It was a restless sleep as the boat yanked hard on its chain throughout the night.  There was a weird current and or sea change that caused the boat to jerk on her anchor waking us with a start.  But it was another beautiful day with the sun shining, bright white puff clouds and see through, blue water.  It was time to do some provisioning so we moved to Apooiti.

Apooiti (pronounced “a-poo-e-tee”) is a fairly large bay with a marina and several charter boat companies.  We needed to dump trash and recycling and pick up some provisions before we moved on to Bora Bora.

Not sure what happened, but we came up short on our navigation.  First time we’ve done that!  We dropped the hook at Carneage which is a boat yard a ¼ mile south of Apooiti.  No big deal.  A super friendly worker showed us where we could dump our trash and then told us how to get to Apooiti by dinghy.

We pulled up at the Apooiti marina and found the grocery store.  But like most days we arrived during lunch and they were closed.  Most island stores close from 12-2p.  Drat.

Apooti Marina

We decided to hop back in the dinghy and go around the corner to Uturoa.  This new village is about 1.2 nm from Apooiti, but with our 25hp outboard it only took us about 15 minutes to get there.  We grabbed our provisions, zipped back to the boat, and headed back to TauTau to anchor.

TauTau Anchorage

This spot is so beautiful we had to come back a second time.  We were the second boat to drop the hook here, but another 2 boats joined us before the sun set.  We enjoyed some float time and were rewarded with a gorgeous sunset.  The top photo shows Bora Bora peeking through the atolls (tall mountains in the background), a beautiful motu in the center and the private hotel on the bottom.

Sunset Beauties