Bora Bora was for us one of the most beautiful places we ever visited, while it also served as the place where we prepared ourselves for the rest of our trip to New Zealand, including looking for extra crew for the longer passages we would be making.





The plan for Bora Bora

We came to Bora Bora with not little excitement, after all, it is "the Pearl of the Pacific". We kind of expected to be "amazed" and intended to enjoy the beauty that the place offers to its fullest.

At the same time, after worriless cruising for a month through the Society islands without planning more than one or two days ahead, now we soon would be taking off for Rarotonga, the main island of the Cook Islands, a 535 nm (4-5 days ) passage, with the need for appropriate preparations for such trip, including trying to find additional crew, provisioning, border formalities, weather forecasting etc.

Moreover, looking further forward - the islands we expected to visit between here and New Zealand, are much less developed than French Polynesia, with much fewer boat repairs facilities. This required that we make sure that the boat was in the best possible technical shape before leaving.


About Bora Bora

Bora Bora is primarily a touristic place. It is mostly geared towards up market tourists, the majority from North America, including a lot of honeymoon travelers. There is a large number of resorts spread over the motus (islands) around the main island. This is where most islanders work. The resorts are most, if not all, consisting of strings of units standing on poles above the water. Actually, very discrete, and not disturbing the landscape. Like everywhere in French Polynesia (except maybe Papeete), there are no high rises, at all. There are also no crowds of tourists in the main town of Vaitape. The airport is not on the main island but rather in a corner of the archipelago, on a motu (see picture further below). There is continuous activity of water taxis zipping across the lagoon between the resorts, the airport, the main islands and the various diving and snorkeling sites around the island. You also see yachties, but here they are not in huge numbers, maybe because of the relatively high mooring fees being collected.

For many people, Bora Bora's main attraction is in the views the islands offers, including on the stunning mount Otemanu, on the lagoon and on the reefs and motus surrounding the main island, and last but not least on the spectacular sunsets.

But the island also offers a lot of action oriented activities, many in the sea, i.e. snorkeling, diving with various sea animals from turtles, through manta rays and sharks to whales, but also hiking up the mountains for example.

Apart from that the island has some interesting historical sites, while there are also some cultural events, similar to the Heiva that we attended in Papeete.

As to the islands history - James Michener's book "Hawaii" which I was reading while we visited there, claims that Bora Bora was the place from where a group of (discontented) Polynesians set out (hundreds of years ago) in their wooden catamarans, to reach Hawaii, and to become the first humans to settle in those islands.

A more recent historical period in which Bora Bora features prominently. Is WWII, when the US, after Pearl harbor, chose Bora Bora as the location for a safe logistic hub, out of reach of the Japanese, and as an intermediate landing airport for flights between the US and the war theatre in the South West Pacific (Solomon Islands) and to Australia. They launched operation "BOBCAT" whereby the "Seabees" (the engineering division of the Navy - so I understand) built extensive facilities on Bora Bora in support of such logistic hub, including the first (and current) airport, various port and ship repair facilities, as well as cannon batteries all around the island. I read that some 6000 US personnel were stationed on the island and 20000 more passed through the island, and they left some 60 children behind.

Here is a link to a tour you can take with one of the descendants of those US soldiers (which we did not take).
Here is a link to an article explaining exactly how to visit each of the cannon batteries (or the remains of them).
Here is a link to a site by "GI's Bora Bora BOBCAT CENTER" with a lot of detailed info about the WWII operation.

The picture below (taken from www.welcome-tahiti.com) shows the airport they built:



Arrival 8-Aug

The passage to Bora Bora from Taha'a was uneventful (see track below).


The weather was cloudy with occasional showers, which fortunately did not pass over us. However, they looked pretty impressive, from a distance.


This is the view of the island when we got closer.


We had to go around the island to arrive to the island's single passage through the reef into the lagoon, sailing quite close to the reef for quite a while.


Here one can see the boats lying at anchor/buoys in the lagoon behind the reef, next to the second largest island of the Bora Bora island group, called Motu Toopua.


Our plan was to start our visit by exploring the area of the main town on the island, Vaitape. We were not really sure about anchoring possibilities next to town, we actually did not see almost any other boats anchored. We passed by what looked like a kind of port/marina,


The weather was not totally cooperative at that point:


We went on to the next option the Povaie Bay, popularly called the "Bloody Marys" anchorage area (after the name of the adjacent restaurant), where we quickly found a free buoy.


A disadvantage of this location was that it was quite far from town, i.e. 1.5 nm. For us this is quite a long dinghy ride. One can go on land nearby, at the Bloody Marys restaurant dock, but that stands deserted most of the time, is not guarded, and one needs a taxi to get to town.
In this weather we were required to spend our first evening inside the cabin, more messy that usual...



First explorations 9-Aug

The next morning the weather had fortunately improved:


We took the dinghy in the direction of Vaitape harbor, but on the way decided to first have a look at the alternate anchorage for this area, in front of the Bora Bora Yachting Club, and see if it would be worthwhile to relocate the boat to that anchorage.
At first, we were pretty enthusiast about the place, it had a classy café / bar / restaurant, and the facilities (toilets / showers / garbage disposal) looked OK. This is a look at the seaside café:


What we did not very much like was the 3000 XPF (~30 US$) daily fee for using the dinghy dock.

So we moved on to the port in Vaitape town, a busy place with boats coming and going taking tourists to/from their tours of the day, as well as ferries to other islands, and to the resorts of Bora Bora. This was to be our dinghy dock for all our visits to Vaitape town.


We visited the tourist office and succeeded to get a map of the mooring and anchoring restrictions of Bora Bora, a complicated looking page:


The assigned mooring areas for yachts to lie on buoys are indicated in green (there are 5 such areas around the island). We were in the one in the bottom center pf the page. There are also 2 tiny areas for free anchoring (in blue). It is also interesting to see the 10 locations to be used by large yachts of 20-90 meters length (in orange), the two positions reserved for cruising ships (dark blue).

We walked around town a bit and located the various supermarkets, the gendarmerie (for checking out of the country), chandleries, hardware shops, gas stations, pharmacies, car rentals.

When we returned to the port there was the quite spectacular sight of a big marlin (I think that's what it was) that a fisherman had caught, being filleted by someone to pieces, presumably for the various restaurants and resorts on the island, attracting quite some spectators. The pictures may be a bit gory, sorry for that, but the whole spectacle was interesting to watch.






In the evening we had a great meal with friends Avi and Liat on their boat, who were by chance at a buoy right next to us.


Looking for cooking gas, making a walk, dinner in Bloody Marys 10-Aug

The next morning, we got our first visit by the collector of mooring fees on behalf of Bora Bora Mooring Services (BBMS). They knew of our arrival because they monitor the AIS (Automatic Identification System) transmissions, and knows where every yacht is that has the system on. This collector was called Vaima, an extremely friendly and polite young woman driving around Bora Bora every day and visiting (I presume) each and every yacht to collect the fees. Twice a week, she also collects garbage. The daily fee is 4000 XPF, which amounts to ~40 US$. We paid for 4 days. This is Vaima racing around in her nice dinghy.


We then went to town to try to find a service for filling of cooking gas bottles, unsuccessfully, because there was no service like that in Bora Bora, and our bottles were not interchangeable with the ones they were selling.

Then we went looking for a rental car, and found one for the next day.

We went back to the boat and later in the afternoon again took the dinghy towards the Bloody Marys restaurant.

The restaurant looked inviting. In front of it are a large number of wooden panels listing names of celebs who visited the Restaurant. Like everyone, we scanned the list for people we "knew", which were quite a few:






Being the restaurant wasn't open yet, we decided to make a walk up the hills behind the restaurant, which provided us with some lovely views:






This is Maupiti Island, in the distance, with tele lens:


We came down from the hill, and decided to try to have dinner at Bloody Marys, without having made a reservation.
We approached the host, and he told us there was no chance, except... if we would go in now immediately (it was still very empty). That suited us well. We were led past a table where all the menu options were shown in real life on plates (raw fish), and we were explained each of them, it was quite stunning (and I don't remember the full list), but it included sword fish, red tuna, white tune, marlin, wahoo and probably more, I don't remember what we chose (I think swordfish and tuna), just remember that we truly enjoyed the meal. The interior was in Polynesian style, not very posh, but tasteful, in my opinion, and not crowded. I loved the service, and prices were reasonable considering the level of food and ambience, and a charming band was playing Polynesian music.





Tour of island in rental car 11-Aug

The next morning we took the dinghy to Bloody Marys and left it there for the day, picked up our rental car, and started driving around the main island.

The main island is quite small, by far the smallest of the Society islands we visited, even smaller than Moorea (about two thirds), another proof for "size doesn't matter".
We took the only road around the island, which generally closely follows the shore line.
Effectively, the main thing one does is to look at mount Otemanu (727 meters) from all angles, and hooing and haaing, and taking pictures. It is indeed a striking mountain, and it looks different from every different location on the island.

Just for info - as far as I have been able to find it is impossible to climb the mountain to the top. The many tours offering a hike "up mount Otemanu" really only reach the top of the shoulders of the mountain. Here is a link to one such tour offered.

Apparently the mountain is really dangerous to climb, i.e. I presume that means that one cannot count on the rock to hold the bolts that you put into it. I am sure people must have climbed it anyway, but I don't find a record of such, At least by helicopter you should be able to reach it, right? When you Google "Can you climb Mount Otemanu?" You get: "You can climb up Otemanu, but the actual summit has never been scaled.". Oh well.

Here some of the views of the mountain one encounters driving around the island:








Here is a view towards the east, you can see Taha'a and Raiatea in the distance. Closer in, if you look carefully, you can also see the resorts built on the east motu of Bora Bora. I count 3 of them. As I already said, I think they fit into the landscape really well.


We then decided to visit one of the US WWII artillery batteries (see history of Bora Bora above), the northern one.
To get to the battery, you climb up this road:


And then you reach one of the cannons:






Admittedly, not a very impressive site, but with historical significance.

As agreed beforehand, we left the rental car at the Bloody Marys at the end of the day.


Relocate to the other side of the island 12-Aug

We felt that we had seen enough of this side of Bora Bora, and decided to move to the east side, more precisely - to the south east corner of the island, next to Motu Piti Aau, where there was supposed to be a very pristine anchorage. To get there we had to go around the north side of the island, inside the lagoon, and then through a very shallow passage (less than 2 meters).
See the track below as we followed. Unfortunately, the tracker disconnected exactly during the passage through shallow waters...:


On the way, we came by the cannon we had seen the day before:


And got a new perspective on mount Otemanu:


The shallow part of the passage was not indicated in any way, I really went exactly as my navigation program told me to do, supplemented by what I could see under water, left and right and left and right, avoiding the various areas with coral bommies, and indeed we passed through it without touching the bottom, but it was a bit stressing.
We then got some closer up views on the resorts on the motus:


And finally, a view on the anchorage of our destination:


We picked up a buoy, and took in the view in our new neighborhood:





Preparations for the next passage, posting searches on crew search web sites 13-Aug

Today we were busy with preparations for the next passage to Rarotonga, specifically - preparing "opportunities" for publication on the various crew search websites, so that potential crew can hear about what we are planning, and can submit their interest in joining.

For example, we published the following on the "CrewSeekers" website:
"We, a couple of around 70, are looking for a crewmember or a couple for the trip from Bora Bora to Vava'u, with intended stayovers in Rarotonga and Aitutaki (Cook Islands), and possibly in Palmerston and in Niue. Expected duration of trip 3-4 weeks. Crew will occupy aft cabin in stbd hull and have their own bath room. Crew will share in costs of provisioning, and pay their own person related fees (entry/ exit/ mooring), as well as cost of travel to and from the boat. More details can be provided by phone/email."

At sunset we witnessed this dramatic sunset:


We prepared a good meal from a tuna filet which we had kept in the freeze since Papeete:



Snorkeling at reef and visiting beach bar 14-Aug

Early in the morning, Vaima came by again, and I paid her again for 4 days for lying at the buoy. They don't miss a beat!
We then took the dinghy out to try to get close to the reef and do some snorkeling. Here you can see me snorkeling next to the reef. It was nice, as usual, no special findings.


Ruth was not too eager to follow suit, and stayed in the dinghy.


It was not easy to get to the reef, one has to take care to avoid the many corals reaching to just below the surface:


A quick view on mount Otemanu:


We then went to the beach bar nearby, happy to find something like this in this corner of the world:




Here Ruth felt more comfortable to take a swim:



Some more snorkeling 15-Aug

The next morning we woke up to scattered rain clouds, with the effect of creating some nice rainbows:




Vaima came by to collect the garbage (BBMS stands for Bora Bora Mooring Services):


The rest of the day we spent snorkeling not far from the reef on the south edge of the island (an area called Coral Garden of Motu Piti 'U'u Uta). Unfortunately, no pictures.


Strolling around and shopping 16-Aug

Today we took the dinghy to the shore and just strolled a bit along the main island's shore line closest to us. We were kind of (pleasantly) surprised to find a designated public beach area with toilets and showers on this exclusive island:





Boat work, preparations for next passage 17-Aug

Today was dedicated to various boat tasks, including trying to locate replacement batteries for my 12V domestic battery bank. This because my current batteries, which I had bought about half a year earlier, were discharging much faster than I thought was reasonable. It was at this time that I realized that the truck starting batteries I had purchased in Panama were actually not suitable for use as a domestic battery bank. Batteries which are suitable for my purposes are much more expensive, and I had previously avoided going to that expense. Today I did some testing to establish the real usable capacity of my current batteries (until requiring re-charge), and found that it was quite low, much lower than what I had thought at the time I bought the batteries. As it was now, I'd have to recharge pretty often. It was workable for a limited period (the maximum number of charging cycles of lead acid batteries is limited), but I'd prefer to have larger capacity batteries of the appropriate type (deep cycle / gel / AGM), if I could get them delivered to Bora Bora within a few days. So today I turned to some suppliers of batteries in Papeete, with request for proposals.

I was also busy dealing with the responses I had gotten to my crew search ads, and we did not get off the boat today, at all.


Relocate to the Bora Bora Yacht Club (BBYC) anchorage 18-Aug

In the morning, Vaima came by again, we paid for a further 4 days of mooring.

Apart from various messages by interested crew candidates, which turned into nothing, we received one response in FindaCrew with very good potential from a person called Mats, a Swedish guy in his fifties and very fit, who had been living in France, and was now on a world tour. We had a video call by WhatsApp which confirmed the suitability to both sides, and since he would be coming over to Bora Bora from another island today, and we were going to relocate to the BBYC anchorage later today, we arranged to meet in the late afternoon in Vaitape.

Later on he proposed that a friend, with whom he had sailed together for 2 weeks with the name of Gauthier, would also join. We told him that they would have to share one (the aft) cabin (we reserved the left forward cabin for our personal storage), and he was OK with that. Subject to a video call to confirm our mutual acceptability, we agreed to include Gauthier as well.

We then released the buoy and started moving towards the other side. Here is the track of our trip:


Ruth was at the helm:


The last pictures if this beautiful mountain, from this side:










This is how the mountain changes shape within a few minutes during our passing by:


At some point (see map above) we came quite close to a water taxi with a group of snorkelers next to it. We were told that this is a location where one will see huge mantra rays below, all the time. Note how close we are to the coral reefs. Again, this was quite a stressing passage.






And here the last pictures of the other side, just before passing through the shoals:




We arrived to the area of the Bora Bora Yachting Club (BBYC) and took the last free buoy, right next to the waterway where all the taxis pass by.

At some point we had a video call with Gauthier, a young Frenchman, who also made a very good impression, and we all agreed that he would join the team as well.

We then took the dinghy to the BBYC, walked to town for some shopping, walked back, met Mats at the BBYC and took him over to the boat, and had a drink and showed him around on the boat. And pretty soon it was all agreed, and we agreed that I would be looking at a weather windows for the upcoming passage and be in touch with Mats and Gauthier the next day to discuss the exact departure plans and preparations.

We brought Mats back to shore and Ruth and I had a meal at the BBYC.



Preparations for upcoming passage 19-Aug Saturday

Today again spent quite some time emailing to various suppliers for a new 12V battery bank, mostly companies involved in solar power. No responses received, this being Saturday.

Then we went to the Gendarmerie to fill in the forms required to receive a departure clearance. As we knew would happen, they needed to be sent (faxed?) to the head office in Papeete, to receive the OK, i.e. we were expected to receive the clearance by Monday afternoon.
Accordingly, we tentatively scheduled to meet with Mats and Gauthier on Monday 16:00 to receive the clearance paper, and have the passports stamped off.
Interestingly, we apparently were not asked to submit (copies of) the passports of Mats & Gauthier, and, after we returned to the boat, received a personal WhatsApp message from one of the gendarmerie officers with the request to send scanned copies by WhatsApp. Where else do you get such service from the authorities?

We continued our quest to refill some cooking gas bottles, and by sheer tenacity made considerable progress: We went to the petrol station where they were selling gas bottles. Although the ones they were selling were too large to fit into the compartment on the boat, we wanted to buy one anyway, as I had found detailed instruction in the internet on how to transfer cooking gas between bottles, using some simple fittings, a suitable hose and a precise scale. We were not the first to have the problem of mismatching bottles. I checked and found that I could find all the fittings and the hose you need at the local hardware stores, so now I only needed a full big bottle. However, the petrol station required one to come with one's own empty bottle, and then they would replace it with a full bottle of the same type. At first I was told that there is no way to circumvent this requirement. But (of course) that was not true. After endless inquiries, I found someone in Vaitape, who gave me the phone number of the cooking gas company head office in Papeete, and said that they would resolve the issue for me. I did not believe that it would work, but it did, and after an hour or two, the petrol station attendant told me that he received authorization to sell me a full bottle without receiving an empty bottle. I must admit that it felt like a major achievement. So in the end we came back to the boat with a full large bottle and with the hardware and hose to perform the transfer to the small bottles I had on board.

That evening, I also opened a WhatsApp group for the crew, i.e. us two, and Mats and Gauthier. I told them that I had checked the weather forecast for the passage to Rarotonga, and had not seen a good window yet for making the passage, but would continue checking & update.


Further preparations for the upcoming passage and a walk 20-Aug Sunday

Amongst others, we inventorized the food we already had on board:




I succeeded to transfer cooking gas from the large new bottle, to a smaller bottle: As you can see in the picture, I did not feel 100% comfortable doing that, but all went well:


I wrote our weather router, Bob McDavitt ("MetBob") from New Zealand, asking for general advice regarding weather to be expected on the passage to Rarotonga, mentioning that we may be ready to sail on Tuesday 22-Aug.

Then we went to shore to make a walk up a hill that we could see from the boat, and that was intriguing us:


Rather than using the dinghy dock of the BBYC, we went on shore at a small beach a bit to the right, that seemed to belong to no one, in order to avoid the dinghy dock fee of 3000 XPF at the BBYC.

The top of the hill provided a nice view of the bay where we were anchored:



Provisioning and other preparations for the passage 21-Aug Monday

This morning Vaima of BBMS came by again, this time we paid for only 2 more days.

I got an email from MetBob the weather router, that said that if we wanted to leave on Tuesday 22-Aug, the weather fore cast was OK, with some explanations.

I was still busy conversing with the battery companies in Papeete, and indeed found a company who had what I needed, but it fell through because they did not have the option of accepting payments by phone, and we didn't find any alternate way of paying for it remotely and immediately. So I had to drop the whole idea, and we would have to make do with the current batteries, and implement a stricter recharging scheme than I had been using so far, (recharge when the battery is still half full) to preserve the integrity of the battery. I also had the 24V battery bank, consisting of 4 12V (also starter) batteries, that I could cannibalize, in case the current 12 V batteries failed.

So now the decision was taken to depart the next day.

We met Mats and Gauthier at 14:00 at the Gendarmerie, and checked out, i,e, our passports were stamped, and I received the boat departure clearance authorization form. Formally this means you have already left the country, but in reality you still have (generally) 24 hours before you actually leave.

After that we had a discussion of what food and other household goods that we would buy for the (4-5 days ) trip, the next morning.

I also asked Mats and Gauthier to download to their phones (while we all still had internet) a number of apps that are needed to interface with the boat's systems:
- Iridium GO and Mail (for our main satellite datalink)
- Earthmate with relevant maps (allows messaging using our satellite messenger)
- Predictwind Offshore (our weather prediction system interfacing with Iridium Go!)
- VictronConnect (reading battery charge levels through Bluetooth)
- WatchMate (Interfacing with our AIS, showing other ships with AIS)
- Navionics Boating, download & cache relevant maps (our navigation system).
It was important to me that all crew members have access to all that info.

As far as I recall, Mats then came back with us to the boat, with all his stuff (which wasn't much more than a little backpack).

In the evening, I dispatched a filled-in one page "Advanced Notification of Arrival" form to the authorities in the Cook Islands, as they require of visiting yachts. I was surprised when I received a response within a few hours, saying something like "Please send again using the updated form attached", and attached a 17 page long form! I did not have time to do that, and decided to leave it as-is, and to fill it in on arrival, if really required....

I also purchased an eSIM online for the Cook Islands, so that (hopefully) we would be able to get connected again immediately when coming into cellular range, even before going on shore.


Departure 22-Aug Tuesday

The next morning, we took the dinghy to Vaitape town and went shopping together.
We also went to the post office to send the forms signed by the gendarmerie to the Customs head quarters in Papeete, by regular mail. This is a standard procedure, that I had also gone through after I had entered French Polynesia In the Marquesas.


After bringing all the shopping on board, there was another short visit to the BBYC to pick up Gauthier with his stuff (also not much).

We then released the buoy and went over to the petrol station to fill up the boat and jerrycans with diesel, and probably also some fuel for the outboard.

At around 16:30 we went on our way, and took this first picture of our full new crew (Mats on the right, Gauthier next to/behind him):


And here a last look back at beautiful Bora Bora:


More about this passage - in the next blog entry...