Leaving the Maquesas for the Tuamotus

Seems 4 boats in the bay at Nuku-Hiva decided at the same time to pull up anchor and head for the mouth of the bay, a Swiss from Basel, an Australian and a Swedish boat. The Swedish boat swung by and told us he was also off to the Tuamotus. The other was a Bavaria with an Australian flag whom we didn’t communicate with.

We watched them power out ahead while Carolyn dodged around some outrigger canoes, the other 2 boats hoisted their main sails. By the time we cleared the outrigger canoes a rain squall hit us so we waited….big mistake. By the time the squall passed we had reached the mouth of the bay where we encountered the full force of the ocean swells driven by the trade winds. In order to hoist the main sail one has to point the boat into the wind and hence into the ocean swells. It makes for an up and down sloppy uncomfortable ride which requires total concentration for every movement especially once you leave the safety of the cockpit and move forward on deck.

OK back to the business of hoisting the main sail. It requires attaching the halyard (this is the rope that is used to pull the sail up) to the clew (a reinforced hole at the very top of the sail). Times like these you really could use a Brand or a David Andrews or a Jimbo Oberst IE someone with more height. Having none of those on board means yours truly maneuvering his 51 year old bones up onto the granny bars. OK granny bars are like a 3 foot high gate designed to prevent you falling while you work on the mast). Once standing on the granny bars the halyard can be attached to the top of the sail.
The above was completed without much elegance and plenty of grunting and no doubt would make a funny movie, as we watched the other 2 boats disappear over the horizon, both having missed the squall and no doubt without the gymnastics we experienced hoisting the main sail. Still once we set the mainsail with one reef (a reef is basically a reduced sail in that the whole sail is not used) and just the staysail (the staysail is the middle sail between the main sail and the sail at the very front the yankee) we were sailing at 6 to 7 knots. With about 440 n miles to go we estimated 4 days and hoped to make a landfall in Mahini an atoll to the North of the Tuamotus.

Best laid plans
Well an estimated 100 miles a day turned into about 150 + miles a day with beautiful sunny days and long ocean swells, the first we had experienced and by far the best sailing conditions so far. In fact other than rolling out the yankee genoa we never touched the sails. But and isn’t there always? We now faced the predicament of arriving at night as we were sailing too fast. One thing should be mentioned about night arrivals – it’s a no no unless you know the area, and also that the area has no hazards.

Atolls
Atolls are like a coral necklace of reef in the middle of the ocean and in this case the trade winds. Parts of the necklace are high enough to support palm trees and these parts are where the people live, not that there are many! Of course there is a break in the necklace where the ocean can flow in and out called a pass. We do have a guide book thanks to the helpful Kevin in Nuku-Hiva and it describes a number of atolls and their passes. The passes vary in characteristics some can only be entered at slack tide (when the natural flow of water in or out of the atoll is at its minimum). The flow of the tide in or out in some passes can exceed 5 knots…..and our boat under motor barely does 7 knots. Bit like trying to overtake a Mercedes with a Fiat 500 or a 3 wheeled Gremlin.

Change of plans
Given our original destination Mahini was out of the question due to the night arrival we decided to head about 100 miles south west to make the South West pass of the atoll called Fakarava. According to the guide this was an easy pass with only a 4 knot flow in the worst conditions. C bless her heart had downloaded tide tables and calculated the best time to enter the pass. We calculated we needed to maintain a boat sped of about 3 to 3.5 knots for the next 30 hours in order to arrive at the best time to enter the pass, around 1030 in the morning. C made fresh bread and corn bread and bean spouts our only fresh source of vegetable – yummmm.

We were able to reduce sail and maintain about 3.5 knots through the night and into the next day. But the wind died requiring the engine, not only that we had to navigate between 2 atolls to the north west of Fakarava. It meant passing within 5 miles of each atoll in the pitch black of night. Thank God for modern GPS, chart plotters and radar. The French charts were accurate and clearly matched the physical position of the boat according to the radar image which gave us a lot of confidence. There was no evidence of the atolls as we passed by, C smelt smoke (not from us) as often is the case in the Pacific Islands or Atolls.

Daylight found us within sight of Fakarava atoll with the wind on the nose – still motoring.