More Moorea

The winds and seas have finally settled down and we pull anchor before the crack of dawn. It’s a beautiful sunrise and a comfortable motor sail back to Moorea, one of our favorite islands. Not far out from Huahine a humpback whale greets us near the bow with a few gymnastics. It scores a 10 for its breech and tail fluke dive. What a beautiful creature and great way to start our day! Unfortunately the pictures are simply seared into our gray matter. Closer to Moorea Whitey spots several “tuna boils” – large pockets of bubbling, “boiling” water with a mass of diving birds indicating a fish feeding frenzy. After having a couple lines out all day with no bites and passing thru some of these “boils” with no luck, finally it’s “FISH ON!” and lots of group effort brings in a nice 25lb bluefin tuna. YUM! It’s seared tuna steaks for dinner – plus lots of tuna tartare and even the tuna head saved for later. Hmmm…

You always need to leave something to come back for – and we came back to Moorea for an up close and personal encounter with stingrays and black-tip reef sharks on a shallow sand bar in the lagoon. A popular tourist excursion site, “Stingray Flat” was very crowded – with dangerous boats and people – and lots of friendly rays and shark casually swimming among all the people plus a large variety of other fish and coral. Absolutely delightful and unique – especially after most of the tour boats left to take their groups to lunch. Wish those Gkids were here to enjoy it with us!

We revisit (snorkel) the reef near our boat along the public beach several times while here – it’s always an adventure to see whatever you might see: more of the usual and the more unusual to highlight each snorkel. Among the more unusual we see: long sea snake cucumber, a couple different kinds of puffer fish, sea anemone with

their resident clownfish, Moorish Idols, pink tailed trigger fish and a turtle.

Steve and Lili on “Liward”, who we met a few weeks ago in the marina in Tahiti, have been anchored here for a while, enjoying their usual 6 mos in French Polynesia & waiting for a good weather window to move on to the Tuamoto’s. Steve and Lili joined us for one of Max’s delicious dinners on Nutmeg – and Steve entertained us after dinner with his guitar and voice, including some of his own written songs. What a treat!

On Sunday we visited the Tiki Immerges de Papetoai. The underwater tiki are volcanic stone sculptures, the work of artist Tihoti Guy from Moorea. The 6 tiki were created in 1998 as a tribute to the Polynesian ancestors who were obliged by missionaries to cast their religious symbols into the sea.

The ultra modern 256' super yacht Venus anchored in the Baie d’Opunohu for the night. Built in the Netherlands for Steve Jobs for $120 million, it was launched in 2012, a year after Jobs died. We saw her about 10 years ago at Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas. Nice the Jobs family is still enjoying her. But WE are having just as much fun as they are ... or MORE!

Some fun facts:
* French Polynesia is made up of 118 islands and 5 archipelagos.
* There are 13 letters in the Tahitian alphabet: a, e, i, o, u, f, h, m, n, p, r, t, v. “Bora Bora” is actually pronounced “Pora Pora,” but it’s likely that early visitors misheard it, and it’s been Bora Bora ever since.
* The word “tattoo” comes from the Tahitian word tatau. Dating back as far as 1500 BC tattoos have been an integral part of Tahitian society and were often symbols of rank, wealth, tribe or family group.
* The very first overwater bungalow was created in the ’60s on the island of Moorea.
* There are no poisonous snakes or insects here.
* The story of Moana is based on the very real history and traditions of Polynesian islands such as Hawaii, Samoa, Tonga, and Tahiti.

As Great Grandma Lemmenes used to say, "You should learn something new every day." I hope you did today.

XO XO
Gma & Gpa