French Polynesia sailing

French Polynesia Circuit
Distance
Varies with your plan. For scale, Raiatea to Bora Bora is about 45 km (24 nautical miles), Raiatea to Huahine about 45 km, and Papeete to Bora Bora about 260 km in a straight line.
Country
French Polynesia
Difficulty
Moderate
Type of trip
Sailing route

There’s no route called the French Polynesia Circuit. French Polynesia’s 121 islands are spread over more than 2,000 km of ocean. This page covers the group most charter sailors use, the Society Islands. Tahiti and Moorea are in the east, and Huahine, Raiatea, Taha’a and Bora Bora lie 150 to 250 km to the north-west. Each high volcanic island sits inside a coral reef, so most of the sailing is short hops inside the lagoons, plus longer open-water passages between islands.

Many charter companies are based on Raiatea, which has marinas with good facilities. It shares one lagoon with Taha’a, and Huahine and Bora Bora are each about 45 km away. Moorea is only 17 km from Tahiti, but from Tahiti or Moorea to Huahine is around 150 to 175 km, usually an overnight passage. The French Polynesian government has been limiting anchoring in the busiest Society Islands lagoons, in some places with quotas and time limits. On Bora Bora most visiting yachts pick up a paid mooring. Check the current rules with your charter company or the local commune before you drop anchor. Where you can anchor, float your chain so it stays off the coral.

Highlights along the way

  1. Moorea: 17 km north-west of Tahiti, with ferries from Papeete. Cook’s Bay and Ōpūnohu Bay cut deep into the north coast, with steep peaks behind them.
  2. Huahine: two islands, Huahine Nui and Huahine Iti, inside one reef. It has one of the largest groups of Polynesian archaeological sites, dated to between 850 and 1100 AD, many of them around Maeva and Lac Fauna Nui.
  3. Raiatea and Taputapuātea: Raiatea is the second-largest of the Society Islands. The marae complex at Opoa, on its south-east coast, was the religious centre of eastern Polynesia and has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2017.
  4. Taha’a: across a 3 km strait from Raiatea, inside the same lagoon. The island grows about 80% of French Polynesia’s vanilla, and there are black pearl farms in its bays.
  5. Bora Bora: about 260 km north-west of Papeete. Only one pass, Teavanui, leads through the reef into the lagoon, opposite the main village of Vaitape. Tahiti Tourisme gives August to November as the humpback whale season in French Polynesia.

Distance

Varies with your plan. For scale, Raiatea to Bora Bora is about 45 km (24 nautical miles), Raiatea to Huahine about 45 km, and Papeete to Bora Bora about 260 km in a straight line.

Best time to go

May to October, when it’s drier and cyclones are unlikely. The South Pacific cyclone season runs from 1 November to 30 April, which are also the wettest months. In Papeete, December and January get the most rain (about 400 mm and 320 mm a month on average), and July and August the least (about 65 mm).

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