The Burnetts have been thoroughly enjoying Aitutaki, an island in the southern group of the Cook Islands. This is the first new nation they have sailed to since arriving in French Polynesia in May. Once again Mel finds herself docked in a place she did not know existed one year ago. The world is so big, especially to the geography-impaired!

The Cook Islands are self-governing, but they are in free association with New Zealand, which helps with defense when requested.  This fact explains one of the wonderful things about this place: the islanders speak English! For the first time in a long while, we can get to know the locals on a deeper level than just, “Where is the bathroom?” After nights of feeling guilty for not doing a French lesson (an unsurprisingly ineffective way to learn French), being able to converse freely is like stepping into a hot shower after a cold swim.

The vibe here is different from French Polynesia. We feel like we are visiting old Hawaii, or the Exumas in the Bahamas, thirty years ago. On paper Aitutaki is similar in amenities to Bora Bora. Like Bora Bora, Aitutaki also possesses a beautiful lagoon with turquoise waters, humpback whale grounds, mountain hikes with lagoon views, and a busy on-the-water-tourism industry. However, the people here are different; lighter. The tourism workers seem happier; relaxed. They are more apt to smile, more interested in our story, and more open with their own stories. Removing the language barrier surely contributes to this ease in making connections, but it seems to go beyond that.

Fewer boats help. In the Societies we always carried a little stress created by the evident strain the large influx of sailboats placed on the French Polynesian infrastructure, which seemed incapable of responding to the challenge in any sort of organized, top-down way.  This stress is now gone, Mel realized, as she deposited a small bag of trash ashore, in a designated spot, and right by the marina, no less!

Another cool thing: Aitutaki provides one of the most prized experiences for a cruiser: NOVELTY. Even better: the novelty we experience here can’t be found in tourist brochures.  It can only be experienced by those who sail here, because the novelty is in the marina. 

It’s…weird.

The marina is currently being built and consists of piles of soil shaped into piers.  During the weekdays, various construction vehicles roll down the piers and move around giant piles of mud.  It greatly resembles what many a kid has built when given a shovel and Tonka trucks at the beach. To pack us in, we had to med moor (drop our anchor and back our boat in) for the first time since, well, the Med. Instead of cleats, lines are wrapped around concrete blocks.  There are several low spots in the harbor where mud and boulders reside. Once moored, usually with your stern 10-20 feet from shore, you use your dinghy to get to shore, typically by paddling or moving along your lines. There are no full-time, paid marina workers.

All of these quirks have prompted the cruisers to form a cooperative culture here.  Boat arrivals and departures are shared over WhatsApp so that line handlers and dinghies can be recruited from the docked boats and assist with mooring.  In this way you interact with the crews of other boats far more than you might at other marinas, and it is the first time since Shelter Bay Marina in Panama we have felt such a part of the cruiser community.  It is also the first time in months Mel has had to check a schedule, as she has a job now of sorts. Greg volunteered them to help run the marina!

Our time here has not been all work, however.  We have gone on humpback whale-watching tours, a lagoon tour, and an island drive.  The lagoon is stunning, as can be seen in the photos below, which also include some pics of our last days in Raiatea with Allie.  It is easy to fall behind when you take 300 pics a day!

Mel was hoping that by now she would have shared an amazing video or photos of a humpback whale gliding by.  Alas, despite two “swim with the whales”  tours, she is empty-handed. They were told that the whales in this nursery/ breeding ground were curious about snorkling humans and would often frolic close to them. Greg and Mel were hopeful to catch their own video of a breaching whale from 50 meters away, underwater. After all, they have donated to whale protection foundations for over a decade. Unfortunately, after chasing a “teenaged” male humpback around Aitutaki, who every 15 minutes would spout and flourish his dorsal fin to lure the boats to him, only to plunge into the depths whenever people jumped in the water, Mel drew another conclusion about our planet and its lifeforms:

“Some whales are assholes.”

–Mel

Can you see his mischievous smile? Here’s hoping the Burnetts will have better luck in Tonga!

Here’s our pics of Raiatea:

And Aitutaki:

Cruisers gotta cruise. This truth about the nomads that make up our community is one reason why we weighed heavily the decision to go through the time and effort to extend our allotted 90-day visa to a full year in French Polynesia. This island group is touted as the gorgeous cruising grounds that will never be equaled as one sails west around the world. Added to the need to accommodate the looming Pacific cyclone season by finding a safe harbor, such as that offered up by the Marquesas, we got the long-stay visa and made plans to spend a year in this expansive island paradise. However, cruisers tend to migrate at different paces, and we land on the quicker end of the spectrum. Since arriving here May 11^th, we have explored 3 of the 5 island chains of French Polynesia, traveling from the far southeast Gambiers to the far west Societies.  It has truly been a breathtakingly beautiful adventure. 

Anyone who has been dumped before might guess however that this paragraph is setting the reader up for a “But…”  We recently have made a decision about our next steps, which I will share at the end of this post.  But first, put yourself on our boat as we take our kids and their plus-ones through the Society Islands!

Tahiti

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Your journey begins in Tahiti. After weeks scouring four small stores for meat packaged without parts best identified by an orthopedic surgeon in the Gambiers, you have spent many a delightful afternoon wandering the well-lit aisles of multiple humongous Tahitian Carrefour grocery stores, pinching yourself that you can now once again lunch on a decent ham and cheese sandwich, and then collapsing once back on the boat from all the visual stimulation. You have done your laundry in an actual laundromat and indulged in something other than steak frites at a restaurant. You have identified the best produce stalls at the Papeete market, the best food truck by the cruise ship dock, and where and how to get rid of your trash. (That last bit is one of the more challenging tasks one faces in French Polynesia.)  You have soaked up Polynesian culture via live music, museums, gardens, waterfalls, parades, dance festivals, traditional sport competitions, rooftop bars, driving tours, and shopping.  You are surprised to find that the most urban location in this island chain can still be incredibly charming, with its flower markets, warm Polynesians that don’t seem to resent speaking English (“This is your island, too,” our tour guide told us), and beautiful seaside parks. After your kids arrive in stages, you tear yourself away from the security of the Marina Papeete (and all those Carrefours!) and head west.

Mo’orea

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

You are excited to go back to Moorea as it was your first international tropical destination over thirty years ago. You sail past thatched huts on stilts over the water to anchor in a bay surrounded by green-bedecked volcanic hills that seem frozen in time at the moment they violently erupted out of the water.  At sundown you sit on the roof and drink in not a G&T but the intense floral aroma flooding the bay from the hills. You discover a public beach with a reef packed with colorful fish, hike past irrigated pineapple farms and content cows to a sweeping hilltop view, and sample sweet and tart jellies made from the varied fruits of the island.

Reluctantly moving on too soon, you later learn that you just barely missed having your dinghy pushed off into the sea by an angry local and having a flier taped to your boat, telling you to go away.

Huahine

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

You enjoy a calamity-free overnight sail, appreciating the rarity of doing an inter-island offshore free from commercial fishing boats, pearl farms, and cargo traffic. Upon arrival, your seasickness is forgotten. You grab a mooring ball by a motu surrounded by an expanse of shallow reef and spend a water day kayaking the protected waters. You encounter helpful locals when you accidentally back your dinghy into a corner of the reef.  One day you rent a car and explore the island.  On this tour, Huahine fills all of your senses. You feel the slickness of the sacred eels, smell the rich scents of the vanilla farm, hear the delightful sounds of the beautiful vanilla farm tour guide practicing her English with a Tahitian accent, view the panoply of colors and structures of the seashells lovingly catalogued in the shell museum, and taste the subtle stickiness of Polynesian star apples. Perhaps because it was favored by some influential figures in the past, such as the archeologist Dr. Yoshiko Sinoto and the cultural icon, painter, and musician Bobby Holcomb, Jr., Huahine also provides intellectual stimulation, educating the tourist in a sophisticated way, beginning with its well-maintained marae and ancient Polynesian fish traps. You lose yourself in a peaceful cultural museum, perusing the respectfully arranged objects and dive deep into their history through beautifully written guides and placards.

You can tell a lot about a place from the quality of its placards.

Mel

After all of these experiences, Huahine replaces Mo’orea in your heart.

Bora Bora

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

A few days later you find yourself arriving in Bora Bora after a lovely trauma-free spinnaker sail. You pick up a mooring outside the Bora Bora Yacht Club (oooh-la-la!) with a great view of an iconic mountain peak. Like Raiatea, it is hard not to notice the scope of the charter business here, and you are occasionally distracted from your sunset viewing by the need to critique the mooring ball hookup techniques of the charter boats zooming way too close. The explanation for the nostalgia that hits you as you view the mountain is found when you learn of the transformative American presence here during WWII. You rent a car and drive American-hewn roads and look at American-installed cannons. The driving tour teaches you that there are really two Bora Boras these days. One is an insulated, glittery, high-end resort island, offering complete guidance through a highly curated and sophisticated experience.  The other is the grittier, neglected side, with ramshackle houses, slowly disintegrating abandoned hotels, poorly marked hiking trails, and overgrown marae. You walk into the town by the yacht club and see these two worlds intersect, searching for souvenir shops while shielding your eyes from the clouds of dirt stirred up from the unpaved shoulder as cars race past on the 80-year-old road. In town, juxtaposed between piles of trash and the chain-link fences surrounding the cluttered remains of dilapidated buildings are “art galleries”, actually shops for Marquesan wood carvings, and surprisingly high-end pearl shops, requiring special appointments to go to the pearl AND diamond room.  Perhaps they give you a good dusting off first?  You nevertheless have a delightful time in the shops deciding between the tiki-shaped soaps and the Bora Bora seasoned salt. All over the island you see construction crews furiously upgrading the roads and infrastructure in an attempt to merge the two Boras.

Realizing that Bora Bora is probably a spectacular experience for the resort attendees and a less compelling place for a cruiser who has worked their way (and bled money) through French Polynesia already, you spend some delightful boat days in a lovely setting playing games, swimming, and enjoying your guests before putting them on planes at the American-built airport and heading back to Raiatea.

Raiatea

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

You visit Raiatea twice.  On your approach from the east, you fly your spinnaker, triumphantly overcoming the Spinnaker Trauma experienced months ago when the halyard snapped and the sail dragged under the boat. After sorting out the complex geography of Raiatea/Tah’aa, resembling what looks like a semicolon that’s been eaten by a paramecium with only a few pores for passage, you find a mooring ball in the blue lagoon between the two islands, a lagoon with such staggered and varying depths the seafloor likely resembles one of those laser-cut wooden lake souvenir cutting boards from space. You and your guests go on a snorkel excursion, zipping across the lagoon in a powerboat with a marine biologist, explore a healthy coral garden teeming with fish, and hover in awe over your first-ever live sea anemone. You end up surrounded by 10 black-tipped reef sharks that you swear are putting on a performance, behaving more like trained circus dogs than formidable ocean predators.

At a later point in time you anchor in a muddy bay in the south. You and your family dinghy along with some cruising friends down a river, taking an inland river tour for the first time since the Caribbean. Your eyes, used to seeing shades of blue from below to above, almost fail to process the browns, greens, and jewel tones flooding their fields as you glide past fecund jungle, explore a well-presented botanical garden, and fulfill the petting demands of the garden watchdog. You journey across the river and encounter a vigorous older man who visibly pulls his energy from the earth as he escorts you through speed-dating the results of his fruit-farm labors. Under Andre’s guidance, and literally under Andre as he scrabbles over your head through the trees, you begin to appreciate the subtle differences in the taste of the fruits of each of his lychee trees. You are astounded by all of the textures and flavors the botanical world uses to protect its seeds, and encouraged by Andre’s reassurance, you defy your instinct to not eat the teeny tiny pepper or the fruit that smells like it has a bad case of gas gangrene. 

You recover from tasting that fruit, and after some socializing on your own boat and others, you decide you miss your blue visual palette and thread your way through abandoned monohulls and charterers into a gusty anchorage near Raiatea’s western reef, processing your experiences with your keels floating just 2 feet above the sand.

Next Steps

Did you enjoy your tour?  Like selecting a puppy from a litter, the islands look similar on the surface, but a little play tends to reveal personalities as distinct as their names.  For the curious, here’s a wonderful video with instruction on how to pronounce these beautiful island names.

At this point, our daughter Allie is the only guest that remains. She will be with us until she flies off to study abroad in England in early September. With each passing day, cyclone season approaches, which typically begins Nov 1.  However, if we experience the strong, “Super El-Nino” that is increasingly predicted, cyclones can occur as early as October, and they are more likely than typical to reach as far east as Tahiti. This means: no more putting off a cyclone season plan. As much as we have enjoyed this group of islands, we cannot see ourselves turning around and heading almost a thousand miles back east to the Marquesas and staying put for 5-6 months.

So where do we now plan to ring in the new year? A whole new country with new experiences – a place with plentiful cheese, boiling mud pools, and funny-looking birds…

New Zealand!

Mel hasn’t posted much lately as her role has been transformed from free-wheeling, blogging cruiser to Mom and concierge to four visiting Gen-Z’ers. To imagine what this is like, take the logistics required to live on a sailboat in a foreign country, and square it.  No, strike that. Triple it.  

Before the arrival of our guests, Mel cleaned out the port hull.  This was not a small task, requiring the stuffing of provisions purchased in Panama and residing in bins on the beds into the plastic pantry occupying the port forward shower. Numerous spare parts were shoved into crevices in the forepeaks, under the beds, and in the bilges.  The starboard hull’s capacious passageway narrowed.

Mel’s success at this project was short-lived.  Our guests arrived laden with boat parts and supplies that were either difficult to obtain or ridiculously expensive in French Polynesia. As a result, Jerry is sitting much lower in the water these days.  We now assume Jerry’s draft is a full foot deeper than the official 4’10” listed in the factory specs.  We have set the zero-point of our depth sensor at keel level, to play it safe.

For the curious, here’s a partial list of our cherished imports:

1. Our two kids and their significant others
2. Backup Raymarine rotary autopilot
3. Backup Lewmar 60000191 spare windlass motor and gearbox
4. Underwater lights (some of ours are broken)
5. Articulating boroscope
6. Yet another rigging knife
7. More rechargable LED flashlights of a brand that was the sole survivor of 5 different brands tried (Trixhub rechargable super-brights)
8. Various stainless steel cleaners and lubricants like Lubriplate
9. USB-C dustplugs to protect phone charging ports, UV-resistant zipties of various sizes
10. A variety of electrical equipment such as junction boxes that only Greg understands
11. Domestics: Oxo Dish brush for washing dishes, with refills, Blueland scentless laundry washing tablets, Vanicreme scentless body soaps, Sonicare toothbrush refills, Mel’s favorite plastic clothespins that don’t rust, nonskid shelf liner
12. Ninja Airfryer grill replacement (original was sacrificed to Poseidon, which was too bad, since the gesture failed to fix the autopilot.)
13. Food: Dried bay leaves, black beans, taco seasoning, red pepper flakes, gochujang
14. Pharmacy: Neutrogena Sport SPF 70+ face sunscreen, melatonin, Lotrimin (to treat Mel’s finger, which has “sailor’s hand” from wearing wet sailing gloves 12 hours a day while hand-steering for 13 days.)
15. Sewable Velcro, a yard of boat blanket material (anti-chafe), sailrite snap rivets to repair enclosure
16. Party games, such as the Poetry for Neanderthals expansion pack
17. Better snorkel gear
18. Clothing
19. Alcohol

One might draw from this list the following conclusions:

1. Americans who have previously had unlimited access to the winners of free-market competition end up with brand and product preferences that are difficult to maintain when abroad.
2. All cleaning products in French Polynesia are scented. In retrospect, this was entirely predictable. We are in France!
3. While it is possible to obtain some boat parts in Tahiti, it is often impossible to obtain the exact boat part you need.
4. Any sort of liquid, gel, cream, or chemical is exorbitantly expensive in French Polynesia.  That $50 bottle of Barnacle Buster you bought in Panama?  According to the lovely French man who came to fix our port air conditioner, it’s $1000 here!
5. The Polynesians are not fans of Tex-Mex. Or spicy food. More hardship for the Americans!

Alas, more storing and stuffing took place!  Mel then compounded the problem by grocery shopping. For some reason, provisioning for two Gen-Xers and four twenty-somethings for just a few days in French Polynesia has proven to be a more daunting task than provisioning for three Gen-Xers for sixty days in Panama.

Nevertheless, Hotel Jerry opened for business Aug 1. Since then Jerry’s crew has enjoyed packed days, taking in the experiences pictured below. Next stop: Huahine!

It’s time Mel gets out her thoughts about Tahiti in one of her long, rambling posts! Prepare for long sentences with lots of commas and a gazillion photos with informative captions! And many, many exclamation points! No punchy-perfect AI sentences here!

Jerry is currently moored in a marina for the first time since leaving Panama in April. He is backed up right next to a park, with Mel and Greg’s performance of their aft cockpit chores, such as hanging laundry and upgrading the starboard alternator, providing entertainment for the boatwatchers slowing their pace as they jog by. Jerry’s beautiful Leopard 48 butt, with his exotic non-French ensign flying in the breeze, his strange “Shell Knob, MO” home port displayed prominently between the transoms, and his sweaty crew strewing the cockpit table with toolbags and sewing paraphernalia has become a magnetic cultural attraction, a tableau of life on a modern ocean-going multihull, set in a land originally populated via Jerry’s ancient multihull ancestors.

Mel and Greg took a nontraditional route from the Gambiers to Tahiti, spending only a few days on the rarely-visited island of Hao in the Tuamotus before beelining it here for the Heiva Festival and the imminent arrival of their children. Ask most cruisers which location is preferable, and they will unanimously vote for the gorgeous Tuamotus. They will be shocked we didn’t stay there longer. Don’t worry, Jerry will get there some day!  Many will say, to the point of it becoming a “Cruiser Meme”: “When visiting Tahiti, you get your stuff done, and then you get out.” After spending a couple of weeks here, Mel disagrees.  It’s frickin’ Tahiti!

So Tahiti doesn’t have the plentiful gorgeous waters, quiet anchorages near palm-strewn beaches, and small-town feel of the less populated islands. Its main city, Papeete, with its 200,000 people and cruise ship port, has the usual city baggage of noisy traffic, police sirens, loud bar chatter, and people sleeping on sidewalks, reminding one of how terrible most nations are at supporting their remote island territories that no longer have any natural resources to exploit. However, Mel has chosen to optimize her experience here — to “Tahitimaxx”, as it were.  After all, she travels not only to soak up Earth’s natural beauty, but also to expose herself to novel experiences and all the different ways humans have chosen to live on this planet.

To paraphrase a line from the fantastic TV show Ted Lasso (which we are re-watching now that we are in soccer country):

“I try to love Tahiti for what it is and forgive it for what it isn’t.”

–Leslie Higgins

And so here are some glimpses of how one experiences Tahiti with an open heart and mind:

We have a wonderful view of a park with a walking/biking path that goes right by our boat.  We love to see people out enjoying the 78-degree weather. We have been impressed with how many Polynesian men are out walking in the parks with their kids.

Mel has identified, through a Spotify crawl as she builds her Mel’s Polynesian Breeze playlist, some talented French Polynesian musicians. This playlist includes Barthélémy, primarily because they met the brother of this late musician on Hao. It also includes songs in French by the duo Vaiteani and the lovely, up-and-coming singer Papehau. After learning Papehau was playing at a local bar, Greg and Mel joined SV Drishti for a night of lovely live music.

Nightly, Mel watches the sunset over beautiful Moorea, which sits to the West. Every sunset is different, and every sunset is apparently un-photographable?!  Mel’s iPhone is not good at pink!

Rooftop bars! Bakeries! We have enjoyed finding wonderful restaurants off the beaten track that take care to provide delicious food and a fun atmosphere – one of the benefits of visiting a city with plenty of restaurant competition.  Mel has had her first good hamburger since she left the States!

There are colorful murals painted on many buildings in downtown Papeete displaying the beauty of Tahiti – and they are free of graffiti!

Drivers are nice here! They stop for people in crosswalks and merge in civilized fashion. They smile and use lots of hand signals.

The festivals! We’ve seen indigenous games, dancing, singing, a parade…

There is still more to explore! Once our kids arrive, we will tour the inland peaks, waterfalls, gardens, and museums. We might take in a surfing competition. Mel is also interested in learning more about the town of Punaauia, home of the “passionate orange carriers.” This town happens to have the best municipal website Mel has seen in a while.

Once again Mel has let her photo collection build up to bursting, so here’s a few!

The Intrepid Jerry is doing the cruiser thing of waiting for parts in exotic locations. Our autopilot will not reach the Gambiers until early July.  Once we get Jerry ship-shape, which now includes having TWO entire autopilots and assorted parts in triplicate aboard, we are considering sailing on to Tahiti.

One would think that people as nomadic as cruisers would get restless after six weeks in one region. After all, there are so many pictures of beautiful islands one can take.  If Mel searches her iPhone’s photo gallery for the word “sea”, 3500+ results turn up. Most of these photos are expendable, looking like many others in the gallery, striped with different shades of blue with a sliver of yellow or green in the middle, failing to capture the emotion of the moment when displayed as a search result. Moving anchorages mixes things up a bit, but the opportunity to look at pretty things is not enough to keep one going in this sometimes-difficult lifestyle.

This must be why National Geographic has text as well as photos. Exploring the local people and culture is what sustains us now.

Before coming here, we had heard that one of the wonderful things about the Gambiers was its welcoming local community.  We have been thrilled to confirm this through our positive interactions with local shopkeepers, tour guides, and residents, despite the fact that we cannot speak French. We have attended Sunday picnics at resident homes, played volleyball with locals, met some interesting characters during beach cleanups, exchanged provisioning tips with American expats living on Mangareva, frequented almost every shop on the island, and, bedecked in our new black pearls, attended many cultural events, including the school dance recitals pictured at the end of this post. We also have learned about Europe and Australia through our interactions with the large and wonderful cruising community here, which is slowly making its way to the Tuamotus.

We are having so much fun attending festivals that we plan to sail to Tahiti next in order to catch the Heiva i Tahiti cultural festival that runs until July 18.  Mel is especially excited about watching the Tū’aro Mā’ohi traditional sports competition, which includes events such as Polynesian stone lifting. Even after being in French Polynesia for more than six weeks, Mel’s mind is still blown whenever she witnesses a cocoa-skinned, heavily-inked, musclebound man speak French. Certainly a different visual than what is seen in a Paris café! Move over, Jean-Claude Van Damme!

In the meantime, Mel has assigned herself a French Polynesia reading list. She is currently reading W. Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence (admittedly not entirely about Tahiti). Other books include Bungalow: A Novel by Sarah Jio, Island of Shattered Dreams by Chantal T. Spitz, Daughter of the Reef by Clare Coleman, and Frangipani by Celeste Vaite.

AI tells me the title of this post means “beautiful children” in Mangarevan. I hope it is right!  Below are photos of some of the amazing young people of Mangareva, celebrating the end of their school year.  This post is all about the kids, so let’s get to it! If you are a woman of Mel’s generation, be forewarned – viewing these photos will methylate your DNA and activate any grandmother genes you may possess!