Huahini

After dinner and the Tahitian dance review in Moorea it was off to bed early as we were bound for Huahini with a midnight departure.

More about that, but first, a bit of local geography. French Polynesia is composed of five primary island groups. The Society Islands, the Tuamotus, the Marquesas, the Australs and Gambier. The Australs and Gambier are well south of us and we will not be visiting them. We are presently in the Society Islands which are composed of 6 primary islands – Tahiti, Moorea, Huahini, Raiatea, Tahaa, Bora Bora and Maupiti. From the pictures so far, you can see that these islands are primarily volcanic in origin.

The Tuamotus – which are well east of us – are primarily low coral atolls and will be our next stop after the Societys. From Bora Bora, our likely departure point for the Tuamotus, it will take us about 1.5 days to make landfall on Fakarava.

The Marquesas will be our next stop after the Tuamotus and lie about 2.5 days travel time north and east of the Tuamotus. The Marquesas are again volcanic in origin and are generally reputed to have some of the most beautiful vistas in the South Pacific.

Back to where we are in our blog – we are actually somewhat further down the road as I am behind as usual. In the Societies, most of the islands are within a 1/2 days journey but the leap from Moorea to Huahini takes us about 12 hours. Hence the midnight departure from Moorea to arrive with the sun high in the sky for the passage thru the reef which surround Huahini and all of the Societies for that matter.

Steve and I negotiated our way out of Cooks Bay at dead idle . Although we had a good track from our entry to follow out, Cooks Bay is a busy place and there was a substantial number of anchored boats to avoid on the way out. Once at sea, I stood the first watch until 0200. Kim and Daria also wanted to experience watch keeping so after some basic instruction, they were on from 0200 to 0400 and 0400 to 0600. Steve slept on the salon settee and I was just below in the master with the door open.

Primary instruction was how to interpret the radar screens and to wake up either Steve or me if there were any alarms or any traffic on the radar. The radars, one set to 4 miles and one set to 24 miles, deserve particular attention on these inter island transits as most traffic is following the same pass to pass courses that we were on making head on encounters likely. Such was the case on Kim’s watch with a cruise ship leaving Huahini for Moorea.

From New Zealand to Tahiti, there was a stretch of over 1900 nautical miles where there was nothing but us and the ocean – no traffic at all. Around the islands, it is everywhere including small, unlit fishing boats which calls for extra vigilance (along with a bit of nerves when you consider what Iron Lady’s 80000 pounds and solid aluminium stem going 10 knots would do to a small boat if we were to strike one).

Deb took the morning watch and Steve and I were up well before our passage thru the reef. The first time we transit a reef pass, our standard procedure is to have Steve on the flybridge with radar and charts running (including my iPad with a separate chart program on it for verification). I am at the lower helm station also with radar and charts running on the Furuno Navnet but I also have our underwater scanning sonar running. The scanning sonar is like underwater radar – very useful but it takes a good bit of experience to run it and interpret the image.

We talk to each other over the VHF and discuss everything we are seeing. The radar usually pick up the breaks on either side of the reef, the chart programs show us marks, ranges and lead in lights thru the pass and the boats position relative to same and the scanning sonar confirms the location of the reef and underwater obstructions. And finally, good old eyeballs out the window with polarized glasses are just as essential as all the high tech stuff.

We anchored up for an afternoon swim and snorkel off a nice little beach where a picnic lunch was in progress complete with Polynesian music. Now I like Polynesian music as much as the next guy, but 5 hours of what sounded like “Red River Valley” sung in Polynesian by a Ukelele player who knew just two chords was a bit much. By evening when they finally quit playing, all of us were ready to shoot the Ukelele player. We actually went ashore after they left hoping to find the bloody thing and steal the strings off it. No such luck so we decided to move no the next morning before they came back.

On tap for the following day was a tour of Huahini. Will cover that in my next post.

Cheers