It all started on Christmas Day 1985, when we took a week off to fly from San Diego to Northern California for a mini-vacation. We rented a car and drove up Highway 1 from San Francisco to Mendocino and had a very romantic eleventh anniversary there. Then we wandered slowly back south, staying at quaint little bed-and-breakfast places and soaking in hot tubs at midnight under the redwoods. We visited scores of wineries and bought a case of assorted wine. As we were returning to San Francisco through beautiful Marin County, we talked about what it would be like to live in the Bay Area. The idea appealed to both of us, but it would mean leaving all our friends in San Diego.

We discussed it further on the flight home, but it seemed like another of our many fantasies that we never quite got around to doing. When I got to work that Monday, among my mail was the company’s annual relocation survey, asking if I would consider transferring, and if so, where. Every year I just wrote in "South Pacific" and turned it in. The company didn’t have any offices in the South Pacific, so it was sort of a joke. This time I checked the Bay Area. They did have three offices there, but I thought it unlikely that anything would come of it. I promptly forgot about it.

We were then finalizing plans for our big trip in the spring with our oldest and dearest friends Karen and John. Karen had given me my first data processing job almost ten years before and we had been close friends ever since. Linda and I played music for their wedding. Like us, they were great hikers, backpackers, and sailors, and we had taken many adventurous and memorable trips together in the California mountains and deserts. Then two years ago they had moved from San Diego to Virginia, but we were determined to not let that stop us from continuing our adventures. Last year we spent a great week hiking in the Grand Canyon. Then at Halloween we had decided to go for the ultimate adventure trip. Both John and I were avid amateur astronomers, and Halley’s comet was due to return in the spring. With a 76-year period, it was the only chance we would ever get to see it. But it was going to be low in the south and not very prominent in the northern hemisphere. Well, then, we would go to the southern hemisphere. John had built his own ten-inch telescope, cleverly designed to fold up into an easily-carried box. We decided we would fly to Tahiti, take a small plane to Raiatea, charter a yacht, sail to Bora Bora, and observe the comet from a tropical beach. We set it up for spring break in April, when Halley would be at its peak.

At the end of February I got a call at work from the manager of the San Francisco office. She had an opening for a programmer, had seen my survey, and was sending me a ticket to fly to San Francisco for an interview. Two days later she picked me up at SFO, interviewed me in the Hard Rock Café, and in two hours I was heading home thinking I could probably have the job, though the pay was slightly less than my current salary. Linda and I talked it over. Her job was becoming a real drag. Some parents at the pre-school where she was director had filed totally absurd complaints against her, and she was sick of the hassle. A change sounded good to both of us. We decided to accept the job if it was offered. The fantasy was becoming reality.

In the middle of March the San Francisco manager called to offer me the job, at my current salary. They would pay all moving expenses and get us a place to stay until we found a house. I accepted on the spot. The only problem was that she wanted me to start as soon as possible, preferably by the end of March. I explained that we had a vacation scheduled for the first two weeks of April, and, no, it couldn’t be changed. She reluctantly agreed to wait, but she said I should just come straight to San Francisco as soon as we got back. I agreed to this.

When Linda and I discussed it that night, we realized that I would have to go up by myself. She still had three more months of the school year to finish. Plus, someone had to stay to start trying to sell our San Diego house. It all seemed rather rushed and uncomfortable, but frankly, we were so excited about the upcoming trip to Tahiti that the whole San Francisco thing seemed a bit unreal. We’d been in San Diego for twelve years, all our married life. We were playing regularly in a Renaissance music group, the Westwynde Consort; we were the founders and officers of SDEMS, the San Diego Early Music Society; and we had a large circle of friends and acquaintances in the area. We couldn’t quite imagine what it would be like to move. But Tahiti was only two weeks away. We’d worry about it when we got back.

The next day I gave notice at work. I’d been there six years, and as the word got around the shop, people started dropping by to chat. I described the new job over and over, but many of the questions were about the upcoming trip to Tahiti. It was just so far away and exotic, people couldn’t seem to understand it.

"Do you mean you just rent a boat with no crew or captain?"

"Yeah. It’s called a bare boat charter. They provide the boat, fuel, and food. All we have to do is sail away."

"And where do you sail to?"

"We’re starting at Raiatea. We’ll do a shake-down cruise to Tahaa, then head east to Huahine, then circle around to the west to Bora Bora. It should be perfect for seeing Halley’s comet."

People just shook their heads. No one had the slightest idea where all these islands were, but they had great romantic names and the whole idea of sailing to the South Pacific in chase of some comet sounded like just the kind of crazy adventure Linda and I were famous for.

But of course the major issue was my imminent departure from work. I wasn’t just going on a two-week vacation - I was never coming back. I was thrown into a frantic schedule of trying to finish in-flight projects, turn the rest over to others, and above all to document everything I knew. There were several applications only I knew well, and I had to get new people fully trained to be able to support them in only two weeks.

Linda was busy too. She went through the garage and the closets, sorting out stuff to give or throw away. In the evenings we had meetings with my company’s relocation manager. He was great and provided us with lots of good advice. He found us a good realtor who went through the house and told us all the things we should repair or clean up for the sale. We spent a lot of time working out details, preparing ads and listings, and trying to come up with a price that would allow the house to sell fairly quickly. We would have to close the sale before we could buy anything up north, so we didn’t want it to drag on all summer. We arranged to have two separate appraisers go through the house and give us their estimates.

On top of all this, we had our normal lives to get on with. Linda was organizing Easter programs and dying eggs for her school. I was trying to finish up the income tax, as we would be out of the country on tax day. The SDEMS had a workshop coming up soon, and we were calling teachers and performers, hiring halls, and composing fliers. Also, our band was still meeting for rehearsals at our house every Wednesday night.

Before we threw ourselves into all that work, we took the weekend off and went out to the Anza-Borrego desert, over the mountains from San Diego with our friend Bruce. We four-wheeled as high as we could get on Pinyon Mountain, then back-packed the last four hours to the summit of Whale Peak. We camped in a little hollow just below the peak, and at four AM watched Halley’s comet rise above the summit crags. Its tail streamed away to disappear over the southern horizon, and Linda and I dreamed about how bright and beautiful it would look from the South Pacific. It was a gorgeous weekend, and a fitting farewell to our beloved desert.

On Monday the last-minute minutiae started to really pile up. Linda was busy finishing up school tasks for the spring break. I was writing documentation and doing training as fast as I could. In the evening, I turned over the treasury of the SDEMS to my successor and went over the books and procedures with him. One of the appraisers went through the house Tuesday morning and the other that evening after work. That night we had band rehearsal and stayed up smoking and drinking and talking politics with the band until two AM. The next day Linda called her parents in Virginia and told them about the move. She was finally on vacation, and she and our friend Jay Sacks had lunch and spent the afternoon at the beach. We all went out for a good Chinese dinner. On Thursday I spent nine hours straight writing documentation. It suddenly hit us that this would be our last weekend together in San Diego. Linda started inviting all our friends to a big farewell party on Saturday. She went into a flurry of party planning.

Friday, March 28 - I finished the documentation package and had the afternoon off for Good Friday. Linda and I met for lunch at a French bistro in Mission Hills, then I went shopping for some music for my brother Gary’s birthday, now only three weeks late. I decided to send him some old family mementos, and spent the rest of the day sorting through boxes of junk. In the evening a realtor toured the house.

Saturday, March 29 - Now it was only a week before our departure for Tahiti. Karen and John called from Virginia to confirm they would be flying in on Thursday. I mailed the package to Gary, sold our bicycles, and cleaned the house and yard for the party that evening. Linda was cleaning and cooking like crazy. People started showing up just as we finished up. Soon there were thirty people there, some from my work, some from Linda’s, and many more old friends from all our years there. Of course the whole band was there, and two bedrooms were set aside for playing music. The loud band, consisting of the raucous shawms and sackbutts, was consigned to the back yard - we didn’t have to worry about the neighbors any more. The party went on until two, then some of our closest friends stayed to help us clean up the considerable mess.

Sunday, March 30 - We woke up late on Easter Sunday, mightily hung over. We finished cleaning up the place, then went to see our friends Steve and Mary, who provided us a delicious Easter brunch. It was a beautiful sunny Spring day. Linda went for a bike ride around the bay; I lay out in the back yard in the sun and read all afternoon. I couldn’t get it through my head that it was the last Sunday I would ever spend at this house. In the evening we had dinner with Diane from the band, then had a mailing party to mail out the workshop fliers. One more project done.

Monday, March 31 - It was my 39^th birthday, but we were too busy to do much celebrating. It was my last week at work, and I was frantically trying to wrap everything up. In the evening the realtor came over and we spent the evening going over all the paperwork and signing the contract. My brother Gary called for my birthday and we talked a long time about all the changes coming up.

Tuesday, April 1 - It was a busy day for both of us. The realtor and the relocation officer from my company called and came by several times during the day. There’s still a lot of disagreement about the terms of the contract. That evening we had the very last rehearsal of the Westwynde Consort. We had been playing together every week for over seven years, and had become closer than many families. It was hard to believe we would never be getting together again. A bittersweet evening with some tears.

Wednesday, April 2 - Linda went to a budget meeting at her school and had a very unpleasant confrontation with her boss. In the evening the realtor came over again and we rescinded the contract and signed another. We wrote up itineraries of our trip and sent them to Linda’s parents and my brother. Karen and John would be arriving tomorrow, and we were so involved with wrapping things up at work, leaving the band and the SDEMS, selling the house, and saying goodbye to so many old friends, that we hadn’t had time to give much thought to the Tahiti trip.

Thursday, April 3 - The office took me out for a farewell lunch at a Mexican restaurant. I drank so many margaritas I was too drunk to get much done the rest of the day. Linda called to say Karen and John had arrived. Later Linda went out to run a last-minute errand. While she was gone, a realtor had let herself into the house to show it to some prospective buyers. She went to the guest room and flung the door open to show off the room, only to find the guest room full of guests. Karen and John got dressed and helped show off the house’s other amenities. I left work an hour early and Linda and I got home about the same time, to find the house full of realtors and prospects. I was trying to greet Karen and John while people were looking in closets all around us. When they left, Karen and John, who used to live in San Diego, went off to visit some friends. Linda and I drove all the way up to Vista for a farewell dinner with some other friends. We got home after midnight, just as Karen and John got home. It had been a long day and tomorrow was my last day at work, so we went straight to bed.

Friday, April 4 - Both Linda and Karen and John were going to need the cars for about a dozen last-minute errands, so she drove me to work. John would pick me up at five to help me haul all my office stuff home. I spent the morning wrapping up loose ends, turning over my files and records to my colleagues, and saying goodbye to dozens of friends. Around noon I remembered that we hadn’t called the airline to confirm our flights. I was way too busy myself, so I called home to ask Linda to do it. John answered the phone and said that Linda was till out. But a guy from the yacht charterers, The Moorings, had just called from Raiatea to say that our boat had blown its engine. They had a backup boat, but when they tried to start it, its engine blew too. So there were no boats available. They told us to cancel our trip! Well, I was having none of that. Everything was ready, we were less than 24 hours from departure, and we had way too much momentum up now to just cancel the trip. I called the airline reservations guy at The Moorings and had a heart-to-heart.

"We paid our money," I told him. "We have our non-refundable airline tickets and hotel reservations, our friends have already flown across the country to go with us. We are coming tomorrow. You better have a boat ready."

"There are no more boats," he pleaded. "You must not come to Raiatea. You will not be able to sail."

"We are not going to cancel our vacation. We are going to Raiatea, Huahine, and Bora Bora. You people will just have to think of something."

After a great deal of discussion, he finally agreed to set up a whole new itinerary, with The Moorings arranging (and paying for) flights on inter-island planes to all three islands, as well as our hotel stays for the whole two weeks. He was not at all pleased with the prospect.

"Fine," I said. "We’ll see you tomorrow." It looked like our long-planned dream cruise was off, but I was determined that the trip would not be wasted.

I called John back to tell him what had been arranged.

"That’s great, Brian," he said. "It’s a disappointment, but I’m sure it will be fine."

A few minutes later my phone rang again. It was our realtor.

"Listen," he said. "I may have some buyers for the house."

"What? It hasn’t even been listed yet."

"I know. But as soon as the word got around, another realtor called me and said he wanted to make an offer."

"Oh, listen, that’s great. But we’re leaving in the morning for two weeks. I have to leave my job, make arrangements for the cat, close up the house, and pack in the next few hours. I just don’t have time to meet with people about the house. Tell them we’ll talk to them after we get back on the 15^th."

"I don’t think this can wait that long. Besides, even after your vacation, you won’t be here. You’ll be in San Francisco. You need to be here to sign the papers."

"Oh, Christ, that’s right."

"Listen, I’m coming over to the house at four with the buyers’ realtor. At least meet with him."

I was too rattled from my two-hour phone argument with the charterer to think very clearly. My head was too full of the Tahiti trip and all the new arrangements to even think about trying to sell the house. I tried to think of any other reasonable arrangement, but failed.

"Okay," I sighed. "I’ll leave work early and see you at the house at four." I called John and asked him to pick me up at 3:30 instead of five.

As soon as I hung up, the relocation manager called to say he had already seen the offer and thought it looked pretty good. He urged me to try to finalize the sale before we left. When I finally hung up, it was already after 2:30. That gave me one hour to clean out my desk, pack up all my boxes of stuff, and make the final grand tour of the office, shaking hands with everyone and promising to stay in touch. It should have been a memorable and emotional time, but my mind was spinning with all the things that were happening at once. At 3:30 John picked me up and helped me load all my crap into the car, and we were off. I was finally officially on vacation, but I was way too stressed to enjoy it. John kindly offered me a joint and we got loaded on the drive home. I felt much better after that.

When we got inside, there were two more realtors poking around the house. John said there had been people in and out all day long as he and Karen and Linda were trying to get our luggage packed and organized. Finally the realtors arrived. The buyers offered us $138K, a fairly good price, but not as much as we’d hoped. With all the interest we were getting, we figured we could probably get more. Besides, if we turned down the offer, we wouldn’t have to hassle with it today. We could concentrate on the trip. After a private consultation, Linda and I said we wouldn’t accept less than $142K. That should shut them up. The realtors left, saying they’d take it back to the buyers.

Finally we were alone. We were just flopping down on the couch to catch our breath when the relocation manager called again to ask what had happened. We discussed the pros and cons of the offer and our counter offer. When he hang up, The Moorings called again to say the alternate itinerary was all set up. We would go to Raiatea and stay in a hotel for a few days while they tried to get a boat operable. If so, we could still have a shortened cruise. If not, we’d fly to the other islands. We thanked him.

By now we were all pretty frazzled by the wild day. We drove up the coast to Solana Beach for dinner. We picked up Karen and John’s friend Barbara on the way and met two of our friends at the restaurant. We absolutely pigged out on a huge Mexican feast with lots of beer and margaritas, then came home and crashed straightaway. What a day!

Saturday, April 5 - The big day had arrived at last. We staggered out of bed and Linda made us a great breakfast. Our flight wasn’t until that evening. We ran about a thousand more errands, went through the mail, paid all the bills coming due in the next two weeks, and turned all our SDEMS activities over to other members. Finally we could start to relax and enjoy the vacation we had been looking forward to for the last eight months.

Karen and John wanted to visit some of their friends outside of San Diego, so we left them take the Prelude. We were still running errands. Just as we got back to the house, our realtor called. The counter offer was accepted; the house was sold. That took some getting used to.

Then Karen called. They had stopped for gas in Campo, out in the high desert some fifty miles east of San Diego. When they tried to unlock the gas cap, the key had broken off in the lock. They had no way to drive home, so I had to drive out with a spare key to rescue them. We got back in time to grab quick showers, finish our packing, and catch a taxi to the airport. We were on our way at last!

We had allowed too much time and had to cool our heels at the airport for over an hour. We checked our luggage through to Papeete, just keeping our carry-ons and the telescope with us. We caught the short flight to LAX with no trouble and went through the usual international hassles. Oddly enough, we noticed another man in the line carrying a home-made folding ten-inch telescope nearly identical to John’s. We struck up a conversation and he and John talked about grinding mirrors and collimation and other cool stuff. The UTA flight out was delayed, but finally we got aboard. We sat for a long time on the runway, but at 1130 we lifted off. After an unbelievably stressful and hectic week, we were finally on our way to Tahiti!

Sunday, April 6 - They served us a big steak dinner at 1 AM, then showed us a not particularly funny French comedy. We squirmed in the seats, trying various positions to get comfortable enough to sleep. Around 3:30 we finally fell asleep, only to be awakened a very few hours later for an early breakfast. The sun came up, revealing an endless expanse of blue ocean. Then we passed over some islands, one of which might have been Raiatea, and started our descent for Papeete. We peered out the windows, trying to get our first glimpse of Tahiti. The adventure was about to begin.

Soon a spectacular pair of islands came into view. The nearer, Moorea, was heart-shaped, with two deep bays cutting deep into its jagged interior. The other consisted of two unequal lobes, two volcanoes connected by a narrow neck. Tahiti, the Island of Love!

A few minutes later was landed. The doors opened and a waft of warm humid air swept into the plane, scented with frangipani and the unmistakable scent of copra. After our long absence from the tropics, it felt almost like coming home. Linda and I grinned at each other.

But our short walk through Faa’a Airport showed us how different Tahiti was from our former home in Tonga. This was a French colony, not a proud and independent country. Aside from the language difference, there was an obvious cultural difference. The Polynesians we saw here were cab drivers, porters, janitors. The counter clerks and customs officials were all white and French. Although we couldn’t understand the Tahitian we heard spoken around us, it sounded very familiar to us from our time in Tonga. My only other experience in a French country had been in New Caledonia thirteen years earlier, and I hadn’t enjoyed the superior colonial attitude of the French there. The Melanesian natives were an oppressed race, and it had saddened me to see such blatant and official racism still being practiced in these modern times. I was prepared to dislike it again in French Polynesia.

We passed through Customs and Immigration fairly quickly, then found we had three hours to kill before our flight to Raiatea. The airport was not close to town, and there was not enough time to go out and see anything, so we changed some money and went to the bar for some drinks. We loafed and looked out at the gorgeous scenery and flamboyant tropical flowers everywhere, discussing our chances of being able to do some sailing. Linda wandered off to cruise one of the shops.

Then the PA system crackled. "Passenger Brian Crawford please report to the Air Polynesie ticket counter."

We looked at each other. What could it possibly be about? Had I left something on the plane, or could there be a problem with our flight? Perhaps The Moorings was calling to tell us our boat was ready. I went over to the counter and was met by a man in uniform. He looked me up and down unsmilingly.

"Where is your wife?" he asked with a very strong French accent.

"In the gift shop," I answered, puzzled.

"You will get her, please."

I went to the shop. "Honey, they want to talk to both of us."

"Who does?"

"Some guy in a uniform. I think he must be from Immigration."

"We’ve already cleared Immigration. They stamped our passports."

"I know. I don’t know what it’s about, but he doesn’t look very pleased."

We went back to the counter. "Come with me, please," he said, leading us to an unmarked door. Karen and John watched us curiously, and I could only shrug.

We entered a small square interrogation room, containing only a desk and three chairs. The officer sat and gestured for us to sit across from him.

"When were you last in French Polynesia?" he asked without any preamble or explanation.

"We’ve never been here before," I said. He gave me a long steady stare, apparently meant to intimidate me.

"Your name is Brian Crawford?"

"That’s right."

"And you have never been here before?" he asked after a long minute.

"No. We just came in on the UTA flight from Los Angeles. Is something wrong with our papers?"

He did not reply, but opened a folder and read for a moment. Then he looked up at Linda.

"What about you, Madame? Have you ever been to French Polynesia before?"

"No, never." She threw me a worried look. What in the world could this be about?

He studied her a moment more, then swung back to me.

"And you say you have never, at any time, been in French Polynesia before?"

"That’s correct."

"Hmm." He seemed at a loss for anything else to ask. He studied his dossier again. I tried to construct some plausible reason why we should be questioned like this, but failed. Why didn’t he ask what he really wanted to ask instead of repeating the same question?

He peered at me over the top of the papers. Suddenly he seemed to think of a clever new line of attack, for he snapped out, "Were you in French Polynesia in 1973?"

This seemed a not particularly profitable question in light of our earlier answers.

"No. Neither of us has ever been in this country, in 1973, or at any other time."

"Hmm," he said again, and returned to studying his papers, whatever they were.

But his mention of 1973 got me thinking. I had never been in French Polynesia, but in 1973 I had intended to come here. The French government was then the last country still doing atmospheric nuclear testing, long decried and given up by every other nuclear power. But they didn’t want to poison the air and soil of France. So they exploded their bombs over tiny Mururoa Atoll in their far-off colony of French Polynesia, where no one would be hurt by the radioactive fallout but all the ten of thousands of Polynesians in the Leeward Islands, the Cook Islands, Line Islands, Rarotonga, Tonga, Samoa, and New Caledonia, and of course all those damned English-speaking roast beefs downwind in New Zealand and Australia. Plus all the delicate corals, fish, and marine mammals in the immediate vicinity of Mururoa, which were blown to smithereens, of course.

In June of 1973 I had sailed on the yacht Warana, Australia’s official Nuclear Protest Vessel. Her mission was to sail from Melbourne to Auckland, then on to Mururoa to anchor at ground zero, hopefully preventing the French from dropping their bomb on us. Greenpeace and several other anti-nuclear groups had attempted the same thing and Warana was intended to demonstrate Australia’s outrage about their regular irradiation by joining the protest. She was fitted out with Geiger counters, radiometers, and a specially-installed washing system to quickly rinse fallout off the decks in case the bomb was dropped anyway.

But a combination of political machinations, mismanagement. equipment failures, crew incompatibility, and general incompetence had doomed the mission from the start. After many months and many problems, the rest of the crew had jumped ship in Fiji and the whole project collapsed. The captain and I rounded up a new crew and returned to Melbourne, never getting within 1,500 miles of Mururoa.

But there had been a great deal of publicity about the mission. The newspapers in Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji had been full of stories about Warana and her brave crew. During our stay in Suva, we had all done many television and newspaper interviews and given a number of public talks and lectures. The French authorities were undoubtedly aware of us.

And the French government did not appreciate other nations protesting their God-given right to poison a hemisphere. French naval vessels had intercepted the protest yachts, beaten up and arrested their crews, and seized their boats. One protest vessel was rammed and nearly sunk by a French destroyer. Only the year before, in July of 1985, as the Greenpeace protest vessel Rainbow Warrior was fitting out in Auckland harbor in preparation for sailing to Mururoa, a French secret service underwater demolition team placed two bombs on her hull, sinking her and killing Portuguese photographer Fernando Pereira. The resulting scandal forced the resignation of the Defense Minister and the head of the secret service and nearly brought down President Mitterand.

So without a doubt the French secret service had seen my name as a member of the crew of Warana and added it to a list of undesirable persons. The only saving grace was that the details had been lost in the intervening thirteen years. From this idiot’s questions, or actually single repeated question, it was clear that he didn’t know why I was undesirable. If he had, it is possible I would have been jailed as a terrorist or foreign agent. At the least, I would have been deported and our vacation ruined. Finally having figured it out, I waited anxiously to see if the official would put the pieces together. I needn’t have worried.

He put down his dossier and studied me closely, clearly thinking of how to crack my implacable resolve. At last his face lit up with a cagey smile. He had finally come to the only conclusion a clever and rational investigator could reach; the only sensible solution to the puzzle of how I could appear on a list of undesirable people in 1973 without ever having been to the country before. He leaned forward and posed the perfect question.

"Do you have a brother named Brian Crawford?"

"Uh, no, actually, I don’t," I replied. I nearly laughed outright, and Linda could only stare open-mouthed. After this brilliant sally, he seemed to have exhausted his investigative skills, for he let us go. We rejoined Karen and John, who had been very worried by our long absence.

"What the hell was that all about?" asked John.

I shook my head. "I’ll tell you later," I said, "after we’re out of Tahiti."

We still had over an hour to wait, so we took a walk around the airport. Finally our flight was announced and we boarded a small Twin Otter. I was never so happy to leave the ground. It had never occurred to me that I might be a wanted man in a country I had never visited. I had certainly been busted in a lot of places, but usually I had to go there before I got into trouble.

The plane headed back north and in less than an hour circled to land on Huahine in the eastern Society Islands. It was very picturesque, with steep jagged mountains, deep-shadowed valleys, and surrounded by turquoise reefs. This was one of the islands we had hoped to sail to, and one I had been particularly looking forward to visiting, as it was more isolated and considerably less developed and touristy than Raiatea or Bora Bora. But we didn’t even get to leave the plane, and within a few minutes were airborne again for Raiatea, twenty-five miles to the west.

Raiatea was a triangular island about fifteen miles long. Only three miles to the north was the smaller, nearly circular, island of Tahaa. Both were mountainous and completely encircled by a barrier reef sixty miles long that formed a huge protected lagoon of smooth water. It looked beautiful from the air, the islands thickly covered with dark green trees, and the lagoon a thousand colors of blue. The plane circled over the island and we had glimpses of houses built on pilings out over the lagoon. We landed at a small airport at Uturoa, the major town on the northern tip of Raiatea.

As we collected our luggage, we were met by a young woman from The Moorings. She was very nice and apologized profusely for the problems with the boats. She gave us our plane tickets to replace the cruise. We were booked for three nights in a local hotel, then had a flight to Huahine on Wednesday.

"What are the chances of a boat becoming available?" asked Karen.

"I’m afraid it is not very likely," she said. "They had to pull the engines out of both boats. The men are working on them as quickly as they can, but it is not likely to be ready within the week. If you wait that long, you will not have time to sail to the other islands. But your flights, your hotels, and all your food will be completely paid for by The Moorings. You are booked into the Bali Hai Raiatea. It is a very nice hotel, right on the water. I hope you will still be able to enjoy a wonderful time here in the islands."

We were disappointed, but not too surprised after what they had told us over the phone. I had at first been suspicious that they had had a booking snafu or found someone willing to pay more for our boat. But the fact that they were paying for our whole stay made that seem less likely. They would be losing a fortune on us. On the other hand, we had already paid them for room and board for a week, so it was only fair. Still, we had really had our hearts set on doing some sailing.

We caught a taxi to our hotel, outside of town on the east side of the island. It was really quite beautiful, and the staff was very attentive and nice. It may have been the place I glimpsed from the plane, because the rooms were out on docks over the water. Each room had a trap door where you could swim right out of your room. We moved our stuff in and took much-needed showers. We went for a swim in the warm clear tropical water, surrounded by fish of million different colors. Now this was more like it, I thought as I drifted over the coral. I felt relaxed for the first time in weeks.

We had a tropical lunch in the bar, then borrowed some very ancient and beat-up bicycles from the hotel and pedaled over to The Moorings to see what was up. We talked to Henri, the manager. Sure enough, there were two boats at the dock with their engines ripped out. Henri and two other guys had one engine disassembled and were cleaning parts.

"The engines are sea-water cooled," he explained. "The sea water comes into this side of the oil pan, and the hot oil is on this side. They are separated by this wall, and the wall contains two freeze plugs that are supposed to pop out if the water freezes."

"That must not happen often around here," observed John.

"No, but the plugs are soft metal, and the sea water here is very salty. The plug corroded through, the seawater got into the oil, and the oil pump pumped it throughout the engine. Now everything is rusted together," he added glumly, holding up an irregular lump of metal that was probably once a piston.

"And the spare boat," he explained, pointing to the other engine sitting in a pool of water nearby, "it had exactly the same problem on the same day."

"And you don’t have spare engines lying around?" I asked.

"No. The boats are privately owned. We lease them from the owners and charter them out. We keep them clean and maintained, but the owners are responsible for major repairs like this. It was just bad luck that we only have two boats in right now and both have lost their engines."

"Are there any other boats due to come back in soon?" asked Linda.

"Not for a week, but one might come back early. In the meantime, your rooms and food are all paid for, and we can only try to get one of the engines working for you."

It was clear they were doing everything they could, so we thanked him and decided to leave him to his work.

"Please call us if there is any news," Karen said.

"I certainly will. Merci, Madames, Monsieurs. Enjoy your stay."

We pedaled precariously back to the hotel, the rickety bicycles nearly falling apart on the bumpy roads. We had drinks, a nap, more drinks, then went for a very nice dinner in the hotel restaurant. Somehow the drinks and food tasted better knowing someone else was paying for them. Later we read on the veranda, quite literally directly over the surf. John proposed that we set the alarm for four AM so we could get up and see Halley’s comet through the telescope. None of us had slept well on the flight and we went to bed fairly early. Another long day, but we were finally here.

Monday, April 7 - Linda and I slept right through the alarm. Karen and John got up and took a look through the scope, but there were a lot of lights around the hotel and the seeing was not very good. I woke up at 5:30 and went outside to peer briefly at the comet with my naked and only partially open eyes. The comet’s tail seemed to be if anything smaller now than when I saw it from Whale Peak. I went back to bed.

We got up at seven, had a nice breakfast, and talked to the desk clerk about things to do. He told us that there was an outboard-powered outrigger canoe that could take us out to one of the motu, or reef islets. That sounded like fun, so we had the hotel pack us box lunches. There was another party of six tourists who also signed up for the trip. The canoe arrived soon after and sped us quickly a few miles across the lagoon to Ofetaro Motu. It really was a beautiful place, with white sand beaches, coconut trees, and a great view back to Raiatea. We had a beautiful morning of snorkeling, swimming, sunbathing, eating, and lazy reading. The snorkeling was disappointing, as most of the coral was dead and bleached white, nothing like the vibrant living reefs we had seen in Tonga. But there were still plenty of tropical fish swimming about, and it was a pleasure just to float face down, completely inert, and let the currents carry us gently across the reef.

The other party returned to the hotel after lunch, but we chose to stay on. We spent a few idyllic hours as the only inhabitants of a tropical island. It didn’t take long to explore the whole island. The sun was bright and warm, the water as warm as bath water, and the colors of the water and flowers like a Gaugin painting. The canoe came back for us in mid-afternoon. We showered and met for drinks in the hotel bar, then simply relaxed on the veranda, reading or staring down into the water. We were truly in vacation mode now. A little later Linda and Karen walked into town to check it out, but John and I couldn’t be bothered to get up.

In the evening we had yet more tropical drinks and went to the hotel restaurant to have a good meal to celebrate Karen and John’s seventh anniversary. The waitress, Erica, was in a very silly mood and made lots of mistakes, but she was so happy and cheerful and laughed with us that it didn’t seem to matter. The food was good and we had a good French wine to celebrate. After dinner we got out the telescope and set it up on the end of the longest dock, as far as we could get from the many lights. Finally we should be able to get the great look at the comet we had come so far to see. The sky was partly cloudy, and one big dark cloud drifted over the comet as we were setting up. By the time we were ready, that was the one part of the sky we couldn’t see. We examined some other great southern sky sights, such as the southern cross and Omega Centauri, the biggest and brightest globular cluster in the sky. Some of the locals saw us out there and came out to see what we were doing. None of them spoke English and our French was limited to "L’Etoile!", but the people were very friendly and exclaimed gratifyingly at every sight we showed them through the scope. But after waiting two hours and catching only brief hazy glimpses of the comet, we packed it up and went in.

Tuesday, April 8 - We got up rather late with no plans in mind at all. We had a relaxed breakfast and discussed what we might do. We could rent motor scooters and go for a tour of the island. But the wind and sea were ideal for sailing, and we ached to be out on the water. We asked the desk clerk if there were any yachts for hire. He pointed out a yacht anchored off the beach not far away.

"Michel, the man who owns that boat, often takes people out," he suggested. So we wandered down and called to Michel and he rowed over to talk to us. We explained our predicament. He was sympathetic, but said he was already booked for the next two days. But he said he would ask around among the other boat owners and come get us if one was available. We went back to the hotel and settled into a grueling round of reading, swimming, and eating for the rest of the morning. Around noon Michel sent us a message to tell us that no boats were available for the rest of the week.

We decided to call The Moorings to see how they were progressing, but the phone was out of order. We had nothing better to do, so thought we’d go visit Henri in person. None of us wanted to ride those miserable hotel bikes again, so we walked into town to rent a couple of motor scooters. But the shop only had one scooter available. We tried to call The Moorings from a pay phone, but it was out too. We couldn’t find anyone who spoke English so we could ask to use a phone. A passing American ex-pat got us the use of a phone in a store, but it was out too. Perhaps the whole phone system was down.

We inquired about a bus to take us to The Moorings. Yes, there was such a bus, but it went on around the island and could not bring us back. Clearly something there is that did not want us to contact The Moorings that day. So we gave up and went back to the scooter shop. We reserved two scooters for the next day, then walked back to the hotel.

We did some more extreme loafing. Late in the afternoon, Michel came by to tell us that his charter tomorrow was only for a half day. He offered to take us out sailing after he got back. But that would give us only a couple of hours before our flight to Huahine, so we thanked him and declined the offer. It seemed as if nothing was going to go as planned on this vacation.

In the evening we went to happy hour in the bar and learned how to tie a pareu. We had a great dinner of butterflied shrimp and stuffed veal, along with a lot more inexpensive French wine. After dinner the sky was clear, so we got out the scope and set it up at the end of the dock. The word had apparently gotten around about the scope and the comet, and soon a dozen or more people came out to join us. The comet was finally clearly visible, but there was nothing like the predicted huge tail stretching halfway across the sky. It looked like a fuzzy round ball, in fact almost exactly like Omega Centauri. But having all the locals there was fun, and they were all eager to see the sights. The desk clerk Patrick, who had been very friendly and helpful to us, brought his whole family out. His kids were great and we held them up to the eyepiece one at a time to shoe them the comet, Saturn, Mars, and Omega Centauri. There were many pleased exclamations and it was a fun time trying to make our explanations understood to the French. We stayed out on the dock until well after midnight, visiting with Patrick and his family and admiring the brilliant southern Milky Way like a white river from horizon to horizon.

Wednesday, April 9 - We met for breakfast and decided that since there was so much island to cover, we should get started early. We walked into town and rented two little white scooters. We decided to go over to The Moorings first just on the chance that there was good news for a change. We saw Henri and his crew working on one of the boats. The engine they had been working on was gone.

"Good news!" he called to us. "The engine is fixed and back in the boat. However, there is still an oil leak that I am not happy with. But I am sure that we will have it ready for you this afternoon. Do you still want to take it? You have lost two days of sailing?"

We were astonished at how much they had gotten done yesterday. After a very brief consultation, we agreed that we did want to take the boat. There would not be time to sail to Huahine, but we could still go to Tahaa and probably Bora Bora. That was why we had come, after all.

"Tres bien," replied Henri when we told him. "I am glad. We will cancel your remaining airline tickets and hotel reservations. Come back in late afternoon."

"We will, thank you. See you then." Considerably cheered at the change in our luck, we took off on our tour of Raiatea.

There is really only one main road on the island, running all the way around the coast. With all the twists and turns, it was probably forty miles. We had planned a leisurely circuit of the island. But if we were to get back in time to get cleaned up, packed, and checked out of the hotel, return the scooters, and get back to the boat by late afternoon, we wouldn’t have time to take the whole tour. The one place we all really wanted to see was a marae, or temple complex, called Taputaputea near the village of Opoa, right down near the far end of the island. It was the biggest marae in all the Society Islands. We decided to run down there as fast as we could and skip any intervening sightseeing. John and I drove, the girls on the back. The road was unpaved, made of ground coral, but in pretty good condition. We roared off south down the east coast of Raiatea, big clouds of white dust behind us. We circled around the absolutely gorgeous big bay of Faaroa. We kept glancing at all the lovely white sand beaches, swaying palms, and inviting coves, but we didn’t even have time to stop. A couple of hours of driving finally got us to Opoa, later than we had expected. We couldn’t miss the marae. It was immense - a series of walls and temple platforms on a beautiful peninsula pointing out into the open sea toward Tahiti. We parked and walked into the impressive ruins. There was no one else in sight.

We were all struck by the atmosphere of the place. This was one of the most sacred sites in all of Polynesia. Here great ceremonies were held, no doubt including human sacrifice. These platforms had held thousands of people, chanting and dancing by torchlight, calling on their gods to bless their voyages. Huge canoes had stood there on the beach, filled with people, food, and animals. It was this very spot that the expedition had set out to explore the unknown expanses of the North Pacific. How many had set out, never to return, lost in those empty wastes? But one at last succeeded and found a chain of large fertile uninhabited islands. It was so beautiful they named it after their legendary paradise. They called it Hawai’i. They returned to Raiatea and brought back an entire self-sufficient colony, eventually peopling all the Hawai’ian islands, and those people later sailed diagonally across the entire Pacific to discover and settle New Zealand.

Even in ruin, Taputapuatea was an impressive structure. The immense blocks of jagged coral formed long straight lines and perfectly rectangular platforms. We climbed the walls and walked on the summit. We found ourselves whispering in awe. But we didn’t have much time to explore. We ate our box lunches, took some pictures, and then it was time to head back. We were finally going to go cruising.

Linda and I climbed down to the ground. Behind us we heard a sudden clatter of rocks and John’s shouted curse. We turned to see him fallen at the bottom of the wall, his leg partially buried in loose rocks that had tumbled loose. When we got him free we found he had bruised and scraped his leg quite badly. His big toe had a huge ugly gash and was bleeding heavily. We didn’t have any first aid supplies, but we managed to tie a cloth around it and got the bleeding stopped. We joked about the wrath of the old gods, still defending their temple from infidels. It seemed that there were more mishaps scheduled on this vacation.

We took a few last pictures, then loaded on the scooters and headed back for Uturoa. It was a little later than we had planned, and we drove as fast as we dared. About an hour later, with Karen and John in the lead, we came to a sharp left turn. I saw John braking ahead of me and realized the turn was even sharper than I had expected. Startled, I fumbled for the brake. The brake on the scooters was a small pedal that protruded forward from under the seat mounting, so it couldn’t be seen by the driver. As I felt for it with my heel, my flip-flop caught under it. Already into the turn, I didn’t dare look down to clear it. We were going much too fast. I pulled my shoe loose and stomped on the brake. But we were already leaning into the turn, and the sudden brake caused the rear wheel to lose traction on the loose coral sand. Before we knew what was happening, the scooter slammed went down and we were both sliding along the road on our left sides. I had one of those moments of perfect clarity, when everything seems to be happening in slow motion and all sense of reality evaporates. I looked ahead at the edge of the road, where it dropped off down to the sea. We were going to die. We would slide right off the cliff.

But then we stopped. We shouted to Karen and John, who had not seen us go down. Karen looked back over her shoulder and must have gotten a hell of a shock when she saw us spread all over the road. She shouted to John to turn around and in a minute they were back to us. We were still taking stock, trying to figure out how badly we were hurt. There didn’t seem to be anything broken, but Linda had a bad bump on her left fore arm that was already swelling up grotesquely. The worst part was that we had very little skin left on that side. Linda was wearing shorts; I had on thin cotton long pants. Every inch of exposed skin on our left arms, legs, and hips was scraped away and we were covered in blood. Oddly enough, we weren’t in a huge amount of pain. Maybe it was just the shock. The scooter was badly smashed up, the headlight broken, the handlebars twisted backwards, and a lot or paint missing from the front and left side. It was not a good moment.

The worst of it all was that we were still a long way from town, and we were due to take the boat out in a few hours. We hadn’t seen a car all day, so it was up to us to get back ourselves. We mopped the blood off with scraps of our shredded clothes while John bent the scooter’s fender out enough to drive. After many tries, he managed to get the scooter running again, so we decided to try to drive it home. Linda, furious at me for getting us hurt, insisted on driving home. The steering column of the scooter was so twisted we had to turn hard left to get the wheel going straight. So we got back on and puttered very slowly back to Uturoa covered in blood. Karen and John followed us in case we had more trouble. It seemed to take forever to get back, but we finally pulled into the hotel. We took a very gingerly shower, using washcloths to gently scrub the worst of the sand and gravel out of our wounds. Then we got dressed in clean clothes. We looked like victims of a bombing, but at least we were cleaned up. The pain still wasn’t unbearable, but we were very uncomfortable.

When we came out, Karen and John looked at us glumly.

"Man, you guys look like shit," said Karen charitably. "How do you feel?"

"Not too bad, oddly enough. There’s no real wounds, just a thorough sanding."

"I guess this means the cruise is off again," grumbled John.

"I don’t know," I said. "We might still be able to do it. What do you think, honey?"

Linda was still very displeased by my driving. But none of us wanted to just hang around hotels for the next week. "I feel like crap," she said. "But we’re going to be uncomfortably skinned no matter what we do. We came her to go cruising. We might as well be on a boat as here."

"Are you guys sure?"

"Yeah, why not? We don’t need epidermis to sail. Let’s go for it."

"Okay, then we better get going. We have a lot to do."

We called Henri and asked him for a status. He said the boat was ready for us and they were just finishing loading it with food. We could come down any time.

We left the girls to pack while John and I drove the scooters back to the rental office. The manager had no sympathy at all for my injuries, but was really pissed about the bike. He said it was brand new and it was the first time it had been out. He behaved as if I had deliberately vandalized his bike. He spoke no English, so it was a difficult conversation. He kept my $50 deposit to cover the repairs, which seemed reasonable enough. He said he was calling his mechanic to go over the bike and see if $50 would cover the repairs. We couldn’t wait (and I had no desire to), so John and I walked back to the hotel. We’d be at sea before the mechanic arrived anyway.

The girls had everything packed and had checked out and settled the bill. We were only paying for our own bar bills, but it was still $155. I guess we had done a lot of drinking. Then we went out to the lobby to get a taxi to The Moorings. Patrick was shocked at the sight of us. He asked us all about how and where it had happened and suggested we go to a hospital. But we didn’t see the point. We didn’t have any serious injuries; we just needed time to regenerate some skin. Patrick was kind enough to drive us over to the boat in his own car.

The Moorings was a completely different place. Where before it had been three guys in a garage, swearing in quiet French at an engine, now it was a madhouse and jammed with people. Four of their charter yachts had come in at about the same time. All needed more food, fuel, and supplies, but two also had engine problems. One was motoring around in tight circles in the marina because his shift linkage had broken and he couldn’t bring it into a slip. While Henri and his crew tried to deal with all the emergencies, the four of us showed with our piles of gear. It was a wildly hectic scene, and I sympathized with poor Henri, who had always been very helpful to us. He showed us our boat, a very beamy 36-foot sloop named Buttercup. We started hauling our stuff aboard while he hurried off to deal with the others.

The boat had two huge staterooms, one before the cockpit and one aft. We let Karen and John have the master’s cabin aft and we started hauling all our gear aboard and stowing it away. The boat was really nice; well-appointed and nicely arranged. We started nosing around everywhere, trying to familiarize ourselves with everything.

When things had settled down a little in the shop, a guy named Francis came aboard and gave us a tour of the boat, explaining where everything was and how it worked. He went through the larder in detail, showing us all the cases of beer and wine, the fresh fruit and veggies, the dozens of steaks and the whole side of a mahi-mahi in the cooler. It looked like more food than we could eat in a week, and we had to return the boat in four days. Francis was very thorough, pointing out all the controls, emergency and safety equipment, and the locations of all supplies. He finished by going over the charts with us, describing in glowing detail all the lovely cruising grounds, anchorages, and swimming beaches we could sail to. By the time he was finished, it was after five o’clock and too late to go to any of them. After he left, we talked it over and decided to just sleep aboard in the slip tonight and head out at first light tomorrow. I felt doubly bad. Because of my accident, we’d lost another day of sailing and Huahine was now definitely out, though Tahaa and Bora Bora should still be doable.

Linda and I took the boat’s first aid kit and retired to our bathroom to tend to our wounds. Upon closer examination, we found that there was still a lot of sand and dirt ground into the wounds. If all that scabbed over, we were sure to get infections, not to mention a lot of scarring. So it had to come out, and right away. After some unpleasant experiments, we discovered the best implement was a dishwashing scrubby, one of those plastic things for scrubbing pans. It hurt like hell, but it left the wounds clean. Then we rinsed them all thoroughly, dried them, and applied lots of antibiotic. We decided that it might heal better if exposed to the air, so we didn’t try to bandage them. Besides, it covered so much area we would have looked like mummies. Meanwhile John was cleaning his cut toe, which was badly gashed and looked awful, a much deeper wound than any of ours. For a while it looked like a MASH unit.

With repairs accomplished, we set about making dinner. John cooked his usual superb feast, ably assisted by his sous-chef Karen. We put on some good CD’s and started guzzling beer and before long all our problems were forgotten. We were finally on the boat and tomorrow our great adventure would start. But to tell the truth, it seemed like we’d had a lot of adventures already just getting here. We turned in early after a long and exhausting day.

Thursday, April 10 - We got up early and got everything shipshape. Henri came aboard and checked the oil. It was down a little and he added some. He said that they had reduced the oil leak but had been unable to eliminate it. It was not dripping out of the engine, but seemed to be getting into the cooling water. Perhaps a seal wasn’t tight enough. But we were determined to sail anyway and hoped to not use the engine much. Just as we were getting ready to cast off, a man ran down the dock shouting at us. It turned out to be the guy from the scooter rental place. He was very angry, and told me his mechanic said it would cost two hundred more dollars to fix the scooter. I argued some, but I didn’t see what I could do. He might be right about the price - they’d probably have to order parts and have them shipped from someplace far away. I did feel guilty about wrecking his new scooter. Anyway, we were all ready to go and I didn’t want to have a hassle. So I paid him his money and he left, still grumbling about crazy American drivers.

We took aboard a few extra cans of oil just in case, thanked Henri, and cast off at 0730 - under way at last. We raised sail, killed the engine, and headed off in a nice beam reach to the north, across the channel towards Tahaa island, some five miles away.

There was a good stiff sailing breeze, but inside the barrier reef the sea was as calm as a lake. Linda was relieved, prone as she is to seasickness. On our way across the channel we passed Toatautu, a tiny islet on the reef, no more than ten feet in diameter. In its center rose a single tall graceful palm tree. It looked exactly like the prototypical desert island in the cartoons. It only needed a guy sitting under the tree in a ragged tee shirt to make it perfect.

We soon reached Tahaa and sailed into a deep bay on its southern side called Baie Apu. We continued deeper into the bay, struck by the beauty of the place, until the wind started to fail, so we wore ship and headed back out. We came back out on a wonderful close reach, the boat heeling hard and moving well. It was spectacular sailing, and we were all grinning like fools.

John, always the meticulous sailor, noticed that the main wasn’t drawing as well as it should. He went to the outhaul and gave it a pull to tighten the main along the boom. There was a crack and the sail went limp. The outhaul line, which ran inside the aluminum boom, had parted somewhere inside. We hassled him about pulling too hard and told him to just leave stuff alone. We jury-rigged a temporary outhaul with a sail stop and kept on going, with John grumbling in his beard about shoddy equipment and inadequate maintenance.

We cruised the whole southern coast of Tahaa in one long glorious reach, then turned north up the east coast. We passed the entrance to the steep fjord-like Haamene Bay, then got into the scant shelter of another reef islet, Toahotu Motu, and hove to to decide where we should go next. While the rest of us loafed and talked, John rigged a wire messenger on the topping lift and tried to fish out the broken outhaul, but it was caught on something inside the boom and wouldn’t come out. More muttering from John.

Karen and I proposed doing some snorkeling on the reef. We were far from any inhabited areas, and we hoped the reef would be healthier here. Linda said I was crazy to consider going into the salt water with so many open wounds. She would stay on the boat. So Karen and I took the dinghy and went out on the reef. We anchored a few hundred yards from the big breakers on the outer edge, then put on snorkels, masks, and fins and slipped over the side. I was prepared to be in agony, but there was only a slight sting as the water touched the wounds. Once I was in the water, it felt fine. We explored along the edge of the reef. There were more fish, but the reef was still largely dead. It was a shame. There couldn’t be much pollution way out here. I was disappointed, as I had been raving to Karen and John for years about how beautiful the reefs had been in Tonga.

While we were gone, John inspected some of the other running rigging, and was not pleased at what he found. The main halyard was dangerously worn. It looked like it would part at the first stiff blow. He was further disgusted that the bitter end of the halyard didn’t have a knot to keep it from running up the mast, a very lubberly oversight. He found that the shackle securing the main sheet block, another critical piece of equipment, was worn nearly through. He cannibalized another shackle from something less critical to replace it. As he was opening the old shackle, it fell apart in his hands. He continued cursing about the shameful lack of maintenance and the shoddy way they treated a nice boat.

Around noon Karen and I returned to the yacht. We tied the dinghy astern and got under way again, headed north. It was a perfect trade wind day: sunny and warm with a deep blue sky dotted with little puffy round clouds - and a strong steady breeze from the northeast. We had another long glorious beam reach up to the northeast corner of Tahaa, then bore off and turned east along the north coast. The outer reef was a line of small motu that looked very inviting to visit, but I read in the sailing instructions that the best motu was Tautau, off the west coast, which the book described as "a little bit of heaven - everyone’s dream of the perfect tropical island." We decided to take its advice and go on to Tautau, then spend the night in some sheltered bay on the west side, the lee side.

The area enclosed by the barrier reef was dotted with occasional reefs, and we carefully steered around them at first. But although they looked very close to the surface, we realized as we passed them that they were actually fairly deep and we could have sailed over them easily. It was just that the water was so crystal clear.

In mid-afternoon we rounded the northwest corner of Tahaa and approached Tautau Motu. With the stiff wind from the east it was going to be a lee shore, with a real danger of being driven ashore if the anchor dragged. We decided to nose in as close as we could so we could get a better anchorage. John was at the helm and he eased us slowly into the maze of reefs fringing the islet. Suddenly Linda shouted from the fathometer. "Hey, we’ve only got four and a half feet here!"

"Shit," yelled Karen. "That can’t be right. We draw six feet."

I instantly cast off the sheets while John fired up the engine, spun the boat around, and got us out of there safely. We looked at each other in alarm.

"Man, that was close! We almost struck. The keel must have been going between coral heads there for a while."

We moved out into deeper water and anchored successfully. We watched the anchor for a while, feeling the cable to see if it was dragging. It seemed okay, but we were not too confident about it. We were no more than fifty feet from the reef. If it dragged at all, we’d be aground in seconds. John’s discoveries had made us all leery of the boat’s equipment. Plus, every boat is different, and we’d never anchored this one before. We also needed to run the engine for a while to keep the fridge cool and we all preferred not to have it running while we sailed. In the end, John volunteered to stay on board and leave the engine idling. That way he could quickly get under way if she dragged. We all thanked him for his generosity, then climbed into the dinghy to go ashore. I motored slowly up to the island. It didn’t have any beaches; the shore was about a two-foot cliff of dirt. I killed the engine, tilted the prop up out of the water, and rammed the bow gently against the edge, while Linda jumped ashore with the painter. As I turned to secure the outboard, I heard Linda swearing.

"Ants!" she yelled. "I’m covered with ants already." Sure enough, in the ten seconds she had been ashore, she was covered to the knees with a mass of red ants. "Ow!" "Ow! The bastards are biting me. Ow!" She was still holding the painter and couldn’t let go to brush them off. Karen and I jumped ashore to help, and we were soon covered in ants as well.

"The water! Get in the water!" yelled Karen, and we all jumped into the knee-deep water. The ants let go and floated off in little writhing red mats. Linda’s calves were covered with little red bite marks - except for the open wounds, of course. What a tropical paradise this was turning out to be!

We pulled the boat along the shore until we found a place without ants. We climbed ashore and hauled the boat as far as we could out of the water. With the outboard, fuel can, and oars in the stern it was too heavy to pull completely out of the water, but I sure didn’t want it to drift off while we explored. I tied the painter securely to a coconut tree, tight enough to keep the bow well out of the water. Then we set off into the woods to explore paradise, swatting constantly at the hordes of mosquitoes that formed clouds around us.

The ground between the trees was covered in low shrubs about knee-high. There didn’t seem to be any paths or open ground. Not only was it difficult walking, but you couldn’t see the ground as you stepped forward. This soon turned out to be a problem, for the ground was honeycombed with holes. Linda stepped into one and let out a scream of horror when something snapped at her bare foot. She leaped clear, and an immense coconut crab crawled out of its burrow to take a look at us and see if we were worth eating. These huge land-dwelling crabs, more than three feet across and weighing up to ten pounds, climb the coconut trees, saw through the tough stems, and harvest the coconuts. They’re strong enough to husk a coconut in seconds, and look absolutely terrifying. The natives hate them, as they can devastate a coconut grove. They’re pretty good eating, however. This island was infested with them, the ground like a Swiss cheese. There was hardly a place to put a foot down without stepping in a burrow.

Picking our way carefully, we finally emerged from the trees on the leeward side of the island, where we hoped to find beaches and some relief from crabs and mosquitoes. We did, but the beach was covered a foot deep in a wide band of plastic bottles, beer cans, and tampon applicators that had drifted there from points unknown.

"Yuck," said Karen. "This place sucks."

"Yeah, this is awful. What did the book call it - ‘a little piece of heaven’?"

"Looks like hell to me," said Linda, rubbing at her many ant and mosquito bites.

"Let’s get out of here." We turned back and made the hellish walk through crab town again, much disgusted at our first landfall.

When we emerged from the trees, it was immediately clear that the wind had risen considerably in the half hour walk. Whitecaps dotted the lagoon and waves lapped at the shore. We hurried to the boat and found the waves were already splashing over the transom and the dinghy was half full of water. We hurriedly launched the boat to get it level. The only things we could find to bail with were the dive masks, so we each grabbed one and bailed like crazy until the water was down to a safer level. Then the girls scrambled in while I lowered and locked the engine, not an easy job with the boat surging in the waves and pounding against my legs. Then I jumped in and gave the motor a pull. I was afraid that it had gotten wet and wouldn’t start, but for once it started quickly. I opened her up and headed for the yacht, where John stood looking at us in wonder. The waves were short and choppy, and a lot of them were coming over the bow. The girls bailed all the way back to the yacht. We were all thoroughly wet. It wasn’t cold, of course, but it was the first time Linda had gotten all her many scrapes and abrasions into salt water, and she wasn’t at all happy about it.

It seemed to take a long time to get back to Buttercup, but finally we nosed up to the stern. I held her there with the engine while John caught the painter and clipped it on, then helped the girls aboard. We all must have looked like drowned rats. I killed the engine and passed up all the gear except the outboard to John. The girls and I went below and changed into dry clothes.

"Let’s get the hell out of here," I said to John when I came out on deck.

"Right. I’m not sure how much longer the anchor will hold in this wind and chop. Give me a hand with the anchor, will you?"

We went forward and started the laborious task of breaking the anchor out and hauling it aboard. The girls hauled the gear below and stowed it. When Karen came back out on deck, she looked back at "heavenly" Tautau Motu.

"Hey, the dinghy’s come adrift!" she yelled. We all turned to look. Sure enough, there was our dinghy, a hundred yards astern and drifting quickly away from us.

"Shit!" said John. "How did that happen? I know I secured it. Come on," he called to me. "Let’s get the hook up and go after it."

"It’s too late," I shouted back. "It’s already over the reef. We can’t get the boat in there."

It was true. The dinghy had only a foot or two of water under it. Worse yet, we could see that it would miss Tautau. It would drift completely over the reef and head out to sea. It was miles to the nearest opening in the reef. It would take us hours to get through the reef and back here. By then it would be way out to sea and it was very unlikely we could ever find it. Besides, it would be dark in an hour or two. We didn’t have a chance of catching it. Worse yet, the outboard was still in it. Not only would we lose the use of the dinghy, but we’d have to pay for the boat and motor.

There was only one thing to do. I jumped off the transom and started swimming for the dinghy. So much for my dry clothes. I swam as fast as I could, knowing that every second I delayed meant a longer distance I would have to swim. I reached the edge of the reef and went into shallow water mode, my hands out in front and just kicking my feet. The razor-sharp coral was six inches below my chest. I reached a deeper spot and raised my head to look around. I was maybe two hundred yards from the yacht, and about the same from the dinghy. It was light and riding high, drawing very little water and blowing along faster than I had estimated at first. I wished I had taken the time to get my fins.

I lowered my head and took off again as fast as I could. I started having second thoughts about the whole idea. What if it got to the outer reef? I couldn’t swim through those big breakers out there. At that was at least half a mile away. Could I swim that far and back? I just kept driving. At the next check I was that I was clearly gaining. In another few minutes I reached the dinghy as it drifted over a deep pool. Thankfully, I grabbed the gunwale. I tried to haul myself over the side and discovered it’s not as easy as I’d thought. I couldn’t climb over the transom because of the outboard. When I hauled on the side, the dinghy started to tip and nearly swamped. So I pulled myself around to the bow and laboriously hauled myself over the bow, scraping every single one of my abrasions in the process. I collapsed on the seat, completely exhausted and out of breath. I looked back at the yacht and figured I had sprinted about five hundred yards. I was beat, but I had the boat.

I started the motor and soon caught up to the yacht. They were still trying to get under way. John was struggling mightily with the anchor while Karen was at the controls and Linda was keeping an eye on me. Just as I got there, the anchor broke free. They didn’t need me trying to come aboard during this delicate maneuver, so I stayed clear until they were ready to pick me up. I saw the wind catch John’s hat as he tried to wrestle the anchor aboard. It landed upright on the water and started drifting away. I wasn’t doing anything useful, so I opened the throttle to go catch the hat. The boat surged ahead, but the throttle went limp in my hand. The spring that turns the throttle down when you release it had broken inside the handle. Worse yet, it was now stuck at full throttle and I was bouncing from wave to wave completely out of control. The others were too busy getting the anchor secured and threading their way out of the maze of reefs to notice me. With the chop up it was very hard to see the coral, and they were having a hard time getting out to open water.

I kept trying to get the throttle down, but it was locked hard. I didn’t want to go anywhere, so I kept the tiller over, doing a tight circle of wheelies. On one I saw John’s hat going by and I lunged over and grabbed it. By then Buttercup was clear of the reef. I straightened up and headed for her, still at top speed, occasionally catching a crest and bouncing clear of the water. They must have thought I was hot-dogging out here. I found that I could press the kill button to slow down. As soon as I let it go, the engine would start again. Using it like a throttle, I managed to come up with the yacht and Linda grabbed the painter. I killed the engine, tied the painter on with a bowline and three half-hitches, and collapsed in the cockpit. Another successful outing.

Since we were under power and it was only a couple of miles to our intended anchorage, we decided to just motor there. It was nearly sunset anyway. Five minutes later, the engine oil pressure light came on. I checked the oil. The dipstick came up dry. We killed the engine and refilled it. We had lost five liters in one day, and we had barely used the engine. That’s about a liter a minute. There was no oil on the engine or in the bilge. Where was it all going? We fired it up again and continued toward our anchorage at a slow pace, keeping a close watch on the oil light. We only had a couple of miles to go.

Five minutes later, the light came on again. We shut down and checked the oil again. It was still full, but there was no oil pressure at all. Maybe it was the oil pump. If so, we were finished. Disgusted, we raised the sails and headed for Uturoa to return the boat. We got on the radio to The Moorings and gave Henri the bad news. He groaned.

"I can’t believe it - we just rebuilt that engine. I can’t believe all the troubles you guys have been having. I’m really sorry. Listen, we have a lot of spare parts here, but it will take you all night to sail here. Why don’t you go put in somewhere and anchor for the night? First thing in the morning we’ll come out in the launch and bring the spare parts. We’ll have you under way again in a few hours at most."

"Okay, that’s great. By the way, better send out another outboard. The throttle is broken on this one."

"Great. Will do. Out."

We decided it was too late to get into the bay we had been headed for, so we doubled back into Tapuamu Bay. The wind and seas subsided as we came into the wind shadow of Tahaa. Behind us the sun went down in a blaze of tropical glory directly behind the fantastic vertical peak of Bora Bora. We drifted into the bay on a breeze so light we could barely feel it. Dark forested hills rose steeply on either side. The water was as smooth as a mirror, both the island and the boat completely silent. The wind and the daylight both faded away at the same time, and we drifted to a stop a hundred yards from shore near the end of the bay. We were in seventy-five feet of water and a perfect sheltered anchorage. Without a word, we went forward and carefully lowered the anchor over the side. We let it go, and it plunged silently into the darkness. We had arrived.

Linda was still suffering from the salt water on her wounds, so she went below to have a shower, The rest of us just stood on the deck in the darkness, listening to silence. The water was so still and clear it was invisible. The boat hung suspended in space. Karen, John and I dropped our clothes and slipped over the side into the bath-warm water. It was salty enough to allow us to float effortlessly with our heads out of the water. We just hung like that, grinning at each other like idiots. What bliss! A dog barked in the distance, and some time later, a cock crowed, but both very far away. A gentle rain squall passed over us, turning the surface to silver, then moved on, hissing, across the jungle.

Linda emerged feeling much better. We urged her to join us, but she’d just gotten the salt off and wasn’t about to come in, no matter how Zen-like the experience. "How about dinner instead?" she asked, and we all decided we were ravenous. We climbed aboard to start preparing dinner. There was no discernible temperature, so we just stripped off our wet bathing suits and fixed dinner naked, and it felt perfect.

We put on The Four Seasons and grilled the mahi-mahi. It was delightful with fresh fruit and an excellent wine. Then we went out on deck and sipped coffee while a slim one-day-old moon set behind Bora Bora and Halley’s comet rose above the peaks of Tahaa. We cleaned up the galley and the others turned in. I stayed up late, catching up on my journal and nervously checking the anchor every time a rain squall went over. Not too bad a way to end a very trying day.

Friday, April 11 - We woke up to a beautiful still morning and had breakfast, still in the nude, while we waited for the boat from The Moorings. It wasn’t long before we heard a fast launch enter the cove and we got dressed to meet them. They dropped off two mechanics and swapped out the outboard engine, then they raced off to go help another boat stuck at the far end of Raiatea. Not for the first time, we agreed that we would never go into the yacht chartering business.

The mechanics tore into the engine and soon declared that the main seal was blown. They started taking the engine apart to replace it. They said they could have it done in a couple of hours, then the launch could come take them off. They asked us if we could start sailing toward Uturoa so we could rendezvous with the launch on its way back to town, as that would save us all some hours of waiting for the launch. We had nothing better to do, so we said fine.

We sailed off the anchor and got under way. Once out of the bay, the wind picked up to a nice stiff sailing breeze, and we had a glorious sail down the coast, with spray flying over the bow and flying fish scattering from our path. A rain squall swept down on us and we got a heavy downpour for a few minutes, but it passed just as quickly as it came, and the weather returned to perfect. The damned boat might be falling to pieces, but she could sail beautifully. We were all reveling in the exhilarating speed.

The mechanics got the seal in and the engine back together. They started it up, but in about two minutes the oil pressure light came on again. Disgusted, they shut it down and took the engine apart again. Finally they discovered a small hole corroded all the way through the cast iron front plate of the engine. They tried a silicone sealer, but it quickly blew out. By this time we were at the southwest corner of Tahaa and we started beating up toward Raiatea. The colors of the water and the ever-changing aspect of the mountainous island were spectacular.

We got on the radio to Henri and explained the situation. He said that another boat had come in. If we came back to Uturoa, we could swap boats and be on our way in short order. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do. We weren’t comfortable sailing in these complicated, reef-infested waters without an engine, and Buttercup seemed to have a lot of other problems. So we headed across the strait for Uturoa. We were making seven or eight knots, so we figured it was about two hours away in this great breeze.

Halfway across the strait, a Moorings boat came out to meet us and offered to tow us in. We said no thanks because we were doing fine. But they insisted that they could get us back much faster by towing us, and we were overruled. Much to our disgust, they took us in tow and we rolled and slopped slowly back to town, fighting the wonderful sailing breeze every foot of the way.

They towed us to a slip and we tied up. Across from us was an identical Moorings 36, the Patricia. With help from The Moorings staff, we quickly shifted our gear, food, and supplies across to the other boat. Within the hour, we cast off and were on our way again. We had a new boat.

But by now it was after noon and too late to start for Bora Bora, about thirty miles west. We had lost another day of our vacation. Now we only had one day to see Bora Bora. We decided to put into a sheltered bay on the west coast of Raiatea for the night, then get an early start for Bora Bora in the morning.

So we ran south along the coast while we studied the charts. The best anchorage looked to be in Vaiaeho Bay, but there were a number of reefs to navigate between here and there. We were approaching one of the few passes through the reef, and there was another near the bay, so we decided to go outside the reef. We found Rautuanui Pass and worked our way carefully through it. We felt big swells rolling beneath us. We were out on the open ocean for the first time. We turned south and ran along the edge of the reef. The big waves were impressive and threw up huge breakers on the outer reef, just a couple of hundred yards to port. We passed Mt. Tefatuaiti on the mainland, with gigantic vertical cliffs falling to the sea, then turned in again at Toamaro Pass. It turned out to be quite dicey. The winds swirling off the mountain kept changing speed and direction, occasionally becoming quite violent. The pass was quite narrow, with many twists and turns. Also, the tide was going out, so there was a strong current running against us. We had a working engine now, but we had gotten so leery of using engines that we stayed with the sails. We took at least a dozen very short quick tacks to get in, but eventually we emerged into the lagoon. The wind was howling and the lagoon was covered with whitecaps.

We turned into Vaiaeho Bay and headed for the anchorage marked on the chart at its head. The wind was blowing hard straight up the bay, and there was no shelter anywhere. None of us felt like anchoring an unfamiliar boat on a lee shore. We decided to drop the sails and motor around to find a better spot. John fired up the engine while the rest of us went forward to drop the sails. The wind was blowing so hard the jib started flogging wildly. The jib sheet was whipping around the deck, looking for someone to strangle. Before we could get it under control, it slammed into the mast just below the main halyard winch, whipped upwards, and lifted the coil off the cleat. In seconds both jib sheets and the main halyard were tangled into a ball of line dangling halfway up the mast. We couldn’t raise or lower either sail. While John drove and swore colorfully at all the gods of sailing, the three of us managed to get the lines clear, the jib furled, and the main down.

We motored up the bay to Marahi, the nearest village, thinking there might be a better anchorage there. There was a tiny cove there, but there were two yachts already anchored there and they were hurriedly rigging lines to the coconut trees. It was a terrible spot in this wind, and too crowded for us anyway. We studied the chart, but there was no place for many miles that appeared to be sheltered from a west wind. There was Toamaru Motu out on the reef. Perhaps we could shelter behind that. We motored over there, but it was just a small islet with a few coconut trees, providing no relief from the wind.

"This whole damn bay sucks!" bellowed John. "There’s nothing here at all."

"Yeah," I agreed. "How about this next bay to the south, Vaiaau Bay? The sailing directions describe it as a ‘hurricane hole.’"

"That’s what we need," the girls agreed. "This feels like a hurricane."

"Okay, let’s go," said John, spinning the wheel and opening the throttle.

We were all completely disgusted at everything that had gone wrong on this trip. As we sat gloomily watching the boat plunge into the whitecaps, John added to our misery.

"Hey, guys," he said quietly. "The engine oil pressure light just came on."

"God damn it all to hell!" I exploded. "This is a different boat. Are they all wrecks?"

There was nothing to do but put up the main again and kill the engine. Finding an anchorage in this gale was going to be even less fun without an engine.

"Hey, the light just came on again," said Linda.

"That can’t be. The ignition’s not even on."

We all gathered around to peer at the light. As our shadows moved across it, we realized that the light only appeared to come on when the sun hit it at a particular angle. It seemed to be glowing brightly, but if we cupped our hands around it, it went out.

"Hey, maybe it never came on at all. Let’s try the engine again."

We started it up and kept the light in the shade. It stayed out.

"Shit oh dear," observed John. "I guess I shouldn’t have sworn at the gods of yachting."

We entered Vaiaau Bay and motored all the way to the head of it. A river came in there, and we found a spot where we were partially protected. We anchored at 4:30 in a stiff breeze and got the boat battened down for a windy night.

We relaxed and had a drink, then rigged the dinghy and went for a row up the Maoroa River. A very pretty place with jungle down to the banks, looking like something out of Heart of Darkness. Rowed back to the yacht in the short tropical twilight and made an elegant dinner of Cornish game hens. Saw what you will about The Moorings boats, they sure knew how to stock them. Laid naked out on the deck and watched the stars, then turned in. Another challenging day.

Saturday, April 12 - I was awakened very early by a tremendous splash. Thinking a meteor had impacted or a jumbo jet had crashed, I rushed out on deck to find John in the water grinning at me. The wind had dropped, and it was a gorgeous morning with birds twittering in the jungle and butterflies fluttering around the boat.

We got everything stowed and shipshape in record time, then sailed off the anchor in a very seamanlike manner. Linda took the wheel while Karen and John went forward to stow the anchor and chain and I trimmed the sheets. There was a thud and the boat jarred to a stop. John looked over the side and all he could see was reef. With the morning sun on the water, Linda hadn’t seen a projecting tongue of the reef and we ran aground before any of us saw it. Fortunately we hadn’t been moving fast. We furled the job, started the engine, and backed off with no problem. Still, it reminded us all of how dangerous the reef could be. If we had been sailing full speed like we did most of yesterday, we would have torn the bottom out of her.

Since we had the engine on, we decided to play it safe and motor out through the tortuous pass. Just as we got clear, Linda noticed the engine oil light was on again. I cupped my hands around it to prove that it was a trick of the light again, but it stayed on. We hadn’t been under way a half hour and already we’d run aground and had more engine trouble.

We stopped the engine and John and I examined the engine while the girls sailed. Unlike the saltwater-cooled Buttercup, Patricia was cooled by fresh water. Salt water was infinitely easier to come by, but as we had seen, salt water and engines do not co-exist peacefully. I took the cap off the water tank and looked inside. It was bone dry.

"Well, there’s your problem, bucky," I observed to John. We filled it with fresh water from the drinking water tanks. Hopefully no damage had been done to the engine. We returned to the deck to find the boat sailing beautifully at seven knots in a stiff beam reach, expertly steered and handled by two beautiful naked women. "I reckon it don’t get no better’n this," John exclaimed.

It’s thirty-two miles exactly due west to Bora Bora, and the wind was perfect for a fast sail. We didn’t have to touch a thing. We ate like kings, drank like fish, and admired the spectacular peak of Bora Bora rising ahead of us. The mountain is like a huge column, so steep it actually leans over to the south.

After five hours, we approached the southern edge of the barrier reef that encircles the island. There is only one pass suitable for yachts, Taveanui Pass, on the western side. We rounded the southwest corner of the reef and close-hauled up the west side. The pass was marked only by a pair of skinny poles stuck in the reef. It seemed very narrow, and as usual, both the wind and current were against us. But it was such a beautiful wind that none of us wanted to start the engine. We tacked in, the whole crew perfectly choreographed. We’d sail up to a few yards from the reef, throw the helm over, and tack back across. By the time we had the sails trimmed, it was time to do it again. It must have taken twenty tacks, but we finally emerged into the huge calm lagoon inside. We turned south to head for a recommended anchorage off the Hotel Bora Bora. There were other boats about, so we reluctantly put on some bathing suits.

The anchorage was close to shore but very nicely protected by the southern peninsula of the island. We dropped the hook and buttoned up the boat. We all jumped in the water. We could clearly see the anchor sixty feet down, securely buried in the sand. We also examined the keel, but there was no damage from the grounding at Raiatea.

We clambered aboard, showered, dressed, then launched the dinghy to go ashore. Sat in the picturesque bar, watched the spectacular sunset, and got royally blitzed at $25 a round. Everything in French Polynesia was outrageously expensive. There was no point in worrying about it. We were on vacation. We’d sort it all out when we got home.

We noticed a guy who looked familiar, and realized it was the fellow astronomer we had met at LAX. Had a nice chat with him about comets and stargazing in general. Dinner at the hotel looked great, but at a hundred a plate it was silly. Rowed home in the dark totally drunk, running aground several times, but this time it was quite funny.

We fixed a great dinner of grilled burgers and Cole slaw. We ate out in the cockpit in the balmy tropical night and went to bed early.

Sunday, April 13 - Slept late and had breakfast on deck on a sunny morning. We threw our snorkeling gear into the dink and rowed around the hotel and along the south shore of the island to Matiri Point, then crossed the lagoon to a low motu that looked inviting. Did and amphibious landing and were happy to find no red ants, no crabs, and no plastic tideline. Snorkeled around the island. Much better than at Tahaa, but still only so-so compared to Tonga. Rowed back to the boat and dropped Linda off to have a nap. John, Karen, and I rowed on around to Pufau Bay. There was a big wreck on the reef, and we went over to check it out. It was quite old but still largely intact. A good-sized freighter must have driven hard onto the fringing reef, because the bow was thrust up at a 45-degree angle, the stern either broken off or very deep. We guessed it was most likely during a typhoon, because it was hard to see how it could have hit so hard inside the lagoon. We tied the dink up and swam through the wreck. It was very spooky swimming through the dark submerged wheelhouse, through schools of small fish. I kept imagining sharks, morays, or octopi waiting to lunge out of the shadows. Even catching a foot on one of the dangling cables would be fatal, as it was ten feet under water. It made me wonder how my old ship, the Fairmorse, looked by now, sunk in shallow water off Cozumel over a decade ago. I imagined fish swimming amongst all the brightwork I had spent so many months lovingly restoring. Wrecks always make me sad.

We returned to the yacht for lunch and spent much of the afternoon eating, reading, swimming, and snoozing. Later we explored another reef nearby, much the best we’ve seen so far, the coral thriving and masses of birth-colored fish. In the evening we got cleaned up and went to the hotel bar again. Spent another fortune and chatted with the bartender and some of the guests. When happy hour was over, it was fun to leave the bar like all the other tourists in the hotel, but then to walk down to the beach, get in the dinghy, and row off into the dark. Got back well after dark but without running aground this time. John fixed an excellent lamb curry, so good even liked it, and she hates lamb.

We had a quiet evening talking on deck and watching the sky. Halley’s comet is passing Omega Centauri and they look very similar in the binoculars, the comet just a bit brighter. Went to bed early after a very relaxed day, on which nothing went wrong for a change.

Then we returned to the coast and continued our circumnavigation of Tahiti Nui. We stopped at the Gaugin museum, a very attractive and well-laid-out museum and impressive botanical gardens. There were Gaugins all over the walls, through the building was open to the breeze all day. Browsed in the gift shop and we all bought some nice prints, none by Gaugin, oddly enough. By the time we left the museum it was after three, so we pushed on around the island to Papeete and returned the car.

We walked back to the Hotel Ibis to retrieve our luggage, had some drinks in the bar, then hauled our stuff across the street to the ferry dock and boarded the Keke III, the ferry to Moorea. There was a big crowd of teenagers aboard, a volleyball team from Moorea, returning home after winning a trophy. They were all very happy, very pretty, and very silly. The twelve-mile passage across to Moorea was lovely but too brief. We rounded the northeastern tip of Moorea just as the sun was going down and it was dark by the time we docked.

The only public transport on Moorea is Le Truck, which drives continuously around the coast road and is a famous tourist attraction. We loaded our piles of gear aboard and roared off into the fragrant tropical night. We had no idea where we were going., only the name of the hotel, the Ibis Kaveka Village. The driver didn’t speak English, but a school girl did, and pointed out the stop for us. We grabbed out stuff and climbed down, Le Truck roared off in a cloud of dust, and we standing on road in near total darkness.

There were no lights or signs, but we spotted a gravel driveway leading down toward the shore, so we trooped down it. A half-mile down, we came to a hotel, but it was closed and dark. We finally found a lighted room and went in to find a hotel desk. When we gave our names, there was no record of us and no rooms available. We kept insisting that we had reservations, and the clerk kept insisting that we didn’t. It finally turned out that the former Hotel Ibis Kaveka Village had split into two and were under separate management. This was the Hotel Ibis, but our reservations were at the Kaveka Village. We just had to walk back up to the road, go a half mile to the right, and go down the next driveway. It was late, we were tired, and we had tons of gear. We complained loudly, and eventually the clerk called the clerk at the other hotel and she came and collected us.

The Kaveka Village, when we finally got there, was quite nice, with separate bungalows right on the beach. We got moved in and went up to the bar for some drinks and dinner. It turned out the only restaurant was back at the Hotel Ibis, so we hiked back there and had a moderately good dinner. Home in the dark and to bed.

Thursday, April 17 - We walked into town for coffee and shopping. Spent a lazy day swimming and snorkeling, reading and dozing. Karen and John went out scuba diving for the afternoon. At four we went for a sunset cruise on the bay and saw an excellent sunset. The center of the island is a spectacular curtain of rock thousands of feet high, so steep that in one place there’s a hole through the mountain big enough to fly a plane through. We met a nice Australian couple Terry and Carolyn, newlyweds from Adelaide on a world tour. We got John and Karen to join us for happy hour at the Ibis, then we all walked into town for a good Chinese dinner and talked with the chef, Deng Yu. After drinking quite a bit on the cruise and at happy hour, the three bottles of Tavel at dinner were definitely overkill. We literally staggered home in the dark, weaving all over the road. Finally got back and dropped into bed, as drunk as lords.

Friday, April 18 - We woke up very hung over. Linda was sick. Definitely too much of a good thing. Got up rather gingerly, then picked up a scooter we’d rented yesterday. I had trouble kick-starting it, and managed to peel the skin off my ankle on a sharp bit cleverly placed right over the kick-start lever. We drove into town and had coffee and fruit pies, then started up the road to Le Belvedere, a famous viewpoint. On the way we visited Titiroa marae, which has been nicely restored to its original appearance.

We had infinite trouble with the scooter. It would stall every time the road got steep, and it was steep and winding all the way up to Le Belvedere. Each time it stalled, I couldn’t kick-start it, so had to turn around and roll-start it, then try to make a quick U-turn and roar back up the mountain till it stalled again. Disgusted, I finally parked it and walked up the rest of the way. Just as we finally got there, two busloads of aged American tourists arrived from the cruise ship Liberté. The view really was incredible. The two long bays that cut deep into the northern coast of Moorea, Cook’s Bay and Opunohu Bay, point right at Le Belvedere. The Liberté looked like a toy far below. Behind us, the near-vertical mountains of Moorea reared above us.

We walked back down to the scooter, and after many tries finally got it started again. It was fine going downhill. We drove around the shores of both bays and back to the hotel. Karen and John had gone out diving again. We returned the scooter, had lunch, and relaxed with more snorkeling, reading, and snoozing. We noticed that all the time we spent in the salt water every day seemed to have actually helped the healing of our scrapes from the scooter spill in Raiatea nine days before. The scabs had come off clean, and there weren’t even any scars.

In the evening we walked over to the Ibis for a good dinner with Terry and Carolyn again, but non-alcoholic this time. We ended up sitting out at the end of our dock with glasses of wine, feeding the fish that swarmed around the dock. A pleasant end to the day, and to the vacation. Tomorrow we headed home.

 

Saturday, April 19 - We got up at 0530 to pack and head out. The taxi was right on time, as was the plane to Papeete - a beautiful flight in the early morning. We changed all our money back to US currency, then had a couple of hours to kill. We bought some duty-free wine. At 0930 we boarded the flight for home. Got some nice views of some atolls in the Tuamotus, then nothing but an endless expanse of blue water. Seven and a half hours later, we landed at LAX and cleared customs and immigration. Karen and John were flying out first, so we got them checked in. We had a long two hours to kill before their flight, so we hung out in the bar and had drinks and snacks. None of us was eager to say goodbye and get back to our real lives. We talked about what a great trip it had been. Just about everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, but it was still a trip we’d remember all our lives.

About forty-five minutes before our flight, we decided we better get to our gate. We hugged John and Karen a long goodbye, then headed off across the huge terminal to the Transtar counter. The girl at the desk looked at our tickets as we checked our luggage.

"I’m sorry, but the schedule has been changed. Your flight leaves in five minutes. We’ve been announcing it."

"We weren’t here," we exclaimed. "Can we still catch it?"

"I’m not sure. It’s due to push back any minute. Go down to gate seven to get your boarding passes, then you’ll board at gate eleven. You better run!"

So we took off running wildly through the terminal. We skidded to a stop at gate seven, but there was nobody there. There was nothing to do but go on to gate eleven. It was closed up, too, but the door to the jetway was open, so we just ran down the tunnel. When we got out to the end, a plane was just arriving. This couldn’t be right! The girl driving the jetway told us our plane was actually at gate seven. So we ran back to gate seven and ran down that jetway. The plane was already pushing out, but when we gasped out our sad story, the operator called the plane and the tug pulled it back in. They opened it up, and we got aboard, totally frazzled from all that running with our luggage. We’d hardly caught our breath before we were coming in to San Diego. We caught a taxi home, arrived at midnight, and said a long hello to the Kitskat. We were still so wired from all the excitement that we went through a two-foot stack of mail and did some laundry before we wound down enough to go to bed. It was great to be home at last, in our own bed.

As I lay there thinking over all that had happened on the trip, it suddenly struck me that this was my last night in our house. I had nearly forgotten. Tomorrow I had to drive to San Francisco, and the next day I started a new job!

 

Copyright 2004 by Brian K. Crawford. All rights reserved.