Ta Ta Tahanea

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After our 5-day passage, we arrive at the Tahanea pass with 4 knots of outgoing current.  Not ideal for our incoming arrival.  But we power up the engines and make it through the pass with no problems.  Yeah us!

Anchoring in Tahanea can be “tricky” as you have to avoid getting your anchor stuck or your chain wrapped around one of the gazillion bommies (little black marks in the photo).  In the middle of the photo is shows the pass where you enter the lagoon.  You can see there is an outgoing current at the time of the phot.

As we were approaching the Tahanea pass we saw a rather large cruise ship on AIS.  Super strange as these are not the “normal” cruising grounds for that type of vessel.

The World

A completely foreign occurrence happened the morning we arrived in Tahanea.  Typically, you will only see a small handful of other sail boats here.  However, a rather large, 196-meter cruiser ship entered the pass and dropped the hook right behind us!  WTF!  Seriously, why would you bring tourist here when there are NO services.  OMG What is this world coming to? 

The cruise ship is called “The World” and it is the world’s largest privately owned yacht.  All of the cabins are privately owned (like condos) and evidently you have to be worth over $5M to be considered for a cabin.  A 700’ cabin will run you about $300,000.  But you will be draped in luxury.  Lucky for us, they left around 5:00pm the same day and we had our anchorage all to ourselves again.  Matt said it “farts rainbows.”

 Boobies, Boobies, and more Boobies

As you know by now, boobies are a type of bird that are super common in French Polynesia.  There are red foot, blue foot, and brown foot boobies.  And they are all super fabulous

There are lots of nesting motus where the a large variety of birds mate.  We enjoy seeing them, but keep our distance so as not to scare them off.

The adolescent boobie (top left) was with a friend and they literally walked or rather waddled up to us.  I took the funniest video (check it out on my instagram account).

 The boobies in Tahanea nest in the trees and on the ground!

Some of the young adult boobies are super curious.  One little guy decided he wanted onboard Sugar Shack!

 Turtle Nest

On one motu we spied these tracks from the water to a spot below a tree.  They were turtle tracks – most likely a large turtle like a leatherback!  One set of tracks left the momma up to the nest and one set of tracks left her back to the water.

A little Relaxation Station

We head to a motu near the eastern most pass and discover a small village.  It is used as a communal area for locals visiting from other atolls.  They even built an outdoor seating area.

 Tahanea Anchorages

 The anchorages here are simply breathtaking!  It is so difficult to express in words so here are a few photos.

 And my favorite anchorage, called “7”  The reef makes a natural “7” in the lagoon.

Tahanea 7 Anchorage

Tahanea 7 Anchorage

So very beautiful.  Our anchorage near the pass at sunset.

We take our time migrating from Gambier to Tahiti (see migration post).   The migration began 25 Feb. in Gambier and ended on 26 March in Tahiti.  Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind our adventures.

Fiji Bound Day#12 – Jumping ship

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Investigation into why Mr Spinnaker would jump ship in the middle of the night revealed that he had help. Not exactly sure of who his accomplice was but the evidence points to the shackle. The wayward crew member waited just the exact moment to escape the shackle that bound him to our service. After pulling him back on board and a full check over all is back in place for the next time his service is required. If he tries the same trick again, he will also have to deal with a dyneema lashing that is the backup in case that becomes unscrewed again.

It’s not a normal marine shackle and I assume its bent a bit as it took some good leverage to get the nut closed so I would be surprised if it ever comes apart again, but just in case the stronger than steel dyneema lashing is there as a backup.

Today was not a spectacular day. It was gray and overcast with rain squalls all day long and they are continuing into the night again. We are just running the jib and making decent progress at a comfortable ride. Actually with the high winds and high waves we have been surfing quite fast a lot today. Max surf at 11.7 and all day average of 6 knots with just a foresail.

Enough to get us to Fiji, we saw some of the outer island when we still had 120 miles to go. The rain and dark clouds made spotting them a bit of a challenge. None the less we have 90 or so miles left to the anchorage. Where a beer and customs/immigration and a long nap on less bouncy boat will be in order. Most likely in that order.

Tonights project, use up the last of the fresh veggies before we have to turn them in, cabbage will be coleslaw, cucumbers will be marinated, apples will be eaten, tomatoes will be salsa. Might have to turn in a onion or two. Limes …hmmm…. Margaritas? That would be awesome, but sure the customs and immigration would appreciate slurring of the vocabulary.

A pretty sweet passage, 12 days – We left Saturday around noon will arrive Thursday around noon – but its actually a Friday because we crossed the date line. We are now in the future. Looks the same but only newer. This is one day longer than our Easter Island to Gambier, French Polynesia but a bazillion times smoother passage and easier more comfortable passage. Christine did amazing. No sign or hint of seasickness that comes from sailing over night, might be getting used to it? Or just highly medicated on this extra long trip.

I will try and remember to post an arrival notice, but with beer and sleep being the priority I hope I don’t forget like I normally do.

Fiji Bound Day #11 – Squally Tuesday / Spinny goes for a dip.

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After a beautiful night time run with the spinnaker running all night. Day broke and there were some dark spots appearing on our sunny days. A really dark spot off our port side where the wind was coming from. Looked like rain was already falling.

Christine is the net controller this morning. The net is time and frequency on the SSB radio where all sailors from around French Polynesia can checkin for safety and local advice and basic jib jab chatting. This Tuesday is her last day as a controller and there are lots of boats checking in, so just before the net we took the spinnaker down so _IF_ the squall got closer I wouldn’t have to interrupt the net. All good squall came and went with some wind and rain and Christine received a bunch of accolades for running the Tuesday slot for the last couple of years.

The day wasn’t the best on the passage, patches of blue sky. Wind was a bit strong for the spinnaker and the waves were building. But the boat was doing fine, every hour or so we’d take a hard look at the skies to see if would hoist the spinnaker again, but ended up just going slow and I was napping quiet effectively.

One hour just rolled into the next, until the sky looked inviting and the wind has stayed down for the past hour. Time to hoist the small spinnaker again. All was going to plan till the spinnaker decided it had had enough of me and decided to jump ship and go for a swim. What a fickle little guy. Yes, I know Sugar Shack is heavy with all our live aboard gear, but its his job to just pull the boat along. I guess he had had enough and needed to cool off! Grrrr..

So now that means we have to coax him back on board with uplifting banter and jovial promises of going on a diet, and when that didn’t work brute force ensued. Some profound language I’m sure was used as well. The connection inside the sock that the spinnaker lives had failed but luckily everything was attached to the boat. With the boat cruising along at 5 knots its impossible to pull a wet bed sheet for Shreck out of the water.. The jib was still pulling the boat forward so we had to roll that up and that was enough slowing the boat down that we were able to pull it all out of the water. Now waiting on daylight to see the state of the spinnaker.

So we were going to knock out some more miles with the spinnaker between dark clouds to give us a little wiggle room on the Thursday arrival (Friday in Fiji) so that we can avoid overtime charges for the government officials to come out to the boat to check us in. We will have to see what our options are for speeding up in they day time. Probably not going to take the short-cut through the islands and reefs as we will be hitting them at dark, opting instead to go for the Nanuku Passage as its the widest on the charts and doesn’t add too much to the distance to go.

180 miles to go to our waypoint, then another 5 or so to get to the town to check in.

[tag Live,Passage,underway]