Arrival in Tahanea

Greetings from Tahanea! Flyer and her crew arrived here yesterday (Sunday) and dropped our hook on the far southern end of the atoll around 1p local (Tahiti) time after a mildly eventful end to our 540nm passage from Nuku Hiva.

Our passage was a good -if light and slow- one, averaging about 135nm per day. The conditions through the first two days were a pretty consistent ENE breeze between 9-15kts, and very minimal sea state. We did quite a lot of eating, reading, podcast listening, laundry and cooking. And on Thursday we celebrated James’ 14th birthday! While it wasn’t in his ideal setting, nor with his closest friends, we are certain it will be a birthday he won’t forget anytime soon. Kristen baked a cake and we enjoyed a beautiful sunset from the cockpit while having dinner.

By the third day we had a better picture of our potential arrival time at Tahanea, and we began eyeing an 1130 slack tide at the atoll’s middle channel (on it’s north/east facing side). This suddenly gave a charge of certainty to our timing and served to raise our concerns about making this window as the breeze dropped in velocity and clocked to a more NE direction, making sailing aboard Flyer painfully slow.

Atolls are like big bathtubs that are partially submerged. When the tide goes up, there’s a big rush of ocean water pouring into the tub around it’s varied edges, and when the tide goes down, there’s a corresponding rush of lagoon water pouring out into the ocean. This turns the passes into tidal gates, and given the relatively slow speeds of sailboats under power, one needs to time their entry and exit of the atolls at slack (between tides) water. It would seem this is a pretty predictable exercise from a timing point of view, however the wind direction and strength of the preceding hours or days can greatly affect the amount of seawater that rushes in or out of the atolls… it’s a bit of a black art to getting the slack tide time correct. As it turns out there is a cool tool that some other cruisers have developed to help the average joe like us, and it’s aptly called the Guestimator. (NERD ALERT – it is a project that’s worth learning about if you’re interested in tides, navigation, and home-built electronics and sensors!)

After a couple of minor rain squalls passed we decided to fire up the engine, and on it stayed for the better part of 11 hours. It was painful but it allowed us to motor-sail at around 7 knots and get us further down the track until the breeze hopefully filled back in. And fill back in it thankfully did. Late on Saturday we were back to sailing with a fresh 16kt easterly breeze pushing us along at 7 knots. The sailing was so good overnight that Kristen was able to bake a new loaf of sourdough.

It felt at this point that we had the passage sealed up, but as usual, it ain’t over until it’s over.

Minor rain squalls continued to pass us by but a few hit us directly over night. Winds weren’t terribly strong in these, in fact within a few of them the breeze backed off considerably.

Around 0700 I was fast asleep when I was awoken by Paul to come help. Just 2 miles to our east, Dark Star had radioed to warn us of more wind coming in the squall they were experiencing. And like clockwork, just as I got on deck, the wind hit us, quickly spiking to 35knots. Thankfully we still had 1 reef tucked into our mainsail, so Flyer took it in stride. I disengaged the autopilot and ran before the gusts while Kristen and Paul reefed in the genoa. I got a good shower while driving (there’s nothing quite like multitasking), and within 15 minutes it had moderated to 20kts.

Now running a bit ahead of schedule, we spent the remaining 5 hours moderating our speed, keeping the mainsail reefed and continuing to furl up the genoa until it was gone completely. By 1030 we had hove-to just a mile and a half from the atoll entry, biding our time. A gigantic, ultra-luxe cruise ship had staked out a spot right in front of the pass, belching 25’ zodiacs to swarm the surrounding motus. We made our way around it and swiftly through he pass, with a favorable 3kts of current pushing us through. Even though we were 10 minutes ahead of anticipated slack water, the tide had already turned significantly!

The remaining 8 miles were spent on full bommie watch as we made our way through the middle of the atoll. Bommies are coral heads that are peppered throughout the atolls, hosting spectacular wildlife while raising the blood pressure of boaters. Some are 10 or 20 feet below the surface, while others are merely inches from the top. Some are marked on charts, but most are not. And we quickly learned why it’s best to transit these waters not only in daytime, but with the sun behind you. Bommies are easy to spot when lit from your viewing direction, and virtually impossible to see in the reverse setting!

After about 20 minutes of hunting for a good anchorage (which requires finding a big open sandy bit with minimal surrounding bommies, in just the right depth), we found a great spot in about 4m of water and dropped our hook, replete with the requisite chain floats and all!

Once our hook was set, as if on cue, a black-tip reef shark showed up and curiously circled Flyer as Paul nearly lost his marbles in excitement. Paul has been studying sharks this last semester (a self-initiated project for both school and floating-home) and has a particular affinity for these medium-sized predators. They’re big enough to feel like proper sharks but small enough to be considered cute, I suppose. They’re all around us here and seem to be unphased and not particularly interested in these human interlopers.

That brings us to the present, where I’m sitting at our cockpit table trying to bang these words out before I stop again just to stare and drool at these surroundings. As Kristen says, this place looks like the Gary Larson version of a deserted island, except it is our new reality. And also excepting the fact that we’re not here totally alone. Tahanea may be one of the uninhabited atolls of the Tuamotus, but there are still 6 other boats within a couple miles of us here, including our good friends on Dark Star! Rocket Science has made a detour to Fakarava to address some maintenance needs; more to come on that in a future post. We’re looking forward to reuniting with them before too long, but in the meantime we’re here to soak up as much of this remarkable, remote bit of the world as we can.