katie

Diving with Dolphins

After leaving Fakarava, we had an easy overnight sail to Rangiroa. Rangiroa is one of the atolls in the Tuamotus which we weren’t able to visit last year. So, we were excited to explore a new place. Our friends Diana and Marcus on Allora came along with us, and we were very excited to run into our French friends Caroline and Philippe on Ivadel when we arrived in the anchorage. We first met Caroline and Philippe in Mexico and reconnected with them last year in the Marquesas. Upon arrival, they told us that they were in Rangiroa so that Philippe could complete his dive master certification at one of the local dive shops.

One of the reasons we really wanted to visit Rangiroa was for the diving. As many dives as we have done in French Polynesia, we have never seen dolphins in the water. We see dolphins from the boat, but it seems to be really rare to see them snorkeling or diving. However, Rangiroa is known for some local dolphins that either tolerate or actually like playing with the divers. We’ve had friends tell stories of dolphins coming right up to them like dogs wanting to be petted. We had no intention of actually touching a dolphin, but I really wanted to see them while diving.

There had been a rather large south swell for a few days filling the lagoon which meant that the current in the pass into the lagoon was always going out. With wind opposing the current, this also meant that there were some rather large waves in the pass. Due to the conditions, and our desire to get the best shot at finding the dolphins, we decided to go with some local dive shops rather than attempt the dives on our own.

We didn’t waste anytime getting to the diving and scheduled a sunset dive for the same day that we arrived. On the first dive, there were no dolphins, but lots of great barracuda, a school of twenty spotted eagle rays and a fantastic end to the dive where we ended up in a huge school of thousands of small jacks of some sort.

The next day we were back at it with even more determination to see dolphins. We had a different dive guide this time, a young French woman who was the most at ease in the water I had ever seen. She just kind of floated with an occasional frog kick to propel her forward, unlike my clumsy diving where I’m always trying to dial in my buoyancy and not look like a flailing fish when trying to deal with current. I aspire to look so calm in the water!

Anyway, our guide suggested that our best shot at seeing the dolphins might be to go out a little bit further from the reef “into the blue.” After a “one, two, three, everybody into the water,” we descended into the blue. I had never had a dive like this where all around was blue. You couldn’t see the bottom or the reef off to our right. As we descended, I had to carefully watch my depth gage, because I had absolutely no sense of how deep we were with no reference points around us. Even looking up at the surface didn’t give you any clue as to where you were. It really did feel like floating in outer space. I thought it was awesome.

We swam for a while with some fish drifting by and eventually over toward the reef. All the while, we were constantly looking for the dolphins. As my air showed less than half a tank left, I was beginning to think that dive number two was also going to be a bust for dolphins. But, just as I was beginning to lose hope that we would see them, they appeared. The dolphins were above us toward the surface, but we could see a small pod of four or five. And, the most amazing part was a baby dolphin who we were told by the dive guide had just been born about 10 days prior. If it is possible to smile with a regulator in your mouth, I did it.

After three dives, the weather forecast was not looking too good to stay anchored up by the pass. We looked at sailing down to the southeast part of the lagoon where we would have some protection from the wind and fetch. That part of the lagoon also has large sand flats where Mike and Marcus were very excited to do some fly fishing for bonefish.

The boys had a fun time that week out every morning stalking the fish on the flats. Diana, who is an artist did an awesome mosaic on one of the sand spits which a bunch of shells she collected. And, one day Diana and I went out to do some fun photo shoots. Diana caught this cool photo of me and an a sting ray. (I now want a dome lens for my camera!)

She also got some awesome drone photos of our boats, that I’m thankful she shared with me.

The wind subsided and we headed back to the anchorage by the pass to do some more diving. We got in a couple more dives and even got to have Philippe act as our dive guide as part of his training with one of the dive shops. We saw the dolphins (and the baby) a few more times, but they never got too close to us. I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get my close encounter, but we gave it our best shot.

We loved Rangiroa, and I could have stayed there a lot longer, but the time was coming for us to head back to Tahiti and to start to head west. Leaving the Tuamotus with no idea if or when we will every be able to return gave me a sad pang. I know that there is more to see out there, but it is hard to wrap your head around leaving a place that it truly a paradise.

~katie

Dinghy Walkabout

After leaving Tahanea, we headed to the atoll of Fakarava. Fakarava was one of my favorite places that we visited last year. The southern pass is known as one of the best dive spots in French Polynesia, if not the world. The fascinating thing about diving the pass is the wall of sharks. I posted a video last year of diving in the pass. If you haven’t seen it, click on the videos link on the front page of the blog and check it out. Hopefully, I’ll eventually get up another video from this year’s dives.

We arrived early in the morning and found an open mooring to pick up. And, as we came in we recognized another boat in the anchorage, Alondra. We got to know Ken, Edith and their two daughters last year and were excited to see them again. Ken and Edith are marine biologists and avid divers, so we knew we were in for a treat to dive with them again. The minute we said hello, we were already planning a dive with them.

There was a lot of incoming current in the pass, so in order to dive we tied up one dinghy to a buoy outside the pass and left another dinghy inside the pass. The plan was to surface in the shallow water near the second dinghy where someone could then head back and retrieve the first dinghy. It’s been fun learning how other people dive on their own without paying to go with a dive operation. It’s a little more work, but it is rewarding to plan and organize your own dives and then successfully fulfill them.

We descended down to the ocean floor full of coral and beautiful reef fish about 60 feet down and then headed to the middle of the pass where there is a deep canyon. The canyon is where all of the sharks hang out. Ken and Edith showed us where there was a cave located at 90 feet down. The cave didn’t extend far inside, but it provided a fun sandy spot to hang out and watch all of the sharks drift by. The sharks really do seem like they are floating in air as they calmly swim against the current. It is a lot of fun to watch.

We didn’t stay that deep for long, especially because once we were out of the cave the current pushed us further in where we could just relax and float by all the fish. As we got even shallower, there was an area Ken referred to as “Superman Alley.” That’s because the current really has you flying over the coral at that point. If you want to stop, you’ve got to grab onto something and hold on tight! It was all super fun, and in all we got about five more dives in there.

Another boat had invited us and our friends Marcus and Diana aboard for cocktails at sunset. We had fun with friends new and old telling lots of sailing yarns, but we got a real shock when we went to leave. It was about 9:00 pm and pitch black out. So, when we discovered our dinghy was no longer tied to the back of their boat, we both had a bit of a freak out.

When you live on a boat, your dinghy is your lifeline to shore. It is a bit like your car to get you from A to B, but also lets us do fun things like dive and snorkel and fish. And, when you are in a remote spot like Fakarava, you can’t just go out to the store and get another one. So, if we couldn’t find the dinghy, it was going to seriously put a crimp in our future plans.

I got dropped off at our boat while Mike in our new friends’ dinghy and Marcus and Diana in their dinghy went out looking with spot lights. It seemed hopeless, especially when Mike got back about an hour later with no sign of the dinghy. Neither of us slept well that night.

The next morning we were up early trying to come up with a plan. Fakarava is an atoll, which means that other than the two passes, it is a lagoon with a fringing reef and lots of motus (islands). We thought about the winds and tides and all came to the conclusion that it would be unlikely, if not impossible, for the dinghy to have gotten out of the lagoon. But, to search the lagoon seemed like an insurmountable task. It is huge!

As soon as it was a decent hour to bug people, I started getting on the phone and email to contact anyone and everyone we knew in Fakarava to get the word out. We figured if the dinghy was found, it would likely be brought to the main town of Rotoava about 25 miles away. In the meantime, Mike and Diana went to shore to see if they could hire a local boat, that would be much bigger and faster, to go searching.

Just as I had about exhausted everyone I could think to contact (boats in Rotoava, yacht services, gendarme, etc.), Diana excitedly came over the VHF to say that they had found the dinghy!

We don’t know how the dinghy came loose. Mike tied the line around the rail the way he always has done, but somehow it came undone. So, the line was dragging in the water as the dinghy blew away. That ultimately was a blessing, because that line just barely snagged on some coral as the dinghy drifted over a shallow reef. And so, the dinghy was just sitting there waiting for us only a couple of miles away. There were all smiles aboard both the boat that took Mike and Diana out searching and aboard Adagio where I was waiting. Whew!

~katie

Jellyfish

Right before we left the Gambiers for the Tuamotus (about 650 miles), I started having really severe headaches that were causing me to be nauseous, vomit, dizzy and generally incapacitated. At first I thought it was just really bad migraines. But, then they would come and go. I would be fine one day and in bed the next. We were in passage planning mode, and this was really not the time to be sick.

We had a decent weather window to leave the Gambiers, and if we didn’t take it we might have to wait another couple of weeks. After a bit of discussion, we decided to go anyway. Mike said he could handle the boat himself, essentially single-handing, if I could just stand some watches for a few hours at a time to let him get some rest. It was a huge undertaking for him to do, but he was confident it would be fine.

Thankfully, we had a wonderful passage from the Gambiers to Tahanea in the Tuamotus. The wind was perfect, and we sailed almost the whole way wing and wing downwind. The first few days I was really feeling bad, but then I started to feel more like myself and could help out a bit more. I tried to get as much rest as I could, and Mike was wonderful. By the time we arrived in Tahanea, I was hopeful I was finally back to being 100%.

My hopefulness was short lived when we arrived in Tahanea, as I had another horrible day where I couldn’t keep any food down. My friend Diana was so lovely trying to help me troubleshoot what could possibly be wrong. I didn’t have a high fever or any symptoms that were life threatening, so we didn’t feel the need to bolt to civilization for medical assistance. It was just a long two weeks of on and off days. We still don’t know what the problem was, but suspect it was likely one of those lovely tropical mosquito borne viruses that you can’t do anything about except wait it out anyway.

We ended up in the most beautiful anchorage in Tahanea with clear, sunny days, and I was miserable that I wasn’t able to go out and enjoy it. We had seen these very strange looking large, purple jellyfish around the anchorage when we approached. Diana has inspired me with her amazing underwater photography, so I was not surprised when she immediately dove in to photograph them. Later that night, she showed us her amazing photographs that looked unreal. The jellyfish looked like alien creatures with amazing colors of blues and purples. Her pictures looked like works of art, and I was determined to get some photos before we left this place.

Finally I was feeling up for getting in the water and set off with Diana and our cameras to capture the jellyfish. Each one was slightly different in shape and color. Some of them would dive down toward the sand while others stayed up near the surface. It was a sunny day, and the sunlight reflecting through the water onto the jellyfish made them seem as if they had internal lights lighting them up inside. We tried photographing them at all different angles and at different stages as they swam. Despite my best efforts, I really can’t even describe them. The best pictures, to me, are shots zoomed in that show the unique detail on each one. We were both so fascinated by them that I think neither of us wanted to leave the water even though my fingers looked like prunes.

These jellyfish were so unreal and like nothing I have seen in the water. They were also the most fascinating thing I have ever photographed. Diana was right in her assessment that an awe inspiring day with creatures like that can be very healing, and it was. It was just what I needed to get out of my slump and start feeling more like myself.

~katie

Shark Bump

We followed our friends Marcus and Diana on Allora to a beautiful anchorage in the northern part of the Gambiers, where their friend Eric owns a pearl farm. Marcus and Diana have been in French Polynesia for two years and really made some wonderful friends with some locals, including Eric and his family.

We took the dinghies over to Eric’s place which has a huge sand flat out front where Mike and Marcus were going to do some fly fishing. Around the side of the island is what is called a “false pass.” A false pass is a break in the reef that heads out to the open ocean, but it is not deep enough for a boat to be able to pass through across the reef. But, the false pass made for a great snorkeling location.

Diana and I left the boys in the flats and headed to the pass with our snorkel gear. We had to almost crawl across very shallow coral to get to these large caverns or bowls of deeper water cut into the reef. It was a spectacular site. Diana and I each started exploring the area, diving down to look in little crevasses under the coral and getting great pictures of all kinds of colorful reef fish. We saw several species of huge grouper lumbering around and even had a couple schools of bluefin trevally swim by.

After swimming for a little while, several whitetip reef sharks appeared. The whitetips have been the most curious sharks in my experience. Most of the other reef sharks won’t get that close to you, but the whitetips don’t seem to have much fear. They are usually in the 4-5 foot range, so they are big enough to be substantial but not usually frightening. A couple of times I would turn around to see one only a foot or two next to me just staring at me. It was starting to get a bit annoying, because I then became distracted constantly looking around me.

At one point I was at the surface and turned to find one shark heading straight for me at an angle from below quite quickly. At the same time, there were two or three others swimming nearby me. It was a little unnerving. I faced the shark heading toward me. As I had my fins out toward the shark, he came up and bumped my fins. I kicked him to get him to move away from me, which didn’t really do much in terms of a deterrent effect. Finally, he moved away a bit as I looked over at Diana. She asked me, “Did he bump you?” When I said yes, we decided to move out of the area. Some locals had told Diana that the sharks will bump you before they decide to take a bite.

Neither of us wanted to be shark bait, so we swam to a shallower area where the sharks didn’t follow us. The whitetip reef sharks aren’t known for being aggressive or dangerous, so we don’t know if these particular sharks were just curious or being territorial, or what. Whatever it was, we didn’t really stick around long enough to find out. Luckily, the sharks didn’t bother us the rest of the afternoon as we snorkeled around the shallows and headed back in toward where the boys were fly fishing.

As I’m sure you all know by now, Mike loves to fish. But, he had done mostly deep sea fishing and had not tried his hand at fly fishing. Marcus is a huge fly fisherman and inspired Mike to try it. So, when we were back in the States, Mike bought himself a fly fishing rod. The sport of fly fishing is really fascinating to watch. The technique used to try to catch a fish on the fly is really an art and quite graceful.

We’d heard tales from Marcus about the fascinating fish that he had caught fly fishing. But, by far one of his favorites is bonefish. These beautiful, slender, silvery fish dart around in the shallow, sandy areas eating little things they pick up on the sand. In order to catch one, you have to see it first, then present the fly just in front of it and then be able to hook it and reel it in. Once they are on the hook, they like to fight, giving the fisherman a bit of fun.

Mike had now been trying to catch one of these elusive bonefish ever since we arrived in the Gambiers, with no luck. But, just as Diana and I were coming out of the water from our snorkel, we saw Mike in the distance hook up. We all ran over to see the action as we hoped Mike would be able to score his first bonefish. It was fun to see him quickly stripping the line and reeling it in to get that fish, and we were all there to see it! Mike was beaming and having so much fun. He is definitely hooked on fly fishing!

The next night we were invited aboard Allora for dinner with Eric and his son (also Eric) and had a wonderful time with a fantastic meal and great company. It was a great end to our time in the Gambiers. After a quick stop in Rikitea, we were off to the Tuamotus.

~katie

Convergence Zone

We ended up on the west side of the island of Taravai in a bay called Anganui. It was a beautiful, uninhabited part of the island that made us really feel like we away from the rest of the world. Of course, we really were. The Gambiers are really remote, and without cell phone and wifi access, we felt pretty disconnected.

We were enjoying our time sharing the bay with Marcus, Diana and their guests on Allora. We even had “movie night” aboard Allora where they set up a projector and screen outside on their boat on a calm evening that really felt special. The next day, we all went diving outside on the reef where we had a spectacular scene of reef fish, pelagics, sharks and unique coral formations. I even spotted a few fish I hadn’t seen before.

Soon Allora left as they had to get their guests off to the airport, and we were left alone in the bay. We remarked that it was the first time we could remember having an anchorage to ourselves since we were in the Perlas Islands in Panama. Little did we know that we would be all alone for the next two weeks!

Shortly after Allora left, the winds picked up from the southeast. As we were on the west side of Taravai, we were pretty protected with just the occasional gusts making their way over the hills on the island into our little bay. We started watching the weather forecast as we saw the winds were blowing in the 25-35 knot range, so we decided to stay put. Our weather forecasters informed us that there was a convergence zone sitting over south French Polynesia, right where we were. This meant that the lows and troughs that come up from New Zealand essentially stall out and hang around one area. In addition to the strong winds, we had days of squalls and drizzly rain that had us cooped up in the boat.

We kept waiting for the weather to change, but every day the forecast was just more of the same. We were stuck. When the sun finally broke through the clouds, we would go ashore to pick coconuts or paddle around the bay. Mike also tried his hand a fly fishing several days while I read several books. There were a couple of days we got a little stir crazy, but then we just had to laugh about it and told each other that there were definitely worse places to be stuck than this beautiful little paradise.

The wind finally died down enough for us to leave our protected anchorage and head back to the village at Rikitea. We knew the supply ship was coming in, and we needed to get there in advance of the ship arriving. It had been a month since we’d gotten any supplies. And, this was going to be our last shot to pick up some gas and diesel before we would be leaving the Gambiers. We had taken on some diesel when the previous supply ship came in, but not enough to fill our tanks. We were also almost out of gasoline, which we use to power our dinghy, generator and scuba compressor.

There is no gas station in the Gambiers, so if you want fuel you have to get it from the ship. They only sell it in 200 liter drums (about 50 gallons). If you need less than an entire drum, then you have to make some deals with other boats to go in on a barrel together. This makes for a very interesting situation in the anchorage. Right as the ship is pulling in, you can see everyone out in the dinghies either rushing to the ship to purchase a barrel (which is a limited supply) or going from boat to boat to figure out how to split a barrel with other boats. It is a bit comical, and stressful, especially when there are sometimes language barriers.

Once you’ve got your barrel and a plan to share the fuel, you have to take your jerry jugs to shore in the dinghy. You use a hand crank pump to pump the fuel into your jugs, then ferry them back to the boat to put in your tanks, and then repeat the process until you’ve got all your fuel. I think it took us most of the day to get this accomplished.

Fuel was our first priority, but we were down to canned and dried goods, so we needed some more food. The magazins (small stores) get their orders at different times depending on how they come off the ship and get trekked out to each store. Then, the store has to decide how they are going to stock the new food. So, each store will open and close and put out the fresh food at different times. When the fresh produce does come out, it is like vultures appear. At one point I had just purchased a bunch of goods when the store decided to put out a box of fresh pears. Everyone dove into the box grabbing the pears, including me. By the time I got back and line and purchased the pears, the entire box was empty.

Once we were full up on food and fuel, we were ready to leave Rikitea and check out another part of the Gambiers. But, more on that next time…

~katie

Getting to Know the Locals

We left Rikitea on Mangareva and headed over to the next island south called Taravai. We were feeling pretty grateful that another boat had given us their tracks around the Gambiers to import into our navigation software when we had to traverse over a shallow patch of coral in order to get into the anchorage. I’m not sure we would have trusted there was enough depth to avoid hitting it if we hadn’t had that clear path to follow. But, we ended up in a beautiful anchorage in time for the weekly Sunday barbeque.

Herve and Valerie have a home in the bay on the water and invite all the visiting boats to their home on Sundays during the summer. Their modest home has the most incredible view and is surrounded by gardens and fruit trees. On this Sunday there were boats from the US, France, New Zealand and Austria. Everyone brought some meat to throw on the open pit BBQ as well as a potluck dish to share, which included rice, potatoes, papaya salad, pasta salad, squash, etc. and tons of desserts.

There aren’t many people who live on Taravai. Herve and Valerie enjoy opening up their home to make new friends from all over the world. And, they love having boats with kids join so that their son has some new friends to play with. The day was filled with lots of laughter and games. There were many petanque games (French version of bocce ball) and lots of volleyball. We were very humbled by their warmth and generosity and looked forward to returning the next Sunday.

At the south end of Taravai, we met another couple living in their own remote paradise. We took the dinghy to the only home in the southern bay to meet Eduard and Denise. Eduard had just returned from spearfishing with a Frenchman named Pierre and showed us their catch. They had speared these beautiful surgeonfish that were black with unique orange and yellow markings on them. I later looked them up in my fish guide to find out they were called Orangespine Unicornfish.

As Eduard and Pierre were cleaning the fish, we walked up to the house to meet our friend Diana who was speaking with Denise. I was glad Diana was there to introduce us (and her French is better than mine), because it feels a bit awkward to walk up to someone’s house across their property without an invitation. But, Denise was very happy to meet us and give us kisses hello. We were also greeted by her puppy Roxy who was a little white fluff ball and couldn’t have been more than a couple of months old.

Cruisers regularly visit Denise and Eduard to do some “shopping” as they have more than a garden. I would call it an orchard if it looked like some kind of organized planting. But, really you just walk behind their home into a forest of banana stalks, lime trees, orange trees, papaya trees, breadfruit trees, etc. She also grows lots of herbs. We walked around pointing at what we would like, and she picked the ripe fruits for us which we quickly piled into our bags. Eduard came around and cut off a huge stalk of green bananas for us to hang in our cockpit while they ripen. Finally, Denise cut some fresh basil, mint and green onions and tied them in a bouquet for us. It was the best grocery shopping we have done here!

We actually had a few days of projected calm weather, so we headed across the lagoon to a small motu called Kouaku with our friends on Kini Popo. Getting there was a bit of a challenge as we had to navigate through the pearl farms. In order to develop the pearls, they hang lines or racks with the live oysters underwater suspended by buoys at the surface. We’ve been told that the oysters have to hang at 80% of the water column, so the depth of the where the oysters hang depends on how deep the water is in that spot. When navigating through the area, all we can see are the buoys at the surface, and sometimes the buoys get submerged just below the surface. The oyster lines are usually strung between two buoys, but from the surface it is impossible to tell which two buoys! So, I was up on the bow trying to navigate while Mike was at the helm. If I could see lines or submerged buoys I would yell back to him. Most of the lines were deep enough to go over. We would put the boat in neutral just in case and coast over them, but one set was definitely too shallow, and I had to yell to Mike to turn the boat quickly to starboard to go around the raised buoy which was several hundred feet away.

Once we got to the anchorage, we then had to be on the lookout for reefs and bommies. This area of the lagoon is uncharted, but we knew other boats had been there. We navigated our way through the coral reefs, found a sandy spot and dropped anchor. We had to float our chain to avoid getting caught on anything below. And, as soon as we were set, we jumped in with our masks to swim a 360 degree circle around the boat to make sure we had swing room over the coral. We dropped the anchor in 30 feet of sand, but there were coral heads that reached just 8 feet below the surface (enough for us to swing over).

We had a fun couple of days exploring the small island and snorkeling the reef outside the lagoon. We had noticed a couple on the island, who we don’t think permanently live there but were certainly camping out for a few days fishing and playing on the beach. We’re always curious about what fish the locals eat due to the ciguatera issue (dangerous fish toxin I’ve mentioned before). The locals always seem to know which fish on which reefs are safe to eat. So, when the couple came by our boat one afternoon we were pleasantly surprised to have them give us a fish they had just caught. They had quite a few of them in their boat and were genuinely happy to share their bounty without any requests in return. We didn’t get to talk to them much as they were trying to get back before sunset, but we were very excited to try out the fish. It was some sort of snapper or emperor. I couldn’t identify the exact species in our book, but I just decided to call it ceviche.

We took the ceviche over to Kini Popo for a feast that night with the lamb chops Dan put on the grill. It was a bittersweet evening as we said goodbye to Dan and Staci. They left the next morning for the Marquesas. The Marquesas would be Dan’s jumping off point for the long passage up to Hawaii and then the Pacific Northwest. It’s been a fun last two years hanging out with Kini Popo, but our paths now go separate ways…his back to the States and ours to New Zealand.

~katie

The Storm Approaches

Trying to time the weather to make a seven day passage is a bit challenging. In this case, we were heading from Tahiti to the Gambiers on a southeast course. The usual trade winds are easterly, so we needed to find a forecast with some northerly component to it and a bit lighter so that we would not be bashing our brains out going directly into the wind and swell. But, we needed some wind to sail as we don’t carry enough fuel to motor for seven days.

It looked like a decent opportunity was coming up, and we didn’t want to be stuck in Tahiti another week or two waiting for another weather window. So, we motored away from the dock with our friends on Kini Popo just behind us and headed out. The first two of days had us heading into a bigger swell than we would have liked. Our boat doesn’t ride up and over a head on swell, but tends to hobby horse plowing the bow into the waves and then popping up over the other side and slamming down into the trough. Not a fun sail.

The second day was full of squalls. I swear they always happen on my watch. At one point I was watching an oncoming squall with no real way to avoid it. I put on my rain jacket to wait for the onslaught of rain. But, before the rain even got there we were hit with what felt like a wall of wind. The wind had only been in the 10-12 kt range and we had a lot of sail out. All of the sudden we had 35 kts on the beam which heeled us quickly and dramatically. Mike jumped up from down below and I grabbed the helm. The hydrovane had been steering us but couldn’t handle the sudden change of wind. Mike quickly furled in the jib and let out the main to depower it. I steered us downwind to wait out the squall as the rain started pounding down on us.

By day three the conditions were finally in our favor. We had light but steady wind and the sea state had improved quite a lot. The next four days seemed to fly by as we enjoyed mostly good sailing weather. There were some still conditions where we had to motor if we didn’t want to prolong the passage by bobbing around for hours without any wind. We had pleasant nights with skies full of stars. It was a new moon when we left, so the stars were our only light. I love laying down staring up at the constellations and looking for a shooting star or two. But, the best is when we get some phosphorescence in the water which makes it look like the stars are both above and below you.

We did have one funny experience when we passed the atoll of Mururoa. This is a restricted atoll where the French did their nuclear testing. It is off limits to civilian boats but is apparently staffed with French military. The guy on duty one night must have gotten a bit suspicious of us sailing a couple of miles offshore, because he hailed us on the VHF asking who we were and did we know we were in French territory (picture the guy saying this is a heavily French accent).

We arrived in Rikitea on the island of Managareva on Saturday afternoon. We had been checking in twice daily on the SSB with our position report, so several of the boats in the anchorage knew we were arriving. As we started looking for a spot to drop the anchor, the boats that saw us approaching started blaring horns and shouting hellos waving us in. It was quite the welcome! So, with that in mind, that everyone was watching us, it was quite comical that we had trouble getting our anchor down.

Those first couple of days that we had bashed into the swell jumbled up our anchor chain so bad that that it wouldn’t come off the windlass. Mike had to crawl into the anchor locker to untangle it while I drove the boat around doing donuts outside the anchorage for a few minutes. I’m sure we were the entertainment for the whole anchorage that afternoon.

We were happy to have arrived at our destination, but we quickly discovered a problem. Our watermaker wasn’t working. We were able to diagnose the problem and determined we needed a new membrane. Of course this couldn’t have happened in Tahiti where it would have been easy to find one! So, we spend a few days making calls and figuring out how to purchase and arrange for a new membrane to be shipped to us in Rikitea. There is no FedEx or UPS service in French Polynesia, but you can send things freight via Air Tahiti.

While we were busy trying to sort all of this out (not easy with limited phone and internet service), we started looking at the weather forecast. There was a pretty sizable storm that was going to be approaching the area in a few days. While we were stuck in Rikitea, several of our friends had ventured out to other anchorages around the Gambiers. But, Rikitea was definitely the most protected anchorage from the northwest winds that were going to hit us. As the storm was predicted to get closer, more and more boats started filling up the anchorage. What was maybe 12 boats when we arrived soon swelled to 32 boats and was getting crowded. We were sending messages to our friends who were anchored elsewhere to tell them the status of the Rikitea anchorage. They were understandably concerned with how crowded it was, as there is always a chance another boat will drag or swing into you when anchored in such close quarters. So, five boats, including three of our friends, chose to ride out the storm anchored off Taravai about five miles away.

When the storm finally arrived, I was glad we were in the position we were in. The wind was gusty and swirled around the anchorage but wasn’t too bad. The boats were swinging all around, so we just had to make sure we didn’t swing into anyone. Several boats had to reanchor to get away from hitting another boat. One boat even tied up to the commercial wharf. We were close to shore and mostly protected from the wind, but those farther out near the reef weren’t as protected. One boat went up on the reef outside Rikitea but wasn’t damaged.

Over in Taravai, they were not so lucky. We could hear them on the VHF and felt a bit helpless to assist. They saw over 50 kts of wind funneling into their anchorage. One boat dragged and ended up on a reef (luckily not too much damage). Our friend Dan on Kini Popo severely damaged his dinghy and ripped his dodger. Not a fun experience for any of them. The storm lasted for several days before letting up. With so many boats in the area, we were glad no one had any serious damage.

So, our introduction to the Gambiers was a bit of a let down with a major storm and a broken watermaker. But, soon enough we had our new membrane and better weather. We were happy to leave Rikitea after a couple of weeks of feeling stuck there to explore the rest of the Gambiers.

~katie

Moonshine

When I left off we had just returned from our visit to the States and were working hard to get the boat ready to leave for the Gambiers. The Gambiers is one of the more remote archipelagos in French Polynesia. Almost 900 miles southeast of Tahiti, it’s location makes it outside the usual paths of any cyclones that may occur in the South Pacific in the summer time. That makes it a great place to spend a couple of months during the summer. And, it is one of the places in French Polynesia we had not yet been to.

Due to the remoteness of the islands in the Gambiers, supplies are a bit limited. There are only about 500 people that live in the archipelago, with most of them living on the main island of Mangareava and the village of Rikitea. The Gambiers have an interesting history. There was a unique culture here at one time, but it was destroyed by the Catholic missionaries who enslaved the people and caused the deaths of thousands. Some of the original churches erected in the early 1800’s still stand on the islands as a reminder of this history.

Unfortunately, the French didn’t do much better in more recent history. Several atolls only a couple hundred miles from the Gambiers served as nuclear testing grounds through the mid-1990’s. The locals will tell you of the destruction of their agriculture and the extremely high cancer rate that occurred here.

Today, the small remaining population in the Gambiers mostly work in the pearl farm industry or are mainly subsistence based on the outlying islands. There are supply ships that arrive twice a month to deliver goods and take back pearls and oyster shells. There are also flights that arrive twice a week that keep the Gambiers connected to Tahiti. With such a small population and only periodic supplies, you can imagine that provisions would be limited and more expensive. So, in order to get ready to leave, we needed to make some serious grocery runs in Papeete.

Papeete (the main city in Tahiti) has the only large grocery stores in French Polynesia. Food is hit or miss in price. Some things are reasonable, but others are quite expensive. There is a lot of imported food from France, the US, Australia and New Zealand. Interestingly, all of the frozen chicken we have found has come from the US. But, you can get duck breasts from France and lamb chops from New Zealand. Produce is sometimes locally grown and sometimes imported. The local stuff is much cheaper. If you want oranges from Florida, its going to cost you.

Our friend Dan on Kini Popo and his new crew Staci were also preparing for the passage to the Gambiers. So, we rented a car together to make several runs back and forth to the Carrefour (grocery store) and the marina. I always think the locals must think we’re crazy when we have a grocery cart piled so full of food that we can barely push it. After putting some damage on our credit cards and stuffing every available compartment on the boat and topping off the freezer, we felt pretty good about our supplies. But, there was still one thing we were missing.

Booze is incredibly expensive in French Polynesia. Think 3-4 times what you would pay in the States. Aside from Hinano, the local beer, and one local Tahitian rum, everything is imported. You can find lots of French wines, but any other liquor is imported and a ridiculous price. Cruisers are a social bunch, and every time you pull into a new anchorage someone will invite you over for sundowners which then gets reciprocated and then another boat invites you over…You get the picture. And, we like our cocktails out in the cockpit enjoying a beautiful sunset with a palm tree lined island next door. So, to not purchase some alcohol was not really in the plans.

Our friend Marcus gave us a tip that there was a guy in Tahiti that made bootleg rum at a reasonable price. He found the phone number for us, and Mike and Dan immediately called the guy. I think there was something about the fact that they were doing something illicit, that a guy had a homemade still concocting a secret rum, that made this seem like an exciting thing to do. The next thing I knew, Mike and Dan were each emptying and consolidating old liquor bottles. Then, they ran off to make a cash deal in the parking lot of the post office!

They both came back laughing with a ten liter water jug full of rum. They had to return the jug, which was the reason for the empty liquor bottles. The two of them sat on the dock at the marina with a funnel filling up all the bottles as various people came traipsing down the dock to check out the action. They filled up the last bottle as the sun was setting, and it was time to try out the goods. The rum seller had given them a bottle of vanilla syrup and explained that the way to drink the rum was a little ice, a shot of rum, a splash of vanilla syrup and a squeeze of lime. It was similar to what the French call ‘ti punch. And, it was delicious. After several rums with a few other sailors we attracted on the docks, we returned our full bottles to our boat and to get some rest for the seven day passage to the Gambiers.

p.s. We are now in the Gambiers with zero internet or phone service other than the sat phone. What little phone/internet there was here has been down for weeks. So, its going to be a while until I have any photos I can share. But, I’ll work on getting up more text updates about our time here in the Gambiers.

-Katie

Putting the Boat Back Together

We’re back in Tahiti! We had a wonderful couple of months visiting with friends and family back in the States over the holidays, but it was time to get back to Adagio to start our fourth year of our sailing adventure. We had waited too late in the season last year to find a spot in a marina to leave our boat while we traveled, so we reluctantly left the boat at anchor (something we had never done!).We anchored the boat in Port Phaeton in Tahiti, which is the most protected bay here on the island and paid a local guy to look after our boat. That gave us some comfort, but as December technically was the start of cyclone season in the South Pacific, there was always a remote chance that a huge storm could arrive leaving us helpless to do anything half way around the globe. Luckily, everything went fine.

We arrived back in Tahiti at about midnight, and the anchorage was close to 30 miles away from the airport. So, it was not possible to get back to the boat that night. Our friend Dan was nice enough to pick us up at the airport and let us stay aboard his boat in the downtown marina so that we could get back to Adagio in daylight the next day.

I was a bit concerned about what we would find when we arrived back to the boat. On the day we left, it was pouring rain. We had taken down all the canvas and sails and had to put them and the cockpit cushions inside the boat soaking wet. As it is pretty hot and humid and the boat was going to be closed up for two months, my main concern was mold. It wasn’t that bad, but I did have to wipe down just about every surface and wall inside the boat with vinegar to kill any mildew that was present.

Our first order of business was putting everything back in place when we arrived. Everything on deck had been stored below, so it was impossible to even walk in the boat. The paddle boards and surf boards take up quite a bit of room, so they were the first to be evicted from the cabin to be stored back on deck. Next came cockpit cushions, scuba tanks and canvas for our dodger.

We had to wait to put the sails back up as there is a bit of a funnel effect of the wind in the bay. So, we got up at 5 am the next morning just before sunrise, which was the only time we found it still enough to hoist and furl the jib and staysail. The bottom of the boat didn’t look too bad, but our prop was fouled with tons of barnacles. Mike spent over and hour chipping them off of there. We weren’t going anywhere with a prop full of barnacles. As bad as the prop was, it was nothing compared to the anchor chain. As we pulled up anchor, the first thirty or so feet were just covered in the stinky crustaceans. It took two and a half hours of back breaking scrubbing to get them off as we raised our anchor chain.

Slowly, the boat systems came back online. We got the refrigerator running again after recharging it with a ton of refrigerant, flushed the pickling solution out of the water maker to get it running again, and changed the oil and filters on the engine to be ready to go. So far, its been a solid five days of hard work to get back to normal around here, but we’re feeling pretty good about it.

Next, we have to get ourselves put back together. After two months in the States of overindulging in food and drinks, we’re finding the clothes don’t fit so well. When you’re hanging out with friends and family you haven’t seen in a year, everyday is a bit of a celebration. In addition, we celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, an anniversary, three birthdays and a new baby (my nephew)! Its going to require a bit of discipline on our parts to get back into good shape. We also lost any tan that we had acquired. As it is summer time here, the sun is particularly strong. So, we’ll be wearing long sleeves, hats and lots and lots of sunblock for the near future.

We have some more work to do on the boat, provisioning and other errands, but soon we are going to start looking at weather windows to leave Tahiti. Our plan is to make it to the Gambiers, but we may make some stops in the Tuamotus along the way depending on what the wind and weather do. We’re excited to see what is in store for us this year!

~katie

Diving in the Tuamotus

We’ve been back in the States visiting family for the holidays, and I have been busy editing videos of the scuba and free diving we did in the Tuamotus this year. The best things about the remote Tuamotus are the clear water and abundant sea life. That made it the perfect place to get in the water daily to check out what was below the surface.

If you’re wondering what our process is/was for finding places to dive that were fun and safe, we actually had a lot of help. Thanks to sailors who have gone before us and published their favorite dive sites, there is a lot of information you can find online. We also asked other sailors we met along the way for their favorite spots. In places where there were actual dive shops, we found the people to be very generous with their local knowledge even when we weren’t paying to dive with them. But, sometimes we just had to do some exploring on our own to scope out some new spots.

When we didn’t have any information about an area, often we would do a reconnaissance snorkel to see if it looked like a good dive spot before breaking out the dive gear. That let us assess the depth, current, visibility, etc. We have our own dive gear, including a compressor to fill our dive tanks, which lets us dive wherever we like. We’ve also met lots of other divers on boats doing the same thing who have become fast friends. That means it is rarely ever just the two of us diving. There is always safety in numbers!

Pretty much all of the time, we are diving from our dinghy. We get all our gear ready and pile it into the dinghy to head off to the dive site. If the site doesn’t have any current, we anchor the dinghy or tie it to a mooring ball if there is one. The dive shops have been really nice about letting us use their moorings. But, if we are scuba diving or free diving anywhere that has current, especially in the passes, we tow our dinghy. Mike has a 100′ floating line that he attaches to the dinghy and his BCD. That way, when we are ready to ascend, we just come up the line and are right at our dinghy no matter where we are. We’ve also been lucky enough to have other sailors that just wanted to snorkel the passes while we dove and were willing to tow the dinghy at the surface for us and keep an eye on where we are. So, overall, we have had lots of fun and easy dives without incident.

Below are a few of the videos that I put together about our time in the Tuamotus this year. I hope you enjoy them. You can also read more about the Tuamotus if you go back and check out my blog posts from earlier this year.

Diving Fakarava – June 2018

Exploring Tahanea – June 2018

Diving Makemo – May 2018

Free Diving Raroia – May 2018

Happy Holidays!

~katie