Raiatea, Apr. 19, 2004 - Apr. 20, 2004

The winds were non-existent between Moorea and Raiatea, so we motor-sailed overnight reaching Baie Hotopuu, Raiatea the following afternoon. A few miles outside the pass we turned off the engine and coasted gently to a stop amid a smooth expanse of crystal clear, azure blue so Julie and Chris could dive in. After a few minutes I could tell that the initial wonderment had given way to the creepy feeling that I have felt on the few occasions when when I have gone swimming in the middle of the ocean - nothing below but thousands of feet of water - "Just what the hell is down there, and when is going to come up and get me?"

With Julie and Chris back aboard we motored to the pass, which was visible as a narrow expanse of clear water between waves breaking over the submerged coral to either side. We anchored in 75 feet of water at Hotopuu and experienced some difficulty in getting all 300 feet of the chain out. Through many months of swinging at anchor in various places the chain had become twisted in the chain locker and had gotten jammed in the elbow of the windlass hawsepipe as it came through the deck. I went down below to pull the chain back down to try to free it, wedging myself into the chain locker and looking up into the pipe as I hauled down on a screwdriver put through one of the links. A sliver of iron was ground away from either the chain or the windlass housing and landed in my left eye - I was not wearing my safety glasses. It was amazing how extremely uncomfortable it felt to have a foreign body sitting on my cornea. As luck would have it, Julie is a registered nurse and was able to quickly pick up the sliver by using a cotton swab. After irrigating the eye for a few minutes I put on the safety glasses and finished freeing the chain.

We made sure the anchor was secure and went ashore to see Marae Taputaputea, which is (as every tourbook says) the largest and most important historical religious site in French Polynesia. It may have been quite something hundreds of years ago but now all that is left are a few stone ruins in a park-like setting by the ocean. The point that was driven home to me, as we walked around the deserted site and read the archaeologists conjectures about the lost history of this ancient site, its priests and their mysterious rites, was what a bloody mess the Europeans had made of the South Pacific. In the space of a few hundred years explorers, whalers, traders and, most destructively, missionaries had completely and finally destroyed dozens of mature and vibrant ancient cultures. I couldn't help but feel a certain sense of guilt as we traveled around retracing the footsteps of our forebears at the scenes of their most heinous crimes. And it continues today - our presence there was contibuting to the further westernization of these places.

Since the anchorage was very deep and subject to a bit of swell coming in from the pass we decided to head north, inside the reef to Baie Faaroa where there is a small town and a Sunsail base. There we were able to tie up to a mooring ball, buy some local charts and provisions and do some sightseeing in a little river that feeds into the end of the bay. Chris and Julie went up in the inflatable kayak they brought us and Stephanie and I followed a little later in the dinghy. We visited a good tropical garden and arboretum that had labeled specimens of local plants and trees.