August 8-20
Our last stop before finally leaving French Polynesia was Mopelia (Mopihaa). It's an atoll about 150nm west of BoraBora. 3 families live spread out on the island and there are no tourists besides yachties like ourselves. We decided to go there after hearing some good reports from others, despite the notoriously harrowing pass. We arrived early in the morning and did some circles while the sun came up to give us better visibility of the reef. The pass was indeed narrow. About 18 meters wide, straight with the reef steep-to giving a nice clean edge on both sides going from 40 feet to a foot under the surface. There was a 6 knot current running out of the pass so we headed for it with both motors at full throttle, giving us a little over 4 knots made good. Once again, our good Océalys let us do something that another boat would not have been up to (we would have had to wait for a tide change).
We spent 10 days at Mopelia. We'd planned on stopping a day or two at the most. It was a magical place. There were only two other boats there when we arrived, and by the time we left, we were alone. We made friends with one of the 3 families and had some wonderful moments with Sophie and Calami and their grandson Tatuanui, who became great friends with Massimo and Annabelle.
Our first night there they invited all the yachties to their house on the beach and cooked up a feast with fish, dozens of lobsters and even a big coconut crab, which nowadays are very difficult to find, even in the most remote areas. We went spearfishing with Calami in the pass and I had one of the best dives of my life. It's a stunningly beautiful pass. The current was so strong that you couldn't keep a gun pointed across it, so you had to shoot while sweeping the gun sideways, and there were a lot of sharks following our progress, which added to the fun. We filled the dinghy with fish and had a big BBQ on the beach in the afternoon.
Sophie and I went on a coconut crab hunt at night with the local Sophie and were lucky enough to bag a good size one. We brought it back to the boat and I decided we'd keep it alive on coconut meat and maybe eat it in a few weeks. We put it inside a live bait tank that I assured Sophie was impossible for the crab to escape from and we named her Jessica. After going to bed, I had to get up and move the tank to the foredeck because the
damn thing was making so much noise moving around in there, we couldn't sleep. At about 3 in the morning I shot bolt upright and said to myself, Damn. Jessica's loose. I could hear her walking on the deck all the way forward. I ran up and sure enough she was making her way to high ground towards the bimini top. We squared off for a while and I certainly thought twice before doing anything as I stood there, naked. These crabs can tear a mature coconut to shreds with their claws. They're also aggressive and fast-moving over short distances. I was certainly the more intimidated between us. Suffice to say that Jessica made an incredible dinner for us the very next day with her delicious, smoky/coconut flavored flesh.
We had such a wonderful time in Mopelia that we decided not to go to Suvarov, which I felt would be very similar to what we had just lived, except a lot more crowded with cruisers. Instead we opted for the more southern route to Palmerston Atoll and then on to Niue, the world's smallest country.
Our last stop before finally leaving French Polynesia was Mopelia (Mopihaa). It's an atoll about 150nm west of BoraBora. 3 families live spread out on the island and there are no tourists besides yachties like ourselves. We decided to go there after hearing some good reports from others, despite the notoriously harrowing pass. We arrived early in the morning and did some circles while the sun came up to give us better visibility of the reef. The pass was indeed narrow. About 18 meters wide, straight with the reef steep-to giving a nice clean edge on both sides going from 40 feet to a foot under the surface. There was a 6 knot current running out of the pass so we headed for it with both motors at full throttle, giving us a little over 4 knots made good. Once again, our good Océalys let us do something that another boat would not have been up to (we would have had to wait for a tide change).
We spent 10 days at Mopelia. We'd planned on stopping a day or two at the most. It was a magical place. There were only two other boats there when we arrived, and by the time we left, we were alone. We made friends with one of the 3 families and had some wonderful moments with Sophie and Calami and their grandson Tatuanui, who became great friends with Massimo and Annabelle.
Our first night there they invited all the yachties to their house on the beach and cooked up a feast with fish, dozens of lobsters and even a big coconut crab, which nowadays are very difficult to find, even in the most remote areas. We went spearfishing with Calami in the pass and I had one of the best dives of my life. It's a stunningly beautiful pass. The current was so strong that you couldn't keep a gun pointed across it, so you had to shoot while sweeping the gun sideways, and there were a lot of sharks following our progress, which added to the fun. We filled the dinghy with fish and had a big BBQ on the beach in the afternoon.
Sophie and I went on a coconut crab hunt at night with the local Sophie and were lucky enough to bag a good size one. We brought it back to the boat and I decided we'd keep it alive on coconut meat and maybe eat it in a few weeks. We put it inside a live bait tank that I assured Sophie was impossible for the crab to escape from and we named her Jessica. After going to bed, I had to get up and move the tank to the foredeck because the 
damn thing was making so much noise moving around in there, we couldn't sleep. At about 3 in the morning I shot bolt upright and said to myself, Damn. Jessica's loose. I could hear her walking on the deck all the way forward. I ran up and sure enough she was making her way to high ground towards the bimini top. We squared off for a while and I certainly thought twice before doing anything as I stood there, naked. These crabs can tear a mature coconut to shreds with their claws. They're also aggressive and fast-moving over short distances. I was certainly the more intimidated between us. Suffice to say that Jessica made an incredible dinner for us the very next day with her delicious, smoky/coconut flavored flesh.
We had such a wonderful time in Mopelia that we decided not to go to Suvarov, which I felt would be very similar to what we had just lived, except a lot more crowded with cruisers. Instead we opted for the more southern route to Palmerston Atoll and then on to Niue, the world's smallest country.
