The South Pacific resists cliché, but only just. The photographs from Bora Bora — the peak of Mount Otemanu, the lagoon in seventeen shades of turquoise, the overwater bungalows — are accurate. The problem is that they are accurate in the way that a photograph of a dish is accurate: it tells you what it looks like but not what it tastes like, and the South Pacific superyacht charter is something you taste.
French Polynesia is five archipelagos and 118 islands spread across an area larger than Western Europe. The Society Islands — Tahiti, Bora Bora, Raiatea, Huahine, Moorea — are the charter hub. The Tuamotu Atolls, further east, are lower, wilder and home to some of the best diving on earth: the pass at Rangiroa, where hammerhead sharks congregate at the incoming tide, is one of a small number of dive sites that justify a Pacific crossing in themselves.
Fiji is different — more equatorial, with the interior mountains driving rainfall that produces the lush green of a tropical landscape rather than the dry volcanic ridgelines of the Society Islands. The Mamanuca and Yasawa island chains are the charter area; the outer Lau Group, close to Tonga, is virtually unvisited.
Tonga sits at the edge of the South Pacific charter map, closer to New Zealand in culture and temperature. The Ha’apai Group is where humpback whales come to breed between July and October — one of the few places on earth where swimming with humpbacks is a realistic prospect.
