Exploring Bora Bora by Sailboat in French Polynesia

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. So the yacht club was closed but I was still able to tie up and lock up my dinghy and they had doors open so you could get out to the street. And I passed a gentleman that worked there and he didn't say anything about me not using the dinghy dock. So we're gonna make our way into town. It's a maybe a mile or so, two miles or something walk and it's beautiful out. So all over the South Pacific so far I've seen these cool boat lifts. Some of them in the more rural areas are very homemade, made out of just sticks and trees. These ones are a little more sophisticated but they're still very simple. It's just like a big wheel that they just turn by hand and it pulls these boats up. I'd love to see someone raising and lowering one. It's amazing that you can do that with just that simple mechanism, a heavy ass boat. I like the way they look too, it's cool. A little sailboat with a no mast in one of those boat lifts, very funny. So I'm in the little village town area, it's pretty busy. There's a big cruise ship off, anchored off too, so that might be part of it. The mountain's stunning here. So according to this chart there is free anchoring here. You can only stay for 36 hours at a stretch but it also seems that it only applies to boats 33 feet to 66 feet which means that, I don't know what that means, maybe that means that I can anchor for longer or in different spots. I wouldn't imagine that if I actually get in touch with someone that knows the answers that they're going to give me the correct answer. I just went in town hall, I went to the tourist board, they didn't know. I went in town hall, they didn't know. So I'll probably call this number and talk to someone over there and see what's up but I think tonight I'll move over and try to anchor at this spot because it's free and go from there. So just as the American told me earlier, the gentleman from the Bora Bora mooring services came by in his tinder and first thing, his name's Moana, really nice dude. First thing he asked me was how long's your boat? I said it's nine meters 30 feet and he was like awesome. He was like you don't have to stay on the mooring balls. He was like you can anchor in any of the designated mooring fields for free which is exactly the loophole I thought I had found on the info from the sign in town and stuff but I was like there's no way that there's going to be a loophole but he was like and he even said if they were really busy and all the moorings were full he would have to ask me to clear off of it because the boat is actually under 10 meters because boats over 10 meters are not allowed to anchor and I'm allowed to anchor which is fantastic fantastic news because I cannot afford to stay here more than a couple nights at $33 a night and so he said okay what are your plans and I was like well I had seen the coordinates for free zones of anchoring where you can free you can anchor for 36 hours in these free zones two of them one of them is decent it's on a coral bed it's a pretty small area but only five boats are allowed in that zone and you can only anchor for 36 hours and the other zone is like 70 feet deep and so I was like I was gonna go to this other free zone because I found the map and he's like okay he was like he was like and that's when he told me you can anchor in any of the mooring fields um and he pointed out one uh just off of this island over here he said that's the best one you're gonna find like it's it's really good anchoring you can find a good patch of sand there's wonderful snorkeling he was like that's the he was like if I was going out to anchor for the night that's where I would go but he was like you can go to any of these spots though and um he looked over the map with me and he was like okay and so he was like what's your plans though and I was like I want to stay here I stayed here last night I got in yesterday and I want to spend the night tonight and he's like okay let's just say you were here one night I was like okay and he was like yeah you know cruise around and then he said he gave me a receipt and he said keep the receipt and if the cops come up and like hassle you because you're anchored you show them the receipt and if there's any problems have them call me immediately um super cool dude super stoked and uh so it's all settled I'm staying the night here and then I'm going to go over to that other anchorage and anchor for a few days get some snorkeling in and uh then I might cruise around to another mooring field and anchor it's like rare that small boats have such advantages so I'm pretty stoked that having a little boat paid off here at Bora Bora and the notorious anchor so wonderful news and thanks so much Moana super nice dude and I'm excited to relax now knowing that it's all taken care of okay so for the last I don't know week or so the boat has started smelling really funky and it's coming from the anchor locker I don't have a spray down especially if I had a water maker I could have a fresh water spray down to rinse the chain as it up I do not have that option so like you know all the living matter in the sea or even seaweed and stuff come up on the chain the mud gets the anchor locker it makes it super super rank so I'm going to pull it all out on the deck let it dry out and then we're going to spray clean it with something that's okay eco-friendly but uh the first job is to pull it all out and get it laid out on the deck which is handy that I can do it here because we're tied to a mooring so it's a little more convenient so let's knock out that little boat project the chain laid out on the starboard side is the side we really need to clean everything on the port side doesn't really get used um and it's not dirty there's a little bit I'll probably just rinse it but all this stuff has like marine growth on it that's come up from the seafloor and stuff so I'm gonna go ahead and knock that out get it scrubbed up and we'll just let it dry out overnight on the deck maybe some rains will come and rinse it and then first thing tomorrow morning we'll re-stow all the chain um which will be a trick solo uh we'll speed it down I'll have to do it a little bit and climb in and out climbing it out so that you can lay it in a spool so it doesn't create a mountain um but it's good to get this chore knocked out while we're on a mooring and it's easy so time to get to work time to untie from the moorings here at Bora Bora Yacht Club mooring field and we're gonna head off to the free anchorage spot here in Bora Bora which is a zone that one of only two zones where anyone can anchor at under a certain size um and uh yeah it's just on the north edge of the reef inside the lagoon so let's get untied and head over that way and and check out that anchorage all right we're about half a mile from this free anchorage spot I laid out the coordinates that show the space of the anchorage on Navionics so we're just pointing for that zone it doesn't look like anyone's anchored there which I'm not surprised about because most people think you can't anchor so but it's probably blowing 15 knots so be a little tricky mostly tricky because you can't it messes up the vis you know so I can't see if there's any coral you know you would think they would put this outline this very small anchorage in a spot that wasn't heavily ridden with coral but you never know but that's a bummer because I won't be able to kind of see where I'm dropping the hook I'm just gonna have to watch the depth and go from there it's supposed to be like 20 feet of water so I don't know we'll know till we get over it and um the hook will set real quick with the wind once we get get the chain out so find out real soon okay as of this moment we're within the zone so now we're going to kind of creep up in this scary teal green color water and see the depths right now it's 90 feet 20 feet 18 feet 5 feet we're anchored in 10 feet of water we have five scope out with floated chain there's coral bombies kind of everywhere the one I'm a little nervous about is there's one there that could be a problem if the wind shifts and if it is then we'll haul up change spots that one looks very shallow but that's the problem coming in here with the wind like this it's hard to see coral coral see our float the fishermen out here so yeah this is the free anchorage beautiful view it's kind of protected from the with the motu or maybe there's just not gusting right now but the winds feel less than they were on the passage over and when the clouds blow off the landscape's gonna be crazy it has been a very very breezy afternoon here at the free zone I don't know the real name of this anchorage um I'll probably make one up and just put it on this screen right now or if I can find the name of the anchorage um been very breezy and the winds are supposed to increase they're supposed to get up to like 22 knots tonight and um they're gonna continue to increase we're very exposed see Taha in the distance um there's not much to do here the main reason I came to this spot is so I could see it know what it was all about that way I could tell everybody anyone who's coming here what to expect because it was very difficult to even find out about this anchorage so I think tomorrow morning I'll probably haul up drive back around and there's um a good anchorage behind this island near to where we started out at Bora Bora Yacht Club and that's what um Moana he had told me that's a really great spot and it looks really protected from the wind direction that's happening so that's probably what we'll do in the morning haul up so just here spend the night know what it's all about and it is a beautiful scene but it has been very very windy make sure you tune in next week when I explore the turquoise waters of Bora Boras Lagoon 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