Day 77 Moving to Mo'orea

Big surf
It is nine o'clock at night and I am sitting on the deck listening to the surf pound Mo'orea's South reef and wondering if the coral can resist the 12 to 18 foot waves. My guess is that they thrive and the reef grows larger even under this onslaught.
Everyone else has gone to bed and I sit alone in the dark writing by the light of my headlamp. One difference between a marina and an anchorage is the hour of bedtime.
This morning we cleaned up from last night's pot luck supper and completed the final arrangements for our departure from Tahiti. Mark got all the papers signed and payed the bill to Polynesia Yacht Services while we did a final clean and stow. We departed Marina Taina at 10 AM and several of our friends turned up to wish us well.
The 5 mile trip to Mo'orea reminded me of days long ago when we would go out onto Long Island Sound in our 12 foot boat and ride the ocean swells. This time it was on a bigger scale. The boat is 45 feet and the swells are 10 to 15 feet high. The similarity is that these swells have a 12 to 15 second period meaning from one peak to the next takes 12 to 15 seconds so the ride is quite comfortable - unlike the short period swells that knocked us about near the equator.
Instead of going back to the North side of the island where Cook's and Opunohu bays are, we entered the reef at Matauvau pass and anchored in front of the surf camps by Haapiti village. The large swells we had ridden in the crossing were magnified when they hit the reef and became double and triple overhead in height. (If I understand surfing lingo correctly, this means they were two to three times as high as a person.) By what ever measure, they were huge and entering the reef was quite a treat as the swells ushered us in. As we passed the waves breaking over the reef, it was easy to get a scale as several surfers were in the water at the time. Almost as impressive as the size of these waves was the sound they make when they hit the reef.
As soon as we were anchored, Kurt and Mark took their boards in the dinghy to try out the surf. They came back awed and excited about the next few days we would spend near such a playground.