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| RAFTKIN in the early morning glass out at Punuruku anchorage, Tahanea |
Our passage from Marquesas to Tuamotus held no great
surprises. We lifted the anchor just
after daybreak on Wednesday 23rd May and sail ed away from Taiohae Bay. The wind was on the beam, so we could sail
fast. The waves were side on, tossing us
about like a hobbyhorse for the first two days.
It was a little uncomfortable, but we have now experienced worse, so we
just got on with it. For the kids (and
me!) it meant a break from school for a day or so until we could concentrate
without being sick. Then, like magic,
the wind eased off and the sea flattened.
The flat sea meant that we were still sailing fast enough, but it was
smooth and calm on board.
Unlike other passages, there was pressure this time as to
the timing of our arrival. The Tuamotu Archipelago
is a collection of 77 coral atolls between Marquesas and Tahiti. Entry
to an atoll must be timed at the slack tide, preferably the low, when the current
leaving the atoll is minimal. There are
tide gauges on some of the atolls that reference the high and low tide, but the
atoll tide is also influenced by wind speed and direction and swell, which also
contribute to the amount of water in the atoll.
We had worked out that we needed to be at the pass at around 10:30am, so
the pressure was on. When the wind died
out more and our speed dropped below 5 knots, we had to switch on the engines
to ensure our arrival on time.
MAKEMO
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| Makemo morning anchored at Vavaiha |
We approached the western pass just before 10am Tuamoto time
on Saturday 26
th May, just behind Pelizeno (again! Man they are fast!). Our timing was perfect. Yonder had been through the pass about 45
minutes ahead of us in about 2 knots of current. Peter climbed the mast and stood on the boom
to watch for coral bommies. I stood on
the bow of RAFTKIN, then later on the roof of the saloon and in we went. We had about ½ knot of current and the pass
was wide and deep, so it was very straight forward. We then decided to motor about 7 NM west to a
good anchorage. Yonder lead the
procession, with Carli sitting up on the spreaders looking for bommies,
followed by Pelizeno, then RAFTKIN bringing up the rear. A big, grey cloud covered the sun making it
difficult to see the coral, especially when it rained. When the sun came out from behind the clouds,
it was like someone turned on the underwater lights and there were all the
danger zones, though there were not too many and there were no dramas.
We put the anchor down off a little beach at Vavaiha amongst
every shade of blue you can imagine.
Just off the bow was a sandy beach with thick coconut grove behind
it. When I dove the anchor it was like
our anchor chain was trying out for the Super G as it wove in and out of the
bommies below. After a little
discussion, we decided to lift anchor and move to the other side of the small
reef that edged the bay, where the bottom was sandier. We anchored in about 10 m of water, a couple
of hundred metres from the beach and were soon exploring the bay and the small
beach, which turned out not to be sand, rather it was made up of all different
sized pieces of coral and shells. We saw
an army of giant hermit crabs chattering across the sand, finding cover under
whatever they could to get away from the invaders. From the beach, we got back into our kayaks
and padded around the foreshore looking for a creek. We returned to out boats for an early night on
a beautiful, flat sea. Heaven!
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| Paddleboard exploration with Adrian |
We spent the next four days falling into a regular
pattern. We got stuck into school in the
morning, usually finishing by lunch time, then spent the afternoon enjoying
what we could see in the atoll. Sunday
we explored the motu (small island that is formed on the reef surrounding the
atoll). We found a small cemetery hidden
amongst the palms. Many of the
headstones were so weathered there was no writing on them, but some were
engraved as far back as 1907. As we
walked around the motu the ground changed from sand to volcanic rock and then
to coral that had broken and washed up on the atoll over many years. We walked out of the scrub and there was the
ocean, calmly breaking upon the shore.
There were many shells along the beach and Dave found some beautiful
cowrie shells.
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| Exploring the motu |
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| Exploring the motu - giant hermit crabs |
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we explored the underwater
world of the atoll, starting locally with the reef behind the boats. It’s hard to work out where to go and what to
do from the surface, but as soon as you are underwater the whole picture
becomes clearer, it’s a whole world under there. Each bommie is like a miniature city
supporting its own ecosystem. There are
clams and scallops clamped to the coral, anemones that close up when you get
too close, fish that duck in and out of the coral formations and much more that
I can’t name because I don’t have that knowledge.
We took our dinghy across to the southern side of the atoll
on Tuesday, where the visibility was seemingly endless. When we dropped over the side of the dinghy
the view took my breath away. The
shallow coral dropped off to a large, deep area, still probably only 15-20m
deep for 100m or so before it dropped away deeper again. There was not the abundance of fish we were
expecting, but as we turned to head back to the dinghies we almost ran into 5
or 6 black tip reef sharks, each with a set of yellow and black striped fish
swimming in formation around it. The
sharks swam coolly and calmly around us, sometimes coming close enough you
could reach out and touch them, before their sonar kicked in and they swam
quickly away.
We explored a couple of bommies just a few miles out from
the anchorage on Wednesday, completing a circumnavigation on one. The bommie was like a circular wall dive
disappearing down into the depths of the atoll.
There was plenty to explore in the top 5 m of water and we challenged
ourselves to get deeper and swim through narrow passages between the corals.
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| Snorkelling a bommie |
Thursday we were up with the sun to lift anchor and follow
our tracks out of the atoll to get to the pass for the 7:40 am slack tide. We motored through with the outgoing current,
hitting a top speed of 10 knots! Once out the other side we put the main sail
up, got the A-sail out and had a fun sailing day to Tahanea. We even got buzzed
a few times by a French Polynesian military jet patrolling the area, the crew
of which checked our details over the radio.
Quite a thrill as it tore past us!
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| Early morning departure from Makemo |
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| Buzzed by FP airforce on route to Tahanea |
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| Awesome cruising day eating melon and listening to tunes |
TAHANEA
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| Tahanea at sunrise |
We arrived at Tahanea mid-afternoon and motored easily
through the pass and eastward along the shoreline to a good anchorage at Punuruku. We still had plenty of light and this
anchorage was certainly easier to manage then the previous one. We celebrated ‘end of passage’ with a potluck
dinner on RAFTKIN. Another lovely night
with friends.
Friday morning the kids were highly motivated to get stuck
into school, because Pete had promised if they had got a good chunk of school
work completed by 10am, they could have 1 go wakeboarding before we dinghied
across to drift snorkel the northern pass at 10:30 slack, with more
wakeboarding was promised later in the day once school was finished. When we arrived at the pass there was a
slight outgoing current. We killed the
engines just inside the atoll, in front of the pass and jumped overboard in our
snorkelling gear. Dave held onto the
paynter and we all drifted through the pass on the current. When we got to the other side the kids said
“again, again!”, we climbed back up into the dinghy and motored back through
the pass to do it again. There was just so much coral, it was like a field
of wildflowers stretching out across the bottom. There were loads of big fish and small fish,
long fish and short fish, red fish, blue fish... We saw about 4 or 5 sharks too, black tip and
white tip.
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| Tahanea wakeboarding at Punuruku anchorage before pass snorkel |
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| First drift dive through D'Otao Pass, Tahanea |
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| White tip reef shark in D'Otao Pass |
After lunch a climbing lesson started on Yonder and Rob soon
had Hayley and Megan prussiking up to the spreaders. Very cool!
The other toys also came out and the kids spent the afternoon
wakeboarding, tubing and sailing in the Terra.
How lucky are these kids?
Saturday and Sunday mornings there was not a breath of
wind. We enjoyed paddle boarding
effortlessly across the glassy surface, with a window to beneath the surface
where the fish we had seen swimming around yesterday were so bright and
colourful, as were the corals. At one
point a shark swam passed, then turned and followed me, curious about the piece
of rope I was towing behind the board. It
soon worked out I was bigger and quickly diverted it course.
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| Sunrise in a glass out at Punuruku anchorage |
After breakfast the kids from Yonder, Pelizeno and Bajka came
over to RAFTKIN and started playing ‘Her Royal Disappointment’. They built a cubby house in the helmstation
and were having a ball. The slack was at
11am, so the kids were not impressed when we said it was time to go snorkelling,
but H&M said they could continue playing the game while they were
snorkelling and that seemed to fix things.
We took the dinghy out to the middle pass (the one we came in through)
to drift snorkel on the slack. The
middle pass was wide and deep, so not as pretty and coral covered as the
southern pass, but there were loads of fish and sharks, a couple bigger than we
had seen before. We then motored down
the outside of the atoll (given the no-wind/ calm sea conditions) to try the
northern pass. The northern pass was
also wide, but its southern side was covered in coral, and it just got better
and better as we drifted into the atoll, with more and more fish of all shapes
and sizes. There were groups of angel
fish all hanging out at a funny angle, looking stunned. There were grouper fish in their commando
camouflage and loads of rainbow parrot fish.
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| Boat kids play Her Royal Disappointment on RAFTKIN |
After Sunday morning pancakes for breakfast, we met up with
the others and a Canadian boat, Optimist of London, on the shore to go and
collect plastic from the ocean side of the atoll. We spent a couple of hours trawling up the
shoreline and finished up with more than a dinghy load of plastic, which we
will take to Tahiti with us if we are unable to dispose of it beforehand. We got back to the boats around 12pm and
hauled up the anchor to make our way to the SE side of the atoll, where there
was a good anchorage, protected from the bad weather forecast to arrive on
Monday. It took just over an hour to
motor across the atoll, where we found a sandy bottom to anchor in with just a
few bommies to avoid. The afternoon was
spent exploring our new world.
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| Part of the collection of plastics cleaned up from the motu |
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| Late afternoon paddle at the SE anchorage in Tahanea |
After school on Monday the kids from Pelizeno, Yonder, Bajka
and RAFTKIN met up for a swim and play at the beach. The Bajka crew had collected some firewood to
make a bonfire on the beach. We made
some dough so that we could make damper on a stick and cook it over hot
coals. Ella brought in some sausages
that we also cooked over the fire and they fit snugly inside the damper with a
bit of tomato sauce. The kids loved
it! Later we tried filling them with
golden syrup or honey, which they loved even more. We found a packet of marshmallows on board,
which we brought in and Yonder had some Gram Crackers (?) so we toasted
marshmallows and jammed them between two crackers to make a Canadian smores. We had run out of light by 6pm, so we packed
up under torchlight and made or way back to our boats. The big wind that was forecast was not to be,
with just a light breeze coming in from the SE.
We did notice over the next few days that the swell was much bigger
crashing against the outer reef, so there must have been bad weather out there,
it just (most fortunately) missed us.
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| Just hanging around at beach BBQ on the motu at SE anchorage |
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| Kids cook damper at beach BBQ on the motu at SE anchorage |
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| Secret mens business at beach BBQ on the motu at SE anchorage |
After school on Tuesday 5th June we met everyone
on the neighbouring motu to go for a walk.
This SE end of the atoll is made up of a series of motus protected by an
outer reef. We all walked around the motu,
which had a sandy beach on one side and a rocky foreshore on the other. At the southern end of the motu there was a
small lagoon where the tide was running through into the atoll. We walked back there and jumped in to float
with the current around to the beach. We
did this a few times, climbing out and running back up the beach, before jumping
back in the warm water again.
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| Exploring a different motu near the SE anchorage |
Wednesday was our last full day in this idyllic SE anchorage.
The kids got stuck into school early so that we could get into some water
sports in the afternoon. After an early
lunch Dave got the windsurfer out and Megan had a go followed by Hayley, but
the slight breeze there was soon died out making it an act of balance alone, so
the windsurfer and terra were packed away and the wakeboard, doughnut and
‘skurf’ board (AKA paddle board) came out.
A fun afternoon scooting around the anchorage. Megan won the award for noisiest - no
surprises there!
As the light began to change we dinghied into the little
beach to recollect the firewood and re-build the fireplace washed away by the
higher tide. We were witnessing the effect
of larger seas on the atoll. The waves
had been crashing against the outer coral reef all day causing a massive spray
along the horizon and more water coming in over the reef into the atoll than
the usual tidal effect. We soon had a
fire going and Rob (Yonder) bashed a stake into the ground to place a grill
over the fire. The kids went and
collected fire sticks to cook their damper and before long there were sausages
sizzling over the coals and damper cooking below. The kids have found their new favourite camp
food. Once dinner was finished the kids
started burning their sticks in the fire, then running over to the sandspit to
write their names in the air. Heart in
mouth, but a big smile on my face I watched as they had the time of their life
running back and forth with glee, somehow avoiding each other and injury.
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| Sailing on the terra at SE anchorage |
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| Fun on the donut at SE anchorage |
Our
last morning in the SE anchorage dawned calm and clear, so Hayley and I got up
early and took the paddle boards out to explore a little. We got back, had breaky and got stuck into school. The day just disappeared, as it seems to on a
boat. After an early lunch Hayley and I
went out exploring in the dinghy with Carli and Adrian. We beached the dinghy near a lagoon and
walked out across what looked like the old volcanic flow to the edge of the
reef investigating the contents of the rock pools. Too soon it was time to head back to RAFTKIN,
pull up the anchor and motor away. It
was a complete glass out and we were glad to have our tracks to follow back across
the atoll as it was hard to tell which way was up with the sky reflected
perfectly on the water’s surface. As we
came through the pass we saw birds working ahead, so the lines went out and we
motored straight through the birds. We
had tuna for dinner, but sadly it was from a can.
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| Motoring across the atoll in a glass out - which way is up |
FAKARAVA
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| Aerial of South Fakarava Pass - Photo by La Cigale |
We motored until close to midnight when the breeze picked up
to 10 knots and Dave pulled the jib out.
We continued to sail slowly at 3-4 knots to ensure we didn’t arrive at
Fakarava until dawn. Light slowly filled
the sky and we were there. We came
through the southern pass with no dramas and dropped anchor on a slightly dodgy
bottom just behind La Cigale. The radio
calls came through almost immediately that La Cigale and Shawnigan were heading
out for a drift dive through the pass at about 9am. We quickly got organised and joined them in
the dinghy.
Drift snorkelling the southern pass of Fakarava has
been one of the most remarkable experiences of this trip. The coral was incredible, there was an
abundance of fish and at the bottom of the pass were several hundred sharks
cruising about. There are always at
least 300 sharks in the pass, but in June each year the sharks start to
accumulate at the same time as the grouper fish start to gather inside the pass
to spawn. There were reportedly about
500 sharks in the pass when we were there.
At the end of the pass there is a large area of coral, another field of
flowers that you drift over. We saw
larger number of groupers than we had seen elsewhere, all waiting for the full
moon. We went back and did the drift
through again and again and again.
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| Fakarava Sth Pass drift snorkel with sharks! |
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| Fakarava Sth Pass drift snorkel wall of sharks! |
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| Fakarava Sth Pass drift diving with friends |
In the afternoon the kids paddled over to the nearest island
to explore. They played all afternoon
before heading over to La Cigale for a big movie night and sleepover. There were twelve girls there for the
sleepover and they all slept on the trampolines at the front of the boat. What a memorable night.
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| Beautiful Fakarava South anchorage |
Saturday 9th June we picked the kids up just
before 9am and went straight out to the pass again. We did about 3 drifts, but they were much
longer this time, starting closer to the outer end of the pass where the waves
were breaking. It was just as amazing as
yesterday. We were treated with a family
of three eagle rays, including a baby not much bigger than your hand, floating
in formation in the current. The sharks
were all there again and the coral spreading on forever.
We had a slower start on Sunday morning, but there was time
for a quick sail on the Terra with Nina and then with Francis before heading
off at 11am to snorkel the pass once more.
It was amazing and different again.
We stuck to the shoreline, where the coral is shallower and saw loads of
reef sharks. There are a couple of swim
in areas behind the reef where the sharks hang out. It was amazing to be swimming so close to
them. We did three drift dives and got
back to the boat exhausted.
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| Fakarava Sth Hayley sailing the Terra with Nina |
After lunch we dinghied over to La Cigale, where there was
to be a marine biology lesson given by Edith from Alondra. The lesson was on plankton. She talked with the kids about the two
different kinds of plankton, phytoplankton and zooplankton. After some discussion, all the kids and Edith
went out in the dinghy to collect plankton, then we looked at it under a
microscope. There was a second
microscope to look at shells and fingers and all sorts of things.
Once they had completed school on Monday the kids played
with their friends, kayaking between boats and the island. Dave did another
download of the weather and we decided to move on Tuesday 12th June to
the northern end of the atoll to shelter from strong south easterly winds. After another fabulous marine biology lesson
by Edith, this time on marine mammals, we motor sailed to the northern end of
the atoll, stopping at Pakota Yacht Services for the night, before moving on Wednesday
to the main town of Pakakota to wait out the bad weather.
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| Fakarava Sth Marine Biology lesson with Edith from Alondra |
This time the bad weather came, so we spent the next few
days enjoying being in civilisation… well there were a few shops and a couple
of restaurants. We also spent some time
at Fakarava Yacht Services using the tiny scrap of wifi that made it there, but
we not able to achieve a lot. We
explored the windward shore experiencing the full brunt of the wind, hiding in
the shrubs and trees to get out of the rain squalls as they came across. We found loads of shells, including some more
beautiful cowrie shells. We also visited
the local Pearl Farm where we saw how the famous black pearl of French
Polynesia is cultivated, then participated in a pearl lottery. For a small fee we were able to choose an
oyster shell, which was then opened and the pearl inside was ours. The lottery was in the value of the pearl
inside. Megan, Hayley and I all got the
same shaped pearl, but Megan’s was definitely the biggest. Our pearls were then cleaned and polished,
drilled and strung onto a thread so that we can wear them. Beautiful!
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| Fakarava Nth pearl farm |
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| Fakarava Nth pearl farm - Megan awaits the outcome of the pearl lottery |
On Saturday, our last full day in Fakarava I was fortunate
to start the day with a SUP yoga session, lead by Josie from Shawnigan. What a great way to start the day! At least the water wasn’t too cold when I
fell in a couple of times and the sharks seemed to keep their distance. After breakfast we hired some bikes for a few
hours and explored the more populated end of the atoll. We road out to the airport and back, then in
the opposite direction along the motu to the south and out of town. It was easy riding on the flat motu and good
to use some different muscles.
Saturday night we were invited over to La Cigale for a roast
lamb dinner, along with Shawnigan. What
a treat! Xavier and Lucy outdid
themselves and we enjoyed good food and company until well into the night,
whilst the kids played happily together.
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| Fakarava Nth Dave has some time out |
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| Fakarava Nth bike riding |
We woke at dawn on Sunday morning and lifted the anchor in
the half light before motoring to the north pass. We got there right on slack tide but there
was a bit of outgoing current, which with the now north westerly wind was
making the waves stand up in the channel.
It was a rough ride through the pass, but that was nothing compared to
what those that followed behind us by just an hour or two had to face. It was also nothing compared to the
unanticipated full day of sailing to get to the northern anchorage of the Toau
atoll as the wind changed direction and met us on the nose for the whole
day. It was such a relief to arrive in
the small bay and find a mooring free, just before the sun set.
TOAU
We spent three days in Toau inside a ‘false pass’ that looks
like an access pass to the atoll, but there is actually no break in the reef to
allow a yacht to pass through. Instead
it provides a unique safe haven to moor or anchor in, with some protection from
the south by the reef, which stops any wind chop that builds up in the
atoll. We had mixed weather whilst we
were there, so we made the best of it enjoying some snorkelling on the reef and
an exploratory walk around the motu. On Wednesday
afternoon as we were snorkelling out on the reef, we saw two familiar boats
come around the corner. La Cigale and
Shawnigan soon joined us in the little bay and Hayley and Megan enjoyed
catching up with their friends one more time before we left for Tahiti.
We woke predawn on Thursday morning 21th
June and slipped quietly out of the bay.
We were under sail by 4am, Tahiti bound.
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