Photo shows Bora Bora's Mount Paiha across the island's lagoon from outside the encircling barrier reef

We're anchored in 21m off the town of Vaitape, inside iconic Bora Bora's lagoon. This is the last easy-to-enter island lagoon in French Polynesia, although little Maupiti is still another 25 miles to the west and Maupihaa a further 100 miles, but both islands have awkward, sometimes scary, passes.

The moderate El Niño (drat that kid!) has meant more wet, squally troughs arriving here, mostly reinforced from the series of cold fronts that wintry NZ is sending Eastwards through the Southern Ocean, their trailing entrails draped northwestwards across the tropics.

A nasty out of season tropical low is forecast to form just East of Niue next week but it evaporates almost as soon as it forms, somewhere between here and Rarotonga. A big fat high pressure system (bfh), which is giving NZ some lovely winter weather this weekend, is the cause of the low on its northern flank. Big highs are bad news in the tropics and particularly in the area between here and Tonga.

The Cook Islands have mostly lousy anchorages and are no place to look for shelter in anything except light to moderate trade winds. More's the pity, because the communities that still live on the little atolls and islands in the Cooks have a reputation for being some of the friendliest and welcoming in the Pacific.

Bora Bora is filling up with yachts heading west, then mostly south. We wanted to reach New Caledonia before looking for a weather window to NZ, but that looks increasingly unlikely now and like many others we may be forced to track south west from Southern Tonga.

Bora Bora is where French Polynesia makes the most of its tourism income (add Mo'orea and that must account for 90% of tourism numbers and dollars). On the main island itself - the 7 million year old volcanic plug that is slowly sinking into the sea - tourists are not that obvious, as they are herded out onto the resorts that are situated on the motus.

Bora Bora's barrier reef is made up of an almost entire chain of coral islands - motu - which have sandy beaches and lovely lagoon back yards to play in. The lagoon is almost entirely navigable right around Bora Bora itself except for one bit that is too shallow at the southern end. We have already circled the island by bike on the usual sealed road that hugs the coast. Like the other Society Islands, the coastal flat is pretty well occupied by small farmlets and houses owned by Bora Bora's Polynesian families, together with a sprinkling of French and other expats.

Its another waiting game - but, to be honest, we haven't really waited at all since entering the Pacific despite always keeping an eye on the weather. In fact, we have hardly been held up at all since the "Let Op!" days of Curacao in the ABCs last year. That's not bad!