Leewards, to the Islands of Dream by John Borthwick

Half way between the islands of Tahaa and Bora Bora, we heave-to. The big catamaran lolls in the swell as our shipmate Maggie gently lowers Yurtle the Turtle (as she has nicknamed him) into the water. Tahaa restaurateur Leo Morou had found Yurtle in the local fish market, mournfully awaiting a culinary fate. Leo purchased him not for soup but salvation.

"This is, I think, the 730th turtle that we've released since 1992," says Leo, standing in front of his small hotel and restaurant, L'Hibiscus, on the shores of Tahaa's Haamene Bay. At a market price of up to US$100 per creature, that's a fair commitment to turtle liberation. Leo asks us to do him, and Yurtle, a small favour.

"We've tagged him for a University of Hawaii research programme. When you've sailed out well past the reef, just put him in the water. He'll know what to do."

The collective noun "Tahiti" loosely refers to the totality of French Polynesia - five archipelagos and some 120 islands, scattered over four million square kilometres of ocean. The Society Islands archipelago is the most famous, because it contains the island of Tahiti, the capital and gateway to French Polynesia. Amid the northwestern Society Islands group, known as the Leeward Islands, is small, somnolent Tahaa. Unlike some of its more developed neighbours, Tahaa retains a quality - both energetic and ethereal - which once gave these islands the title of Les Iles du Rêve, the Islands of Dream.

A unique way to enjoy the Leeward Islands is to hunt up a small group of friends and charter a yacht. It's no more complicated than doing a similar thing in Australian waters: if you have a competent sailor or two among your group, book a "bareboat" charter; if you're not confident about handling a boat, they'll throw in (for a fee) a qualified skipper.

Five of us are spending a week aboard a roomy Jeanneau Lagoon 47 catamaran, with four en-suite cabins and a full galley, sailing among the Leeward Islands of Raiatea, Huahine, Tahaa and Bora Bora. Ancient marae platform altars and lagoons the colour of a computer-enhanced postcard are among the unscheduled intrusions into our rather vague itinerary.

Another one is Wednesday's song and dance night at Leo's Hibiscus pub. Half a dozen good ol' Tahaa boys amble down the quay with not much more than their pareu wraps and a preferred musical launch vehicle - guitar, garbage bin string bass or wooden slit drum. The Hinano beers handed up from the audience start to kick in and soon we're all taken up in the riptide orbit of that Tahitian music - soaring harmonies, blazing ukeleles, flying fingers and plenty of grins. Then, out from the wings sashay the grass-skirted teenage vahines of Haamene Bay to kick it all up another notch, with their tresses flying and gimbal hips pounding in hyper-drive tamure time.

Because of its numerous plantations, Tahaa is known as "the vanilla isle". At times the countryside smells like a giant vanilla milkshake. Crabs dawdle across the single road. One hundred tourists and the island's at capacity. The coral beaches aren't particularly good, but just offshore are numerous motus (atolls) with sandy beaches and coral bommies for snorkelling.

Out in the channel beyond Tahaa's reef, it's time to release Yurtle. Leo had said that the turtle would know what to do. Too right. As Maggie eases him over the stern of the catamaran, his flippers feel water - and suddenly he's out of the blocks like Ian Thorpe. Not sticking around to say merci, Yurtle hurtles. It's the best thanks we could have.

The Islands of Dream, the Isles of Venus: Tahiti's constellation of peaks and myths still basks in the romantic literary afterglow wrought by Gauguin, Melville, the Bounty mutineers and others. Indeed, Paul Gauguin almost "invented" our idea of Tahiti. Ever since he stormed Paradise with a paintbrush in the 1890s, the world has seen Tahiti principally through the prism of his astonishing canvases.

Gauguin might also be thought of as a pioneer of the lately much desired "sea-change syndrome" - he abandoned Paris, stockbroking and all that for the dream of a saner life by the sea. Instead, he soon scandalised Papeete's colonial petit bourgeoisie with his inclination for absinthe and adolescent mistresses. Self-exiled to the Marquesas archipelago, he expired miserably in 1903 from the effects of social diseases and more-than-social drinking.

Despite this ignominious exit, "Paul Gauguin" is back in Tahiti - this time as a 320-passenger cruise liner of that name. The irony, even though it may be lost on the Papeete bourgeoisie of today, would surely amuse the painter. Should navigating a charter yacht not sound like your style, then consider cruising on a vessel like the MV Paul Gauguin or the 21-cabin MV Haumana. Or joining a crewed sailing trip among the Leeward Islands, the Marquesas or the Tuamotus.

Some 200 km (a half-hour flight) northwest of Papeete, the Leeward Islands are a perfect ground for yacht cruising. Distances between the islands are not great (generally around 20 km or less) and broad lagoons provide plenty of good anchorages.

Most charter cruises here start from the yacht base in the pretty Baie de Faaroa on Raiatea - it's another island that assails the visitor with aromas of not only vanilla, but copra and frangipani. We find that our catamaran maintains the theme of French 19th century painters - it's called "Toulouse Lautrec". After stowing our gear and marveling at the vessel's numerous creature comforts, Stephanie Betz, a skipper from the yacht base, runs us through the catamaran's operations before we take a quiet lagoon cruise up to the capital, Uturoa.

Although Uturoa's main street is basically a long row of shops plus a market building (and, curiously, a Chinese Kuo Min Tang meeting house), it's clear that change is on the way. The town wharf is being dramatically enlarged to accommodate large cruise liners.

Quiet and verdant, Raiatea (the name means "clear sky") is set within the same reef system as Tahaa and flaunts its topographic centrepiece, a two million-year old, extinct volcano. Raiatea, once known as "Sacred Havai’i", was the traditional centre of Tahitian royalty, religion and culture and its main visitor attraction is the massive Taputaputea marae, the largest and most sacred site in Polynesia. From its ceremonial stone platforms you can look across a lozenge-blue lagoon to the Tea Vamoa reef pass, through which the great double-hulled canoes departed around 800 years ago to settle both Hawaii and New Zealand.

If our next island, Huahine, seemed snoozy (as indeed it should) tiny Tahaa made up for it, with its tamure frenzy, black pearl shopping fever and the resurrection of Yurtle the Turtle. A hard act for most places to follow, but not our final destination, Bora Bora.

Bora Bora slumbered until Pearl Harbour, when it was suddenly "invaded" by 4500 GIs arriving to build French Polynesia’s first airstrip (and leave behind 130 off-spring). Despite its considerable popularity ever since with tourists, Bora Bora remains almost everyone's idea of classic Polynesia: extravagant vegetation, the tombstone peaks of Mt Otemanu, floating motus, a hula hoop reef bursting with surf, and a lagoon whose depths are colour-coded in bands from azure blue to turquoise. Shallow-draught yachts like ours can almost circumnavigate the island inside its lagoon.

Off Motu Taurere, we don masks and snorkels, and slip into a rip surging in through the reef. Like a horizontal, tidal waterslide, it takes us on a free ride through reefs and bommies stocked like a free range aquarium, with colleges of surgeonfish, ranks of fusiliers and shocks of tiny, electric-blue chromis fish - in fact, almost everything that swims is here but Yurtle. I repeat this ripping ride three times before heading back to the Toulouse Lautrec which, appropriately, sits at dusk like a painted ship upon a watercolour lagoon.