Bora Bora and the Coral heads
Zepher
Chris & Lyn Darch
Wed 27 Aug 2008 21:04
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Hi Folks,
Problem solved with the em system , technical hitch
.. anyway we are back with the system now ...
The story so far .. we had two days at Raiatea ,
not a very nice anchorage , with not much onshore either, it is the main area
for the charter boat industry , the wind picked up four two days gusting 40
knots briefly , not used to this sort of weather , rain to ..had a walk ashore
good set up for boat repairs, and many wrecks also, including a few with palm
trees growing through them !.
We left yesterday morning for Bora Boar, news
on the grape vines said that
Tahaa island was much the same as this one so we
opted to go straight to the big apple instead ..
Great sail down wind .. poled out Yankee and
off we went at 6 to 7 knots touching 8 at times, we were off the end of Bora
Bora SW corner by 1300 , then got the pole in and went to head sail on a close
haul, we were still doing a respectable 5 knots .. into the main entrance and
then picked our way down one of the small channels , to an anchorage off
the island of Toopua which is a small island with in the Bora Bora reef , just
to the west of the main island .
It is the shallowest anchorage we have been
in for a long while just 8m of water, all went well negotiating the channel
down in to the narrow anchorage , dropped the hook and settled in for the
evening , nearly everybody we have met in Panama was here , Trevelly , Summer
Wine,Sliepnier,Rhythm and Zephyr, on the radio we could here a lot of other
names that we have met since Panama , Bora Bora is the last staging
post before everybody goes either to the many small islands that scatter the
route to Tonga and Fiji , the next big meet will probably be Tonga were we will
all be gathering for the final push towards New Zealand and out of the Cyclone
region and into the NZ summer zone ...
At 6:30 this morning after a night of
grinding and tugging of the anchor chain around many coral and not much sleep, I
plunged full booted and spurred into the briny to untangle our chain from the
figure of eight configuration that we had wound ourselves into, it would have
been impossible to have retrieved the anchor in an emergency and the small gust
of wind we had been experiencing were enough incentive in these confined
anchorage's to make me take the plunge at first light , now full awake I am
putting pen to paper before we move off to the next anchorage, hopefully with no
coral heads !
A tired crew
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