16º 27.045s 145º 22.042w
Sun Jun 30 2019
Well
here we are in the Southeast corner of Fakarava with something like 25 other
boats. There’s another 10 or so down by the South pass about 6 miles from us.
They’ve got good protection from the swell, but except for the few moorings
there it’s a bit of a dicey anchorage with bommies galore and not many sandy
patches. Intuition would make one think that it would be best to be there in
dead calm weather, however the flaw in that plan is having the boat wander
around and tangle the anchor chain around numerous bommies, something that can
lead to damage and loss of ground tackle if the wind heats up. What’s actually
better is to have the wind steady out of the South so that there’s no fetch and
the boat lies still without much movement back and forth. Once the anchor is
stuck in the rocks at least things hopefully won’t get worse. The boats down
there now have pretty much settled in for the blow that’s coming, and hopefully
they’re all securely moored or anchored.
Up
here in Southeast corner, called Hirifa, we’ve anchored in about 8 meters of
water at about 6:1 scope. We’ve carefully inspected the anchor to ensure it’s
dug into good sand, and there appear to be no bommies for the first 16 meters
of chain to entangle should we swing. We’ve installed floats at about 17
meters, 27 meters and 37 meters then the bridle is connected at about 47
meters. We reckon we’re set for the blow and so far haven’t moved in winds up
to about 25 knots.
Mr.
Weatherman says it’s going to blow up into the mid to high 30’s, so we’ll just
see how well our plan works out. We’ve got a killer Sarca Excel #5 anchor
we imported from Australia, and it’s held us in other blows about as bad as the
one to come. The holding here is really good, and if necessary we’ve got enough
room around the other boats to let out a bit more chain, but we think we’re
pretty set for what’s forecast.
Looks
like this is going to last up to a week, so now it’s time to put projects, kite
surfing, and fun and games with other cruisers on the calendar. We’ve no
internet access here, and the cell service is 2G so other than SSB email or
Iridium Go, we’re isolated from the world. Having recently had a chance to look
at the news, it’s obvious that we haven’t missed a thing and the giant bucket
of noise that’s daily news doesn’t do anything but increase our stress level.
Business news is more interesting, but that’s something we can get snippets of
over email using Reuters or some other service.
Paddling
a SUP in 20+ knots of wind is challenging, but if we survive the first 100
meters towards the beach, the trees provide good shelter and the water is flat
calm. It’s fun tooling along in shallow water and the visibility is good enough
to see all the little creatures living around the bommies. Yesterday I paddled
by a 1.5 meter black tip shark, a fine looking fellow indeed!
For
us this will be a bit like the old days when we were snowed in and played lots
of cards or piddled with some craft. I’ve got plenty of dyneema lines to build,
perhaps a few new soft shackles and loops, so no risk of being bored. Hopefully
by week’s end a few more projects will be off the list!
We
visited New Zealand a few years back, and discovered they might just have the
tastiest ice cream on the planet. Certainly the amount of butter fat in their
ice cream is world class. Between the local sauvignon blanc, flat white coffees
and ice cream we just about went broke, but wow was it fun. My favorite flavor
of ice cream was “hokey pokey”, and darned if there isn’t a sailboat anchored
down at the South pass with that name.
That’s
got to be one of my favorite boat names of all time, right alongside “Mystical
Crumpet”.
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