Left Raroia for Tahanea

Position: 16 degrees, 45 minutes south; 143 degrees, 17 minutes west

We were up at 0600 because this trip is 140 miles and we needed to be out at slack water which was about 0730 (Hide slack). We need to in turn, get to Tahanea by slack water there tomorrow. After doing this one today at high tide, I think we might wait offshore for the low tide at Tahanea. They say it’s best to enter and leave the atolls on slack low water. “They” are right. We got to the pass at 0815 and there were standing waves. It was white water, but fortunately there wasn’t a lot of wind or ocean waves, so not as bad as it could have been. However, if it had been any worse, we would not have gone out. Orcinius is going with us to the same place, so we were following them out and it was quite a thrill watching them hit the standing waves and swerve back and forth with the current. There were boils all around pulling you first left, then right. Turns out, they were in awe as we went through as well. Neither boat thought of getting a picture-which probably tells you how busy we were navigating out through the crazy water. If there hadn’t been a range marker to help identify the channel, I might have gone onto the reef. The interesting thing is the white water was in the deeper channel and you had to go right through the standing waves to get out. The calm water was running over the very shallow reefs on either side. Very counter-intuitive. If you go for the calm looking water, you run aground! Past the calm looking water on either side of the pass the ocean waves were breaking on the reef, so all in all the whole experience definitely woke us up.

The rest of the day has been pretty boring. Very little wind, so we’ve been motoring as we want to make this a one day, not two day trip. Strange wind direction right now. It’s coming from the west. The predominant winds down here are easterlies. We haven’t seen a west wind since dropping below the equator. Oh well.

Dinner was (wait for it)….Mahi! This afternoon, I pulled one of the bags with four fillets out of the fridge. I cut up two fillets and made ceviche for tomorrow. It’s marinating in lime juice right now. I marinated the other two fillets in soy/teriyaki/ginger/wasabi, seared then steamed them and served over rice with the marinade poured over the whole thing. Yum, yum and yum!

Beautiful stars out now as we thread our way through multiple islands on our way to Tahanea. It’s supposed to be a stunning, “classic” South Pacific atoll and we have high hopes to spend several or more days there just playing in kayaks, trying out our standup paddleboard and snorkeling.

We’ll let you know how that goes.

We took an easy day here anchored at our first atoll. We really didn’t do too much of anything. After an easy morning-I made an omelet and lots of coffee-we inflated the dinghy, put on the outboard and went ashore. Not a lot ashore. A small town but no stores. This is mostly a town that houses pearl industry workers. A lot of this atoll is pearl farms. You can see them in the distance and every day around 1530 the workers come back from work by boat.

The best part of the day was tide pooling on the ocean side of the atoll. We walked across-about a 300 yard walk and were on the ocean side. It was low tide, so there was lots of exposed coral. Not too many seashells, but it was like a treasure hunt. Every once in a while you’d see something shining like an opal against the dull white broken coral that makes up the beach. A cowrie! They are gorgeous and we collected a dozen nice ones (with no critters inside).

The other highlight of the day was the arrival of Orcinius. It turned out they decided not to stay longer at Oa Pou but instead just headed down here. We heard them the last couple nights on Seafarers Net, so they were not unexpected. In fact we radioed them last night to set up Mahi Mahi dinner for tonight. So after our tide pooling, we got back to Charisma around 1630, changed, collected the fish and went over to Orcinius for a delightful evening. Cocktails, dinner and good conversation. What fun. Oh, and left over birthday cake – yesterday was Lisa’s birthday!

The biggest challenge for today was coming back in the dark in an inflatable dinghy among the coral. I had established a course when it was light so I had an inkling where we needed to go, but it’s still kind of eerie knowing that any moment, if you are off course, the coral could rip out the bottom of the dinghy. And we have seen sharks in this bay!

We’ve decided there’s not a lot holding us here, and there are much nicer atolls ahead, so tomorrow at first light we’re heading out for an atoll called Tahanea. It’s about 140 miles, so an overnight. Oh well, as Blue Rodeo Mark says; “Nothing’s easy”.