Sailing French Polynesia
French Polynesia SailingMajor luxurious charters such as Camper & Nicholsons see an upward trend and are sending their Tahitian boats here, as adventure sailors and hosts look beyond the French Polynesian holiday resorts and the Bora Bora and Mo'orea holiday caps. Campers & Nicholsons' 41m destination (from $96,000 per week) currently reaches Fakarava, Apataki and the biggest avatar in the area, Rangiroa (known for its vast numbers of shovelhead sharks) on its 2016 summers course.
Edmiston's Robert Shepherd has a lot of local expertise and the 50m Silencio (from 148,000 per week), loaded with toy kit, will be available for this year. This year Burgess is another part of the match, with Zarissa (from 105,000 euros per week), a slim 43-metre ship that will be in the South Pacific for four month, several of which will be in the Tuamotus.
However, the most convincing among those that make up this shaft is probably the 59-metre long Motoryacht Sens, which was constructed in 1999 by the Freres Schweers firm in Germany and extensively modernised between 2011 and 2015. Previously only used by the owner's private home, Y.CO. of Monaco now offers slots for rent.
At first sight it is dramatic noticeable - especially if one travels from the small airfield on the second biggest Tuamotus tunnel (just over 800 inhabitants), on the island of Facarava, by heliport. Famous for two things in particular - the growing of delicious dark beads and an almost pristine seascape with probably the best scuba in the South Pacific - and it is in this part of French Polynesia, where Senses is located until mid-July.
At first the small band of the country that cuts through the ocean is speckled by the random bead plantation and the straw-roofed building, but is finally replaced by thick heaps of palm trees and the vast expanses of the inner lake of the tunnel (1,100 square kilometres), whose area is as quiet as crystal, with the color of the waters ranging from low-coal to almost transparent ore.
And, lastly, the boat itself: a strange view that is the only symbol of man's existence for mileage. It has its own desalination system (no synthetic material is used) and a special black waste treated system that drains away pure waters; even synthetic beveragestraw is forbidden in favor of recyclable glassbottles.
At Fakarava Airport I was welcomed by a young South African called Andrew Bance, a former pro windsurfer and all-round adventurous adventurer, who is Senses' second mate. These quadskis, which turn smoothly from water-based Jetski to dunes buggies at the push of a single switch, are a special excitement; emergence from the sea to discover a range of rose-coloured sandy shores took up a particularly exciting half-day experience.
I was with Bance in the sea within 30 min after board-ing sense, who took me on a standing paddle trip to discover a small, empty motorcycle about 800m away from thehip. In the early afternoon we took the 20-minute flight back to Fakarava airport, where an SUV was awaiting us to take a few kilometers on a rough, dirt track - without even driving a one-way vehicle, just the sporadic line of cleanly planting palm trees - to another empty, postcard-perfect environment, with meter-high rippling seas.
While I was a freshwater scuba-diver some crew members were champions, among them AJ Sutherland, an Englishman of sacred endurance who had previously lived as a dive teacher in Australia for 10 years, and Julien Buzzi, a Frenchman and long-time Tuamotus inhabitant, who was also an authority on the shark and sea lives of the area and worked as an independant advisor for personal charter in the South Pacific.
Climbing down to about 20m, the currents went through the crystal clear, bathing waters as if on a soft moving staircase, while an astounding variety of marine creatures, large and small, came by. That 45-minuteive seemed to go down in 10 minutes. It was the stunning wealth of lifeforms - a show of astounding things to be admired - that almost shocked the fantasy.
"I have done over 2,000 logged in my lifetime, and that was easy in the top 10," he said, the amount of adrenalin in his vocal led me to believe that he was serious. Returning to the auction, a few hours later, the only lights came from the rapidly dying campfire on the shore and the foaming waters that were illuminated with bioluminescent lights from the shining surfaces.