Underway for Fakarava

15º 58.156s 145º 16.859w

Sat Jun 08 2019

Well, Kauehi was a great stop, and quite appropriate for our first atoll. Easy pass on the Southwest corner with prevailing winds from the East made for a “training wheels” entry. Everyone gets worked up about entering and departing atolls, and for good reason, but this one worked out fine and is known to be easy relative to many of the others.

The Southeast anchorage was also good for our first atoll try, with the opportunity to anchor in 4 meters of water and still the anchor chain (and JollyDogs) remained well clear of bommies. Great holding too, in a mix of crushed coral and sand. A couple minutes swim from JollyDogs and we were into some lovely snorkeling with many varieties of colorful reef fish, beautiful clams that our book claims to be Tridacna crocea, or commonly called boring giant clams. They’re not called that because they’re boring to look at, rather because of the way the grow in cracks in coral and rocks. Absolutely stunning to look at. There were also a pair of small (1.5 meter long) black tip sharks that followed folks around like lost puppies. Quick dinghy access to several motus and the inlets that defined them made for fun land adventures as well, but we did learn that a particular species of bird breeds there and during nesting season it’s best to stay off the motus where they’re present. Just like everywhere else, the presence of man and the removal of native plant species to plant cash crops (coconuts here) are destroying the wildlife habitats. Yep, mankind is like a bunch of suicidal cockroaches, and when we’re done blowing each other up or trashing the planet, we’ll be gone and the real cockroaches will still be skittering about.

The little village was interesting to visit, the locals very friendly, and the stores adequately stocked with non-perishable food items. Many homes had solar, they all had cisterns to capture rain water, and there was a small diesel power plant to supplement the solar. There was a good cell phone signal in the anchorage by the village with horrible 2G (I think also called edgeband) data speed, just enough to be almost useless and totally frustrating. Just for fun I tried calling our pals Mike and Tami who are in Europe and attending an Eric Clapton concert tonight. We both have Google Fi service and Fi specific phones. The call went through (I thought it would bounce to voice mail) and the call quality was very good! Let’s hear it for Google Fi! Best part we all retain our US cell numbers, calls are only 20 cents per minute, and the monthly base fee for my and Isabel’s 2 lines is $35 US. Data is $10 per gigabyte. No screwing around with local sim cards like we used to do in UK and Europe and Mexico. Yahtzee!

Anchoring in the South bay of the village was a bit of a challenge; we deployed and pulled down 3 times before we were happy with the set, but when we visited with Anselmo, the proprietor of Yip Magazin (best stocked shop we found) he noted that the middle bay had moorings the village people had installed specifically for cruisers. Isabel and I dinghied over there to snorkel for a bit and we were suitably impressed with their integrity. I wouldn’t hesitate to take one and ride out a blow. We have heard about moorings on other atolls that haven’t been well maintained, but just like anchoring, it’s nuts to assume all is well unless one dives on the anchor or mooring to verify proper integrity.

We found some good snorkeling by a small Island about 1 ½ miles from the anchorage which offered up a 2 meter white tipped reef shark and a different flavor of boring giant clams. Another 1.5 miles in the dinghy got us to an access point for some great beach combing. Isabel loves to wander the beach and look for treasures; she now has a variety of cowries to sort through and other things she refers to as “pretty shells” as she can’t be bothered to properly identify them.

Today we elected to launch out for Fakarava, apparently along with about 6 other vessels. We timed our transit through the pass to match the slack water current suggested by our “tidal guestimator” spreadsheet, and it was spot on! Flat water, no standing waves, easy peasy kinda sleazy!

Now we’re on a dead downwind run towards Fakarava North pass, where the tidal guestimator suggests we should arrive around 1430. We’ve got around 13 knots of true wind and we’re making around 45% of that speed with our simbo (twizzle to English folks) rig set. No rolling, no effort, nothing to do but wait for a giant tuna to chomp on one of our lures and feed us for another week.

Life is good!