Friday 25 June 2010

Bora Bora Week Two

This is one of the many reasons we are out here....love living outside!!!

This was our view last night from the back of the boat during Happy Hour



This was our view, at the same time, from our bow...a full moon.



As expected from the blog last week, we did get blasted with almost four full days of high wind and lots of rain. For the first time since we left B.C. in 2007, we put the additional rain cover on (that connects the bimini with the dodger) so that helped to give us more outdoor space and also made sure the bimini wasn’t blown off the boat.

We anchored once again in a deep bay (100 feet) and our chain and anchor held us fast and secure, although we skated around and had to maintain anchor watch through the nights. We were anchored with a 200-foot sailboat, a 100-foot motor yacht and a 100- foot 1904 gaff-rigged sailboat named Merry Maid with the original rigging, as well as our friends on Jenny (58- feet). We felt a little dwarfed!

1904 sailboat - The Merry Maid


The first night when the winds exceeded 40 knots, the motor yacht broke its stern line at 2:00 a.m. in the morning and had to re-anchor. It was quite an adventure with the waves, rain and wind. The next day they had to dive for a few hours to recover their anchor.

The views are amazing from every anchorage



We spent Father’s Day tucked in on the boat. Jan and Elle invited us for dinner, but the wind came up too strong in the late afternoon to contemplate leaving QuickStar. Instead I made baked macaroni and cheese – with cheese that you don’t need to refrigerate (just don’t think about that for too long, especially my sister Denise, the cheese-maker), yellow pasta (not sure why it was yellow), powdered milk and of course breadcrumbs (after picking out the weevils). Yum, yum! We called Peter’s Dad from our computer and they shared the fact that they were going to have a lovely family barbeque with Oma’s fantastic cooking and a selection of her fabulous cakes!!! I tried to make a package of chocolate chip cookies for dessert, but alas, no eggs left.

An example of the many over the water bungalows - this is the Hilton


It is really odd being in Bora Bora. This must rate as one of the top ten most expensive destinations in the world. The prices of the over- the- water bungalows start at about $800 a night. Food prices are through the roof, and activities are expensive as well. It is about 50% more expensive than Moorea, which already has the regular high prices of French Polynesia.

One of the closed and decaying bars



What is really sad, is that Bora Bora is like a ghost town. There are 60% less tourists here than before the crash. Hotels and bars are closed and left to just rot. The famous Bora Bora hotel is deserted with the bungalows just falling down on the beach. Lots of shops and activities have closed down as well and those that have remained open scarcely have any customers. They don’t get the whole supply and demand concept here though, and haven’t lowered their prices. Instead they just close down. They also don’t get the concept of cleanliness in paradise, as the roads and public areas are completely litter-strewn. Dogs also roam at will and none of them have been fixed.

Bloody Mary's Restaurant - Jimmy Buffets favourite hang-out here



While here, we went to the famous Bloody Mary restaurant, which has a huge list out front of all the celebrities that have been there. We were the only two in the restaurant – until our friends from Jenny and the owner of Merry Maid came in for a beer.

Check your sandals/shoes at the door



Bora Bora is a fabulous place to sail around though. The scenery is amazing, the water is crystal clear, the diving is fantastic and the long walks on the beach are a treat.

Location of our dive shop - the hotel and restaurant are closed



What is also sad, though, is that the coral is pretty well all dead. What used to be vibrant coral gardens bursting with colour and live coral is now just brown and broken. This has been caused by the Crown of Thorns – photo courtesy of Scott Stoinitz.

The Crown of Thorns has been around for awhile, but was kept controlled by its two predators – the Napoleon Wrasse and also the Triton Trumpet. Since the reef isn’t protected here, the locals overfished both of these natural predators – the Napoleon because it is great to eat and the Triton for their shells, since they fetch upwards of $200 U.S. a piece.

The Crown of Thorns



The Crown of Thorns now ran rampant, and one of them alone can eat and destroy nine square feet of coral a day!!! The coral was almost dead already by February, so when the cyclone came through, it finished it off.

The next island we are going to tomorrow is Maupiti, and it is one of the last Society Islands to have live coral. This is due single-handedly to the dive master there who has killed in excess of 3,000 Crown of Thorns and thereby protected the reef. We are looking forward to diving there on Saturday. This is assuming we are able to shoot the entrance, as it has a very narrow and dangerous pass to maneuver to get in to the lagoon. If it isn’t navigable due to winds and/or swell, we will have to take a miss and carry on to Mopelia overnight.

I’m doing the blog a day early, because we are getting ready to leave “civilization” behind and start heading to the remoter areas…Maupiti (with 1,500 residents), then on to Mopelia (with 12 residents) and then about a four day crossing to the Cook Islands.

We got our final provisioning, fuel and completed all our formalities for check-out, and as I write this Peter is securing our dinghy on the deck for our dawn departure tomorrow morning.

Ouch! That darn Lion Fish


We went for our final dive here this morning and the visibility was amazing. We were lucky to see black tipped sharks, lemon sharks and grey sharks all on the same dive! Our dive master got stung by the very poisonous Lion Fish and his finger blew up to twice the normal size. Hopefully he will be okay and the pain and swelling should go away in a couple of days.

Getting medical attention for the Lion Fish sting



Now that we have finished our three dives in Bora Bora and are leaving, I’ll show you a picture of one of the dive guides, Patrick. (thanks again to Scott for the photo). Patrick got a chunk taken out of his leg by a lemon shark – he tells the public the injury was from a motorcycle accident, as the truth isn’t great for business. He freely admits that it was his error that caused the accident. He was feeding the sharks, by putting out fish heads under rocks and he didn’t realize that one had dropped down and he had it between his legs. The rest is history…the lemon shark just came for the fish head. Patrick no longer “feeds the sharks” and it really is quite safe to swim with the sharks, as no tourist has reportedly been “bitten” here.

Photo of Patrick's shark bite!



We expect to be out of internet range for about two weeks, so I’ll update the blog via the ham radio again next week if I’m able to, and then daily for the crossing to the Cook Islands. As always, if there are any emergencies at home, just send us an email to our Ham Radio, which we’ll check once a day.

QuickStar in the final Bora Bora anchorage



Until next week….Live like a crazy person!

Saturday 19 June 2010

Our first "incident"


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This great past week, including diving, kayaking, exploring the lagoon around Bora Bora all pales in comparison to our big event yesterday.

One of the challenges of sailing in the lagoons around the Society Islands is the many coral heads and reefs – many of which are not charted. Yesterday, while we were picking our way through the very narrow channel, with me on bow watch, we inadvertently misread a cardinal buoy and –you guessed it – ended up on the reef.

This was even more nerve-wracking than normal as the wind was gusting between 15 – 20 knots and the current was running at about 8 knots – pushing us ever closer to the main reef. Peter responded to the situation quickly and took out our stern anchor in the dinghy to hold the boat from being thrust further onto the reef.

Once back aboard, he was getting ready to deploy our second (main) anchor when I noticed that our dinghy was speeding away all on its own (yes, 2nd mistake, not tying the dinghy – keeping in mind things were a little hairy at this time). Peter then swam off in the water (luckily grabbing a life jacket.he swam like a demon and finally caught up with it and managed to drag himself on board.

At this point I was trying to flag down passing motorboats that were taking hotel customers back and forth, but they went by so quickly, they either didn’t notice we were stuck on the reef, or chose to ignore us. I was quite keen to call for assistance, but Peter was still determined that we could manage to get off the reef by ourselves.

We were continuing to drift further in to the reef, and the tide had already turned from high tide and was moving towards low tide. Not a good situation when you are on a reef. We emptied all our water tanks to raise the waterline, but this still wasn’t enough to lighten us and get us off. As Peter and I were hauling the main anchor to the stern of the boat, I noticed that the dinghy was full of water. When I mentioned it, Peter said “well of course I was soaking wet”. I said “not that wet!” and we realized that the plug had come out of the dinghy and it was in fact sinking! This would be funny if it wasn’t a true story. It was really no big deal as I just hopped in the dinghy, replaced the plug, and bailed it all out.

After all of this, with late afternoon fast approaching, I was able to convince Peter to sound the alarm. He reluctantly called a Pan Pan on the radio (this is one call down from a mayday when life is in danger). No one responded to the first call, which was amazing considering all the hotel boats that were going back and forth. On the second call, we got a response from a fellow cruiser from Norway sailing on a 58' boat. He was fairly close by at anchor and had a big, strong boat so came to our assistance. He couldn’t get close to us, as the channel we were in was less than 15 feet wide and surrounded by coral heads and reef. Instead he anchored out in the deeper water and he (Jan) and his son-in-law (Urwelcum) came over in their dinghy.

Fortunately, just before they arrived, a fast boat went speeding by us, and his huge wake enabled QuickStar to get off the reef! That should have been the end of it, but of course, we still had to bring in both anchors that had been deployed off the stern. The first one was no problem. I kept QuickStar in a slow reverse to hold her off the reef and to compensate for the current, while Peter brought in the anchor. He was pretty exhausted after dealing with this for over three hours.

Our main anchor refused to come up! It was stuck on a coral head.
Another local power boat, with three strong men, came over and offered their assistance. Now we had two boats helping us out.

We rigged up a chain and line to pull up the anchor from the power boat. It still wouldn’t budge. Juan came on board and helped to maneuver QuickStar in the narrow channel as we continued to fight with the chain. Peter was hauling it in and I was tailing it. We weren’t really getting anyway and it looked like the only answer was going to be to cut the anchor (which would mean leaving it there and leaving us without a main anchor and then coming back with a diver and equipment to retrieve it another day – since darkness was less than two hours away at this point). Fortunately, the anchor did shift and we got it loose – ALMOST.



Turned out that it had a full coral head attached to it. At least we were free, so we motored out of the channel, very slowly with this huge coral head attached to the anchor and then we tied up beside Jenny to get the coral head off. This was accomplished by raising the anchor with the halyard and disengaging the coral head.



We all breathed a sigh of relief and then went to anchor in a lovely little bay. We spent about an hour cleaning up the boat – mud everywhere, including ourselves covered from head to toe from hauling anchor chain and adding a few more bumps and bruises. Luckily the damage to QuickStar was fairly minor with only a damaged toe rail and a damaged life rail from the anchor line.

We invited the gang from Jenny over for gin and tonics to thank them for their very valued assistance. Another reminder how important it is for cruising boats to monitor Channel 16 (the distress channel) while in anchorages. You never know if you will need help or can render help to another vessel. We are deeply grateful to Juan and Ella and Benedicta and Urwelcum – with much apology for the spelling of their lovely Norwegian names.

Peter didn’t sleep most of last night, busy beating himself up for the error in navigation. He also popped a couple of Advil this morning as his back is feeling the effects of putting out and hauling in all the anchor chain. To add to our little comedy, we have just checked the weather and there is a warning in effect with hourly warnings being announced on the radio. The wind is going to begin building tomorrow and increase to over 40 knots per hour for the next four days with 100% precipitation called for. We will be moving to a more secure anchorage and probably hunkering down until it blows by. We should be in for quite the ride. (Our departure to Mautipiti is on hold until this passes).




On a more light-hearted note, we sure enjoy the many rainbows. The diving has been fantastic, with our best dive so far this year featuring sea turtles that swan with us, lots of black tipped sharks, moray eels and so much more. We’ve also had time to do some kayaking. The locals here are constantly out in their outrigger canoes (they are all in great shape) and they love to play in our wake.



Sadly, the coral and reefs have all been almost decimated by the Crown of Thorns Starfish and topped off by the cyclone that came through last February. I was going to report on that this week, but our little “incident” upstaged it. Next week, I’ll explain the situation regarding the reef. You can see in this photo that the corral is all but dead beside the black sea urchins.





So, tomorrow we will be heading out of Dodge and back to the Yacht Club where we will probably grab a mooring ball for added safety and wait out the storm in the comfort of their patio bar, with fellow cruisers. (They also televise the World Cup, so it won’t be such a hardship, ha,ha).



Congratulations to Danny and Ashley for getting possession of their new house yesterday. June 17th is quite a day to remember!



Until next Friday……play hard



P.S. While I've been doing the blog Peter went over to visit with Ella and Jan on s/v Jenny. He says she is absolutely beautiful - a 58 foot Hoek Design that Jan (Isaksen) built himself. Also turns out to be the same designer as Erica XII (mentioned last week) and she is actually 175 feet (as opposed to my description of being more than 130 feet). We are going to head over to the Lagoonarium with Ella and Jan to swim with the rays before we head out. Thanks again to the gang on Jenny

P.S.S. Currently there is a mayday on the radio - two people have gone overboard enroute from Raiatea to Bora Bora. Hopefully this will turn out alright!


Saturday 12 June 2010

Bora Bora Bound with a stow-a-way aboard

A typical Society Island anchorage



Note....have uploaded some photos today from last weeks blog entry below - have a good connection this morning.

Hard to believe another week has gone by so quickly. Most of it was spent sailing throughout the lagoon of Tahaa. We had some wonderful snorkeling and anchored off some motu's all by ourselves. We returned to Raiatea for a couple of nights…one spent at the town dock so that we could do all our provisioning, refuel and go for the famous hike.



We ascended the mountain, which is right downtown, to take in the sunset over Bora Bora. It was a lovely hike, with off and on rain showers, so once we made it to the top, the view was somewhat limited – but truly amazing as we had a 360 degree view and could see the coral reefs very distinctly. Enroute through this Pacific style jungle, we passed all kinds of animals at large…cows, bulls, horses, pigs, piglets, etc.

VIew from the top



Before we left Raiatea, we had one small injury. For those of you who know how much Peter prizes his sandwiches at lunch, you’ll get a kick out of this. Each day when we are in a village we buy a fresh baguette (for only 50 cents – the one true bargain in the South Pacific). Anyway, as he was eating his lunch and going on and on as he does about how much he loves his sandwiches, he somehow managed to dislocate his jaw on the baguette. I thought this was quite funny, but Peter wasn’t too fond of having to eat “soft old people” food for the next two days. All is well now – so steak for dinner tonight!



We motor-sailed the 20 miles over to Bora Bora, with a nice calm sea. We have anchored outside of the Bora Bora Yacht Club where we have spent the last two nights. The first day we walked in to the main town (about 40 minutes each way). We were surprised at how busy the streets were, but even more surprised at how friendly and welcoming the locals were to us. We had some business to take care of, including picking up our boat papers from the Air Tahiti office (thanks Doug we got them!) and doing some scanning. Next year for sure we’ll upgrade our printer to include a scanner as we have had many occasions that we’ve needed one.



The town is beautiful with the mountain as its backdrop. There does tend to be a fair amount of garbage everywhere, as in Tahiti, they do not have garbage containers most places – plus, it reminds me of our culture only 40 years ago where it was quite common and acceptable to just toss garbage from a car, or leave garbage in parks, etc. It would be shocking in Canada to do that now, but it is still very prevalent here.



The Bora Bora Yacht Club is billed as “your home away from home” because almost all sailors who come this way stop in. Unfortunately, the young American couple who own it lost their home this past January in the cyclone, so they are currently living in a little shed on the property, plus the restaurant isn’t open, due to the extensive damage. They have done a wonderful job rebuilding the docks that were also wiped out and the bar is open for business! It is expected to be “the” place to be tomorrow for the World Cup.

The welcoming yacht club



While we are here, Peter and I are getting certified to dive with Nitrox. That is just a different type of air than the more conventional air that is used in scuba diving. It does involve reading a book, doing exercises and writing a test, which we will complete tomorrow. It also requires two Nitrox dives, the first of which we did this morning.

Swimming with the sharks...photo courtesy of Scott Stolinz



The dive was fantastic – we saw lots of large lemon sharks (6 – 8 feet) including some pregnant ones. They are not shy and swim within touching distance. A little freaky the first time one came right for me, with a mouth full of sharp teeth, and then just passed me on the right. We also saw a few different kinds of moray eels, lots of black tipped sharks, jelly fish, and many, many different kinds of fish. After completing the dive, we both remarked that we did, indeed, feel less tired (one of the selling features of Nitrox) than we normally would. (I would like to give special thanks to our sailing buddy – Dr. Scott Stoinitz of sv Beachhouse for these amazing underwater shots – really appreciate you letting me use them).

Medusa Jelly Fish - photo courtesy of Scott Stoilinz



Our next door neighbour in this anchorage is a classic yacht, Erica XII, well over 130 feet. Peter thinks it is an amazing yacht, so he took lots and lots of pictures of it.



We also have a stow-a-way. We have a little gecko that somehow managed to get aboard. We keep seeing it, but have been unsuccessful in catching it and returning it to land. We hope he manages to find enough to eat (I’ve been leaving out a few things, but really not sure what a gecko eats other than bugs, which I’m not catching for him).



We are hopeful that we will be diving with Manta Rays on Sunday, or on one of our dives next week. They are quite famous here, although have been elusive, due to the ongoing construction of new 5 star hotels that are built over the lagoon. So now, I must return to studying. Please feel free to drop us an email and say hello. We love to hear from family and friends. svquickstar@shaw.ca

Until next Friday…..laugh often…..

Saturday 5 June 2010

Iaora! Welcome from the Society Islands where the weather today is sunny, 28 degrees, humidity 72%, winds 20 km/hr from the East, barometer 1014 and rising, and visibility of 24 kilometres. I’m writing this week’s blog during my morning cup of coffee, after my hour of dawn Yoga, underneath another incredible rainbow. The weather here changes in a blink of an eye…one minute sunny, the next a rain shower. One of our good sailing friends, Chuck (sv Jackaranda) from Mexico prepared us for this weather and he came up with an excellent solution that allows the main hatch to stay open even in a downpour. My second favourite captain, Joe DaPonte built it for me this winter (thanks again) and once we got it stained onboard, we’ve been using it ever since. It’s the best thing ever to permit a cooling breeze, so any of our boating friends that want the info on it, we’d be happy to share it with you.







We were saddened this week to learn from our close friends Diane and Rob, of the sudden death of their beloved 30 year old nephew. Too sad for words. Makes you truly cherish every day. On a much happier note, the circle of life continues. We are absolutely thrilled to announce that Danny and his girlfriend Ashley will be bringing our newest grandchild in to the world around December 22nd. What a fabulous Christmas it will be!



This past week we sailed around Tahaa, a small island with about 4,500 people. We anchored at the head of a mile long bay and were the only boat there. The full moon shone overhead and was a magnificent sight suspended between the two headlands at the entrance to the bay. The photo doesn’t do it justice. On Sunday morning, we planned on going to the little church in this isolated community, but we didn’t make it in time. We (okay maybe just me) really enjoy going to church as the entire village comes out and they dress up in fancy hats and their Sunday best. The singing is amazing and even though we can’t understand the service, which is a combination of the local Tahitian language and French, we love how welcoming the locals are to us.

We hiked 8 kilometres over the mountain from our bay to the bay on the other side of the island. The views were breathtaking. After another night in this anchorage we sailed over to the southern bay where the yacht club is. One major difference between South Pacific cruising and Mexican cruising is the depth of the anchorages. It is very common to anchor in 100 foot depths here. We have 300 feet of chain and another 200 feet of rode (which means nylon anchor line to you landlubbers), so we are able to swing comfortably, while others have to attach to and pay for mooring balls.

While here for a few nights we decided to be more social than usual and went to the bar the first night and then to a special Tahitian buffet and dance show on the beach the following night. We were joined there by about 7 of the 20 Blue Water Rally boats – which is an around the world rally that started in England early this year. We enjoyed kibitzing with these sailors as well as meeting some sailors who have plied these waters for over 8 years – so we got a wealth of knowledge on the countries we will be sailing to this season.

The only downside was that Peter said that we could go to this show, but no matter what he wasn’t going to get up and dance and make a fool out of himself. We had a beachside table and you can guess the rest…..Peter was dragged up (glaring at me as he was led away) and he “shook his booty” in front of the packed house. I was laughing so hysterically that my pictures didn’t turn out very well. Peter was actually a pretty good sport about it.



We returned the day before yesterday to Raiatea to do some routine boat maintenance such as refueling, changing the oil, filling propane bottles, etc. Peter discovered that the impeller in the generator was broken. I made the monumental mistake of asking what it was for. Peter then gave me a dissertation on the function of this water-wheel looking contraption. (Kylie, you can well imagine just how thrilling this was!) The reader’s digest version is that this little $20 piece is essential in cooling the engine to prevent a complete breakdown. It is pretty easy to replace and since we have spares and then more spares on board, it was due to be an easy fix. Turned out not to be the case. The spares that the manufacturer supplied in their kit were the wrong size. After lots of swearing and mature ranting calling them a bunch of “f***ing idiots”, Peter went to the marina to see if they had the part.



No, is the short end of the story, but he was able to order them and have them flown in from Papeete (where he also ordered more oil filters, just in case). They were supposed to arrive in a few days, but to our very pleasant surprise they arrived today – at a mere cost of $250.00 U.S. (for three of them). We are still delayed here though as the propone still has yet to be delivered. Hopefully soon.



Our next stop was going to be Bora Bora, but the winds have intensified and shifted, so that if we went now we would be dead on the wind. Instead we will probably head over to the southern side of Tahaa to snorkel the reef for a couple of days while waiting for the wind to be more favourable (and most likely for the propane to be delivered). Being able to choose to sail with the winds at our back in following seas is just another great benefit of not being on a fixed schedule.

My computer got seawater on it (we left a hatch open for a few minutes, and it managed to destroy my keyboard). We got a new one to hook in to the computer, but of course it is French, so the keys are all marked differently. Makes for some interesting typing. Sadly, our binoculars finally bit the dust. They have a real sentimental value as they were Peter’s Dad’s who was given them on his retirement in 1984. We have used them faithfully for all our sailing, and the new ones we bought won’t be nearly as special. Needless to say we’ll keep the original ones, as well as the special wooden case that was built for them. Another little inconvenience here is weevils. Seems the pesky little things get in to most flour, sugar, breadcrumbs, etc. Really, they are just a little extra protein, but Peter is a real baby about them, so I try to hurry when I’m doing any cooking using these dry ingredients.



Every night we are serenaded by drums playing on the beach. It’s like our own private concert. As I’m finishing this off, Peter is currently putting in the impeller – it is the right size but instead of 6 thingy’s, it has 12. You can tell I’m not the mechanic on board. Hopefully, it will work alright – Peter has just emerged from the work room with a big smile on his face, so he’s a happy camper now. We are good to go.

Until next week…..do something fun and free. Like a picnic!

QuickStar

QuickStar
46 foot Beneteau

The journey begins.....

I update this blog every Friday, so that you can share in our adventure and learn about new places and cultures.

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Thanks for dropping in to visit. Hugs from Diana and Peter.