Daily Archives: June 8, 2012

Breakfast at Orcinius

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Location: Still at Tahanea

We had a special start to our day today. John on Orcinius had been cooking again (he is quite the Renaissance man, like Bob) and called late last night to say he had made quiche and invited us for breakfast! And the timing is perfect because although they get up early they don’t eat until after 9 am! So we waited for the call and rowed over for a fabulous breakfast of quiche, Bloody Marys, coffee and sliced pears. Yum!

After breakfast we all decided to go ashore and investigate our surroundings. Back to Charisma to get our swim suits and pack a lunch and back to Orcinius to pick them up. We anchored the dinghy just off of the “beach” (really it’s just coral, so didn’t want to drag an inflatable dinghy over the sharp rock) and waded ashore. We then proceeded to work our way to the other side of the island to explore the shore. It’s all of 100 yards so not that big a deal. And what fun we had. We found moray eels, crabs that stood on their back legs with their claws in the air backing away from us, groupers, and best of all John and Bob danced with the black-tipped reef sharks. Kind of. John was wading in waters that kept getting a little deeper when suddenly he was surrounded by 4 or 5 reef sharks. He scared them as much as they scared him. Which of course caused him to jump up and down in a little “reef shark dance”. Bob didn’t know what was happening but he saw John “dance”, then he saw the sharks and “danced” a little himself. We also saw a 15″ Grouper very close in to shore. Good hunting.

Then we decided to cut across the island back to our side and find the dinghy. With Bob leading the way we crashed through the jungle trying not to get lost. I meanwhile kept my supply of cheese and crackers and Gatorade that was in my backpack a secret. I have learned that with Bob you always need to be prepared. Fortunately with Lisa in the lead at the halfway point, we found the other side. And not more than 100 yards down the beach we looked up and saw a very narrow sandy cut through. Oh well, no adventure in taking the easy way back.

Our dinghy was anchored right off a little shack on the beach (where the seasonal workers who harvest the coconut trees for copra) very conveniently had a bench and a table. We even think that the half plastic bottle tied to a stick might have been a tip jar. However since there was no Wi-fi we left no tip. But we did enjoy the cheese and crackers prior to wading, now waist deep, back to the dinghy to return to our boats. It was 4:30 by the time we returned. Where does the time go!

Tomorrow, we’re going to do a “Pass dive”. You take the dinghy out the pass into the open ocean at slack tide and drift in on the incoming tide past the sides of the reef. John and Lisa will do the actual diving as they have tanks. Bob and Ann will do snorkeling and have the dinghy tied to a leash on one of them as we float/drift on the incoming tide back into the lagoon.

Anchored in Tahanea

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Position: 16 degrees, 50 minutes south; 144 degrees, 41 minutes west

Doesn't get much clearer than this!

Anchored off Tahanea

Anchored off our own Motu

This spot couldn’t be more beautiful. The word “azure” might have been created to describe the color of the water here. We’re in about 30 feet over coral and sand and about 100 yards off a sandy atoll which is covered with palm trees. Azure, ice blue, turquoise all describe the color of the water we are in.

Getting here was a little challenging. After the “exit” from Raroia which was pretty exciting, we had a long day with no wind. We motored. Not fun. Then after dinner a front moved through. By now, Ann was getting some sleep as it was the second evening watch around 0100. I thought I saw some unusual cloud formation, so checked the radar. Red, red, red, across the screen. Darn! Double reef the main, close the hatches, the usual drill. Also per usual just as I finished and was putting my jacket on, it started raining. This wasn’t just a short squall, the rain lasted almost an hour. The good news though is that it brought wind, so we could finally sail.

We “buddy boated” with Orcinius who has joined us on this leg. We sailed the whole 24 hours here within about three miles of each other. Last night Ann and Lisa on Orcinius were on the first evening watches at the same time on their respective boats and played a trivia game over the VHF radio. Anything to stay awake in the wee hours.

After leaving in such dramatic fashion yesterday at 0815, we were looking for something a little easier today. We sailed along this island and got to the pass around 1000, which was two hours before low tide and 26 hours after leaving Raroia yesterday. Big standing waves and lots of tide action. No bueno. No way were we going through the pass until things changed. We dropped sails and just floated in the current about ½ mile outside, just loitering for two hours waiting for slack water. It worked. At noon, we decided to take another look at the pass. It had changed from a roaring rapid to a placid lake. It only stays that way for a short time, so we dashed in congratulating ourselves on our developing technique. Atoll entrances can be more dramatic than you really want, so it’s nice to know that we’re able to identify the calm time.

Once inside the atoll, we turned right around a “bight” formed by a coral reef and tucked into a nice spot a little sheltered from the south wind. It’s a little bumpy-about 15 knots of wind and 2 foot wind waves, but not too bad. We’re in sand and coral. I dove the anchor to see what it looked like. It’s butted up against a big coral boulder, so we’re not going anywhere as long as the wind doesn’t shift around. On the other hand, I’m not looking forward to getting it back up, but we’ll deal with that later. Following the chain back to the boat, there are a couple of large coral formations that the chain could tangle on, so I used the new technique of “buoying” the chain so it hangs in the water floating just above the coral instead of dragging on the bottom and wrapping around the coral as we swing back and forth at anchor.

We had Mahi ceviche for lunch and Ann cooked pasta for dinner. We’ve been watching the shooting stars since after dinner. Quite a show tonight. I saw one that I thought was the moon coming through the clouds, it lasted so long. I happened to look at just the right time and though, “Wow, I didn’t know the moon was out so early”. Then the glow turned into “sparks” shooting out the side of the cloud and it burned out toward the water. Pretty dramatic. It seemed so close, I am guessing it might have been space debris. (Jerry, I’ll bet you can find if any entered the atmosphere on this day)

Tomorrow we’ll go explore the atoll (hopefully bringing back some coconuts that we can use for meals and do some snorkeling. This place is so beautiful I imagine we’ll be here a few days or longer, so we’ll likely have more to describe tomorrow.