We did a 2 week BB charter with Moorings out of the Raiatea base about 5 years ago. Information was definitely a little thin... we had photocopied black and white "not for navigation" charts. These were marked up with pen by the chart briefer showing some of the suggested anchoring areas.

Navigation within the lagoons was quite easy as they were very well marked. Anchoring, on the other hand, I found challenging.

Most of the lagoon is too deep for anchoring, 90 feet was about typical. That leaves mostly anchoring on the edge of the fringing reef and in the vicinity of the passes. The passages between islands (say, Raiatea to Bora Bora) is long enough that you will arrive too late to have good light to see into the water. The bottom shoals VERY rapidly approaching the fringing reef... we almost came to grief several times because the depth finder was set to average a window of readings and would lag behind the depth when approaching the reef. There is a setting in the depth finder to adjust this window and I recommend setting it to the minimum.

Currents in the vicinity of the passes can be strong, holding isn't great and coral is everywhere. Tahiti is the only charter where we dragged (yanked really, when a squall pushed us hard against the direction our anchor was set). It's also the only place we have made ground contact, which was fortunately minimal.


M4000 "Lio Kai"