26 August 2024 – Moorea- Society Islands

We had a quieter night and woke to a calm still morning. The cruise ship and Shinkai had gone. We had our usual breakfast of fruits and my bread went down well.

I had some more admin and emails and had had a reply from Tim about the watermaker. I am not sure I can deal with it and have asked Tahiti crew to find someone to look at it. I spoke to my kids (their all grown up) which was nice. We chilled for a bit and watched the world go by and then decided to go snorkelling back to the reef in the dinghy. This was about 1.5nm but it was a lovey day and we pootled along. We passed a large motorboat which we noticed yesterday and which had no anchor light on it. However, when we approached it we realised it was abandoned and it was registered in London!. There was tape on the back as if from the police and there was no bridge door and it looked a sorry state. There are quite a few abandoned boats throughout the world and it is becoming a bit of a problem.

We came to the end of the bay and followed the buoys round to the western side of the reef and anchored initially off the first set of red buoys. As soon as I got in the water and approached a coral bommie I came across a large and fierce looking moray eel poking out from a hole in the coral and I could see he was looking at me. I decided not to go too close. I headed toward the red buoy but the coral here was a bot grey and I was rewarded by seeing a turtle swim by. However we all agreed this was not the best spot so we got in the dinghy again (not easy without a ladder) and headed deeper into the channel and to a deeper section away from the village and wharf.

We anchored again and headed into the deeper section and were rewarded by a fantastic area of coral of different types and an array of reef fish from the small electric blue and see through to large silver fish. Once fish was unusual in that it had a circular type fan at its tail which helped propel it. We stayed here for some time enjoying the array of fish and coral and the whole environment. Once we had had enough we went back to the dinghy and decided to head ashore to the village and moored in a little harbour. We walked up to the road and found a bar for a Hinano (Tahitian beer – rather good actually) and a snack.

We retraced our steps back to Stormbird, showered and had a salad type lunch. We then read and rested and enjoyed a relaxed afternoon. We made a rum punch – Mark style which is rum, bananas, coconut cream and pineapple juice juiced up – delicious -try it at home.

The sun went down and the shadows darkened on the steep hills and trees and another wonderful day had passed. We will head back to Tahiti tomorrow and we have had a wonderful time here in Moorea which is a beautiful island and well worth visiting.

We had a chicken curry with aubergine, courgette and breadfruit with rice cooked by Mark (again-he loves doing this) again. It was a great supper.

Crewing Opportunity Year Two

In year two I will be going from New Zealand in early January 2025 across to Sydney and up the Eastern Australian Coast, Indonesia and then through Bali, Singapore and on to Thailand to end year two about the end of November 2025. I will need some more crew.

If there is any interest do email me at  hine.nick9@gmail.com  

The blog will continue as we move through French Polynesia and beyond. If you have any comments or suggestions about the blog do email me on hine.nick9@gmail.com