Passage to the Tuamotus

[Kyle]From the Gambiers a big weather system was forecast to be passing south of us. Its influence was expected to overpower the trade winds and reverse them for the foreseeable future (bad for us). Before that happened, we had about four days of easterlies left, five if we went further north. We can take a hint. We were off to the northwest to the Tuamotus. We decided to head off and make the five day passage to Hao.

There are lots of islands in the southeast Tuamotus between the Gambiers and Hao, but few with anything other than open roadstead anchorages. Many islands get their supplies by launching canoes off the beach while the supply ship loiters nearby. We didn’t fancy being stuck at one of these waiting for the trade winds to return, so we pressed on to Hao.

Hao has an enormous lagoon with a pass. The French Navy used it as a base during all of the nuclear testing it did down here. They’re gone now, but the village is the largest in the Tuamotus, so we were hoping for a couple of decent stores and maybe even some internet.

A great sail
Kyle still found some things to fix on the way

The passage was uneventful, apart from having to watch out for the above mentioned islands. We are simultaneously completely comfortable with and rapidly becoming a little overdosed on always being on multi-day passages. On arrival at Hao we had been at sea for 43 of the last 63 days. We were ready to be there, but at the same time, five days felt like we were just getting warmed up. The lights of the village appeared and we hove-to until daylight to enter the pass.

That was exciting. Our first sign of trouble came when I spent my night watch watching a freighter enter the pass on our AIS display. I’m sure they have done this a thousand times, so they’ve figured out where the coral bommies are. I’m sure the Navy did it all of the time.

The part that concerned me was their speed. All of my careful calculations said that they should be fighting a pretty big current going in. Instead, they seemed to be getting a bit of a boost.

Entering the pass

Currents in the passes in the Tuamotus are notoriously hard to predict. It starts with the tide. At high tide, water flows in the pass. At low tide, it flows out. That’s the theory, but each lagoon is different. Most have relatively porous rims, so waves are always sloshing water over the coral into the lagoon, which then exits via the deep passes. Big waves and fewer tall islands means more water gets in. Fewer deep passes means more current at each one. Orientation also means a lot. Some atolls fill up when the waves come from the east, others from the west. It is not uncommon for the passes at two adjacent atolls to have water in their passes going in completely opposite directions. The only real way to know is to ask a local, preferably a dive shop, or spend a couple of days watching it yourself. Navionics, the charts we use on our chartplotter, only gives tides for a couple locations in the Tuamotus and even those seem to be calculated rectally, so mostly I calculate it using lunar transit times with corrections for wind direction and wave height. I’m right more often than not, but every now and then, I find that I’m 180 degrees off.

Hao is the third largest atoll in the world behind Rangiroa and Fakarava. Unlike those two, however, Hao only has one pass and as such it, often has no current flowing into it. I factored all of this in when I figured out the supply ship should be bucking the current. It looked like I was going to be way off again.

As we approached the pass, I had a look through the binoculars and saw that it was smooth and flat. I wasn’t expecting that for an hour or so, so we hurried over while the getting was good. By the time we made it, little eddies were starting to swirl ahead of us and standing waves were approaching from astern.

The eddies and the standing waves both grew more boisterous. Our speed over the bottom slowed to less than a knot. We started the other engine and by the time it was warmed up and at the same speed as the other, we were still going less than a knot. Maryanne unrolled the jib and got it pulling and we were still going less than a knot. Then we slowed down. Then we stopped. Then we started going backwards with the knot meter saying 7.5.

We nudged over to one side as far as we dared and found we could go forward at about 0.3 knots. If we could only speed up to .324 knots, we could go a boat length a minute. It got a little choppy on that side, which killed our speed, so we went across the center to the other side, losing about 50m in the process before we started going forward again. In all, it took us about an hour to get the ¼ mile through the narrow part of the pass.

We approached the anchorage near the town and found something even better. The Military had left behind a little protected harbor where we could tie up for free. It was just a mile or so out of town.There were three other boats tied up on the seaward side, so we pulled up next to the house on the land side. Aleen rode over from her boat Pizza to catch our lines. We then had a series of welcoming committees from the other boats and locals passing by, each giving us a full briefing on what Hao had to offer and where to find it.

The Gambiers (French Polynesia)

[Kyle]Once arriving in French Polynesia we needed to present ourselves at the local police station to officially clear in. The Gendarmerie turned out to be closed for a ridiculously long lunch, so we killed time until they reopened by exploring the town. That turned out to be a big mistake because, by the time the Gendarmerie opened up again, we had seen everything in the town at least twice since that was the nature of our out-and-back route. Rikitea is mostly houses. They have the Gendarmerie, the Mayor’s office, a giant church, a Post Office and three stores, one of which has a small café on the side which comprises the town’s only restaurant. We chatted with a few other boaters who were leaving as they closed for lunch (Yep, you read that right), and they gave it mediocre reviews before making a decrement for price. We should have spread it out. Now we had nothing left to see the next day.

We've arrived back in French Polynesia

Rikitea on the Island of Mangareva
The main town of the Gambiers

Still not ready to go back to the boat, we wandered out of town in search of Fritz. Fritz is a man whose name is not anything remotely like Fritz, but he’s German, so everybody calls him Fritz. He served in the Foreign Legion during some war, probably World War I, and then sailed to Rikitea, where he’s been welcoming boaters ever since. When I met him, he explained to me in French that he didn’t speak English and then tried to converse with me in German and Russian. Every time I tried to steer him back to French, he kept going back to German because he seemed to be convinced it would be easier for me that way. I guess in a way it was, because I don’t even pretend I understand German. On top of this, he is a little hard of hearing and he loves to watch German music videos, so I would shout at him in French while he would shout at me in German as the TV blared in the background. At length, I was able to ascertain that he would like us to consider ourselves welcome to do laundry, take showers and fill our water jugs on the condition that we do them all in the morning. He explained,”I’m old. I sleep in the afternoon.” Fair enough.

So, no sleeping in the next day, then.

At first light, I rowed Maryanne, two big bags of laundry that has been piling up since Chile and all of our water jugs way over to Fritz’s house across a long shallow barely deep enough for the oars. Maryanne enjoyed the luxury of all of the fresh water she could want to rinse the shampoo out of her thick hair and started the laundry while I filled the jugs and began a series of several trips to fill our water tanks. Fritz’s music was actually a great navigation aid. Facing backwards wile rowing, all I had to do was wait until the music was loud and to my right and then turn toward it. Fritz was telling Maryanne stories of derring do in German, of which she understands a little. Even I understood he was flirting with her. How do you say, “If I were thirty years younger…” in German?

The local Cathedral is the largest in the South Pacific islands
A crazy investment of resources for an island with such a tiny population

On about my fifth water run, Chris from Nemo came by and told me he discovered there was a potable water tap at the beach right in front of Begonia. The trip could be made with about five strokes of the oars. That allowed me to top up the tanks while saving an hour doing exercise in the midday tropical sun.

I used the time to row over to the Grocery store/restaurant to pick up a few things. Chris mentioned he got some fuel there as well, so I brought a couple of jerry cans, just in case. After getting the groceries, I asked about the fuel and was led by a ridiculously tall and fit guy to a bunch of 200 liter drums behind a shack. He got out a hose, opened a few caps to find the drum with diesel, and then shined a light down the hole to see how much was there. It was too empty to siphon from directly, so he replaced the cap, tilted the drum so he could get a better grip and lifted the whole drum and placed it on its side on top of the others. That way the hole would be closer to the fuel level. Big deal, Showoff! Those drums only weigh about fifty pounds, plus maybe a little bit extra for the fuel. How much fuel was in there, anyway? He spun the barrel and opened the cap. It was half full. Half a barrel of diesel weighs about 200 pounds – oh yeah, plus the barrel. That dude just threw a 250lb barrel of fuel on top of another as if he were tossing a bean bag chair into the back of a truck.

As the diesel flowed into our jerry cans, we chatted a bit. He asked about America. The poor guy did not know we had had an election since the last one he had heard about in 2008. I tried to explain it to him, but I just couldn’t get it across properly in French. I didn’t want to try too hard. He seemed to have a beautiful tropical paradise in his head.

I asked him what he liked to do for fun. He lit up. He’s a dancer! Yep, one of THOSE dancers. He said his troupe would be in the Heiva on Mangareva. After that, they will be in Tahiti at the big Heiva there. No wonder he’s in such amazing shape! He taught me a couple of simple moves and I promptly dislocated everything below my neck. I’m sure if I tried one of those Haka chants, my jaw would have gone as well.

When the jugs were full, I picked them up to carry them back to the dinghy. He offered to take them for me, but I said I didn’t mind the exercise. He insisted, though, so I put them down. Then he picked them up and took off Fruit Race style in a full run, all while looking happy and really, really, really, ridiculously good looking. That’s it! Maryanne is not allowed to go to that store for anything!

On my last trip to pick up Maryanne and the laundry, I brought a few goodies for Fritz at Maryanne’s request. He seemed especially happy with the cheeses (the only cheese available in most of FP is heavily processed, Velveeta type stuff). In return, he gave us a couple of German sausages and showed us where the ladder was so we could strip his pamplemouse tree. Then it was all hugs and kisses and Bon Voyages and we left him to his nap.

Guests aboard Begonia

For the evening, we hosted Chris and Elayne for dinner. We spent the night trading stories. We told him about that time we had difficulty finding parking near the door at Costco and he told us the one about when he and Elayne were held by the Taliban and held captive for three days. That guy can talk! He was just getting warmed up when Elayne elbowed him in the ribs and reminded him we should have all been in bed a long time ago. Time really does fly when you’re having fun. I had hardly noticed myself, but it was all I could do to not doze off while doing the dishes.

The weather really wasn’t cooperating for moving west, so weeks of lingering in the Gambiers were curtailed to days. Not being able to think about anything else to do in Rikitea and eager to see some more of the group, we pulled up the anchor and went looking for a little more seclusion.

We motored around to the north side of the adjacent island of Taravai and anchored as the only boat in Onemea Bay. We had a perfect little tropical paradise all to ourselves. The bay was ringed with a white sand beach, above which sloped a steep wall of coconut palms and trees laden with tropical fruits. In the bay with us were lots of colorful fish darting around labyrinths of coral.

Some tranquil scenes in Taravai
Kyle undergoes some repairs under the boat!

Paradise lasted until about midnight. The wind picked up. We should have been protected from it but, rather than block it, the topography of the island bent it around and blew it straight into our bay. We were pushed so our stern was only three or four meters from coral that was breaking the surface. We got terrible sleep after that so we decided to move to the bigger bay next door as soon as it got light out.

It was also beautiful and also had no signs of human habitation, but we were a bit too far from the beach and the coral to be able to just pop over. Still, it was a perfect place to lie out on the trampoline at night with the trade winds cooling us off and bathing in the light of the full moon.

Passage to the Gambiers

[Kyle]The morning we planned to leave Pitcairn we woke early and popped our heads outside to check that Begonia and Nemo were in their same locations. Nemo was nowhere to be found. Concerned that we had either swung some unexpected direction or dragged to a new location, We went on deck and did a full 360 to see if all of our other reference points lined up. They did.

A more detailed search with binoculars revealed Nemo already most of the way to the horizon and just about to disappear behind the cliffs to our north. I guess Chris couldn’t sleep and decided to just get on with it and leave before daybreak. He does that.

Nemo and Begonia taking the same passage (Is that a Race?)

We had our anchor stowed an hour later after having breakfast and were now in hot pursuit. They had about a ten mile head start, but we can usually sail faster than monohulls even a few feet longer than us, so I figured we could catch them by afternoon. Nemo and Begonia have almost the same waterline length.

They sailed out of range of our AIS receiver and then reappeared twenty minutes later. Ten minutes after that, they disappeared again. We would get a good gust of wind, speed up and their little icon would pop up. A few minutes later, it would reach them and they would pull away again.

I tried every trick I knew for three days and we never could close the gap. Oh, if only our Secret Weapon hadn’t blown out on the way to Easter, we could have zinged right by them without having to hardly lift a finger to adjust anything. Who am I kidding? The minute they saw our spinnaker, theirs would have gone up too, and they would have remained an unapproachable purple speck on the horizon. Chris is so competitive. {Maryanne: Someone here certainly is.. Ha!}

We had to wait until daylight to enter the pass

The winds were frustratingly less than forecast and when it became apparent that neither of us would make it there by nightfall; we both slowed down and joined up for some formation heaving-to until daybreak. In the wee hours, the running calculation that’s always going in my head told me it was time to stop going sideways and start steering under bare poles to the pass. Our getaway was so slow that I don’t think our friends realized what had happened until I called them at sunrise and said, “Hey, are you guys coming or what?”

“What.”, “You go ahead. We’ll meet you inside.”

We entered the pass on the northwest side of the Gambier group. It was straightforward, apart from the part where the depth goes REALLY fast from a zillion to 5m in just a few boat lengths. The bottom is white sand with black coral heads everywhere and it just suddenly appears out of deep blue water. The water is so clear, it looks like the depths are half of what they are. It was tempting to panic and slam the boat into reverse, but we were dead center in the channel, right between the buoys, so I decided to take a deep breath, trust the chart and press on.

The depth stayed as advertised, plus or minus a meter or so as we passed over coral heads, and then dropped back down into the featureless blue of the twenties and thirties. We were in.

We followed the marked channel as it wound its way around the island of Mangareva and occasionally passed over similar shallow patches just to keep us on our toes. On the other side, we found the well-protected anchorage of the island’s only town, Rikitea.

The anchorage is protected on two sides by high land and the rest by coral reefs skimming the surface and is accessed through a very narrow and winding channel. Between the coral are three or four large patches of sand down between fifteen and twenty meters down. These depths need a lot of swinging room and as such, there was only room for about a dozen boats to anchor without risking bumping into each other. We headed over to a big open spot behind the eleventh boat and perfectly centered in it found a float for a fish trap. Grr! Now we were on anchoring plan B: Find a spot where we are not likely to bump another boat IF the wind doesn’t shift or, if it does, hope we all swing the same direction at the same time. We squeezed between the float and another boat, erring as much as we dared on the side of the float. That got us the stink-eye from our neighbor, not so much because of the small chance we would present an actual hazard to them, but because our swinging circles overlapped. In boats, the swinging circle is effectively the boundary of personal space, so we just invaded their personal space as if we had just set up a picnic on the corner of their front lawn.

An hour or so later, Nemo came in, milled around a bit and set up a picnic on our front porch. I would have complained and sent them off, but we knew full well that they had nowhere else they could go either, so we decided to keep a real close eye on the weather for any unexpected changes and hope for the best.

After my very early morning, I had expected to run out of energy as soon as the anchor dropped, but I was still going pretty strong so I tackled the job of de-lifeboating the dinghy a day earlier than planned. This left us free to go ashore and get our inbound clearance out of the way, which would remove the onerous task from the next day’s chores.

{Maryanne: We're finally back in French Polynesia and in the tropics - water to swim in, French Baguettes, and coconuts galore!}