Leaving Tahiti...Moorea next landfall!

Marina Taina

Today we set sail...time to say goodbye to Tahiti and  to friends  Per, Sabina and Ella on Breeze. We have enjoyed their company and will miss them!  We set sail across the Tahiti channel  to Moorea.

The Breeze family...Goodbye, again!

Gang plank over the water  to Breeze was a little scary!

This seems like an easy two hour sail, but ends up being a  long 4 hour sail with huge rolling cross swells and an occasional breaking wave! The winds are marginal 5 knots on the nose and even though Wizard can point really high, we can't get the direction we want to go, so we "tie a hankie" or reef the genoa and motor sail through the rolly swells to our destination Baie d'Opunohu.
We arrive in late afternoon through the pass negotiating to the anchorage past reefs and the yacht club sailing school in the mist of a regatta race! Lots to watch out for!

Moorea at sunset

We anchor is "swimming-pool-clear" water in only 20 ft! Amazing- I can see the anchor and chain all 60 ft as it lays straight out in white sands.

Opunohu Bay, Moorea

We chose Opunohu Bay, hoping it would be the least populated, but the majestic landscape with huge mountain canyons proved to be a favorite anchoring spot. The mountains look a lot like the plateaus in Arizona, only it's super lush and green.  We are anchored with a dozen other boats...we hear the shore noise and see floating hotels in the distance..certainly not a remote paradise,  because the cruise ships from Tahiti stop here too, but still pretty cool to be here.

Tomorrow we will paddle board around the bay and explore.

Sandy white beach with lots of boats in the anchorage...even a cruise ship!

Capt. John paddling in Moorea...  pretty cool!

c

The Yacht Club  was very active...summer camp for kids!

The water is clear, turquoise and shallow inside the reef

It's most amazing to enter the pass of these islands, through a marked channel and into a lagoon of shallow (10-40ft)  turquoise water with visible coral heads to navigate around, but it's good- you can see the where to anchor and where not to....most of the time.