Moorea
Quartermoon
Mike Share & Sammy Byron
Thu 1 Jul 2010 08:30
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We decided on the way to skip Cooks Bay and anchor
at Opunohu Bay instead (Cook actually landed here not in the bay bearing his
name) The backdrop is pure Tolkien. Akio kept calling it Mordor as its even more
remote than East Ryde (or wherever Gav and Dee are now living). The knife edge
ridge line is an old caldera side with yet more amazingly rugged mountains
covered in deep tropical foliage.
 We decided to be incredibly anti-social and by pass
the busy anchorage (30 boats, Baaaaaaaaaaa) and went to the head of the bay
where there were no other boats. Perfect, our own idyllic anchorage....It wasn't
until the next day that we realised there was a reason for there being
no other boats anchored there. It was a "no-anchoring zone" ......Oh
well...no-one said anything and we had a perfect view all to ourselves. That
night we found another reason why there were no other boats there. The holding
was rubbish and we were dragging anchor in the massive gusts coming down through
the valleys. We really did it bang on midnight just to show Akio that the
cruising life isn't always cruisey.
  We chilled on the boat, with the boys consuming a
months salary worth of beer and occasionally fixing bits and pieces.Akio was
incredibly keen to climb the mast and put some new lights up for us that he had
brought from the good ole' US of A. Excellent job done :-)
All too soon Akio's time was up and we had to get
him back to Tahiti. Wherein lay a small problem.....It was now blowing 35 knots,
gusting 40-45 and seas of 4 metre breaking waves coming from all over the
place. Not the sort of weather you want to head into, especially when the
direction you want go is bang into the wind. In fact every boat that left that
day and since lasted about 1 hour and turned around defeated.
The decision was made to stay put and Akio and Mike
headed off to the Hilton Bar (Posh resort with those not so exclusive anymore
bungalows over the water) to discuss alternative transport arrangements...These
involved a 4pm bus which never showed up so he ended up hitching (not so bad as
a very cute French chick stopped to pick him up) He then missed the last ferry
(we are not sure what he did in all that time?!?) and then had to hitch again to
the airport where luckily he managed to get on a 7min flight back to Tahiti for
his US connection...all in the nick of time!.
It was brilliant having AK onboard and we hope he
can visit again, although for longer next time.
As we have no outboard on our dinghy (It's
currently getting a head-job in Tahiti) the other boats in the anchorage have
been really kind. We carry a handheld radio for when we need rescuing and
have numerous boats keeping an eye on us ready to jump in their dinghy and come
rescue us or tow us when a gust comes in which makes it impossible to paddle
ashore. However on one occasion, another boat came to our rescue as he
heard some shouting and wanted to check that we were ok. In-fact we were fine it
was just Mike berating me for not paddling correctly or hard enough! How
embarrassing.... We owe a massive Thank-you (yet another one) to Chris and
Christine on "Stray Kitty" who have overloaded their already full dinghy (2 + 3
kids) to ensure we don't miss out on the snorkeling sites.
Talking of which, today we snorkeled at an
archeological site of about 8 underwater stone Tiki's. Not sure how they got
there but they are a little way in front of a missionary church which is the
oldest church in French Polynesia. Rumour has it that the missionaries (in there
infinite wisdom) burned all the wooden Tiki's when bullying the locals into
Christianity, so the Polynesians carved stone Tiki's and placed them
in the shallows out of sight of the missionaries. We also snorkeled with
stingrays that are so friendly you can stroke them and there were also a few
black tip sharks cruisin around.
We plan to leave in the next day or two back to
Tahiti as there is a small weather window and we desperately need to get our
dinghy engine back.
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