French Polynesia

Overwater bungalows were invented in French Polynesia in 1967 by three Californians, Hugh Kelley, Jay Carlisle and Don 'Muk' McCallum, who ran a small hotel on Raiatea and needed extra rooms for a property without a beach. They copied the local fishermen's huts, built them on stilts over the lagoon, and accidentally created the most-copied luxury hotel format of the next half-century. There are now over 900 overwater bungalows across the 118 islands of French Polynesia, and thousands more around the rest of the world.

The country itself is five archipelagos spread across an area of the Pacific the size of Western Europe, with the Society Islands (Tahiti, Bora Bora, Moorea, Raiatea) in the middle, the Tuamotus to the east, and the wilder Marquesas further north. A yacht charter usually concentrates on the Society Islands, where the lagoons are sheltered and the inter-island sails are short. Bora Bora's lagoon is the headline view, with the dormant volcanic peak of Mount Otemanu rising 727 metres out of a turquoise ring of reef. Tahaa, just north of Raiatea, is the vanilla island, where most of French Polynesia's vanilla still grows; the inter-island lagoon between Raiatea and Tahaa is the protected sailing water that drew the Bali Hai Boys here in the first place.

The season is the southern winter, May to October, when the rain backs off and the temperature stays comfortable for long days on deck. Most charters pick up at Pape'ete on Tahiti, with internal flights connecting the wider archipelagos for longer trips. A two-week charter is the realistic minimum: the country is genuinely far away and the islands are spread far apart, and a one-week trip ends up feeling like a single resort visit by sea.