Week #14: more friends !

We want to make the most of our last few weeks on Wallis (for now) and get to spend quality time catching up with friends, old and new, in Moorea and Huahine. Lucky us...

Heart shaped sister

After the remote Tuamotus, sailing to Moorea and catching up with friends was like coming back to civilisation. Of course, it's all a matter of perspective, right? In reality, compared to Tahiti, Moorea is a laid back island with “only” 16,000 habitants, spectacular mountains and beaches. We went around the whole island on scooters back in 2018. This time around our plan was to meet our friends who live here and get a feel of their local lifestyle.

We spent a fair bit of time at their place, which is a typical cozy island house with a garden that ends right on the lagoon. We anchored Wallis right in their backyard! We enjoyed a few swims around the corals in front of their house, with an amazing view of Tahiti. Pretty good, right? Unlike the remote islands where we could freely walk or run, Moorea had cars whizzing around (sometimes a little too fast for comfort). Running has to be replaced by hiking here. There are some splendid hikes to do, that we hope to do next time around.

What is also on the to do list, if we are lucky, is swimming with Humpback whales. They visit French Polynesia (and particularly Moorea) from mid-July to mid-November for nursing their babies and Moorea is one of the rare places on earth where we are allowed to swim with these beautiful and gentle giants. Our friends actually took their brave daughter Kira, for a swim with them last year. Can you imagine her surprise when she thought the baby whale was its mama? It must have been so massive compared to her tiny self! What a wonderful memory for her…

10 years later !

One of my friends from HEC MBA, Trina, reached out to me on LinkedIn after stumbling upon my post about leaving behind the corporate world to embark on a new journey as a yoga teacher, sailing in the Pacific. What were the odds that she, too, had bid farewell to her corporate job and was relocating to Moorea with her husband Pierre and adorable 3 year old daughter Kira.

Trina and I hadn't caught up since our graduation which was 10 years back. In this time our journeys have been totally different; but our paths converged a decade later in French Polynesia of all places.! Neither Trina nor I would have imagined this new lifestyle 10 years ago. Well for starters, neither of us even knew how to swim! Today, however, we spend our time in the ocean as if it has always been our home. I think it is a testament to something we both have in common - our willingness to embrace new experiences.

Something else we discovered we have in common is our definition of success - living a simple, healthy and content life. Even though we both owe a lot to our MBA education and the opportunities it brought us, we were able to break out of the traditional path and carve our own path that worked for us. During our time together, we shared healthy meals, and practiced yoga together. I feel so grateful for that!

The most amusing part was when Trina recalled a video we had both been a part of during our HEC days, where we talk about how we reinvented ourselves. It’s great to see that in a short span of 10 years, we are bold enough to once again re-reinvent ourselves!

Bye Bye Moorea

We spotted the perfect weather window for our last night sail from Moorea back to Huahine, it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable crossing of this entire trip. We picked up our anchor at 10am for a 100nm passage and a school of dolphins escorted us out of the Moorea pass; always such a genuine and fulfilling experience.

With no moon and no clouds, we enjoyed the most amazing night sky. Planets and stars lighting up one by one after sunset, filling up the sky above our heads and keeping us busy through our night shifts contemplating the vastness of our little corner of the universe. What also kept us busy were the cargo ships coming our way in the darkness of the night… Our path to Huahine crosses the shipping route between the Leeward islands and Tahiti, we had to dodge 3 freighters and a cruise ship steaming at 15kt and stopping for nobody. Fortunately, thanks to our AIS system, we could spot them from 10nm away on our navigation system!

It was such a smooth ride that we ended up sailing a couple of knots faster than anticipated. For once, we had to slow down! Taking a second reef in the main sail brought us down from 7kt to 6kt, and we managed slow down to 5kt at sunset by furling our front sail to its smallest possible size. Still, we arrived in front of Huahine 2h before sunrise… So we took a little detour and continued on for an hour before turning around. It was such a beautiful night that we enjoyed the peaceful sailing time, and entered Huahine lagoon with the sun rise.