Catching Up on the Societies – Taha’a

The islands of Raiatea and Taha’a (Ta-ha-ah) share the same outer atoll reef so we could sail between the two islands inside the lagoon. We headed up to Taha’a and took a free mooring at the Hibiscus hotel. More a restuarant/bar than a hotel. We had a nice dinner of mahi-mahi and poisson cru (fish in lime and coconut milk) and setup a tour of a local vanilla farm the next day. This is Teva, the owner of the vanilla farm and tour guide showing us his total involvement with the vanilla bean.
We hiked out from Teva’s house on the water up a trail through the valley to his green houses. On the way we passed these fighting cocks. No really legal in French Polynesia, but Taha’a doesn’t have many gendarmes, aka real police.
The beans are organically grown in a screened in green house. The screens keep the bugs out and the plants in shade. The beans do not take a lot of labor to grow, but the process of hand fertilizing the flowers (they’re orchids) and picking the beans time consuming.
   This is the vanilla beans in various levels of dryness. They are taken out for a few hours a day in the sun to dry and then covered and brought back inside to control the drying process speed. This is Teva’s wife, Linda. The smell is wonderful.
We headed over to the west side of Taha’a and anchored near this high-end hotel with its rooms set out over the lagoon. Like something out of Conde Naste magazine.
We went here so we could try snorkeling the ‘Coral Gardens’. This is a shallow cut that you park the dinghy on the inside of, hike out along a trail on the small island and launch yourself into the shallow cuts current. In the center it is about 3 feet deep with the sides being really shallow.

One problem with the cut is that sometimes you can’t see anything because there are too many fish in the way…

  We don’t usually do this, but as this was a spot where tons of tours go through – we joined in with the crowd and brought old baguettes in a plastic bag with holes in it. It drew a mob of very tame butterfly fish.

We did get a little rain while there, along with a double rainbow

We didn’t have time to take John and Lisa over to Bora Bora, but they did get to see Bora Bora’s iconic silhouette at sunset.
Paul

Catching Up on the Societies – Huahine and Raiatea

We did an overnight sail from Moorea to Huahine. John and Lisa got to stand their first night watch. The conditions were a bit rambuncous, but they did great. We went in on the eastern side of the island. It is the much less visited side. I enjoyed it, but it seems this picture is what I really remember. We anchored in 85ft of water. Immediately a local boat came up and in very friendly French told us that we were anchored on a pearl bed. He asked me to lift my anchor very slowly so he could make sure we didn’t catch any oyster cages. It came up clean, no problems. I asked where I could anchor and he told behind the reef that was in front of us. So we anchored over there, also in 85ft, for a few days. When we picked up the anchor we had it hooked in this massively long oyster float held together with a large cable. I ended up having to go in the water and secure a line to the cable and then fight the anchor out of the large black bucket that it is caught in in this photo. In both of these places there were no floats on the surface to indicate that there were oysters below.
   One thing you do on the east side of Huahine  is go into the bay and walk up to the area with the sacred blue-eyed eels. No good pictures of these as I only had my small camera with me and somehow I didn’t grab John’s eel shots. The black bump in the middle of the picture is an eel wanting to be fed.

This gal is the local eel whisperer. With a smile, innate animal skills and a can of open mackerel she has then eating out of her palm- literally.

  

We sailed outside the reef from the east side to the west in very light winds (after getting free of the oyster trap). We were easing along at about 2-3 kts with the headsail out and saw this guy fishing. He came scooting up to us motioning us to stop. I thought we must be heading into a net of his. As we were only going about 2 kts it didn’t take long for him to come up close. His crew struggled with lifting up this massive tuna they’d just caught. They just wanted to show us what a cool catch they had. We waved and cheered and took pictures and then they ran off to fish some more.

We did find a great secret spot for shelling on the east side. We only collect empty shells – its a vegetarian thing. Chris left her beach walk’s haul of shells in the dinghy. Turns out this one was not empty. It was occupied by a hermit crab who decided to walk down the yellow dinghy painter to try to escape to see another beach.
After a 20 mile motor in no wind over to Raiatea we anchored near this ancient ‘mare’, a sacred site. It was well preserved and has some interesting signage telling about the ritual use of the mares, which we hadn’t seen at other sites. In the photo background is the outline of Huahine.

Like all mares there was a sacred banyan tree. Those little people to the right of the tree’s air-roots are Chris and I.

Blue outrigger on a Raiatea river we went up in the dinghy.

Paul

Playing Race Course Catch Up

We entered the Tahiti to Moorea Rendezvous rally put on by the Tahiti tourism bureau. There were something like 70 boats enrolled, most all had done the Pacific crossing this year. It was a rally, but with sails up it meant it was also a race. We had a bit of a late time leaving the docks in Papeete and showed up to the starting line about 5 minutes after our start. The early morning had started out with no wind but by the time we were at the start it was blowing 20-25kts. A nice beam reach almost all the way. We had John and Lisa onboard and managed to pass a bunch of boats to take second place in the 44ft and under category, coming in behind a J/120 Felicita..
  Here’s the carved black pearl oyster shell we got as race hardware – ready for the trophy case. Even more important was the bottle of pineapple champagne that came with it.

We didn’t do so well racing in the outriggers, but we still managed to squeeze by our friends on Continuum.

None of our hardy crew was willing to try the knife dance, even after a few rum drinks.

Paul