Rainbow off the port bow...

That’s Ann’s take on the day. We didn’t get much else done. It rained much of the day, although Ann found time to do the laundry and even got some of it dried in between the squalls. For my part, I spent a good deal of the day on getting the external disk drive of the computer to run. It has all our pictures on it and the computer wouldn’t recognize it. Very frustrating, but I finally found that the Firewire port wasn’t loading correctly, hence the computer didn’t know anything was connected. Not sure if I fixed it or it fixed itself, but it’s running again, so I don’t care.

We put away all our water toys and the plan is to leave this anchorage at Tahanea around 0200 for the 10 hour trip over to Fakarava, which is about 50 miles away. We need to get there around 1200 due to tides and the need to have the sun overhead in order to see the coral heads as we navigate into the anchorage. Our plan is to get a little sleep, then up at 0130, check the weather outside and decide if we go. Right now there are almost horizon to horizon stars, but after such a rainy day I’m not sure what the night brings. The moonrise is supposed to be 0154 and I want to have at least a little moonlight to go out by. We have our inbound track on the GPS that we can follow back out, but I don’t want to do it completely in the dark. Radar isn’t as useful here as in Mexico because unlike Mexico where you’re worried about hitting the rocks-which radar can “see”, the real hazards here are the reefs which the radar can’t see. And we’ve been climbing around on the coral ashore-I can tell you it’s jagged, rough and tough as cement. You don’t want to so much as bump it. We have reefs around our anchorage that come up to the surface on three sides of us with only a narrow exit and then we still have to get around and through the pass, which is basically an opening in the bigger reef that defines the atoll. Anyway, we’ll see. If the nighttime conditions don’t look good, our other option is to leave tomorrow in the late afternoon and then sail to within ten miles or so of Fakarava and then just heave- to (basically stop the boat) somewhere outside for the night and come in the next day when the conditions are right. Ahhh…island crossings.

The sharks swim over to the boat to say; "hello"

Black Tipped Reef Sharks. Very stealthy, very cool. We were snorkeling along and about 20 yards away saw the first one sliding among the coral. I swam over with the movie camera and got some film. He was actually a little shy. As I swam over to him, he swam away. I had to watch where he was going and then “sneak” around the coral head to get him swimming toward me from around the other side.

Today was a world class day. Didn’t start that way. Last night was squally and our anchor chain was fouled on a bunch of coral so it was short and didn’t provide any shock absorption. Charisma was rocking like a bronco tethered too close. I was a little anxious about the short chain and got up around 0300 to watch things for a while. Saw some lightning and some big squalls come by but the wind never got over 20 knots, so I went back to bed around 0400 fairly confident that the chain would hold OK and we could unravel it in the morning. Come morning (and a stunningly beautiful, no-wind day) I was able to just look down into the water from the bowsprit and see (you can see 40 feet down to the coral, the water is so clear) that our chain made several 360 degree turns around two different coral heads. One was right under the boat. So after studying the turns and plotting a course to unravel them, we started the engine and went-left 30 degrees, forward 50 feet, right 70 degrees, forward another fifty feet, right another 60 degrees and then back down a bit. OK, that about did it. The chain is laying straight and we’re back to the waypoint I set on the GPS. While we were at it, I also fixed a sheared cotter pin that holds the head-stay to the bowsprit. Our friends on Blue Rodeo reported they had the same issue about a month ago and I’ve been casually looking at all the cotter pins on the stays and darned if I didn’t find this one. If it falls out and the clevis pin it’s holding slides out the mast falls down. Kind of an important piece of gear. Turns out the pin someone put in (Svensens!!) was too small. I put a bigger one in and will continue to watch it. What it really needs is a spacer to keep the clevis pin from torqueing to one side and putting pressure on the cotter pin. I’ll try and fix that in Tahiti, but it might have to wait until New Zealand.

So about that world class day! The wind finally quit completely. We had absolutely flat, crystal clear water. Didn’t take much convincing to get us into the dinghy to go over to the reef about 100 yards away to do some snorkeling. We were a little tentative since that’s where we saw some reef sharks yesterday in a feeding frenzy. However, all we saw there was the most beautiful live coral and tons on fish. Like being in our own, private aquarium. We swam around and through the reef for almost an hour before moving to the reef just off the beach where we swam with Mr Shark.

By noon, we needed a break. Well, we actually needed a beer! It was so hot. But also, since it was such a calm day we decided to finally break out the inflatable paddle board. Turns out Ann is a natural and she paddled around the reef. Bob on the other hand, despite years of windsurfing is less an expert at paddleboarding. It’s going to take a lot more practice before he can paddle more than two feet before falling in. We also got out the inflatable kayaks. The last thing I heard was; “Nice to be back in the saddle!” as Ann took off for a late afternoon cruise around the cove. She loves that kayak.

We’re hoping for more of the same tomorrow then we’ll be off to Fakarava which is another atoll-albeit much larger one about 50 miles to the west. It’s a bit more populated. Whereas this one (Tahanea) has exactly zero inhabitants, Fakarava has some black pearl farms, some dive shops and a few other amenities. Good timing though since we ran out of fresh vegetables today. We’ll be ready for a small store to replenish supplies to get us to Tahiti by about June 20th.

Anchor voodoo and swimming with sharks. A very good day indeed.