A good word to describe our 20 hour passage from Raroia down to Makemo might be “easy”. Departing Raroia was challenge free. After turning on course for the South end of Taenga we rolled out the jib, shut down the engines, and tooled along at about 5.5 knots until the breeze died a bit, then eventually removed the soft shackle holding the twin headsails together, tensioned up their individual sheets rigged through barber haulers, and turned dead downwind, seas at our stern. Pretty much a sleigh ride, nothing to do but wait.
The moon didn’t rise until after midnight, and with only a few little puffy clouds lingering, the stars were magnificent. Catching up on old podcasts while kicking back and watching for shooting stars made for a great night, and around 0130 this morning I gave Isabel her chance to enjoy the view so I could snooze a few hours, then up again around 0600 for coffee and to prepare to enter the pass by the village. By 0820 we were through the pass and hunting a suitable anchor spot, finding a fine patch of sand amongst the bommies. About a half hour of snorkeling and rearranging anchor chain floats and we were set. Isabel deployed the dinghy and we launched an expedition to plunder the village.
Having been here last October we kind of know our way around, but no doubt there’s something we’d missed. First stop – the shop where we purchased both croissants and diesel, a store that compared to the little shop in Raroia felt like going to a bloody Costco. I’m not kidding when I state that it was almost a sensory overload experience! Both of us wandering up and down the isles, gawking at things like fresh red onions, more than one kind of toothpaste, and cheese!
Best of all this shop also takes a credit card which is good, because even though there is an ATM down by the post office, there’s no telling whether it’ll work or not. Given we’re going to provision for a month, and oh by the way they can now sell spirits Monday through Thursday, vast sums of money could change hands.
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