August 4, 1998- Wandering Aimlessly Through the Societies

Part 1

One night in Papeete as I sat in the cabin with a cold Hinano beer contemplating a chart of the Society Islands. I asked Judy, “Which islands do you want to stop at; there are six”, and I listed them: “Tahiti, Moorea, Bora Bora, Huahine, Raiatea, Tahaa and Maupiti”. We were already at Tahiti, so there were six more.

“All of them” She answered, without hesitation.

Maybe it surprised me; we’d been skipping along pretty fast since we hit Polynesia, stopping only here and there, but I accepted it. She wants to stop at all of them, we’ll stop at all of them.

In the end we skipped Maupiti; after getting hung up at Huahine and Bora Bora we had to in order to make it to Fiji for the Musket Cove Regatta by early September. Still visiting the other five was a decently thorough tour of the Societies.

“I guess we’d better get going in a day or two then”, I answered, and I started to plan an itinerary.

Moorea.

A couple of days later we cast off our shore lines and stood out of the pass, bound for Opunoho Bay, on Moorea, 35 miles away. It felt good to be at sea again, reaching across the SE Trades, rising and falling in the heavy pacific swell. That same afternoon we were anchored in Robinson's Cove, with stern lines ashore, next to our friends on Annapurna, and looking out our hatch at Mt Tohiea’s famous profile. The place looked and felt like the movie set for South Pacific. It was.

It was fun to hook up with Buddy and Ruth on Annapurna. We’d sailed with them in Mexico, including that long hot, summer in the Sea of Cortez, and crossed the Pacific the same month, so we hung out with them for a few days exploring Moorea.

A dingy ride out to the reef quickly revealed that the coral was mostly dead and bleached, and there were no fish. We found ourselves taking walks around Opunoho Bay’s shoreline instead of going diving, seeing native homes and meeting natives; plus we saw a flock of sheep and a cow; pretty exciting. One day a family, (a man and two children) paddled out on half of a surf board to visit us. We had a polite conversation with them but we didn’t invite them aboard. On another day we hiked up Mt Tohiea to the Belvedere lookout, and a day or two day before we left Moorea we took the bus to Cook’s Bay, then to Afareaitu, and the high speed ferry to Tahiti where we visited Jim and Annie on High Roler, just arrived from Mexico. We got back to Opunoho Bay after dark and we couldn’t see where to have the bus stop to let us off. In the end we went past the place where the boats were tied to shore and we had to stumble back in the dark.

So that was Moorea; other than the scenery, not much for us here. Off to the next island.

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Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Bora Bora