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.