The three largest island groups of French Polynesia are the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, and the Societies. The Marquesas are steep and majestic, but not great for swimming as they have no protecting reefs and a lot of sediment in the water. The Tuamotus have crystal clear lagoons, beautiful coral beaches, and very little else. The Society Islands won the geological lottery, with lush peaks, surrounded by wide coastal plains for habitation, all wrapped in large protected lagoons.

Most amazing to us, at some point in their geological past, the Societies also formed large well stocked grocery stores. Novel in our experience so far, these grocery stores stock enough baguette to last the entire day. We could take a break from our desperate 6am bread runs.

We arrived at Tahiti on May 27 and spent almost 2 weeks basking in the civilization of Papeete where we refuelled and resupplied. We caught up with some friends on their sailboat Falkor 4.2, who had just been through some unwanted adventure. A mooring buoy they were tied to broke in strong current sweeping their boat towards a reef. They throttled up the engine to avoid the reef, but the broken mooring line wrapped around their propellor, which ultimately pulled the entire 800lb engine backwards 30cm, breaking it right off its mounting! They avoided the reefs, but had some repairs to do. Imagine taking your car to the mechanic and opening the hood to reveal the engine just sort of lying on it’s side. “It’s making a funny noise.”

We leant a hand with the repair and a few days later their Captain Patrick had the engine reinstalled and running again, miraculously undamaged! The Falkor crew were able to motor over to join us at our next stop on the island of Moorea.

At a quiet anchorage on Moorea one evening I was down below when I heard Sarah from the cockpit, “Doug I could use some help out here.” There was a note of urgency in her voice, so I proceeded outside at a speed calculated not to alarm the children, but to hopefully arrive in time to help with whatever tentacled leviathan she was battling. I came out the hatch to find her leaning over the side, much, much further than advisable. Her legs were sticking straight up into the air, and then, with a splash, she was gone, fully clothed into the sea. One point for the Leviathan. Sarah did manage to save our best bucket though.

We had read that there was some tension on Moorea between the sailing community and the locals, due to sailboats in the past who were not as respectful as they should have been. We only experienced kindness from the locals (except from you Wakey McJetSki, for shame!), but one legacy of this feud was that there was absolutely nowhere to dispose of garbage. I guess the community got annoyed with sailors dumping their garbage into public bins, so they removed every single public garbage receptacle. So be warned, if you buy an ice cream sandwich on Moorea, you’ll also have to eat the wrapper.

Our next stop was the dual island team of Raiatea and Taha’a. Sarah got pretty excited on Raiatea when we thought we had found a public shower, but it turned out to be out of order. We’ve come to accept that there are two types of people: Those who haven’t showered in fresh water since March 7… and those who find this appalling.

After a few weeks of swimming and exploring around these islands we visited the Gendarmarie on Raiatea to arrange our official checkout from French Polynesia. We also purchased our final 7 baguettes, a large enough supply to last for the next 4 hours.

Our final stop in the country would be the small atoll of Maupihaa. Being 150 nautical miles west of the larger islands, this felt very remote. There are a handful of families here who harvest copra (the white part of the coconut). It’s very rare that they get any supplies from outside, so many visiting sailboats will drop off a few groceries as a thank-you to these host families. A local couple Harry and Norma made us an incredible dinner as thanks for some groceries, and we were able to learn all about their copra harvesting operation.

The two of them will spend two days gathering fallen coconuts. On the third day they split each one in half, and set them on a large rack to dry in the sun. After they’ve dried a bit, they are able to scoop out the white meat with a special tool. The meat is deposited in a large bin. Harry and Norma currently had 3 tons of copra stored up. Once all of the local families have a total of 40 tons, a ship will come to collect it and bring it to Tahiti where it is processed into coconut oil. It takes several years to accumulate the 40 tons.

We asked if there was anything else they needed that we might have to spare. Despite not speaking any english, Harry is a fan of Hollywood action movies. “Rambo?” he asked hopefully. We were sorry to disappoint on the Rambo front.

Our next passage will be a large one, west towards Tonga with a few possible stops along the way.

Au revoir French Polynesia!