Sailing to Bora Bora in French Polynesia on a Vintage Sailboat

Hello friends, my name is James and this is my 1965 Albert 30 Sloop Tritea. We are on a mission to sail around the world and see as much of this beautiful planet as possible. We are currently working our way through the South Pacific and I can't wait to show you everything we see. Time to haul up here at Taha and get a little sprinkle on it looks like and make way for Bora Bora so let's get the hook up. So we're hauled up here at Taha light sprinkle happened and there's like a swarm of bees that are wet sitting on the boat right now. Gonna let those dudes dry out before I raise the main. We got plenty of time before we're out of the pass anyway. We have 26 nautical mile passage today. The winds are supposed to be 14 knots or something and in our favor so should be mellow. Nice day and yeah looking forward to getting into Bora Bora. We're getting ready to make our turn and go through the pass. There's a cardinal mark that we need to go past and then we come about and you can see the reef sticking up on either side of the pass and seemingly perfect surfable waves out there that each time I've been by here I haven't seen anyone out there but maybe it's too gnarly but they look beautiful and we are through the pass. Now it's time to point for Bora Bora. Goodbye Taha. Goodbye Rayatea. It's been an awesome visit and I'm excited to see the new bit of paradise and one of our last stops in French Polynesia. We're approaching a very large pod of extremely lethargic dolphins. They are very lazily moving along so let's see if we can get an eyeball on some of them. I counted 30 on the surface and I think what they say is for every one you see in the surface there's five below water so it's a pretty big pod. Boy they are just like sitting still though. They must have just had a feast. Big breakfast buffet. I don't, these might be like melon headed or like something. I don't know. Whoa. Melon headed whales maybe? They were not interested in playing that's for sure. Very curious. I'm gonna have to send a clip of that to Kimberly and ask her what in the world we just saw. I'll put it on the screen right now when I find out. They were definitely just sleeping though. But they all popped up and continued sleeping further past so I didn't disturb them too much. Here's Bora Bora in a squall. We are 11 miles from being inside the pass and we're six miles from being the bottom tip, west tip. Bora Bora. I think we're getting into the current that cruises along the island because the waves are really starting to step up. Which they're not big at all but the fact that there is zero wind and then we've had a really kind of flat passage and then as we approach this is telling me there's a pretty strong current running around the bottom side of the island here. The island's been kind of clouded in a silhouette all day. See a little bit of green and the sun is heavily diffused and we are at Bora Bora. Such an interesting profile. Very different than the other islands. Kind of, I guess the closest one would be Morea. But we're approaching the pass and soon we'll be crossing the pass and into the lagoon. And then we make straight for Bora Bora Yacht Club mooring field and get tied up and see what it's all about. The squall is heading right as I'm going through the pass and there's in the past. Really gnarly squall. We're barely moving through the pass right now. Sucks. Nightmare. Like right by all the reefs. Woo. I might get hit by a squall. Boy I'm glad I furled in the head sail before I came in. We're gonna pull up on the Bora Bora Yacht Club and see if we can find a mooring. Here's the other boats. There's one smaller sailboat just on our bow so I'm gonna kind of creep around them and see if that's where the smaller boat moorings are. And if we don't find something then we'll figure something else out. Okay so we're secured to a mooring. I tried to call them but no one answered. So I think I'm gonna get another dock line on. So we have two dock lines on the mooring and then I'll get the dinghy in the water and go ashore and see if this mooring's available. The only ones I saw free was this one and one other one. Oh there's one out there. So it's probably okay. Nice spot. Now that the squall is past. Another big squall just came in. Wow. All right we got the dinghy in the water. Motor's on. The rains have stopped for the moment. Oh blue skies. Pretty. We're gonna head into the Yacht Club and see if we can get checked in. It's Sunday so I don't know if their office will be open but we'll go suss out what's happening over there. So apparently the office for the mooring balls isn't at the Yacht Club. It's in town. He wasn't specific as to where it is in town but we'll just walk around and go look. Look at all the crabs. I don't know if you'll see them dart in when I walk up. Good morning from Bora Bora. Yesterday's attempts at trying to clear in to the Yacht Club and pay for the mooring were met with confusion and after getting on the phone with Sarah and me and her sleuthing the internet trying to find the answer. Basically the dude in the Yacht Club told me oh no no the you have to pay for the moorings at an office in town. Yesterday was Sunday so I figured they were closed but he wasn't clear to me that where the office was. He wouldn't kind of tell me where the office was or he was just kind of brushing me off. So as I was walking I called Sarah and me and her were sleuthing on the internet trying to figure out what in the world is going on because there's prices listed on the Yacht Club's website for the moorings and they say when you're approaching you call VHF 69 and they'll tell you if there's a mooring and then as soon as you tie up you get ashore and you pay. You bring your boat paperwork and you pay and they have all the prices listed on the site which were fair prices. But then when I go in the guy's like oh no you can't pay here and finally we found on one website that now all of these moorings are controlled by the Bora Bora mooring services organization which must be like a state-run thing. But the problem is they have no website and they don't have any of their information listed online. So I found on like a forum a map of where you because there's like an anchoring band so I found a map on a forum showing where the mooring fields were where you couldn't anchor and in the fine print though I found a loophole that said you can anchor in places you just can't be there for more than 24 hours if your boat is over 10 meters well Tritea is nine meters so that means that we can anchor places longer than 24 hours. So I'm going to try that and see if I get run off but it's very frustrating that and I knew this coming into coming to Bora Bora the information is very hazy and I think they do that on purpose so they can like kind of hose you on a case-by-case basis or it's just a general situation of being disorganized which isn't uncommon at islands but an island with this kind of infrastructure and this kind of heavy tourist presence I'm a little shocked at that. So also at this yacht club if you want to use their dinghy dock or their bathrooms and showers and their internet you have to pay $16 a day which doesn't include mooring and and water costs you can't just get water here so you have to pay for water that's separate and whatever so there's really nothing for us here at the yacht club now that I know all of that. Before I was under the understanding I would get a mooring I would have access to the all the stuff at the yacht club well that's changed and it's not the case anymore so right now we're going to take the dinghy and we're going to drive over to town which is like the city center there's like seven mooring balls over there so I want to drive over there and get an eyeball on those I would imagine they're all full but if it looks like people if it's not just like derelict boats living on them then we might try to move to a mooring ball over there so at least we're close to town and then we're going to try to go anchor off of a reef in a day or so. So right now let's get in the dinghy and head over it's like a mile or something so let's drive over and take some fresh pot of coffee and have a look at the shoreline and go see what that mooring field is all about. So I met a nice American dude on a boat from San Diego beautiful steel boat and he was on the mooring over there he gave me the lowdown on what's happening and asked him I said there were I said the chart shows there's seven moorings here but I'm only seeing three he said yeah very recently four of them broke loose with boats on them during a storm which is terrifying because these moorings are supposed to be kept up by the government and they charge you four thousand francs per day to stay on them so 35 bucks a day and then they can just break loose on you it's not like free ones where it's like well we put them in free and we're not charging so they're like charging an obscene rate and then not up keeping the moorings and putting your boat at risk it's so insane I mean I'm always sketched by moorings because I know I can trust my anchor but you're not allowed to anchor here and I asked him about that I was like oh I might there might be a loophole because my boat's under my boat's nine meters and under 10 meters so I might you know I might be able to anchor and he was like he said he hasn't seen anyone anchoring anywhere but he did say that well off behind that other island that it's really nice there's balls over there he said it's really nice there's like rays swimming under your boat and sharks and he said it's a great spot so he said if you're going to be around you should check that out so we'll do that for sure but and he said the guy will definitely come around he was like don't worry he'll find you and charge you um and uh but it's so funny how disorganized the whole situation is um but at least I know the price now and I know that the dude's going to come around at some point um other than that I guess we just go in and walk to town and have a look around because I don't plan on being at Bora Bora more than if it's 35 bucks a night I can't stay more than like three or four nights I just don't have the money to do it um so we'll see what we can see while we're here um right now there's a little bit of weather threatening but maybe I'll get my stuff together and we'll head into town and see what that's all about if you enjoy the content on this channel and would like to contribute you can consider joining the patreon crew thanks for watching fair winds until next time