Aitutaki, the Cook Islands

We left Maupihaa in the early afternoon for the three night sail to Aitutaki, in the Cook Islands - a windy and wet sail, with a horrible sea state - no moon at all, and raining during daylight hours.  We did see a couple of humpback whales as we left Maupihaa, so it wasn't all bad!

Aitutaki is one of the Cook Islands - a group of 15 little islands. With a total population of approximately 13,000 people - they have their own Maori language which is widely used, the school system only intorduces English in Grade 3, until then Maori is the official language.  

Aitutaki is not widely visited by yachts, not only is the so filled with coral bommies that it is un-navigable by anything other than a dinghy, there is very little space in the anchorage, and the only pass into the lagoon shallows to 1.7 metres which effectively stops most yachts from entering.  As is the case with most of the atolls, it is way too deep and rough to anchor outside the reef.

Aitutaki harbour - we are in the middle of a raft of 5 yachts, three are shallow draft catamarans, and like ourselves, the other yacht has a lifting keel so is able to enter the shallow pass.

The yachts are tied to palm trees and rocks on shore, each other, and also anchored.  Leaving is going to be quite tricky!

The main income on the island comes from tourism, mainly in the form of kiteboarders - there are two areas in the lagoon where conditions are excellent, Ian did have a couple of lessons and did manage to get out of the water with the kite but not for long.  Much like our time in Maupihaa, our planned 3 day visit to the island ended up becoming over a week due to the strong winds and 4 metre swell out side the atoll - excellent for the kiteboarders who had already mastered it, but a bit too much for the beginners.  Unfortunately our visit to Aitutaki coincided with some newly introduced and undocumented rules - we were not allowed to use our dinghies, paddle board or kayaks to visit the lagoon independently, instead we were required to use water taxis that only did specific day trips at Galapagos prices which was not exactly what we had in mind.  Hopefully the situation will be clarified, otherwise we will probably be amongst their last yacht visitors.  Not ideal for an island that relies so heavily on Tourism for it's income!

We did hire scooters and visit the island - there are very few roads - we went to the highest point on the island, Maungapu Lookout, a height of 124metres with superbe views over most of the island.

The views were stunning - lush green grass, turquoise water in the lagoon, the outlying little Motu and the outline of the reef.  A local told us it was the most beautiful lagoon in the world, hard to judge but it would certainly make the short list!

We took the unsealed road to the end of the island where we met this young mother with her baby and her sister - they had been fishing from the shore.

We also visited the Aitutaki Marine Research Centre where they are rearing giant clams in concrete ponds and then placing them back in the lagoon - to try to help the recovery of the species in the lagoon - unfortunately the clams still form part of the traditional local diet which is not helping!  

There are lots of churches on the island, and Sunday worship is a big part of island life and includes wonderful singing in the Maori language.  Interestingly there are loads of individual graves and mausoleums on the island - it would seem that you can keep your loved ones in your garden or in their favourite spot on the island.

During the Second World War the Americans built a runway on the island as part of their Pacific Defences - we noticed the Graves of WWII veterans on the island, and the runway is still in use today.

The trip to the outlying 'Honeymoon Island' motu (by water taxi) was definitely a highlight - there were Red Tailed Tropic Birds nesting on the ground, they appeared totally unaffected by the kiteboarders and other visitors to the island.  

The kiteboard school has put out some open wooden boxes for the birds, but they also nest on the ground amongst the palm trees - their are no mammals on the islands, and no dogs at all on Aitutaki so the ground nesting birds are left in relative peace.

Despite the irritation of not being able to go into the lagoon water unless on an official 6 or 8 hour tour, we have enjoyed out time on Aitutaki, we have watched a traditional dance show which included fire danciing which was a lot of fun.

The locals have been wonderfully friendly, we are leaving with a gift of a massive bunch of bananas and a couple of papaya, but despite their generosity, this is not a place to linger - the cost of living is truly astronomical.  Almost all supplies are brought in by ship which is too large to enter the lagoon, containers are laboriously unloaded onto a barge which enters the harbour where it is unloaded by crane - the ship comes every few weeks and the whole unloading operation takes several days.

The supply ship can not even anchor as the water is too deep outside the reef, and the barge, powered by a couple of large outboard engines, continues shuffling back and forth during daylight hours.

And this is what £60 buys you on Aitutaki......life in paradise doesn't come cheap!

We will be leaving later on today, heading for Beveridge Reef, 450 Nm away.  We expect to be at sea for 4 nights, and have just heard that a 54ft Catamaran has hit Beveridge Reef in the last couple of days - the yacht is a write off, but fortunately all the crew are fine and a rescue is underway from Nuie, the nearest island, which is about 130 miles away.

Maupihaa - our last stop in French Polynesia.

We spent a week in the Bora Bora lagoon before deciding to head on with yachts Vega and Jadean to Maupiti, a day sail, but when we arrived there it became obvious that weather conditions were not suitable for entering the pass - you could hardly even see it through all the breaking waves - so we continued on to our last Society Island destination, Maupihaa a further 100 miles on.

When we arrived, there was only one other yacht in the bay - within a couple of days there were 10.  The wind had picked up and we were in a beautiful anchorage sheltered by palm trees and of course the outlying reef.  

A drone's eye view of our anchorage in Maupihaa, taken by Barry on Jadean, showing most of the Motu surrounding the lagoon.  We are the second yacht on the right, with Vega on our left. The darker patches in the shallows are coral bommies.

We entered the atoll through the pass in the north east and anchored down at the south eastern end of the motu - the chart shows the outlying reef in green, and the land in yellow.

We spent over a week in Maupihaa which gave plenty of time to get to walk the length and breadth of the island.  There are only a handful of inhabitants, all working in the Copra industry.  They can lease a 200 metre strip of land from the Copra Cooperative for a one off payment of approximately US$50 which entitles them to all the coconuts on their section -i it takes several months to collect and dry a ton of Copra which then sells for $1,400. When the island as a whole has collected 35 to 40 tons of Copra a small ship comes to collect it for processing in Tahiti, usually this takes about a year, but even getting the ship to the island is a feat in itself, the pass into the atoll is only 25 metres wide, which gives 1.5 metres each side of the ship.  

Walking round the motu - even coconuts washed up on shore grow on the sand.

The outside of the motu, you can see the surf breaking on the outer reef in the distance.

The outer reef - the waves look like icebergs, there is no way we want to be sailing in that!

Maupihaa does not receive many visitors during the course of the year, less than 25 people live on the island, there is no phone signal or internet, and the only communication with the outside world is via a single satellite phone held by the head of the Copra Cooperative.  Most of the inhabitants come from nearby Maupiti where they still have family, provisions can be sent across by motor boat when the weather is calm, school age children are sent to stay with relatives for extended periods - life revolves around coconuts and fishing and they were very pleased to be able to chat and pass the time with us.

These two sisters have taken about five months to collect a ton of Copra - one of them has been living on the island with her husband for the last 4 years, and the other sister has just moved in and is setting up her own Copra business with her husband.

Another newcomer on the island, this gentleman is still clearing his plot in order to actually collect the coconuts - he lives with his wife and two year old daughter, as far as we could tell she is the only child on the island.

This lady has been living here with her husband for about 15 years, they have four children, none still live on the island, one is in France, one in the Army, one married and living in Maupiti  and the youngest who is 11 lives with grandparents also on Maupiti.  As Maupihaa is in the cyclone belt, when a cyclone warning is received (by sat phone) the islands can choose to be evacuated to the safety of Maupiti - they dismantle their houses and bury anything that could be blown away or damaged.  Fortunately they have not been hit by a cyclone for some years, but the last one destroyed the majority of the coconut palms when a surge of water covered much of the motu.

Island transport - it must have been quite a challenge getting this Land Rover onto the island - there is a single sandy track that runs the length of the motu, we did see a couple of other vehicles but this seemed to be the only one that still works.  Most of the islanders had bicycles.

We played Boules with some locals, and they built a table so we all had a 'pot luck' diner together one evening, but mainly we spent our time walking around the island and chatting to anyone we came across.  After a week the weather calmed down sufficiently for us to leave for the three day sail to Aitutaki, the first of the Cook Islands.  We motored out of the pass and were met on the other side by two humpback whales - a spectacular sight.

Our next destination will be the Cook Islands - a group of 15 islands with a total population of about 13,000 they are self governing but with a unique relationship to New Zealand described as 'self governing and in free association', the locals hold New Zealand passports and although English is universally spoken they also have their own Maori Language.  We will be spending our first ever New Zealand Dollars, and breaking out a new Red Ensign - the current one has done its time!

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Bora Bora - The Society Islands just get better!

Whilst in Huahini we met some fellow Ovni owners who had spent several years cruising the Societies - they recommended we head for the Baie Apu and take a pearl farm mooring buoy, visit a vanilla farm and then head on to Bora Bora, which they considered the most beautiful of the Societies.  

We set off with Hugh and Annie up the road towards the Vanilla Farm, a small family run enterprise where we learnt that the Vanilla plant is actually a variety of Orchid, native to Mexico, Central America and Madagascar and Indonesia - early attempts to cultivate it in French Polynesia failed as the flowers, which only last one day, need to be pollinated by a specific bee that does not survive here.  A 12 year old slave in Reunion discovered the technique for hand pollinating the flowers in 1841 and the French imported them to French Polynesia.

The vanilla vines have to grow in shade - either on posts or on trees.  Left unchecked they will grow to enormous lengths with few flowers so they are trained back down the supports to encourage more flowers and keep them at the height a man can reach easily.

The plants are inspected daily, after 6 months on the vine the pods are hand picked at a critical stage of ripeness.

Freshly picked vanilla pods - then the work really starts ... First the have to be 'killed' by being spread out in direct sunlight for several days to stop the pods developing further and splitting.  They were also immersed in water at some stage as well.

After 'killing' the pods have to be '"sweated" which takes 3 to 4 weeks and involves taking them spreading them out in sunshine  and wrapping them up in the shade during which time they turn brown and get an oily sheen.

The final stage involves "Massage" which straightens the pods out and they are sorted according to size and general appearance.  Short, curled or split pods go to the USA mainly for use in cosmetics, prime quality go to Europe for culinary use.  Vanilla is the second most expensive spice - beaten only by Saffron.  French Polynesia ranks 9th worldwide, producing a mere 60 tons of vanilla annually - Madagascar is top of the ranking producing 3,500 tons.

After our lesson in the reason Vanilla is so expensive (you could buy 7 low grade pods for $20 at the farm) we continued on our walk across the island.  If it wasn't for the palm trees you could have been in the English Countryside!

Lunch Break with Annie, part way across Tahaa.  We were heading for a Viewpoint but the trees had grown up so much there was no way to see the view.

We only spent a couple of days in Tahaa, stopping briefly at its neighbour, Raiatae to collect gas and visit the supermarket.

We have American style aluminium gas tanks from the Caribbean, which naturally have different fittings to the local gas tanks - the way to fill them is to buy a large local one, attach a jury rig of tubes and fittings to connect it to our empty one and then suspend it from a halyard and wait for the gas to pour down and fill our tank.  One large local tank fills about 2 ½ of our tanks.  Best done in a well ventilated area away from naked flames!  Jade from Jadean is supervising the process.

No trip to Tahaa would be complete without a look in the water - we enjoyed some excellent snorkelling off the motus within the outer reef.

Huge anemone with three spotted dascyllus in the Coral Garden Pass, Îlot Tautau, Tahaa

Picasso Triggerfish in the Coral Garden

Fantastically colourful clams, hidden in the seaweed, Coral Garden.       (Annie's Photo)

Our next journey was just under 30 miles to the island that epitomises a Pacific Paradise, Bora Bora - surrounded by a crystal clear lagoon, protected by reef and several Motu (reef islands) and with a spectacular skyline. Despite the tourism,  the vast selection of pearl shops in the main town of Vaitape, it is a place that has to be seen to be believed.

The outlying reef can be seen enclosing the shallow (Blue on the above chart) lagoon.  The green areas are drying reefs, and the white is the deeper more easily navigable water. The red triangle is where we were anchored on 6 August 2017.

Nautilus Sailing under spinnaker towards the iconic skyline of Bora Bora.       (Photo from Annie, on Vega)

It's only as you get quite close that you see the ferocious breaking waves on the outer reef.  There is only one pass into the lagoon - don't try this in the dark!!

Our first night in Bora Bora we anchored off Motu Toopua just south of the pass - a snorkel off the back of the boat treated us to three Eagle Rays, two Stingrays and a Manta.  We then headed for the main town, Vaitabe, where we took a mooring buoy and headed in to the Gendarmerie as we now need to clear out of French Polynesia - quite a slow process, six forms to compete, several in triplicate, a letter handed back to us to take to the post office to post back to Tahiti, and instruction to come back in 24 hours for the rest of the paperwork!  We spent a very sociable evening in the MaiKai Yacht Club bar with Annie and Hugh from Vega, Barry and Kim from Jadean and Kerry and Ian from Weir Kraken drinking hugely overpriced beer! 

The beauty of Bora Bora is really appreciated from the surrounding lagoon - we motored cautiously round most of the island (the far south is too shallow for anything other than a dinghy) and enjoyed watching a local tour operator feeding the sharks - wearing a loincloth.

He had handfuls of small fish held over his head, he threw them in the water and the result was a positive feeding frenzy - the Tahitian Stingrays and Pacific Double-saddle Butterflyfish have come to join in the fun.

Black Tip Reef Shark with a Sharksucker

It's amazing how casual one can become about swimming with sharks!

Bora Bora isn't all about the sharks - you can also feed bread to the Scissortail Sergeants or just admire the coral.

Paddle boarding in the lagoon - hard to believe the colours are real, and as a bonus Eagle Rays and Stingrays glide around under you.

Not surprisingly it is a very popular tourist destination - these are the typical holiday cabins on stilts that can be seen along many of the Motu around the lagoon.

View from our anchorage on the East of the lagoon towards Tahaa

Bora Bora is without a doubt one of the more touristy places we have visited, there must be 50 pearl jewellery shops in the main town of Vaitape alone, but you can easily see why it's so popular, there is something for everyone - kitesurfing, diving, swimming, snorkelling, in the crystal clear lagoon waters to name but a few.  There is also the opportunity to spend lots of money, the prices are truly staggering.

Once we have completed the checkout formalities we will head on through the last of the Societies and on to the Cook Islands - the start of New Zealand!