Wed, August 27
The guys rode bikes to the village and then on to Bloody Mary's, a pub about 5 miles away from the marina, for lunch. Stan went into a bank to cash his Traveler's Checks, but the line was so long that he decided to use his ATM card instead. They looked for a welder who could weld our forward stanchion that has a crack at the base. It's one our dinghy hits against when we pull it up on deck. We try to keep it pushed off the stanchion, but the guys have been raising/lowering the dinghy by themselves for the past three weeks and must have been rough on it. They came back to the marina five hours later. They couldn't find a welder and Stan had a bloody knee from a minor bike accident.

Meanwhile, Casey got her shower stuff together and asked me to go to the marina with her. I took the Neo (what I use to write my blog), a couple of books, a drink, and a few snacks so I could relax in the marina's not-yet-opened-for-business open-air restaurant. As Casey showered, I read a weather guide book borrowed from Fin on Zulu. George came by with his laundry, but the machines were full, so he went back to Astra to get his bocci balls and Oliver. They played while waiting for a washing machine (each only holds 4 kilos of clothing and costs 500cfp).

Casey went back to Adventure to get more snacks, drinks, her book, and some playing cards. Tara returned to shore with her and they both went to challenge the guys at bocci ball. Cruisers that I knew came by in a steady stream to get a beer or two from the bar and sit and talk with me for a while. One of the neat things about this lifestyle is that most cruisers aren't in a big hurry to get somewhere. I sat on that patio all day, overlooking the dock and the only entrance channel to Bora Bora. The girls played bocci ball all day with George and Oliver, and only bugged me twice so they could get money to buy sodas at the bar. I saw Ash jump from the water onto Astra's dinghy, tied to the Yacht Club dock. He'd swam from Astra's mooring to get the dinghy because the shore party didn't bring their VHF radio so they could be called when someone on the ship wanted to come ashore. Sally and Jeremy had hailed every ship they knew in the marina to get a ride, but no one had their radios on. Astra's shore party (George and Olli) were suppose to wash one load of clothes and then come back to the boat, but instead, they played bocci ball all day. Sally was beside herself and gave both the boys a verbal tongue lashing. Jeremy promised new rules would be put in place to prevent this from happening again. Sally went into the laundry room with George and Olli to see how the laundry was progressing. George felt his clothing inside the plastic bag and happily said, "These clothes are quite dry!" Sally shook her head in disgust and said, "That's because you haven't put them into the washer yet!" Sally said that the guys think the clothes get magically washed by themselves.

Ino's crew came by and invited us to an evening of fun and games the next night in honor of Emma's 21st birthday. They said there would be a dance-off, so I should tell the girls to be ready. When I mentioned it to Tara and Casey later, they freaked out. "Mom, we are NOT going to dance in front of everyone!" the exclaimed in unison. I smiled and told them not to worry, I had the perfect solution...learn the Napoleon Dynamite dance and do it with the Astra boys. Now it was starting to sound fun. I called Sally and gave her the suggestion. She thought it would be perfect because the Astra boys were refusing to do the free-style dance-off.

When Sean and Stan got back, they sat with me on the patio for a while. Sean got a tip from one of the marina guys about who may be able to help get the stanchion welded, so Sean grabbed a bike and rode back into the village. Rubbing his scrapped knee, Stan would have no part of another bike ride, so I took him back to Adventure where he showered and then took a nap.

I motored back to the marina to wait for Sean and Fred from Ogopogo had dragged my table and all my stuff that I'd left on it further out on the patio so we could sit in the breeze. He'd had a lot of fun at the BBQ the night before and asked if we could do it again that night. I told him that we had leftover lasagna to eat, but the next night we could meet at the marina and have pizza delivered. He was all over that. "And then the next night after that we could do another BBQ?" Peg, his girlfriend, had joined the conversation and said, "Fred, we don't have to all eat together every night!" "O.k.," he said with his head down. But I could see where Fred was coming from. I told him that it was interesting how we all left Panama about the same time and that was really where our last feeling of a large community was. Traveling over thousands of miles of open ocean and visiting small, barely-inhabited islands, we'd been in some of the most beautiful places in the world. But islands are starting to look the same now and it's rare to see a new kind of reef fish when we snorkel. We've seen other cruisers along the way, but what we're all starting to crave is being a part of a community. Since Bora Bora is the last French Polynesian island and the jumping-off point for the Cook Islands, it is a natural gathering place for cruisers to make final preparations for the next crossing, which is more than 1,000 miles. There are beautiful spots to anchor around Bora Bora, but Sean wants to stay on the mooring ball until Stan leaves tomorrow. The weather charts are showing a large storm coming through South Pacific in the next few days, with 30+ knot winds from the south-west and large seas. So we'd rather be on a mooring ball than at anchor. The mooring field has lots of gusty winds that sometimes disrupt our sleep at night, but we don't have to worry about dragging anchor.

Thu, August 28
It was a beautiful day. The wind had died down and large, fluffy clouds gave texture to the sky. The girls were excited to practice their Napoleon Dynamite dance for the evening's festivities, so I took them to the Yacht Club. They were a bit embarrassed to practice the dance in front of the people walking through the club, but struggled through it. The Astra boys seemed to have other plans for the day than learning dance moves, so I told the girls they would probably be on their own. They seemed o.k. with it. Clair from Ino saw the girls practicing and asked if she could join them. They were ecstatic. Clair said that she'd get Marnix, Ino's captain/owner, and Bruce, here other crew mate, to join them in the dance. Since the guys weren't available to practice as much, they'd just learn a couple of moves and then join in at various spots. They had practiced for a few hours when Sally and Jeremy joined us. I showed them the pizza menu so they could put their order in for the pizza dinner we'd planned. Casey said, "Mom, I'm starving! Can we please order pizza for lunch too?" This didn't sound like a good idea to me, but everyone else thought it was. We placed our lunch order with the Yacht Club lady, who called it in for us. Unfortunately, the pizza place had closed for lunch. Yes, you heard me right. It closes at 1pm so the employees can have a lunch break. Just when all their potential customers are hungry, they close. I wondered if we'd get our pizza that night...surely the employees need a dinner break as well.


The pizza came late and luke-warm, but we were hungry and it tasted good. The festivities for the evening included the dance and a treasure hunt. In addition to the 25 people we were with all the Yacht Club employees and several tables of other cruisers who had heard about the dance and came to watch - gathered around with cameras ready as the music started. Bruce, tall and blond-headed, was the least-practiced of the five dancers, so Clair had told him to stand straight and cross his arms over his chest on the parts he didn't know. Marnix was really into his dancing bits, gyrating his hips in exaggerated movements with the music. The three girls held everything together and were in-synch the whole time. Tara had worried that she'd be off on her timing, but did perfect. The crowd of 50+ people broke into a cheer at the end.

Then the treasure hunt was to start. The Astra guys had exchanged participation in the dance-off with creating a treasure hunt. I could see the envy in their eyes when they saw how good Marnix and Bruce looked in the dance. All they could do now is hope that the treasure hunt was well-received.

They started by reading the first clue and a couple of people running about to find the next one. When that clue was found, along with a bag of candy, many more people joined in the mad rush around and through the Yacht Club, looking to solve the clue. It was a lot of fun. The grand prize was a large top, about the size of a 1/2 liter bottle that had many colors light up when it was spun hard.

Later, we went back to Adventure and found that we'd been robbed. Sean got on the VHF radio and told everyone who was listening that we'd been robbed. He and I jumped into the dinghy with a really crappy flashlight (because our $125 super torch had been stolen) and looked around for skiffs in the anchorage area. We went back to the Yacht Club to tell everyone who was till there and to call the police. Tieva told us the police were useless and jumped into the dinghy with Sean to go search the shoreline. The came back empty-handed. See Tara's blog for the rest of the details.

Fri, August 29
After a fretful night of sleep, we woke up early to go to the gendarmerie. We went to the Bora Bora Yacht Club first to see if Tieva was up and about, hoping he could come with us and translate. He wasn't, so Stan, Sean, and I dinghied to the village, about 15 minutes away. We stopped by Air Tahiti to see what we needed to do to get Stan home. They needed a police report and a temporary passport. We walked to the Gendarmerie and talked with Koko. He spoke a little English and rapidly understood what had happened to us. Our first priority was to get Stan home. Koko said that he could provide a temporary ID for Stan, which would get him from Bora Bora to Tahiti, but he needed a temporary passport to get him the rest of the way home. Stan would need to leave on the next Bora Bora flight. We explained to him that we would not be sending Stan to Tahiti to wait for a temporary passport. He could wait here with us and when his passport was ready, he would go to Tahiti. Koko called Christopher at the American Consulate in Tahiti. Christopher said that the timing was unfortunate because Stan's temporary passport must be issued from the consulate in Fiji, which is one day ahead of us. It was Saturday morning there and the offices were closed. In addition, the US Labor Day holiday was on Monday and is recognized by the US consulate offices. Therefore, the earliest he could get the paperwork done was on our Monday. He was o.k. with doing all of Stan's paperwork by phone/email and letting Stan stay with us here in Bora Bora until the papers were ready. He'd verify everything with Stan in person when he flew to Tahiti to pick up the paperwork. He said that there was a slight chance that he could find someone working in the Fiji office on the weekend, so we should come back to the gendarmerie the next day at 10am and call him.

Christopher was very polite and helpful, seeming to want to help us almost as much as we wanted him to help us. In clear contrast was the local gendarmerie. The perpetrators had left dirty foot and hand prints all over Adventure's swim step and cockpit. This was one very big clue that they were not fellow cruisers. At the very most, we have sand on our feet...never mud. I asked when they would come to our boat to get fingerprints and Koko said, "Madame, we do not have a boat. It is broken." "That's o.k. we'll take you in our dinghy," I replied. "No, we will not come to take prints for this," he said. We were so frustrated. Koko looked toward the door and got up, indicating that we should leave.

"Where do we file a police report on the incident?" I said. "For your insurance?" he replied. "Well, yes, for our insurance, but also so you can catch the people that did this and have a record of it in case any of it is recovered!" I said. Boy, this guy was really ticking me off. I began to feel that he was in on the whole thing. It was clear to me that the gendarm here do not solve crimes or apprehend people, they just fill out paperwork, and as little of that as possible. What I wanted back most was our computer and external hard drive that held all our photos since Panama. For the past 4 or 5 months were gone. They'd been backed up, but the thieves had taken the back up drive too.

Koko reluctantly filed a report and told us to bring a list of all our missing stuff to him in the next day or two.

The rest of the day was a blur of trying to find model/serial numbers of the stolen items, borrowing other cruisers computers to make Skype phone calls, and explaining to people what had happened. I called Sean's mom so she could get Stan's flights rescheduled. We were hoping for the best, so had her schedule them for Monday.

Sat, August 30
We spent a few hours cleaning the boat. Sean took girls to the Yacht Club to play bocci ball in the afternoon. I expected them back on the boat for dinner because I hadn't prepared anything to BBQ at the Club, but Peg had brought extra food that night and ended up feeing them BBQed chicken, potatoes, carrots, bean/veggie salad. I made paninis and tomato soup for Stan and me and had a relaxing night on board.

Sun, August 31
The radio was alive with chatter in the morning and we quickly found out that three boats anchored near Bloody Mary's had been boarded by thieves while the owners slept. Our friend, Fiona from Trenelly, awoke while their boat was being robbed and Jason, her husband, gave chase. The thieves set Trenelly's dinghy adrift so Jason couldn't chase them, but another boat in the anchorage heard him yelling and came with his dinghy to help with the chase. The thieves paddled their aluminum dinghy to shore and had enough time to grab a few of the items they stole before jumping into a car and driving off. Jason took the aluminum dinghy back to his boat so he could take it to the gendarmerie.

We needed to go to the gendarmerie to finish filing Stan's police report, so all five of us jumped into the dinghy and headed to the village. We figured that we would lend support to our fellow cruisers who had gone to file their police report too. With 11 of us at the police station, we looked like a formidable group, but the gendarm didn't seem to be very impressed. Fiona speaks French fluently, so she was the spokesperson for those who'd been ripped off. The police just wanted to file the paperwork and get us out of their office. They had to be pressed to go to the aluminum dinghy to take finger prints. Those cruisers who'd touched the dinghy had their prints taken too. One backpack was recovered from the aluminum dinghy. It contained a cell phone and some pot. The police called the owner of the cell phone and found out he was a local and said his phone and camera had been stolen. Fiona wanted to be sure that the police would get the cell phone guy's finger prints to see if they were on the aluminum dinghy, but the police were non-committal. They said that's not really how they did things in French Polynesia and that people had different rights than in other countries. The aluminum dinghy ended up belonging to the police man's friend, so we're quite sure there won't be any follow up there either. It is really frustrating how the police don't want to do anything to actually catch the thieves.

When we returned to Adventure, the girls and I wanted to go snorkeling outside the pass. Sally said to come pick her up so she could go with us. We snorkeled first inside the pass, but there weren't many fish. Outside the pass, we tied to a mooring ball and jumped into 40-foot deep water that was crystal clear. Beautiful coral heads surrounded by masses of colorful fish flourished beneath us. Sally quickly swam to me and grabbed my arm in a panic. She pointed to a black-tipped reef shark swimming below us. Although Sally is a competent tank-diver and snorkeler, she doesn't like sharks. But these sharks were swimming along the bottom and didn't seem interested in the top-layer of water where we were. "I'm going back to the dinghy," Sally said. I convinced her to swim with us toward the shoreline where it shallowed and after a while she was fine. It was a beautiful snorkeling spot and we saw every kind of reef fish we cared to see. The sharks left us alone and Sally felt comfortable to swim back to the dinghy with us even though I'd offered to motor in toward shore to pick her up.

We dropped Sally off on her boat and then headed to shore to take showers. We were dripping wet. Mystere's captain and crew and Ogopogo were sitting at the tables at the dock and yelled for me to sit with them while I waited for my turn at the showers. I felt a bit awkward, with wet hair and swim suit, but Joost pulled out a chair and poured a glass of champaign for me. The girls got into a game of p�tanque and played for a few hours. Then, Casey came running up to me with her hands held together. "I finally found one!" she yelled. I knew right away what it was. I grabbed my empty champaign glass and told her to put it in. She slipped a baby gecko into the glass. I'd told her that the only pet she was allowed was a gecko and she'd been looking for one she could catch for the past few months. She held her hand over the glass so it couldn't get out. Tieva, the Yacht Club owner, was celebrating his birthday and came by to see what was going on. He pulled some palm fronds off the roof, folded them several times, and then put them into the glass. He instructed Casey to go get some sand to add and then took the glass into the kitchen to put some foil over the top. He gently poked some holes in the top and then handed it back to Casey. Lots of names were discussed, but Casey finally settled on Albert. We took Albert back to Adventure and then let him loose. Hopefully he'll let us see him once in a while and eat lots of bugs that come onto our boat.

Mon, Sept 1
Sean and I took Stan to the village marina where the ferry to the airport would pick him up. The wind was still strong and blew sea spray onto us as we slowly motored to the village. We had to cover Stan's luggage with a picnic blanket so it wouldn't get wet in our dinghy ride. Stan had a special letter from the gendarmerie that would get him onto the plane from Bora Bora to Tahiti, but to get from Tahiti to the USA he needed a temporary passport that Christopher from the American Consulate in Tahiti would bring to Stan when he arrived in Tahiti. Christopher asked that Stan come and pick up his papers at the consulate office, but I explained that we really needed him to deliver the papers because Stan would surely get lost trying to find the office. Besides, he would have two large suitcases to lug around. Christopher was kind enough to agree to deliver the papers to Stan.

After seeing Stan off, we went to the grocery store to buy baguettes and then back to Adventure.

Casey was in the mood to cook, so I helped her make banana muffins. To make them even more special, we put chopped pecans on top before baking them and then drizzled a frosting over the top once they were done. The girls dinghied warm muffins to Astra, Ogopogo, and Decorcy Spirit (we'd borrowed four eggs from them to make the muffins). The got rave reviews from all who ate them. Jeffery said, "It was a surprise when I got the muffin and then it was a whole other surprise when I bit into it!" Jan said that he wants to make muffins with us next time so he knows how to do it.

Tues, Sept 2
The girls and I went to the Yacht Club to wash clothes and take showers. We wanted to go snorkeling later in the day, so stopped by Ogopogo to see if Peg wanted to come with us. She doesn't swim, so hadn't been snorkeling in these beautiful S. Pacific waters. I had told her the day before that the girls and I would take her in one of our orange life jackets and pull her around in the water. She sounded a bit nervous about it, but didn't say "no." When we arrived to see if she wanted to go with us, she was in the middle of defrosting her freezer and didn't know when she'd be done. I wasn't sure if she really was defrosting her freezer or was just using this classic excuse. We drove over to Astra and asked if Sally wanted to come snorkeling with us, but she thought the bad weather would have made the spot we wanted to go too rough.

We had decided to BBQ some steak for dinner, so we motored around the mooring field to see if anyone else wanted to join us. It started sounding like we were going to have a large crowd, so I informed the Yacht Club.
We dragged our large bag of laundry up on the dock and into the laundry room. There were three small washers, two of which were working hard at washing someone's clothes. The other was broken. Four loads of clothes were in front of us. One of the Yacht Club employees told me each machine takes about one hour and twenty minutes per load. I calculated that it would be at least three hours before a machine was available to wash my clothes. I also found out that each small machine only holds four kilos of laundry, which isn't much. I probably had at least six loads in my one bag. That would take four or five hours. Wow, this would take all day! We took showers and then went back to Adventure with our dirty laundry. There had to be a laundry somewhere in the village...

Sean had told the girls that he'd take them to Bloody Mary's restaurant for lunch. This is where many famous people have come to eat and it displays a list and some photos of those people. Sean, the star-struck one in the family, had already taken his dad, who he evidently inherited his star-struck gene from. Sean had bragged to the girls about how he ate in a restaurant that Bill Gates had eaten in. So, on a very blustery day, we piled into the dinghy and headed up-wind. The wind was blowing 20-25 knots and the waves were spraying into the boat. I had a picnic blanket to cover us a bit to keep us a little dryer. Sean drove slow to lessen the spray. After about 20 minutes, we hadn't progressed much. I suggested that we reroute to the Saint James restaurant, only a few minutes away. Everyone agreed. The patio palapa roof on the Saint James had blown down overnight, so we couldn't tie our dinghy to it. We ended up motoring into the village to tie the dinghy and then walking 15 minutes back to the restaurant. As we enjoyed a nice meal, some other cruiser friends joined us.

When we were done, the small electronic store next door had opened and Sean found a camera card reader. Ours had been stolen. The only problem now was that our charger for the camera had been taken too. Sean thinks he may be able to hotwire something together for it, but I don't have high hopes. We bought some bread and a few groceries and then dinghied back to Adventure.

Jeremy came by and we found out that George and Ashley didn't get their banana muffins because Sally had eaten them all. Jeremy had just started a diet, but couldn't resist a muffin because we'd made another batch and they were hot out of the oven. We tried to give him two more for the guys, but he wisely told the girls to bring them to the BBQ and give them directly to the boys. He wanted to avoid marital problems that could be caused by refusing them to Sally.

We ended up having more than 40 cruisers at the BBQ. Joost greeted me with a kiss and said, "Darling, I just heard about the BBQ when you came by this afternoon, so I didn't have time to prepare properly. All I could manage was roasted duck pasta salad, poisson crux, and a variety of four different types of marinated meat." He volunteered to BBQ everyone's meat. We had a bunch of side dishes and I also made 4 loaves of garlic cheese bread.

Joost put the meat on the BBQ and it stared to rain. Tiena quickly set up tables inside the restaurant for us and we ran inside. I went out in the rain to grab our dinner plates and saw James, Mystere's deck hand who had broken his foot from falling through an opened hatch, trying to get under cover. He had both his crutches under one arm and his drink in the other. When the rain started, everyone had run for it and had left him to fend for himself. He must have known that he couldn't make it with his drink in hand, but had refused to abandon it. I ducked out from under the roof, grabbed his drink, and ran back, encouraging him to hobble faster.

Ino asked each boat to think of 5 questions that everyone had to answer. The boat with the most right answers won the contest. Adventure came in last...but to be fair, we found out later that all the boats in the top four had cheated.