SPECIAL NOTICE: You will notice a lack of pictures for the next while. Wifi is okay for text but very very slow for photos. You will only get text for the next while!
We returned to Taiohae Bay to replenish our Polynesian franc
Supply, buy a few more supplies, post another Blog and send a few emails. I was excited to find some nice carrots, apples and a homemade ( still warm) almond tart. Eggplant was plentiful at the vegetable market so I decided to make Ratatouille. No zucchini so I replaced it with the carrots. I had some left over cooked penne that I had in the fridge with some olive oil - so I heated that up and served the Ratatouille over the noodles. Excellente.
1045: Anchor up and we departed the bay on a close haul - speed 5.5 - 6 knots. It is a beautiful sunny day with scattered cumulus clouds. We were on a course of 170. Our destination was Hakauka Bay on the Island of Ua Pou.
It was a great sailing day with an average speed of 5 knots being pushed by the trades.
1700: A squall was coming our way so we decided to change directions and head into Hakaheteu Bay instead, just below the five spires.
The anchorage was a bit rolly but it had served its purpose as the squall missed us. It would have been a more exposed anchorage if we would have gone with our original decision.
Monday, 9-May-2016 We moved over to Hakatao Bay to obtain some minor provisions and check things out. It is the home of the College of Men - a small community college which also supplies accommodations for kids from other islands. One of their classes involves a couple of hours of paddling and racing their outrigger canoes.
This is the national sport of French Polynesia and they take it very seriously! I asked this girl if I could take her picture and tried to explain in French that I also used to paddle a six man outrigger canoe in Canada. She was impressed.
Brought back memories of us girls, usually freezing our butts off, paddling on Thursday nights after work.
The difference here is doing an accidental flip (huli)is enjoyable as the water temperature is around 29C!
Position: 9* 41' S and140* 45' W
We left with the wind on our nose. Our original destination was another island in the Marquesas - Tahauna. The beaches are supposed to be quite lovely there. But the winds were not cooperating and the seas were quite uncomfortable. Did we really want 60 nm of this? We think not.
So the decision was made to change to a more favorable course and head to the Tuomotos - a series of atolls between the Marquesas and Tahiti.
Heading into this part of French Polynesia requires a lesson on Tides, Currents and Passes.
So what is an atoll? From the chart it looks like an island when in fact it is a lagoon surrounded by a series of motus (small coral islands) and a reef.
Some of the atolls have one or two passes for gaining access into the lagoon. Within the lagoon you will find more reefs and individual coral heads, called bommies. It is very important to keep a watchful eye for changes in color in the lagoon so you can pick these up. There may or may not be enough water under your keel to pass over them. Some of the larger passes and lagoons are marked and charted so this can be helpful. You would like to enter these lagoons when the sun is high and behind you as this will allow you to see these areas more clearly.
But first you have to get through the pass! Any of you reading this Blog, who have sailed in the Pacific Northwest are quite aware of tides and currents. There are passes in the Gulf islands where the current can reach speeds of 12 knots or more. If your boat maxes out at 6 knots and you are going against the current then you won't go anywhere - in fact you will go backwards. If you are also in a situation where the wind is blowing opposite to the current then you are in a wind over tide situation and the standing waves can reach 8+ feet.
My sister Susan can tell you all about this. I took my Aunt Doris and Susan and a friend Marilyn out for a sail on my sloop - Yogi. I insisted that we had to leave the dock at a certain time but they were late. My lack of experience was evident - I knew that the optimum time to go under the Lions Gate Bridge had passed but I really did not know what that meant. Thank goodness Yogi made it - but exposed to its limits - and Doris would still say that her fingerprints will be forever imbedded into the cockpit coaming of the boat! We had to battle through a current of 5 knots and waves of 6 feet. Sometimes you just get lucky - and then you have a story to tell.
But back to the atolls! We have heard of one sailboat that they went up on the reef. Rumor has it that they did not have a GPS on board. Four people had to be helicoptered off the reef and their boat is gone! So you have to be careful between atolls. They are usually only visible when you are 10 minutes away as they are very low lyng land formations with strong currents between them. There are 76 of them with only a few that are navigable
So we use every tool at our disposal to determine our course in order to keep us well off the reef and to approach the passes in the daylight hours at slack water - that time of day between the flood and the ebb tides. The GPS is our most useful tool but what happens if you lose power? We also have the charts on our battery operated computer. Someone has also put together a computer program called the Guestimator. This has been updated from year to year and is similar
to our annual Tides and Currents Tables that we would have on board when sailing in the Gulf Islands. This allows us an opportunity to guess what the tides and currents are doing at a particular pass at a particular time. East facing passes are dicey on the outgoing current. West facing passes are dicey on the incoming current. But all bets are off if there has been several days of strong winds coming from the southeast or heavy swells. In these cases there can be no slack water making the pass impassable!
Now that you know all this - you will have to wait for the next Blog to see how we fared getting through our first pass. But no worries - we have Captain Fantastic on board!
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