Bora Bora

Bora Bora

We arrived in Bora Bora on August 29th. We anchored beside Ile Toopua. Amazing swimming pool blue water. Set up the swing/climbing rope and enjoyed our surrounding.  We went snorkeling with blacktip reef sharks and lemon sharks. We have snorkeled around a lot of blacktip sharks, and they can be slightly intimidating, although Gigi likes to chase them and try to touch them. The lemon sharks are quite big and they were intimidating. It took a little convincing to get Axel in the water, but he did join us. Gary grabbed the dorsal fin of one of the lemon sharks and went for a ride. We have a great video, but it is too big to upload on the really slow internet here.

We spent 3 days there, then went into town for a few nights. Sometimes you need food, internet, …

Gary and Axel hiked Mt Pahia, the second highest mountain in Bora Bora. It was a very gnarly hike that people have told us was irresponsible to bring a child of Axel's age on. To get to the peak you have climb a few completely vertical ascents that have sketchy ropes provided to assist.

Mt Pahai with the anchorage in the foreground.

One of the challenging ascents and even more challenging on the way back down.

Success!

Nirvana from the top of the mountain.

Then around to the south end of the Bora Bora lagoon. Traveling around the Bora Bora lagoon is quite interesting since you have to cross areas with less than 10 feet of water over live coral reef that is continuously changing in size. The first obstacle consists of a red mark and a yellow-black direction mark. These direction marks tell you which side of the buoy you should pass. These 2 marks are set so that you must zig-zag through them. So if you look at them on the chart it takes a while to understand how you are supposed to pass them. Then there are a handful more of these marks, sort of lined up, that you must zig-zag through to get to deeper water. On the approach to the first mark the chart states there is as little as 7 feet of water. We draw 7'8", so that could be a problem. We managed to get through the first group of mark with seeing as little as 10 feet of water while the wind was blowing 20 knots. I wanted to go slower, but you can't or you would be blown onto gnarlier reef, so we charged forward at about 3.5 knots. There is a big break between the first group of challenging marks and the next group, so I went down below to keep the kids focused on their schoolwork. I knew we must be approaching the next challenging mark, so I came on deck. My first reaction was, holy ****! Gary slowed down a little. I ran to the bow, and when I got there I could see no appropriate direction to turn without hitting reef. So I did what first came to mind, jump up and down and yell and wave my arms in all directions. Of course this didn't help Gary figure out which way to turn, but there was no good way to turn. So we ran aground on the coral reef.

We tried reversing off, that didn't work. We tried reversing off with the dinghy pulling also, that didn't work. S we proceeded to get ready to kedge ourselves off with our stern anchor. In the meantime, I left the motor in reverse and the wheel locked in the direction we wanted to go. All 4 of us were running around trying to get the situation dealt with quickly. We got the anchor and line out, but then the reverse started to kick in. We managed to pull away from a bad situation with only our nerves frayed. We went to a nearby anchorage and realized when we checked the keel, that thankfully we only lost a little paint. After the incident Axel said he knew something was wrong as there were many words said that he is not supposed to hear.

This is what it looks like as you are going through these areas. Nerves of steel everytime, of course until they are not!

 

The anchorage we stopped in had the most incredible water. You could see every depth transition, the lighter water is really shallow, the darker water is sufficient for our boat, about 12 feet. Around this motu is a vibrant, alive coral reef they call the coral garden. We got to swim with a sea turtle there. It checked us out for a while before swimming away.

Harrison arrived back yesterday, so we came back to the main town. He got treated to the rainiest day we've had in our entire trip today. We got completely drenched coming back from the grocery store. And he has already given Axel a ukulele lesson, which Axel missed doing while he was away.

 

I realize that I haven't written anything in a while as we have been busy with schoolwork, boat projects and snorkeling. We are currently trying to finish the 2nd month of schoolwork and prepare a package to mail back to the US before leaving for about 2 weeks of sailing. We plan to sail from Bora Bora to Suwarrow, in the Cook Islands, then Niue, then the Vava'u island group in Tonga. We expect to be away from internet and most forms of contact for 2 weeks. So for schooling this means we need to get things done in advance. For the passage this means we are provisioning for at least 2 weeks without any new food. And for sailing this means we need to make sure things that didn't work perfectly the last passage are all fixed. I am especially happy that Gary has installed dogs on my cabin hatches so they hopefully won't leak any more.

I will try to shoot a quick message out before we head out as we are off to Suwarrow.