The boat traffic going by the Bora Bora yacht club is considerable. Every half hour or so, the fast catamaran ferry to the airport goes by. There are numerous speedboats, larger power boats, rubber dinghys, and sailboats passing in the parade. Every now and then, a wake hits us just the wrong way and we roll so much that we have to be careful not to leave cups, glasses, and other tippy things in the wrong places.

There is a small field of dinghy moorings outside the reef, a few hundred yards south of the pass. We took our dinghy out, tied up to one and jumped into the water with our snorkeling gear. A tour boat was tied up to the closest mooring and its operator was cutting up pieces of fish and tossing them into the water. A huge cloud of black trigger fish was chasing the falling offerings, while a group of circling blacktip reef sharks darted into the fray from time to time, scattering the trigger fish. After a few minutes, three very large lemon sharks approached along the bottom, then one by one, they darted upward to grab the largest pieces of bait, chasing off all of the other fish. The lemons are very large, but apart from their sudden acceleration to the food, not agressive towards the swimmers. However, we heard that a woman was bitten by one of them in the last day or so. Apparently cocky divers take pieces of tuna and place them inside their wetsuits so that the sharks will come very close. The result is that there are several instances of shark bites each year. While we continued to watch, one of the tour operators dived down with handfuls of fish and became the center of the feeding cloud. We're beginning to see that the fish, including the sharks, are domesticated here at Bora Bora.

We learned that Alan, from Love Song, does refrigeration work so we had him take a look at our engine driven system. In Papeete we were told that because it is an R12 system (uses Freon), it could not be worked on and R12 could not be purchased---the only solution was to replace everything. Alan found that the pressure was low, found a can of R12 for sale locally, ordered in a new dryer, and now we have the system working again, and much more efficiently than before. He could not find the source of the leak, however, but he says it is probably very small. It's great to have the powerful refrigeration unit back in action and not to have to run the engine so much just to charge the batteries just to run the 12 volt refrigeration.

I wouldn't recommend Alan's cure for a cockroach infestation, however. He's a retired America West pilot, and while he was still working, would commute from Love Song in Mexico. After discovering cockroaches, he lit a couple of cockroach "bombs" --- they're like mosquito coils --- closed up the boat, and left on a flight to the US for work. Just before he landed, the pilot asked for him. Thinking he was somehow in work trouble, he went forward only to be informed that his boat had caught fire. Cruisers and the local dock people at Paradise Marina in Puerto Vallarta managed to get the fire out after smashing in the windows but the galley area and much of the interior was seriously burned. Luckily, the plywood overhead liner lasted long enough or the entire boat would have gone up. When we asked if there were any cockroaches left, he said yes, there were. The fire was in the upper half of the boat, and the roaches in the lower half must have thought it was just a particularly warm day. Alan also turns out to have spent a lot of time racing mountain bikes in Arizona, so we had a lot to talk about.

Our reason for coming directly to Bora Bora, bypassing Raiatea and Tahaa for now, was that strong winds were forecast for a week or so and we wanted to be where we would have plenty to do if normal boating activities were curtailed. The wind was quite strong, as predicted. Several boats who left just as the blow started reported on the nets that they were taking quite a beating. We'll head back to Tahaa and Raiatea when we've had our fill here and the wind has subsided enough to make it a pleasant trip back upwind, even if it is only 15 miles or so.

Although the places we visit and the experiences with the sea life and land visits are wonderful, the other cruisers you meet make the whole experience so much richer. You make friends, spend some time together, part ways, then often meet up again and again. The reunions can be quite severe, or at least the headaches the following morning are. Our friends Bruce and Marianne on Galivant have turned up in Bora Bora (five alarm headache), as have Victory Cat, Tender Spirit, and Tarahumara. Tane's been having a great time with the younger crowd here, from Jenny, Krista and Omar on Tarahumara, to Benjamin on Silk sheets and a whole crowd of young Danes on Orbit and Amazing. Brothers own Orbit and Amazing, and they take on board young people who come for one to three months. The brothers are dive masters, and the emphasis is diving. Amazing is a red steel boat, 40 feet long and there are six people packed on board. Victory Cat, moored nearby, gets a show daily as the young women passengers change on deck after swimming.

Tane and I borrowed the two folding bikes from Tarahumara and cycled around the island, some 35 kilometers in an hour and a half. There's only one real hill on the way, just after the recycling plant and dump. A dump in paradise?

We finally managed to contact Alban, the tall, blonde, tanned young Frenchman who provides kiteboarding lessons. The first lesson, just over three hours long, was all about flying the kite. First we flew a small practice kite on the beach. Then we inflated an 8 meter kite (it's a wing---the leading edge and a series of ribs inflate to hold the shape) attached the control lines, donned harnesses, launched the kite and then walked several hundred yards offshore to a large sandy area where we stood in water just over our waists. We first learned to hold the kite at various points on the leading edge of its flight envelope. If you hold it steady, it flies forward until it is just hovering, exerting no pull or very little. The control is a bar with a control line at each end and two control lines passing through a hole in the middle of the bar that then attach to your harness. If things get out of control, you just release the bar and the kite changes shape so that it just hovers with no power. You control the side to side flight by pulling one end of the bar toward you and pushing the other end away. To power up, you pull the bar toward you. The bar slides over the central control lines which stay at a constant length, while the side lines force the kite to change to a more aggressive lifting shape. We learned to control the kite with one hand, so that we could lie in the water with one arm extended forward, legs straight back, and the kite control in the other hand. You then get the kite flying at 45 degrees in front of you and you are pulled rapidly through the water, moving slightly upwind. The final exercise was to lie in the water with the kite flying downwind, then start pulling the bar toward you and rocking it from side to side. The kite does rapid figure eights in the air, dipping well below the no-power envelope, developing a huge pull with each swoop. You leap out of the water and race along in a series of bounds, losing your pants in the process---great fun.

The next lesson was to be a 30 minute review of the first lesson, and then start with the board. We booked for the following morning with Alban, but by dawn the wind had dropped so low, it would not have been worthwhile. With two days of very light winds forecast, we decided to sail to Tahaa instead.

We had a great time at Bora Bora, and would recommend it highly. However, we're looking forward to the much more "rural" Tahaa.