We went to check out the shark and sting ray site mentioned in the guide, it was not far from us. We could see by the number of boats where they had been feeding them and we went to have a look. The sharks roared up to us when we arrived in anticipation of being fed, and the poor old sting rays looked addicted to junk food. One sting ray had a very stubby tail, I guess it was an altercation with a human being!
Where we are – the last of the French Polynesian islands we will visit
Black tipped reef shark
The colour of the water is incredible and SOOO nice to see the sun out
The tourist side of things!
We headed back to PolePole, got off the mooring ball and headed to the fuel dock to fill up, that was all incredibly easy and no queue. Then onto our next anchorage near the Yacht club and had a well deserved late breakfast/brunch. With the sun out brilliantly we decided to go and snorkel at the Coral Gardens on the reef side, opposite to where we are anchored. There was a lot of chunky coral in sand and quite a few fish, sadly the weed looks like it may be killing off the coral. It was however a lovely snorkel through the coral, in the most amazing coloured water. No photos as Rowan’s Go Pro was out of battery!
By the way Neil thanks for trying to identify the weird wormy looking thing we saw in Tahaa. Rowan asked if anyone knew what it was on Face Book and someone replied – Synapta maculata a kind of sea cucumber that can stretch to 2 meters.
We saw a huge Bohadscia argus yesterday
The snorkelling spot opposite our anchorage
All on buoys at the Bora Bora Yacht Club (glorified restaurant!)
Got back and had a quick shower before heading to the Gendarmerie to get our departure papers sorted. Lucky we went today as the papers have to get sent to Papeete for authorisation and we will only get them back on Monday – our departure date! Looks like the weather predictions have changed a bit and it may be better to leave on Tuesday anyway, as the winds are blowing quite high on Monday. There was an Aussie guy doing his boat paperwork in the Gendarmerie at the same time, he is doing a delivery of a Catamaran from Papeete to Darwin. We were both commiserating on the amount of duplicate paperwork that needs filling out. The ultimate bureaucracy was we had to go to the post office and get a stamp so that one of the documents can be posted to the head office in Papeete for statistic gathering! Post office was closed but luckily we could but a stamp at the supermarket. This reminded us of all the performance of signing in and out of countries in the Caribbean during lock down.
We celebrated completing the form filling by going to the yacht club for sunset drinks and supper, who should we sit next to but the Aussie skipper who introduced us to his South African partner! They both normally work as crew on Super Yachts but decided to do this delivery job – I suspect as rather a romantic holiday. I hope it goes well, their boat has a few small issues and she hasn’t done much sailing! At the table he admitted to working out that the boat wasn’t nearly as fast as he thought it was going to be, and the passage was going to take them significantly longer, she looked a little surprised! We had a good supper, the restaurant was full, mainly French and Americans.
Stunning sunset from the Yacht Club
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