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.