Mo'orea

Only 30 miles away from Papeete lay a little island called Mo’orea. There are two big bays that boats can anchor in and cruise ships stop there as well. Our journey there was really smooth, we motored the whole way from lack of wind, which was a bummer. The first bay you come upon in Cook Bay and we only spent a day there. The next is Opunohu Bay. Both look very similar because lushes’ peaks surround you. We anchored so far back in the valley that no wind or waves could reach us so it was like a lake all around us.

 

I had read about a turtle sanctuary near this town called Papeto’ai which also had a stingray feeding ground near by so we though lets just go check out the area with the boat and see if we can find a place to anchor. 

We found a nice little anchor spot in 3ft of water in a sandy lagoon. The perks of having a Catamaran ;) Our spot was right in the hub of the area. There were kite boarders zipping by us doing all kinds of tricks. I’ve always wanted to learn so I swam ashore and found a teacher.

Later that afternoon two kite boarders came and hung out with us. Their names were Toarea and Tamatoa. Tamatoa Gillot is a professional kite boarder and has traveled all over the world for it but his true home is Moorea lives here most of the time. Toarea ended up showing us all kind of cool things in the lagoon. He showed us how to get clams and green turbans.

Which are super yummy and showed me how feed fishes the clams so they will swarm around you. Tamatoa ended up taking me tandem kiteboarding and than gave me another lesson the next day. I am addicted to this sport now.

One of the days we all went out on Tamatoas little boat to see the stingrays. There were tons of sharks, fishes, and stingrays everywhere, which really freaked my mom out. The trick to getting the stingrays to rub all over you is to hide a piece of fish in your hand and they sniff all over you. They don’t have teeth but very strong flat jaws.

I was sad to leave our new friends and such an amazing little town but you gotta keep going or you’ll never experience all those other cool places. So we left for Huahine

Tahiti Nui

Ia ora na! (Hello in Tahitian)
Such an accomplishment getting to Tahiti. The place my dads dreamed of for 40 years. Now we can finally say "Hey we've sailed to Tahiti!" So on Oct 7th we came up on to Tahiti from its east side of its little island. The island is made of two islands connected with an isthmus. The little island area is called Tahiti Iti which means "small tahiti" and the main big island which has its bustling capital Papeete is called Tahiti Nui.

 We decided to sail around the south east side to check out Teachupoo. Which is one of the most famous surf spots in the world for its huge waves. The spot wasn't getting its big swells like usual but it was just cool to see it and surf in the area since this was the first place we've been able to find surf!

After spending a few days on the south east side of Tahiti Iti. We sailed to Papeete on Tahiti Nui. Its a bustling little city. It was nice to be able to get parts and supplies that we weren't able to get any where else but we realized quickly we did not want to be there. My mom (Maurene) flew in on Oct 12th from Hawaii and decided she'd stay in French Polynesia for two weeks and travel with us to some of the other islands. From Papeete you can see the island of Moorea. Its only 30 miles and looked pretty so we immediately headed there! 

Fakarava!

So after Nuku Hiva we headed to Fakarava which is part of the Tuamotus. It took us four days which was so nice compared to our 30 days at sea voyage. We had enough fresh food to get us there. The thing about the Tuamotus is that they are all atolls. Look that up on google images for a better understanding but they are all super flat and extremly hard to see untill you are about 8miles away from them. We went through the south pass of Fakarava

And man was it pretty!! The most beautiful place I've ever been.  The water is so clear and you can see black tip reef sharks all around you and tons of fish.

We brought with us one of the friends we made on Nuku Hiva his name is John and he lives in Japan with his wife Tomoko. But gets out and travels every year and returns to his loving wife after a few months. He and I took up the amazing diving opportunity they have in Fakarava. They have a dive called Wall of Sharks and you down about 60ft. You literally see hundreds of sharks grey, meiko, black tip and white tip. It was the coolest dive Ive ever done and I'm still a beginner diver. John has his master diver card and he said he has never seen this many sharks while diving.

And when I said hundreds of sharks I really mean we saw hundreds of sharks!! I was a little sad to leave Fakarava because of its perfect clear what and beautiful corals but Tahiti is next!

Nuku Hiva

Kaoha! Like Aloha but in Marquesian language.  We have been eating tons of cheese and fresh bread every day. Everyone speaks French and some people a little English. On our first day we met a bunch of other people that had sailed to Nuku Hiva. Walking down the main road of the town we met Alba (Spanish), Mattis (Chillean/Spanish), and Matt (Australia).  All three are so friendly and love to travel. The four of us made friends with a local guy named Lido while hitch hiking around the island. He took us to many cool bays around the island, bought us local treats and than set us up to hike into a little town called Anaho to meet his friends. Anaho bay is one of the most beautiful bays in the world supposedly and it sure does live up to its name.  We hungout with three families and became real good friends with them all. They made us tons of good local food. They taught us how to find octopus at low tide and we caught 5 of them! Here's one of them on my head it’s cool thing to do these days ;). We had a lunch the next day before we hiked out of there. We had roasted goat and pig that had been cooked underground all night, breadfruit, and roasted octopus. The people on this island are seriously the friendliest people I have ever met. Everyone loves their island so much and they want others to enjoy it as much as they do. One day I’m for sure coming back.

30 days at sea!

Sorry guys that this hasn’t been updated. We ended up being at sea for 30 days! Way longer than expected.  The winds kept changing on us and we had to sail really east to be able to reach the Marquesas.  On the 4^th day it started pouring and didn’t stop till a week later. But the 7^th day it stopped for two hours and was really sunny. The pod of 20 dolphins came and joined us during that time and swam with the boat for an hour which isn’t very common. We stopped the boat and  got in the water to swim with them. A week later we were in the doldrums.  There wasn’t any wind for a few days so we just motored. The ocean looked like a huge lake and the sky reflected off it perfectly.

  On Sept 11 we finally reached the equator!! A huge accomplishment and headed into the southern hemisphere! The whole 30 days we pretty much slept ate read and sailed.  Finally saw our first landfall on Sept 16^th. We reached Eiao Island, which is the most northern island of the Marquesas chain. No one lives there but there is a nice cove to anchor in with a red beach! We went exploring and found a waterfall. Since its so small we decided to leave the next day to Nuku Hiva. It took us a little less than a day to get there.

Big Island and Off to The South Pacific

For the past week we have been on the Big Island also known as Hawai'i. We got a rental car and went exploring around the island.

One day we got up at 3am to see the sunrise on Mauna Kea. The top is around 13796ft above sea level but it is supposedly taller than Mt. Everest when measuring from the bottom of the ocean. Also on our adventures we went to a black sand beach and a green sand beach. Ive started to collect sand from different beaches in the world and will continue too along this trip. We are leaving tomorrow morning to head to the Marquesas which are 2300mi away from here or if we cant sail that east we will be sailing straight south to Tahiti which is 2600mi away. It will take about 3 weeks maybe less depending on the wind.

Crossing to Lana'i

We left on Aug 2nd around 12pm and arrived to Manele Bay on Lana'i around 3pm on the 3rd.  It was really tiring to sail all night but totally worth it. The crossing wasn't to rough compared to times when we cross to Molokai instead. During the night of the crossing I spotted something glowing in the water. All of a sudden we were sailing through Bio luminescence (lil glowing plankton). I totally felt like Pi from the book and movie "Life of Pi". I found this picture off the internet it looks like what we saw but ours was green!