We were very excited to arrive in Bora Bora. First of all, it's one of the few islands we had heard of before this trip, and, well, it's Bora Bora - paradise - right? Well, it certainly was beautiful, and we had some good times, but we had some bad also.
The first night we were there we picked up another mooring ball operated by a restaurant called Bloody Mary's. The moorings are free to patrons of the restaurant so we thought we'd go in for dinner, but we didn't know quite what we were in for. This place looked more like I'd expect a Polynesia themed restaurant in Hollywood to look, than like any other restaurant we'd seen in French Polynesia before this. It had a sand floor, and a big wooden bar with stools that looked like beautifully varnished tree trunks. It had a palm frond roof that came down so low you almost didn't notice that there were no walls on either end, and there were amazing rock pile sinks in the bathrooms. The gentlemen's sink had a very unusual wooden device that you had to pull to turn the sink on, but I can't go into more details because we are trying to keep this blog down to an 'R' rating.
We were starving when we got there and were surprised to hear that they were fully booked for dinner, but they told us we could partake of the appetizer menu at the bar. So, we plunked ourselves down on some tree trunks and proceeded to order a couple appetizers and some drinks. Fred continued with his island Maitai taste test. He's become something of an expert on them here in French Polynesia. It's not clear whether his favorite part is the drink itself, or the colored sugar they sometimes put around the rim, or the pineapple and crazy straw it's sometime garnished with, but it is clear that Fred likes them. We had planned to eat multiple rounds of appetizers, but we were shocked at how small the portions were for the price. The priciest was the chicken wings. There were four small wings on the plate which cost 1500 Polynesian Francs, which is about $19 USD. Yikes! We decided quickly that we couldn't afford to eat any more apps, however we did not seem to be detered by the prices of the drinks, and we continued to hang out and enjoy them. There was a continually changing set of people seated at the bar next to us because the hostess sent everyone over to the bar to get a drink before seating them. We chatted for a bit with a couple different groups of people who were staying at hotels, including a nice couple from New Jersey. Later, a young sailing couple from Canada whom we had met briefly before showed up at the bar also and we got to trade sailing stories with them for a bit. Eventually, we all decided to head back to the boat and chat more there. When we got the bill we were a bit shocked to see how many Maitais were on it. We actually wondered if there could be a mistake. We had definitely been there for awhile but Fred didn't look like a fella who'd had THAT many drinks. Well, he didn't until we began the walk down the dock to the dinghy. As we reached the landing where the dinghys were, one of our new sailing friends said something funny and next thing we knew Fred was laying on the dock laughing. Yep, just laying there on his back laughing with his feet in the air. Then, after he recovered from his laughing bout, he climbed into the dinghy, sat down on the pontoon, and leaned back, but since there are no seat backs on a dinghy pontoon he kept leaning right into the water. It was just like the water entry for scuba diving except that he was dressed in island formal wear - his dress shorts and a hawaiian shirt - instead of scuba gear. At this point Jeff and Angie began to think the Maitai count on the bill was probably correct after all. And our new sailing buddies, who had walked down the dock with us, had a new story to add to their repertoir.
The next day we went for a fantastic snorkel around some very large coral heads near the south west side of the island, then we motored up the lagoon and picked up another mooring at the Bora Bora Yacht Club so we could be closer to the town and get some errands done and do some scuba diving. We also had nice barbeque onshore with some other cruisers while we were there.
A few days later we had finished our town stuff and we headed over to the east side of the island, again staying inside the lagoon. Over on the east side sailing was a bit trickier because there are large areas of the inner lagoon that are quite shallow and the area is not charted all that well. With Jeff on the bow conning us through the really shallow spots we made it through OK all the way down the east side of the island until just before our final destination when the bottom of the boat kissed some sand as we went through one particularly narrow and shallow spot. After we were anchored in the truly lovely bay this spot led to, Fred and Jeff got in the water to check out the boat and found that we'd lost a bit of paint on the keel, but there was no real damage. Unfortunately, in order to leave the bay were were in, we would need to go back out through the same spot, so we dinghy'd over the next day to scope out the best route through it, but we couldn't find any way to go out that looked any deeper than where we came in. Let me make it clear that the chart does NOT show this place to be anywhere near this shallow, and we'd been encouraged to go here by some locals after we told them the boat draws 7.5 feet, so this was quite a surprise to us.
We spent the rest of the day anchored where we were and did some lovely snorkeling on the next motu. We took some stale bread with us (on the advice of some locals) and we were practically attacked by hordes of colorful fish coming after it. It was fun but strange to have them swimming right up to you. It felt a bit like swimming in someone's aqaurium. The water in this area was extroardinary. On the dinghy ride from the boat to the snorkeling area, we crossed at least 5 different shades of blue, and they didn't fade into one antother, instead there were very clear lines where one shade ended and another began. We'd not seen anything quite like that before.
The next day we left on the high tide but we still kissed the sand again getting out, but no worse than before. Whew. We thought we were in the clear then, but later in the day we managed to hit a single, solitary, little coral head that was sitting in about 14 feet of water. Jeff was standing up on the bow pulpit at the time, like he normally does whenever we are navigating through coral (his nickname is Eagle Eye, so who else are you going to put up there?) and he thought he had guided the boat around this coral, but we hit it, and the boat came to an abrupt halt, and suddenly Jeff was no longer standing on the bow pulpit - he was being launched into a sumersault into the water. Time slowed down enough for him so that he was able to watch his feet get farther and farther from the boat as he parted ways with it. We were going slow at the time in about 14 feet of water, so his landing was fine, and he didn't get run over by the boat even though he was swam right in front of it to retrieve his shoes that had floated off his feet. So all was well with him but we were all a bit rattled for the rest of the journey up the bay. After we got the anchor down in a safe spot Fred and Jeff dove on the boat again, and unfortunately this time they found a golf ball size divit in the fiberglass on the front of the keel that will need to be repaired at the next haul out, but we were all thankful that the damage wasn't any worse than that. We thought later about the excursion boat that was motoring near us at the time. There was only the boat driver in it, no passengers, but any of you who know Jeff can imagine the show that guy got watching him get launched into the air. Jeff said that if he had known the jolt was coming he could have gotten into a tuck and pulled off a one and a half before hitting the water, but Fred is NOT interested in repeating the scenario to see if he can actually pull it off.
We spent the night at that spot which was a lovely anchorage on the west side of the lagoon near a motu where some people appeared to live in ramshackly island style homes. These are quite a contrast to the luxury hotels that are only a few motus over, but it's nice to see that some of the locals still own and get to enjoy some of the beautiful spots on the island.
The next day we went back to the Bora Bora Yacht Club moorings and stayed for a few more nights while we reprovisioned the boat, made phone calls, did our banking and cleared out with customs. We also had a marvelous dinner at the yacht club one night. The yacht club, by the way, was not a big fancy building, it was a little open air restaurant at the base of the dinghy dock. There are no local boats that belong to the yacht club, it exists to take care of cruising boats and charter boats. The current owners are a young couple who've had it for a couple years now, and everything they've redone is really nice. The husband is from Tahiti and his wife is from Orange County, California. She came in on a cruising boat one day and decided to stay. Then her visa ran out and the moved to California for a bit and now have returned to Tahiti. The husband is the chef, so he and Jeff had a lot to talk about. From these conversations Jeff recommended that we eat there and we are really glad we did. It was island food with a French influence, done really really well.
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