that goat tied to the post from Jurassic park. The one the one where the T Rex knobbles it. There's a little bit of peer pressure involved. It's sort of like smoking a cigarette in school out behind the bus shelter, everyone else is doing it. Everyone had a pallid look of fear plastered all over them. Looking at the pale faces bobbing around in the water you sure as hell don't want to be the one to chicken out and everyone else is thinking the same thing but because most of ye are strangers no one really just says 'are we completely nuts?'. There was a serious current so we had to grab a line and drag ourselves to the front of the boat and pull ourselves down 20 meters on the mooring line. I'll tell you one thing you don't want to have a moustache if you're wearing a mask as it fills gradually, which I didn't really need for my nerves going down blind. I cleared my mask once we got to the coral heads on the bottom and was relieved there were only reef sharks around, in terms of sharks they are soft cuddly critters like the Springer spaniels of the sea. The divers then brought down washing machine drums full of tuna heads and started chumming the water, the little fellas went into a feeding frenzy which after a while drew a big lemon shark about 2.5 meters long after a while I was thinking big whoop we could do this ourselves from the boat these were all sharks we'd seen tons of and knew that they weren't particularly threatening to divers. Then the lemon legged it, or whatever the shark equivalent of legging it is. The water around us calmed the other sharks cleared, and this absolute monster of a shark cruised in from the murk. It was massive like a  big sleek submarine with teeth, the worst thing about it wasn't the teeth it was the eyes. Cold inky pools of black recessed behind cartilage gives the tiger shark an absolutely alien stare, as you look into them you really can't fathom what it's thinking there's no common ground. You know you're food and it's just assessing if it really wants to eat you. Which it could definitely do, one bite would put you in half. This was the biggest one in the area a 4.5 meter female. She just circled around us chomping and crushing tuna heads with lightning quick jerking bites while all the stragglers went for the scraps in her wake. Looking at the way she moves there is no doubt at all that your dinner, she moved with a slow languid grace that was deceptive because in an instant she could belt off or turn on a dime. Eventually the divers ran out of tuna and she circled around us closer and closer investigating the washing machine drums. Eventually she stuck one in her mouth like a lollipop and started champing at it. That seemed to tick her off a little and she came over investigating us cruising right through us pushing us back onto the coral, eventually she seemed to disappear and Don bobbed around way up with his fins attached to the coral to see if he could catch sight of her. He turned to face us and from behind a mound of coral the shark loomed over him, her mouth was literally resting by his head as if she was sniffing him, he saw our reaction and curled down putting the metal of his tanks to her which was enough to disinterest her, she probably had enough washing machines to satisfy her. Eventually she lost interest and we got to resurface. We were on absolute Hi Do after that, but I'll tell you something I wouldn't do it again, not unless I was in a cage. Maybe South Africa so, after all the only other shark on my bucket list is a Great White.

At any a rate that was Tahiti the pearl of the pacific, we said our goodbyes to Danny over a few cocktails on a beach resort in Moorea, and from there we  went to Bora Bora which was no great shakes, all resorts and fake paradise with surly locals. It's long gone time to say goodbye to French Polynesia, it was definitely a once in a lifetime experience. I'll see you cats again at the cook Islands.