Tag Archives: passage

Migration to Tahiti

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The migration from the Gambier Archipelago to the Society Archipelago is about 900 nm if we were to go direct.  However, we decided to head north toward the Tuamotus Archipelago then west toward the Societies which ads several hundred miles and days to our journey.

The first leg of this migration is from Taravai, Gambier to Tahanea, Tuamotus.  This passage is roughly 664nm direct and should take us 5-6 days.  The predicted forecast is for light winds, little rain, long, rolly seas.  We put up our largest spinnaker (200 square meters), since we were anticipating light winds.  We call her “Big Bertha” and she is super colorful   Usually, we take down our spinnakers at night and just run the “working sails” (main and jib) as a “just in case”.  But the winds were super light at 6-8kts and predicted to stay that way all night.

Night 2 – dun dun dun

Matt wakes me up around 2:00am announcing a pending storm.  We need to douse the spinnaker and raise the working sails.  I grab a rain jacket and make a quick trip to the bathroom.  I should have skipped the 2-minute bathroom break.  By the time I got to the deck, the wind gusted to 26 and blew out our sail.  Insert all sorts of explicates here!  We rush to the bow to pull the sail out of the water. 

Yes, Matt could have doused the sail by himself and I could have peed my pants.  Both options would have saved the sail.  Hindsight is 20/20.  But the good news is that none of the sail pieces got caught on the dagger boards, rudder, or prop!  We will try to repair her in Tahiti.  She is 22 years old. Farfugnuggin!  The lower left photo shows you where the sail ripped.

The top two photos show you the huge wind shift and gust of wind.  The bottom right photo is the parasail that we put up afterwards.

On our 5th night, we had a guest on board.  A silly, dirty boobie.  It is so hard to be mad at these birds as it is clear they are tired and just need a place to rest before continuing on their own personal migration.  But man, oh man do they leave a nasty mess!

Part I of the Migration: Gambier-Tahanea

  • Total Miles to Destination:  664nm
  • Total Miles Sailed:  710nm
  • Top Speed: 11.0kt
  • Average Speed:  6.1kt

Notes:  Super beautiful sail with the light wind coming ENE and the seas coming from ENE to E.  The seas were large at 2m, but they were long and lazy and came with long intervals in between.  We ended up sailing 46nm out of our way to maintain the wind speed.

Don’t miss our blog post “Ta Ta Tahanea” where we explore this stunning atoll for the last time.  Coming up next week.

Tahanea to Fakarava

This is the shortest part of our migration.  The tricky part is trying to time the outbound passage through the Tahanea pass with the inbound passage through Fakarava.  Unfortunately, it just does not work out.  So, we decided to leave Tahanea at the midnight outbound slack time with the hopes of arriving at the Fakarava inbound around 9a-10a in the morning. 

Typically, we don’t like to transit the passes at night because you cannot see what the water is doing.  Is it truly inbound or outbound current?  Are there standing waves?  What are the eddies doing?  Too many unknowns.  But we have tracks from a previous transit and a wee bit of the moon light and forged our way out with no issues.

The winds were light at 10-12kts from the East on a perfect beam reach.  We started with full working sails (main and jib) and were making a respectable 5-5.5 kts of boat speed.  At dawn, we lost the wind, dropped all sails and motored.  We hoisted our spinnaker but that only gave us 3kts of boat speed, so we took her down and reverted back to the motor and the jib.  This would ensure we arrive during incoming tide in Fakarava.

Super peaceful and beautiful passage to Fakarava.

Part II of Migration

  • Total Miles to Destination:  48nm
  • Total Miles Sailed: 55 nm
  • Top Speed: 11.0kt
  • Average Speed:  6.1kt
  • Total time at underway: 11 hours

Fakarava to Tahiti

We had light winds predicted for this trip.  We left the North pass at 3:00pm and had 238nm to Papeete.  An expected 2-2.5 days.  Since we did not want to arrive at night we decided to just go with our working sails.  We set them up wing on wing which means the main on one side and the jib on the other. 

We could have flown our spinnaker or parasail but then we would arrive at night – and what’s the point in that.  So, we enjoyed a nice, slow, leisurely paced sail.

Sugar Shack under sail using the spinnaker (this is our medium sized 150 square meters spinnaker as the large one (200m) was ripped on the way from Gambier to Tahanea.

  • Total Miles to Destination:  238nm
  • Total Miles Sailed:  246nm
  • Top Speed: 9.3kt
  • Average Speed:  5.5kt
  • Total time at underway:  1 day and 20 hours

I ended up writing separate blog posts for Tahanea and Fakarava so be sure to read the next few weeks to catch up on our adventures on these two atolls.

A celebration and sad farewell to the Gambier Archipelago. (see passage 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.

Passage: Amanu to Gambier

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After waiting two weeks in Amanu, we finally get what we think is an “ok” weather window to head to Gambier.  I say “ok” window because they are not “ideal” conditions, but they are doable.  The 6-forecasts show NE winds with 1-2-meter seas, little rain and no storms.  Since we are heading SE these conditions will work.  This passage should take us 3-3.5 days based on our previous trips back and forth between these archipelagos.

What we learned during this passage was that the weather predictions were wrong 90% of the time.  It wasn’t until the last 12 hours that the weather predictions were actually accurate.  Little frustrating, yes!  We downloaded new forecasts 2 times per day from 6 sources and they were all wrong. Why is it that weather forecasters can be continuously incorrect and yet still keep their jobs :)?

We left our anchorage at 0600 and had a leisure sail to the pass.  Slack tide was estimated for 0700 so we did not want to arrive too early or too late.  We managed to arrive at 0705 which was perfect and had no issues exiting the pass.

We decided to go around the NW side of Amanu which is about 18-20nm longer and out of the way.  The reason we took this route was because it would give us a better angle for the trip (we make more easting).  As it turned out, we had to go 30nm out of the way in order to clear the Amanu SE corner.  But the good news was that it was a starboard tack (best tack for our boat) and beautiful sailing.

Then we began the pinching and bashing.  Pinching means that we are sailing as close to the wind as possible while still trying to keep the sails filled.  Sugar Shack can pinch to 38 degrees on a starboard tack and 45 degrees on port.  We would be on a port tack the entire way to Gambier.

Fishing for Birds

On day 1 we put out 2 of the 3 fishing lines.  We did not catch any fish, but we did catch a bird.  We had at least 25-30 birds circling and eyeballing our fishing lures.  It was pretty entertaining.  For the most part they would just stick their beak in the water to try to get the lure.  Missing most of the time and not able to pick it up once they got it.  

It wasn’t until they starting diving (their entire body) that we got worried.  We were pulling in one line when the other line went zing.  Crap.  We caught a bird.  The only thing we can do is bring it in and try to free the poor thing.  Within a few minutes it got free and sat on the water trying to regroup.  We certainly cleaned its clock.

Then we put the lures on the poles as we waited for them to go away.  And wouldn’t you know it, they found the lures on the poles and circled them while out of the water.  Silly birds!

End of first 24 hours we made 119nm toward our destination.

Day 2

Pretty uneventful passage day.  The boat is still pinching into the wind and bashing into the waves, but we are making progress and hanging in there.  It is slow going and we are slowly growing our cross track.  The cross track shows us how far off track we are.  We cannot head directly toward our destination because the wind is not cooperating.  But we are going in the “general direction.”

One fish got on the lure, made the fishing line go “zing” but it got off before we reeled her onto the boat.  Bummer.

End of 48 hours we made another 128nm toward our destination.

A beautiful sunset to end our day

Day 3

Wowza, totally crappy day on passage.  We had 3+ meters seas (that’s over 9’!) and lots of squalls.  We were constantly dodging the squalls and trying to make progress toward our destination. Not an easy feat.

Matt woke me up at 0500 to tell me we had two “fish on.”  Oh boy.  Lots to do.  Matt starts reeling in one fish while I make preparations.  Retrieve all required fishing gear (large container, bucket, cutting board, knives, gloves, pliers).  I could not reel in the 2nd line so we let it drag.  The pole was situated to the side of the boat behind the generator.  You had to lift the pole up and over the helm to reel it in and the fish was too strong for me.

Matt got the first line in and left it dragging behind the boat – tuna!  He got to the 2nd pole and barely got it over the helm.  Unfortunately, he did not have purchase to reel it in so we had to move it to a different fishing holder.  It had been at least 15 minutes, by the time we moved it again and he started reeling it in, we lost it.  But we still got a tuna.

The 2nd lure (on the pole that lost the fish), was destroyed.  Wonder what fish took ¼ of the fishing lure?

End of day 3 we made another 109nm toward our destination.

Day 4

We woke up to a much more pleasant day.  We were still pinching and had waves on the nose, but they were back down to 1.8-2 meters.  Much better, but still not ideal.  It wasn’t until sometime in the wee hours of the morning that the weather forecast finally came to fruition.  We got the NE winds that were promised and we were able to point directly to our destination.  Thus, saving us from having to motor the last 50+ miles.

Our cross track had made it all the way up to 38nm!  That means we were 38 miles off track.  Not too terribly bad considering we could not point directly here for the past 3 days. 

Land a Ho!

We spot Mt. Duff in the horizon and it is a sight to see!  We were so happy to see the beautiful mountain peak and be close to the end of this passage.

Passage Details:

  • Miles to Destination:  478
  • Total Miles Sailed:  537 (59 miles our of our way)
  • Total Moving Time: 98 hours 56 minutes (4 days 10 min)
  • Max Speed:  11.0 (during a squall)
  • Average Speed: 5.5kt

To give you some perspective:  a 46’ Amel (monohull) left Hao at the same time we did.  They had 60+ mile cross track and arrived 6 hours after we did.  So, we are feeling pretty good about ourselves.  As you know, any time two boats are headed in the same direction it is a race.

Passage Damage

Because the boat was bashing about from the waves, we had a wee bit of damage.  Any passage can be hard on the boat and this one was no exception.   The good news is that most of the damaged items are easily fixed – yeah!

  • Jib Tact Shackle broke. We had one 90-degree shackle attached to another shackle that held down the tact (bottom part of the sail) of the jib to the furler.  Kind of important as it keeps the sail attached to the boat enabling us to sail.  At dusk on day 3, I saw the tact flapping around, called Matt and we discovered the problem.  Matt was able to tie dynema (super strong line) to hold it down and we rolled the first portion of the jib to support it and prevent additional damage.  Since we only had 100nm to go we decided to wait to do further repairs (see note below on repair)
  • Starboard Alternator Belt Shredded: We have two alternators on each engine. The starboard large alternator has two belts and one became shredded and fell off.  Alternator still works, so we continued on.  Replaced it as soon as we got to anchorage
  • Ceiling Fan Broke: In the master cabin, we have two ceiling fans.  One fan was on during the super bad day and it bounced right off the ceiling and dangled from their wires.  We were able to reattach it to the ceiling but the wires need some love. Will fix at anchor
  • LED Ceiling Light: One of the starboard ceiling lights popped out of its hole during the bad day.  We taped it back to the ceiling until we get to anchor.
  • Two Fishing Lures: The fish were brutal to both lures taking at least 1/4 of each lure.

Repairing the Jib Tact Shackle

Once at anchor, and rested, we decided to fix the jib.  Matt had to unfurl the jib which meant we needed a super calm day.  Not wise to unfurl your sail while at anchor on a windy day.

The top 3 photos show the new shackle and dynema line that Matt added to hold the sail while we were at sea.  We could not connect the two shackles while the sail was under pressure and it was too windy to take it down while we were under way.

There was a small 1/4” tear of the bolt rope which threads up the forestay.  Negligible considering it could have been so much worse had we not caught it right away.  We added a new shackle and secured the sail (bottom image).

All in all it was not our best or favorite passage, but we made it safely.  Thank goodness.

Did you read about our adventures in Amanu in our last blog.   Events from this blog post occurred at the early December 2021.  Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind our adventures.

Le Tikehau Resort

Spoiled Rotten in Tikehau

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It is with a heavy heart that we leave Tahiti and the many friends we left behind, but it was beyond time for us to move on.  We headed toward Tikehau which is 174nm away and should take 1.5 days to reach.  It was a gorgeous, sunny day with blue skies, calm seas, and a light breeze.   This is a shot of us leaving the Tahiti airport anchorage behind.

Andromeda Super Yacht

On our way out of the Papeete pass we went by a HUGE mega yacht called Andromeda.  She is 107 meters long (352’) and 18 meters (59’) wide (that’s longer than Sugar shack).  She has a maximum speed of 16.4 kts and can travel over 9800miles.

Matt thinks there are well over 20 crew working on this magnificent yacht.  The interesting thing is that while she was at anchor, she had no anchors down!  You see that is strange in that, we normal boats, require an anchor to hold us in place.  However, Andromeda has dynamic positioning / sky hook which does not require an anchor.  It holds the boat in place using GPS coordinates!

Tahiti is a crown jewel, that is for sure.  Check out her crown between the two mountains.

The Passage to Tikehau

We had an absolutely stunning passage from Tahiti to Tikehau.  It was simply perfect, with gorgeous skies, light winds giving us a beam reach, small seas, and no squalls. We set the sails once and only had to adjust them lightly to accommodate changing wind speeds.

Passage Details

  • Total Travel Time:  24 hours
  • Total Distance: 174
  • Max Speed:  10.8kt
  • Average Speed:  7.2kt

We arrived at 10am in the morning, exactly 24 hours after we picked up the hook.  We did have to wait outside the pass for 1.5 hours for it to calm down.  It looked very unhappy when we arrived, so we waited for slack tide and headed in.  A rather easy entrance with an incoming tide and 2+kts helping us in.

We anchored near Le Tikehau Resort and had the anchorage all to ourselves.

Flash Back

Last year in Gambier, Matt and I were on a small hike.  During this hike, we met Raipunui who was visiting from Tikehau.  He stopped us on the side of the road, asked where we were going (if we wanted a ride), and when we told him we were going on a small hike, he asked to join us.  We ended up spending a few hours with him and exchanging contact info.

Fast Forward

We reached out to Raipunui and told him we were in Tikehau and would like to see him.  He said he was working that night (he is the front desk manager at Le Tikehau Resort).  I asked if we could come have dinner as we were celebrating our wedding anniversary and he said “I will make it happen.”

Le Tikehau Resort

This is a beautiful resort!  Le Tikehau is situated on the water with dozens of over the water bungalows. 

Le Tikehau Resort

Le Tikehau Resort

Guests have their own private beach, access to water toys, and gorgeous views of the sunset.

Le Tikehau Resort

Le Tikehau Resort

We are super blessed to be able to come on property, considering we are not guests.  Raipunui really gave us the royal treatment!  Everyone knew we were coming – we were known as “the boat people.”  It was so funny.  As we pulled up to the dock, the first employee said “ah yes, you are the boat people.”  Then we went to the check in counter (top photo above) and the receptionist said, “welcome boat people.”  Then the waitress took our drink orders and after we explained that we did not have a bungalow, she said, oh, are you the boat people?  It was rather amusing.

They have a beautiful pool that overlooks the lagoon.  It was stunning during sunset.   But then again Tikehau sunsets don’t ever disappoint.

Le Tikehau Resort

Le Tikehau Resort

Raipuni told us to get there at 1800 which was strange to us as dinner did not start until 1900. But, we did as we were told, secured great seats on the patio as we watched the sunset and had a cocktail.  At 1830, a local Tikehau band arrived and Raipunui was the singer.  With each song, a different waitress would come out and dance.  It was spectacular.  Our own private show – with maybe 10 other people!

Chow Time

We sat down at a nice two top on a raised platform.  Ordered another cocktail, because we are celebrating after all.  Matt ordered crispy red tuna and I ordered a quiche and salad.  Matt said the tuna was divine and unlike anything else he has ever had.  My quiche was ok, it looks like a pizza, but it was all quiche.  For dessert, they brought out a heart shaped chocolate mousse cake with kiwis. The band sang “happy birthday” along with the entire restaurant as they don’t have a translation for “happy anniversary.”  It was all really exciting and sweet!

Raipunui really went all out to make us feel welcome and special.  He is truly a master as his job!  We hope to see him in early December in Gambier again as he is going there to celebrate his birthday!

The pretty side of Tahiti is shown in on our last blog as we discover a new marae, snack and live concert.   Events from this blog post occurred mid-November.  Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind our adventures.