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.