Almost there! Arriving Kauehi

16º 01.003s 145º 07.966w

Fri May 31 2019

Well, we’ve had a marvelous sail down from Ua Pou to Kauehi. We passed a smaller atoll around 2300 last night – I was pleased to see the motus painting on radar, but did note a bit of position error on the electronic chart. Not a lot, perhaps a few hundred meters, but still reminded me of a joke about horse shoes and hand grenades.

I tugged on Isabel’s foot around midnight and as she came on watch we agreed she should aim to be at the waypoint designated as our IAF (initial approach fix) at 0500. There we would have to turn about 90 degrees to starboard, then proceed about another 9 miles towards the channel entrance. Timing the arrival is important, as we need to motor through the pass at slack water then turn on towards our anchor point. The wind had piped up around 2100 and I finally decided to put a reef in the main to slow us down a bit, as a timely arrival would be better than arriving too early. Getting to a holding position outside the channel in the dead of night, then having to hold position outside the channel for hours just seemed so yukky.

The tidal charts for the Tuamotus are pretty sketchy, but we’ve got a “tidal guestimator” spreadsheet that another cruiser put together, and it crunches tides and currents for each atoll’s particular entrance channel. Think of an atoll as a kettle and the channel as the spout; as the tide goes in and out there’s whole lot of water that has to move through the channel, so the incoming or outgoing current can get pretty extreme, and standing waves can build near the channel entrance making for some really sporty conditions. If the wind is howling in the wrong direction it can further aggravate the situation, so there moving through the pass at slack water is kind of important.

Isabel played with the jib, winding it in and out, and when she awakened me to signal the arrival at the IAF waypoint it was exactly 0500. Wow that woman is good! We jibed JollyDogs and rolled up the jib, and now we’re sailing gently along and should be at the waypoint just outside the channel entrance right on schedule. In the meantime, we’ve absorbed one squeezy pot of coffee, and I’m thinking there may need to be at least another cup in my near future to ensure clear thinking for the upcoming navigational tasks. Lucky for us Thad left behind heaps of Starbucks Via instant coffee packets!

We experienced a variety of sailing conditions during this 3 ½ day passage including winds under 3 knots prompting us to motor a total of around 13 hours. We got plenty of practice making JollyDogs go in very light airs (she does great with the screecher up), and we had some spectacular flat sea and beam wind conditions allowing fast and smooth going without any bouncing about. It really doesn’t get much better than this! Now the sun is a bit above the horizon, we can see a couple of the motus, and we’re looking good for our arrival time. The sky is mostly clear with some little puffies about, and the forecast is for a pretty nice day. The next trick will be getting through the pass, then evaluating the visibility and lighting conditions inside the atoll. We’ll need to move away from the pass and the strong currents, then decide if the sun angle will allow us to see down into the water. There be bommies (large coral heads rising from the sea floor) down there, and if we hit one of those we’ll get to use the life raft. It looks so much better in the valise!

We’re excited and slightly apprehensive, but conditions are ideal and we did have enough sense to pick one of the easiest atolls for our first landing approach. Kawil, a 112’ superyacht is anchored just inside to the right of the entrance, probably so their guests have quick access to spectacular snorkeling, and we’re thinking we may wander over to their general area and drop the hook. With any luck we can chat with their captain and get a local briefing and perhaps their own secret set of waypoints. Navigating that big sailboat with her deep draft through an atoll must be pretty interesting indeed!

There’s cold beer (even lousy local lager tastes pretty good after a passage) and a hammock ride in our near future, along with some killer snorkeling. White and black tip sharks will become our new dive buddies today; let’s hope they don’t consider us part of their food chain!