Jaeden, Dailin and Orin took off in the morning for an activity with 5 other young boys on the island that a local church leader had organized. They were getting together to play ping pong, volleyball and soccer. It was great for the boys to head to shore and get out some of their pent up energy with some other guys in the village. Even though their French is very limited they got by with some sign language communication, and with a little bit of English that their hosts spoke. By the time noon rolled around we saw a bunch of boys all swimming toward the boat. They had a bit of a break to cool down at it was about 31 degrees Celsius and the kids had jumped into the water at the cement pier about 3/4 of a kilometre away from the boat. Our boys had invited the others to come swim to our catamaran and they were ready to explore our sailboat.

We didn’t notice them all until they started arriving. Even though they didn’t speak any English, our boys were only too happy to show them the funnest things about our sailboat. Within minutes we had boys swinging off of the rope swing attached to the top of the mast, boys feeding the fish and swimming under the boat with snorkels and masks. That’s about when Jaeden and Dailin started to give the boys rides on the back of the dingy by towing the plastic Kayak with boys balancing on the back as they swerved around the harbour at as high a speed as our little dingy would take them. They all seemed to be having plenty of fun. So much so that they forgot that Orin was still waiting at the dock being a bit too exhausted to take the big swim over to the boat. Eventually they did remember and went by to pick him up. After about half an hour of splashing around the boat like only boys can do, they all zipped back to the pier to finish off their activity with the food that was being prepared for them. It was thrilling to just sit back and watch all of these young boys keeping themselves busy and having so much fun with very limited communication. The lagoon of Rangiroa is an incredible playground for the kids to enjoy day after day.