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Tucanon - Cooks Bay, Moorea,Society Islands,French Polynesia
Tucanon - Cooks Bay, Moorea,Society Islands,French Polynesia
The selection of fruit and vegetables in Carrefour was very disappointing
and we had to leave Tahiti without obtaining everything we needed.
As we left the pass, we saw surfers practicing their surfing skills. With
just one wave breaking, they could let the sea lift them up and having
surfed down they were able to move back, via the calm water to repeat the
process until perfection had been attained.
The sea bed at Cook's bay in Moorea was soft mud and we made four attempts
to set the anchor in around 18metres. The bay is stunningly beautiful with
rugged pinnacles, mainly enshrouded with dense green foliage. From our
anchorage we could see at least three separate areas which were being
actively farmed but all were on a hillside.
A collection of thatched roofed huts, making up part of two separate hotels,
stood on stilts above the water. We heard that another hotel, standing close
to the beach, had ceased trading before the world economic crisis hit.
Unfortunately these islands are very expensive and are no longer feasible as
a holiday resort for the masses, assuming that this was ever the case.
While we were doing a tour of Tahita, we passed a large hotel which had
ceased trading in the late 1990s despite Government intervention to try to
save it. The hotel had been built on a number of terraces to get round the
building regulations. Apparently the height of a building may not exceed
2/3rds of the height of a palm tree. This is very interesting as with so
many varieties of palm trees, there is also at least one variety of short
palm trees.
We spent two nights in Cooks bay. Cook in fact never anchored in this bay
and the bay was so-named after Cook's death. The subsequent morning we moved
out from the lagoon and via the next pass, once again into the lagoon to
Baie D'Opuncho, where the water was crystal clear and light blue.
Here we swam to a reef and snorkeled. The fish were magnificent. So many
different types of fish we hadn't seen before. One in particular resembled a
huge rectangular leaf. It was buttercup yellow with a black, triangular
shaped mouth, wafer thin and about 8 inches by 6 inches in size. The red
fish hid under the rocks hardly daring to look out. They knew that they were
delicious to eat and tried to keep away from predators of any kind.
Just as we were swimming back to the boat, we saw a ray, about a metre
across, swimming way below us.
Getting back to the boat was hard as the current took me astern of the boat,
further away than I had swum to the reef initially. As I approached the
boat, it moved off, swinging on its chain. I gave up. By now I was quite
exhausted having done little swimming recently I was out of shape. Dick
towed me back to the bathing ladder and I climbed aboard. I had rinsed off
the salt water and moved to pick up my shampoo and conditioner when whoosh!,
over I went. I bumped down each of the steps on the sugar scoop on my
coccyx, ending up in the water. I now have some nasty bruises and have
difficulty sitting down, some horrid gashes and a graze on the top of my
back near my left shoulder as well as a stiff neck.
The shampoo and conditioner, both full bottles, floated off across the
lagoon and within minutes were half a kilometer away from the boat. The
current was too strong and the distance too far to swim out to retrieve them
but nonetheless, Dick magnanimously did just that, exhausting himself in the
process. Should you wonder why we didn't take the rib, it was because it was
ashore with a couple of the crew.
We now need to consider obtaining a second rib, or even a dinghy so that if
an emergency does arise when the rib has been taken from the boat, we still
have contingency.
Wednesday after lunch, we left Moorea and made passage to Fare, Huahine,
arriving around 10am next morning. The sea journey was not comfortable. We
were sailing 140º-150º off the wind but the swell was on our beam.
We had to slow down after a few hours as we were sailing so fast, we would
have arrived during the hours of darkness. The parasailor was therefore
brought down and the genoa unfurled. That did the job nicely.
We anchored in the lagoon at Fare, had a brief sojourn ashore, then moved a
further 8 miles into the lagoon to Baie D'Avea.
The buoyage in the lagoons is quite different from that which we have
generally encountered. Other than entering and leaving the atoll via the
pass, where the red buoy on entering is still to port and the green buoy to
starboard, once in the lagoon, the red buoy indicates the land and the green
buoy indicates the reef.
Wow! This must be paradise. The sea is blue, pale blue and completely
crystal clear. The sea bottom is white sand. The scenery is stunning with
cypress trees, conifers, palm trees plus many that I don't recognize,
growing down to the white sand beaches from the pinnacle of the mountains
and hills. Thatched huts, on stilts built over the water with others built
at the edge of the beach, some hidden by trees. Looking out towards the sea,
we are protected by the reef where the water is constantly breaking from the
south Pacific.
When we arrive there is a catamaran here and a Moorings charter monohull.
Before dark, one of the other WARC boats has arrived plus a Moorings charter
catamaran.
We had a steak barbecue for supper and I experimented with my first
breadfruit. This was the first time most of us had knowingly eaten
breadfruit though Moe had eaten it boiled and hadn't cared for it. I roasted
it in the oven in a similar way to potatoes though it cooked much more
quickly than potatoes. The general consensus was that the breadfruit tasted
like a cross between roasted parsnips and roasted potatoes. We will have
another go tonight with the half that we haven't cooked yet and serve it
instead of potatoes with another barbequed supper.
The consistency of the breadfruit before roasting, was most interesting. The
outer 3/8 inch, after the skin had been removed was hard but the rest, after
cutting out the centre, had the consistency of putty.
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