Blackwattle - Small Tales of Schizophrenic Bora Bora

by Nancy Knudsen on 20 Aug 2007 'Securite, securite, securite... it's a far distant voice in my sleep...'....one to two metres...' maybe I am dreaming... but the voice drones on, French accent, .'stay away from the shore...' but now a small alarm..I'm not dreaming.. it's the VHF radio..

It's dark....how long have I been asleep?.. now I am hearing numbers – sounds like a waypoint - but the next words hit like a thump in the solar plexus..'...Richter Scale...' I am awake now, bounding out of the bunk, but Skipper Ted is before me, up the alley way into the saloon, to turn up the sound on the VHF.

The message is repeated and Ted writes down the waypoint - S13.55 W76.7 – it's an earthquake and the warning is for the Marquesas – do we know anyone still there? Where's S13.55 W76.7? We're both half asleep – ''Dunno'' - Quick let's get Cmap going - We wait, silent and breathing shallowly, for the computer to boot. 'A tidal wave of between one and two metres is expected. Crew of vessels are advised to stay away from the shore. Those on land should also stay away from the shore and follow all instructions of the authorities..'' The voice, so impassionate, keeps droning. ''..7.8 on the Richter Scale....''

Our eyes meet. Ted says quietly, eyes wide, ''7.8 on the Richter Scale - but that's huge.''

The voice is all about the Marquesas. Who who is still there that we know? There are lots of boats we know crossing the Pacific just now.... And what about us? We're in Bora Bora, anchored in the lagoon, and looking at my watch it's just before eleven o'clock. We've only been asleep for half an hour or so. Waiting for the computer to boot seems to stretch time interminably. While we wait my mind lurches from the Marquesas to memories of our friends on boats caught in Thailand in the Indonesia earthquake of 2004 and the lessons they learned. We must get out of the lagoon. What about the other boats? What about the people on shore? But now I start to focus down to the tight immediate. Adrenaline up. We know the way out – I think. There are enough port and starboard lights, and we have the way points from our entry here, but will there be enough time?

When Cmap finally boots we plot the waypoint and look at the position we have just created. Our fears are instantly gone for ourselves, but we stare numbly at the screen ''My God'' I whisper, ''It's almost right on the Peruvian coast.'' Silently we go on staring at the position, our just dissolved fear for ourselves transferring into a horror for what thousands of people must be experiencing right now on the coast of Peru.

Up on deck it's a dark quiet night, and the other boats are silent, they seem to be sleeping. The water is lilting with reflections in the soft starlight, and all seems foolishly in order. The next morning the BBC carries the tragic news, and a never-to-be-forgotten pall is cast over our stay in Bora Bora.

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Bora Bora, now we are here, seems a schizophrenic sort of place. Everywhere around there are hotels, but no high-rise. The brown thatched bungalows look like fungi growing from every shoreline, clones of each other. It's gentle, but contrived. The anchorages are deep, mostly too deep to anchor comfortably, but there a mooring balls in many places. The restaurants are brash places, professional money making concerns without heart, but the locals are the same as Polynesians everywhere – flower behind ear, seductive tatoos, slow good natured smiles. And their island is the same – stunning aqua lagoon, plenty of new coral and coloured fish, steep rainforested cliffs rising majestically from the shore. Houses are scattered along the shoreline in dense undergrowth and lush flowering bushes and fruit trees– mangoes and breadfruit, bananas and papaya, the scent of flowers and the sweet wet smell of rotting vegetation.

The main township, however, is a ramshackle affair, dusty and sandy, car wrecks abandoned, piles of rocks left over from unfinished buildings, paint peeling with a general uncared for look – such a contrast to the cliché artificial beauty of the five star resorts.

Our first anchorage, at the Bora Bora Yacht Club, is a strange experience. We must drink at the bar to have a mooring ball - The restaurant is a falsely primitive place, cartooned to look like something Robinson Crusoe would build. Sand sprinkled on the hard floor, raggedy thatching on the roof, dead grass hanging like a badly cut fringe across the view. The service is a bit like Robinson Crusoe might offer as well, but at $25 per couple for each round, and a dinner menu with $30-$40 main courses, we could expect them to be at least a little friendly. We never get past drinks and retire grumpily to our boats to eat.

However, the next day we meet Rapa. Rapa Teave is the Polynesian face of the Bora Bora Yacht Club. ''O I tell those restaurant people, I tell them, but they don't listen. Here come to me, next door – yes I am the Bora Bora Yacht Club – I will make you a barbecue, yes local food, yes, you don't have to pay much – and the laundry, of course we can do that – yes, everything no problem and if you don't go to the restaurant you just pay $20 a night for the mooring ball. No problem''

Rapa, the kindly soul of Polynesia. We love his huge personality, his impossibly warm generous nature, and we now learn about the workings of the Bora Bora Yacht Club. Rapa is in partnership, one partner running the restaurant, and Rapa and his wife Hina Paraue looking after everything else, and we warm to him immediately. With Rapa and Hina we share local breadfruit and other mysterious specialities, washed down with our BYO wine.

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For months now, we have been sailing loosely with many other boats, fleeing across the Pacific like a swarm of drunken bees – different routes, different timings, but we keep meeting the same boats over and over, sometimes they're ahead sometimes behind.

We are all heading towards either New Zealand or Australia before the cyclone season, and so we become familiar with each other – Americans, Swiss, Norwegians, Australians, Belgians, a few English, French (many) and a few Germans.

It's a motley crowd in some ways, all ages and languages, all income brackets, many differing ethics, but we all share our sailing challenges – navigation and power generation, engine problems and electrical failures and refrigeration - the list goes on interminably – and these are great unifiers. There's a wonderful collaboration between these sailors, and when one has a problem all rush to help.

Then when a sea or ocean is crossed and the sailing is done, it's good to share a drink, as it is in one's home yacht club, and we enjoy many happy hours discussing the last sail and the next one, the latest info on the next port and the dramas we have experienced. As we have made our way across the Atlantic and then the Pacific, casual relationships sometimes crystallise into real friendships. Some of these cruisers will become lifelong friends, some we shall never see again. With all we shall cherish mutual memories forever.

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We finally make our way to the western lagoon of Bora Bora and here our enjoyment really starts. We wander the beaches, getting scared when we surprise a sleeping wild pig.

We snorkel straight from the boat into impossib