Hideko and I have been having a true Bora Bora vacation. Thus when the alarm went off at 6:30 AM it took me a while to shake off the haze. Our friends from Rahula were still aboard and needed to get back to their boat in order to make good their offing to the Cook Islands. After checking the dinghy over everything looked set. James had already loaded Shooting Star up so we were off in short order.

The lagoon was a bit calmer this morning and we had drained the hull of the dinghy after our scuba dive outing yesterday. Shooting Star planed up with no problem and we shot off across the lagoon toward the yacht club.

After a fun trip around the north side of the island we cross loaded all of the dive gear and crew onto Rahula who had waited patiently on her mooring for our return. After a goodbye with hopes for a reunion down island I headed back out across the lagoon. Rahula was getting underway as I rounded the corner.

Back at Swingin' on a Star Hideko had made a nice breakfast after which we decided to take Roq on his first tour of Bora Bora. Roq had a nice trip around Fatu Hiva and a little jaunt around the harbor in Tahiti and Moorea but had yet to see Bora Bora up close.

He is getting to be an old boy and Hideko and I had to help him into the dink. Once aboard we motored around the motus in the area and explored the interesting cuts that separate the otherwise unified islets. The cuts go back part way or, in some cases, all the way to the barrier reef. We found some with still lagoons in deep water, others with super shoal sandy bottoms and still others with moderate depth and soaring coral heads. One had trickles of water from the breakers on the reef creeping in and the next had waterfalls of water rushing over the two foot drop between the barrier reef's shelf and the lagoon below. It was eerie and wonderful to see the ocean and the lagoon in one frame and with a couple feet of height difference. It is miraculous to think how independent the lagoon is from the massiveness of the Pacific Ocean all around it.