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Huahine turned out to be one of our most enjoyable stops in the Society islands.

We explored to the very southern anchorage.  The weather having improved a high sun allowed us to get beyond the point that the chart stopped.  Here we found a good restaurant and a dive shop.  Steen and I were persuaded by a rather seductive French diving instructress to join her for a pass dive.  This we did but it turned out to be very tame after the Tuamotu dives.  She actually fed the fish to get them to come!  There were moments.  I saw a moray eel completely out of its hole.  A few sharks were seen and there were large rays.

 

After the dive Annabelle and myself and Steen took the dinghy across a bay to join Stuart, Annette and Christabel in a walk up a very steep hill to a local village.  When we got there we found no eatery of any kind and only soft drinks for sale!

 

Raiatea and Tahaa were enjoyed although we did not explore the south of the former.  At a place called Marina Iti we met up again with our Norwegian friends, Gunne and Tove on the Swan Embla.  This place is rather misnamed as it is not a marina but a series of mooring buoys off a delightful small hotel.  The French couple who own the hotel make yachties very welcome.  Lots of washing was done and a few really excellent meals were taken in the evenings.  A lovely bit of sophisticated life without the odd bland feel that all the larger hotel complexes have.

 

Saying goodbye to Gunne and Tove, who were laying up Embla and going home for a bit, we managed to get our gas bottles filled in Riotia and then left for Bora Bora.  Steen had left us in Riotia to fly on to Rarotonga and continue his world tour.  He is always a great breath of fresh air with his one hundred percent enthusiasm for Life, with a very definite capital L.  Christabel had been whisked away by Troubadour to spend some time with them and so Annette and I now found ourselves back to having the boat to ourselves for a few days.

 

A few anchorages and some days off the yacht club on Bora Bora and we were ready to get  Christabel back and set off to the Cook islands.  Friends had done the five hour guided walk to the top of the Bora Bora  mountain and originally Annette and I had been tempted but unfortunately both of us and Steen had suffered rather debilitating stomach pains for several days so the idea of such exercise was abandoned.

 

I find it hard to write about the Society islands with a lot of enthusiasm which is probably unfair to them.  Their scenery is magnificent and the facilities are good.  The trouble as far as we were concerned was the following.  Firstly they are developed for tourists with holiday hotels on most of the attractive bits of coast.  Secondly  the people were friendly but somehow cowed.  The French have given them an unnaturally high standard of living but at a cost.  All positions of authority at any level are as in the French Caribbean islands filled by French men and women.  The locals seem to have developed a rather lack lustre approach to life as a result of this and the large social handouts which we understand exist.  Thirdly the sheer number of yachts that sail this route is in itself rather sad.  I somehow did not sail the Pacific to spend time wondering if a given anchorage would have any space in it.  This was particularly so in these islands as the seasonal fleet tends to come together here.  The sailing is generally easy, the passes all marked and shopping easy if expensive.  These are our views and not necessarily those of Christabel who was on Troubadour for much of this time.  It was noted by all that she had visibly expanded on her return to us.  Life on Troubadour is obviously much more of a gastronomic (and alcoholic?) success than on Nordlys!  She had enjoyed her time exploring Riotia and Tahaa but ,we are delighted to say, fitted happily back in to life on 'Noodles'.

  

For the above reasons we decided to get off the 'Hiscock Highway' for better or worse and set off north to Penrhyn or to give it its local name Tongareva.  Listening to the various radio nets we did not hear of a single yacht that was going our way.  Actually the routes through the Cook islands are rather limited.  Via Rarotonga to the south or via Suwarrow to the north or even further north to Penrhyn.   Many of the Cook atolls have no entrance and thus are not good places to go in a yacht unless you like hanging off a coral ledge on the lee side of the atoll in the ocean swell.

 

Basically our trip north was a six hundred mile reach.  We started with twenty five knots across the deck at only sixty degrees off the bow for twenty four hours.  This was not as hard as it sounds as the seas were not large.  We then had an easy beam reach in fifteen knots for twenty four hours, then we finished with a broad reach but with lots of squalls of the usual forty knots or more and a lot of rain.  For the whole trip we had two reefs in the main most of the time.  As usual we arrived off our destination just before midnight.  I had thought that this would be no problem as the chart showed a safe anchorage on the outside of the reef but in the lee of it.  There was a full moon.  In practice the clouds and the fact that our radar could not be used to check out the GPS position plus the steady twenty five knot breeze made this course of events impossible so we hove to  and spent the night waiting for dawn.  The arrival of light showed us a very narrow unmarked  pass and it was obvious that the anchorage off the village of Omoka was going to be rather exposed.  High tide was at 1140hrs but we decided to try getting in at 1000hrs as the sun was very much in the right position.  In reality we never had more than three knots against us so we sneaked slowly in and took the route just behind the reef down to the village.  Annette up the ladder at the crosstrees and Christabel in the bow made life easy for me. 

 

The hook  took at the second attempt although all the noises showed that it was on coral and not sand.  The village seemed deserted but after a while people were seen coming from church.  A walk ashore produced a lot of friendly talk from the children and somewhat shy responses from the adults.  During the night the wind blew a good twenty knots and the snubber took a lot of strains.  In the morning I went ashore to check in.  This experience was so remarkable I will tell it in some detail.

 

The first people I saw were a work gang removing the generator, apparently to send away to Raratonga for repairs.  Ta Ta a huge local guy introduced himself as the harbourmaster/assistant minister/church warden/social worker etc.  He bid me climb on his small motor bike and he would take me to Andrew the customs/immigration/everything except health officer.  We went to his house.  I was asked to sit on a seat.  Ta Ta sat on the floor while we waited for Andrew.  Ta Ta told me a lot about himself and the village and asked if I had either double hooks for Tuna or hacksaw blades.  I promised him the latter but alas have none of the former.  Onto another bike with Andrew and off to his office.  This turned out to be a corner of a building that resembled a small hanger that had last been used some years previously but was still littered with the remains of a previous life.  I sat opposite Andrew  at his desk on an upturned box.  The paper work did not take long and I parted with some $50 US for various charges.  I asked him if I could go to the bank to get some NZ money.  'It will do you no good' he replied 'as they do not change foreign money or take Visa cards!'  He then said however I should take his bike to go and see.  He seemed so put out when I said I would walk the quarter mile that I had an instant motor bike lesson.  It was really beyond his comprehension that I did not know how to drive a motor bike.  I got to the bank in bottom gear.  As I arrived I realised I did not know where the brakes were as there was no handlebar brake.

The charming girl in the bank said my only chance was to go and see Warwick, a New Zealander at the airport,  who would change money.  'Just keep going about three miles down the road to the very end', she said. ' Would Warwick be there' I asked?  'Oh yes' she said 'he is the airport man and there is only one airplane a week so he will be in his house,.  Dubiously I set off, found two more gears and somehow stayed upright on the sandy road.  Getting to what I thought was the last house I stopped.  A man came out of the partly built house and asked if I was David!  Had I checked in?  Staggered, there was no phone in Andrew's office, I said yes.  'Go see Warwick in the next house then come and see me' he said.  At this stage the bike refused to start.  He told me to walk the hundred yards while he would sort out the bike.  I fled.  Warwick, the only man  so far I had met who did not smile and seem welcoming, told me he did not like changing money.  He mellowed and a deal was done, very much to his advantage.  Aged forty something he told me he had been on this island for over twenty years.  I say no more.  Back to the house builder and he told me he was Andrew's son and the Health Officer.  Another form, ten dollars down and I was on my way on a working bike.  Returning to Andrew he said he must keep our passports until we came back to leave.  This I did not like but argument was going to be fruitless.  Giving him a donation to the Sunday School Fund which I knew he administered I thanked him for the use of his bike and left for the wet dinghy trip back to Nordlys.

My leg was badly bruised from trying to start the bike and I was soaked but the whole surreal experience was all that I had come to the Pacific for and so such ailments were minor.

 

Half an hour  and a lot of awful strains and noises later we had the anchor out of the coral and set off across the lagoon.  With four of the eight miles done between the coral heads the skies went black and the last bit was interesting.  Just a few hundred yards short of the anchorage the skies opened and the rain came down in sheets.  We anchored in ten meters on sand, highly relieved.  We are in the lee of a motu, the village of eighty three souls is to our right and we are the fifth yacht to visit this year.  Three of the others are here and almost beyond belief one of them is David Mitchell (RCC) in our old yacht Ondarina!  I write this after sitting in her cabin having coffee and cake.  Memories of sailing her with our then young children came flooding back.  Since we anchored yesterday the sky has been mostly a black grey and we have collected thirty gallons of water for the tanks from our small cockpit awning.  Last night we made more electricity from the wind than we used but despite the weather gods being rather irritable we are happy in a snug and fascinating place.  We could have still been at sea or far worse we could have still been stuck in the coral on a lee shore with an eight mile fetch as we were for the much calmer night before last.  The next week sounds interesting if what we have been told by the others is true.  I will get let you know how things unfold as soon as I can.

 

Bora Bora from outside of the reef looking  North East.

Ubiquitous hotel development can just be seen on the shore

 

In the Bora Bora Yacht Club this roof support used to sprout a beautifully carved phallus which we had been told was admired

by many generations of yachties.  Recently it was cut off by the manager as being 'in bad taste'.  This somehow sums up the

sterilisation of French Polynesia.

 

Huahine anchorage.

 

As ever, happy times to all our readers

 

David Annette and Christabel