French Polynesia 3

The Tuamotus

The trip to the Tuamotus took us four and a half days. We had told our shore contacts, Emily and Simon, that it was a five day trip. There was no telephone signal when we arrived at Raroia Atoll and no WiFi. We experienced very mixed weather on the journey of wind speeds from 4-34 knots blowing from all the eastern sectors of the compass. Worse was the swell that varied from almost calm to big and boisterous with waves breaking over Sal Darago. Almost all the windows and portholes began to leak. Many squalls passed over us, some of them taking the wind away, others increasing it to gale force accompanied by heavy rain. It was rarely possible to tell which type of squall we were going to have, so we kept two reefs in the mainsail most of the time.

Stormy weather on the way to the Tuamotus

Raroia Atoll

Sal Darago anchored off the village

This atoll is famous because the Kon Tiki raft crashed on to the reef there in 1947, ending its Pacific voyage from South America. We had GPS, charts and a chart plotter, which enabled us to find the pass through the reef. We knew that we should arrive at slack water and not attempt entry on the ebb. Unfortunately, slack water lasts about 10 minutes and it is almost always ebbing, reaching 8 knots, if you’re very unlucky.

Kon Tiki Memorial

We approached the pass under engine avoiding the worst of the washing machine of overfalls to the south. Our speed went down to 1.5 knots, but the pass was short and we were soon turning to starboard and heading for the village, where we anchored on a lee shore in sand and coral. It was mid-day, but we were so tired that lunch and sleep were all we wanted.

Walking on Raroia Atoll

In the evening, after dark, the anchor drag alarm went off, scaring both of us. Visual checks on lights and a quay showed us we had changed direction and were not dragging. The next day we had a walk around the village. The people were friendly and the children seemed to be having an idyllic childhood with the freedom to play safe from traffic. Back on SD, we weighed anchor and motored across the atoll, marking the coral heads or bomies on our GPS as we went. We anchored off the motu where the Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl Museum had erected a monument to the epic voyage of Kon Tiki. Several other yachts came to see the monument as well. Further on there was a protected anchorage where we anchored on our own and enjoyed a quiet and peaceful night.

Relaxing at anchor

Makemo Atoll

We needed to sail overnight to be sure of arriving at Arikitamiro Passe at 0800. This meant leaving our anchorage in Raroia at 1400. We knew the sun would be ahead of us and we would not be able to see the bomies. We followed our marked track carefully and exited Raroia two hours later. The log was not working. We made good progress at first with the genoa poled out to starboard and no.2 jib poled out to port. The first squall hit on my night watch giving me a soaking and winds to 20 knots from the north and the east. Worse was to come for Jeremy with torrential rain and winds up to 30 knots, followed by no wind at all, so we had to motor.

Burning our rubbish

We reached the pass at the “right” time and it looked awful. Give me the Scottish Sound of Luing, the Dorus Mor or the Cuan Sound rather than the turbulent, white water I saw before me. Still, a yacht had just entered safely, so we continued under engine bouncing along with Jeremy steering and me with my eyes glued to the depth sounder, shouting out the depths. Our speed dropped to 0.5 knots at the worst part but we made it in safely and headed for the village. There were six yachts anchored off the village already, so space was limited. We had poor holding at the second attempt at anchoring and Jeremy’s shoulders were killing him. We’re so sorry now that we didn’t think about our shore contacts as we launched the dinghy, dashed ashore, bought supplies at the supermarket and returned to SD.

The northern pass looks calm here

We weighed anchor and motored NW up the atoll to an anchorage, 15 miles away, off a place called Punaruku. The sun sank lower in the sky and the bomies became harder to see even with one of us standing on the roof and the other one watching the depth sounder. Two and a half miles from the anchorage, Jeremy came back to the cockpit to say, “We shouldn’t be doing this.” I agreed, glanced at the steeply rising depth sounder and shouted, “Depth. Where is it?” I was out of gear and reaching to switch off Neco, our automatic pilot, when Jeremy shouted, “Go left!” BANG! We hit the bommie. We reversed away and checked the bilges. There were no leaks internally. Two and a half miles further, we dropped the anchor, snorkelled and checked the keels. Quite a bit of paint was missing from the starboard keel’s leading edge. For those in the know, it was a similar experience to hitting the sewage pipe concrete support near Limerick on Sarah Bell. The log started working! Later, we snorkelled a beautiful bomie behind us with pretty, coloured corals, plenty of reef fish and rainbow lipped clams.

Water cistern

The next morning, with the sun behind us, we motored to a little bay off a copra camp near the northern Tapuhitia Passe. There were no other yachts and no people. We explored ashore, burnt our rubbish and snorkelled the nearby reef seeing fantastic coral pinnacles and shoals of parrot fish amongst many other types of reef fish. Having marked the pass the previous day, we left Makemo Atoll at 0600 and arrived at Tahanea Atoll middle pass and anchored half a mile away at 1600. We had motor sailed all the way to make the trip in daylight, but there were serious vibrations coming from the prop shaft.

Tahanea Atoll

On Friday morning, May 10^th, we sang a special Happy Birthday to Patrick. We made bread, collected coconuts and snorkelled. The wind and waves came up later and the anchor chain was stuck on a bomie making a dreadful noise, even with a snubber. On Saturday morning, Emily’s lifejacket exploded in the cupboard! (Now why would that happen?) Jeremy decided to change the prop shaft to gearbox coupling, putting on the one which had been revulcanised in Panama City in 2010. We snorkelled to free the anchor chain, but several black tipped reef sharks became interested, so we withdrew to Sal Darago.

Odd shaped coral

The following day, having made bread, we left this national park, Jeremy receiving a soaking from the breaking waves in the pass. There was no vibration on the prop shaft. It was a good night sail until 0400 when we were hit by 36 knots of wind and heavy rain. By 0800, we were at the Anaa Atoll “anchorage”. Two supply ships were drifting in the bay and we could not find a place to drop the anchor. We sailed on to Tahiti bedevilled by wind shifts and heavy rain.

The rubber is disintegrating so the coupling had to be replaced

On Wednesdsay 15^th May at 0500, Jeremy had had enough of the genoa violently slapping, so he put the engine on and we arrived at Tahiti Yacht Club at 1100. We learned that Emily and Simon had contacted the Coastguard to report us as overdue. We contacted the Coastguard to tell them of our safe arrival and were very contrite as we had caused our family unnecessary distress. We were pleased that they had followed the correct procedure.