Honolulu Star-Advertiser © Susan Scott
April 8, 2017
The news that Barack Obama is writing his memoir in Tetiaroa caused excitement at our house. In 2013 we sailed the Honu 40 miles from Tahiti to Tetiaroa, when the luxury hotel hosting the former president was still under construction.
Tetiaroa, often called an island, is an atoll, consisting of a 4.5-mile-wide lagoon surrounded by 13 small islands, encircled by one huge coral reef. Onetahi Island houses the Brando Resort, so-named because Marlon Brando’s estate owns the atoll.
The Honu, bottom left, shared “The Brando” buoy
with a catamaran at Tetiaroa atoll in 2015.
@©2015 Susan Scott
Because Tetiaroa’s reef has no channel, getting into the atoll’s lagoon by sailboat is impossible, and the sheer drop-off outside the reef is too deep for anchoring.
Arriving at the atoll off Rimatuu island, we saw a tourist catamaran tied to a giant, flat buoy labeled “The Brando.” The friendly Tahitian captain invited us to share the mooring, and soon the Honu was secure outside the break.
We weren’t sure how to get inside the reef, but our neighbor had a system. The skipper stood in a rubber dinghy steering the boat’s outboard with one hand and grasping the bow line with the other. His six passengers hung on, three to a side. Driving back and forth outside the break to time the breaking waves, the man seized his moment, opened the throttle and surfed into the lagoon.
Tetiaroa from above.
By Supertoff – Own work, Creative Commons: BY-SA 3.0,
After dropping his charges on the beach, the captain zoomed back toward the break, riding the mass of water rushing seaward.
The collision of the outgoing water with the incoming wave launched the dinghy skyward. With a cigarette dangling from his mouth, this Polynesian Marlboro Man flew up and over the peak, and zoomed back to his boat for more guests.
After watching several of these astonishing performances, we decided to body-surf in. I lost a fin in the tumble, but Craig found it and off we went snorkeling.
Coral formations in that part of the lagoon had formed a kind of pond that hosted a large number of pipefish, relatives of sea horses. Somewhat rare, and usually alone or in pairs, the charming pipefish hung out in nearly every nook and cranny of that reef pocket.
Later, during my panicky exit through the surf, I again lost a fin. It seemed a price worth paying for snorkeling with packs of pipefish and surviving a dive through the washing machine wave.
When I got back to the Honu, my fin lay on the deck, found and delivered by the catamaran cowboy.
Tetiaroa Atoll is the perfect place for Hawaii-born-and-raised Barack Obama to write his memoir. For breaks he can snorkel with pipefish and body-surf the reef.
Map of Tetiaroa.
Public Domain image.