After spending two weeks in Bora Bora, Eitan officially checked us out of the country and we were ready to keep heading west. Since Bora Bora is the last island on our sailing adventure through French Polynesia with a customs and immigration office, we were able to plan stops at the leeward islands of Maupiti and Maupihaa after checkout. Our next stop was to be Maupiti which has a notoriously long and narrow pass to enter. We needed to be careful timing our entry with the wind, current, and tide. There was a storm brewing down south, in New Zealand that was scheduled to cause a severe swell event throughout French Polynesia and we had a 12-hour window to get into the pass and behind the protection of the reef.
Naturally, all of this really stressed me out. Eitan was in charge of timing it all, but I sat there worrying about the “what ifs”. What if… the swell arrives early? What if… the conditions in the pass aren’t good and we have no choice but to keep heading west, getting stuck out in the swell? What if… conditions are so bad we have to skip the next two islands and go straight to Rarotonga? Sometimes I’d like to think that the more I worry, the better the conditions turn out to be, which was the case here. The trip only took 4 hours, was completely windless and flat, and entering the pass was a non-event. Like always, I was relieved to drop the hook in a calm anchorage, just behind the reef.
Our first day in Maupiti was great. We did some snorkeling, then ended the evening with sundowners on the beach, enjoying the company of some local dogs. The next morning, however, was not so lovely and we were woken up by the boat rolling rail to rail. It seems the extreme swell event had arrived, and at high tide the reef was offering little protection. Waves were actually breaking onto the reef, with enough momentum and energy to build and break again, sending a surging roll to the side of the boat. We were rolling and pitching so much, I could hardly get into the dinghy to unlock it from the transom. We pulled the anchor and headed to a more protected anchorage farther north.
The swell and stormy skies were projected to last the better part of a week and we would be stuck inside the lagoon until conditions in the pass calmed down. Our crew member, Evan, had recently been to Maupiti with his wife and suggested we head to shore for a hike to the top of the mountain. Actually, getting to shore proved more difficult than we had anticipated. The tide was about three feet higher than normal due to so much water crashing over the reef and only one small pass to drain it. We tied up the dinghy to a floating dock and tried to keep our hiking shoes dry as we jumped to shore.
The hike to the peak was a strenuous hour and a half but the views were incredible. There was a nearly 360-degree view of the entire island surrounded by the turquoise lagoon and outer reef. You could see all the way down to the pass as the waves broke along the channel, confirming that we would be stuck there for a while. We hiked back down to the bottom and got lunch at a local restaurant that Evan recommended. I devoured what became my favorite single meal in all of French Polynesia, caramel pork belly on rice. The chunks of meat were sweet, tender, and juicy, falling apart in my mouth as I savored every bite.
The next day, Evan and I headed to shore to walk around and we were surprised to find the floating dock that we tied up to the day before, had broken free. Instead, I taught Evan how to stern anchor a dinghy to keep it safely away from the flooding concrete wall. We spent a couple of hours walking around the entire island which was only about 5 miles from start to finish. We collected fruit as we circled the island, making sure to only pluck what looked like it would otherwise go to waste. We managed to grab mangoes, starfruit, and even a few breadfruits which became one of my new favorite dishes. Breadfruit grows to about the size of a football and has a bumpy, green exterior that oozes a white secretion when it gets ripe. It’s actually a very nutritious superfruit and Evan showed me how to prepare it by baking it for an hour, then frying it up. If the fruit gets too soft when ripe, you can puree it and make a kind of sweet pancake out of it. It’s delicious!
After a few days in Maupiti, we eagerly awaited our weather window to leave. It wasn’t a horrible place to be stuck but we had places to be and Evan needed to get home, eventually. By the end of the week, the swell had calmed down, the tide was noticeably lower and we were able to see the concrete wall that was previously submerged the last time we tied up the dinghy. We began getting ready to depart for our final stop in French Polynesia: Maupihaa!
