Maupiti

On Thursday P headed off to the Gendarmerie in Bora Bora to check out of French Polynesia. The process took a little while as she had to fill out about 5 forms with our information and the boats information. Once done, the lovely policeman stamped all our passports and directed us to the post office to send our customs forms and to send an email to the harbour master in Papeete to request clearance. We received our clearance on Friday and planned to set sail the following day. By 7am we were sailing out the pass and headed for Maupiti, about 30 nautical miles away.

We had a pleasant sail with light winds and little swell. Our friends on Skylark left around the same time as us and we sailed within talking distance for a while. Photo opportunity!

We arrived at the Maupiti pass around 1pm. The pass into the lagoon has a notorious reputation under certain conditions and we had timed our entry to ensure a calm transit. Still, it looked a bit hairy with 1 - 2 metre waves breaking on each side of the narrow pass. We took a deep breath and motored in against the 4 knot outgoing current with only a few metres of water on each side of the boat. G steered us through the narrow channel and once inside the protected lagoon we both exhaled with relief.

Happy (relieved) skipper!

We dropped anchor in about 10 metres of amazing blue water with scattered coral heads. The following morning we were asked to move by a local dive operator as he thought that we were anchored too close to a protected marine area, so we pulled up our anchor and moved about 100 meters further away. The dive operator also told us the manta rays would be around shortly, so we quickly got all our masks and fins into the dinghy and went over near the dive boat. Once we were in the water we swam around hoping to spot our first manta ray. We didn't have to wait too long and soon enough we saw up to 5 of these huge creatures. We watched them for over an hour, circling a particular coral head again and again. Apparently the mantas have cleaning stations where they have their undersides cleaned by small fish. They are very graceful gliding through the water and occasionally they'd dart quickly towards the surface showing they are also capable of great speed.

We enjoyed seeing the mantas so much that we went again the following morning and the Skylark crew also donned their scuba gear to check them out from the sea bed.

Once we were done we returned to the boat and moved to the anchorage near the village. We went ashore to find the shops (of which there's only a handful) closed as it was a public holiday and only the odd stray rooster and dog roamed the deserted street (there's only one road that encircles the whole island).

We spent the afternoon preparing for our longest passage yet. P cooked up 4 meals so that we wouldn't have to cook much while at sea while G removed the dinghy motor, secured the dinghy and got everything ocean ready. Then the crew from Skylark came over to share a last meal with us in French Polynesia. We left Maupiti early the next morning with strong winds and 4 metre standing waves in the pass (We later heard from another boat that left a few hours after us that the waves got up to about 10 metres high). The photo below doesn't do it justice, it seems that photos of the sea never seem to match the conditions that you experience. When we were a safe distance from the reef we pulled up our sails and set our course for Niue.

Next update, our seven day passage to Niue!