With just a couple of days left on our visas, Eitan and I headed to Bora Bora to begin the checkout process for French Polynesia and pick up our new crew member, Evan. I met Evan and his wife Stephanie through Instagram a couple of years ago. Like me, they’re both civil engineers from northern California and have been completely refitting a Mason 43 to sail around the world. We have kept in touch and I asked if Evan would be interested in joining us for 2-3 weeks to help us with the passages between French Polynesia and the Cook Islands. He took us up on the opportunity and flew out with a big bag of boat supplies and goodies to meet us in Bora Bora.
Once Evan was onboard and settled in, we picked up a mooring ball at the Bora Bora Yacht Club and walked into town. Evan and I got groceries while Eitan met with the Gendarmerie (national police) to begin the check-out process for the boat and crew. We met up around lunch time and Eitan seemed to be in high spirits, explaining that we didn’t need to illegally stay in the country. Some of Eitan’s friends would be in Bora Bora in two weeks on their honeymoon and had an additional bag of boat stuff for us. We were planning to check out of the country, then hang out around the island until then. A bit illegal but when you’re on a boat, you can typically blame it on bad weather or a “broken” autopilot. When Eitan went to the office to begin the paperwork, the immigration official said we could check out whenever we wanted, regardless of the visa limitations!
Once we were back on the boat, Eitan began going through our new bag of orders and assigning jobs for Evan and me to get working on. Normally, Eitan can get frustrated with the crew not pulling their weight or being less than eager to help out and I was initially worried that Evan might fall into that category. He is, after all, working full-time fixing up his own boat! Evan turned out to be an all-star and the best crew we have ever had! Throughout his time onboard he constantly asked what needed to get done and never complained once. To top it off he was also an excellent chef and offered to cook most of the meals. Not only did he make our lives easier, he asked us every day “What can I do to make your lives easier today?”!
Our two weeks in Bora Bora were off to a great start… almost! We spent our time there hopping around from mooring ball to mooring ball. We would much rather anchor, especially considering the moorings are $40 per night, but we didn’t have many other options. We tried anchoring in a nice sandy spot but the mooring services guy came by and said it is illegal to anchor anywhere in Bora Bora (a likely story coming from the guy who runs the moorings). When Eitan asked for a government-issued map or document describing these restrictions, the guy became defensive saying that people like us weren’t welcome there and threatened to call the police. Since we were technically overstaying our visas at this point, we weren’t trying to get on any bad terms with the local government and agreed to move.
A few days later we visited the local police department to get a map outlining the anchoring restrictions. Apparently in all of Bora Bora, there are only two small places where you can anchor; one of those locations is almost too deep to anchor in and the other is quite far from everything. So, if we were going to be stuck in Bora Bora for two weeks waiting for Eitan’s friends to arrive, we were going to have to pay. The worst part is, after diving on each of the moorings, we found them to be pretty poorly maintained, which made us wonder what we were even paying for.
Eitan posted his concerns on one of the French Polynesia cruisers Facebook groups and got a message from another boat owner that had been in Bora Bora the year prior. This other owner had their boat tied up to a mooring ball outside of the Bora Bora Yacht Club and went out to dinner. When they returned, they experienced every cruiser’s worst nightmare, their boat was no longer there! The mooring broke and their boat drifted across the lagoon, ramming into one of the overwater bungalows at a nearby resort, leaving a sizable hole in their deck and thousands of dollars in damages. Initially, the mooring company tried to bribe them with a sizable chunk of money to keep quiet. But even worse, a few days later the company claimed that they were not at fault because it was not their mooring ball, despite charging them daily for its use. For this reason, it’s always good to dive on the mooring and have a remote anchor alarm in place!
We ended up staying at one of the anchorages for a few nights to get away from the crowds and minimize the costs. It didn’t seem like a coincidence that the only good anchorage was quite far from all the resorts, beaches, and snorkel spots; like we were some kind of a blemish to be hidden. Similar to Moorea, all the beaches are private and there is hardly any place to take the dinghy to shore. Even though Bora Bora is a beautiful island, it was abundantly clear that honeymooners were the target tourists, and catering to cruisers was low on the priority list. I can’t exactly blame them when we try to spend as little money as possible and are constantly bringing our trash to shore.
More on our time in Bora Bora next week!
