Please Note: I posted a shortened version of this a few days ago on our tracking page. Here it is with a few more details.
We pulled ourselves away from Tahanea a few days ago and are now in the Fakarava lagoon.
The passage from Tahanea was short at just 50 nautical miles (90 km) but because we had to time our exit from Tahanea and our entrance to Fakarava around slack tide at their passes, we travelled at night. We wanted to exit and enter each atoll in daylight.
We left Tahanea as the sun was setting. The winds were light but it didn’t matter. We had more than enough time to make it to Fakarava for the 6:00 a.m. slack tide. We soaked in the varying shades of red and orange as the sun slipped over the horizon as we ghosted along.
The winds soon built and we found ourselves needing to slow the boat down. It’s not something we do very often but we didn’t want to arrive too much before slack tide. We only needed to average 4 kts (7 km/hr) but we found we were doing closer to 5.5 kts (10 km/hr) with little effort on our part. We reefed the mainsail which helped a little. In the end we furled the genoa completely and sailed with just the mainsail for the final few hours of the passage.
We arrived an hour or so before the forecast slack tide and sunrise so we heaved-to and waited.
Going through the pass was fine though a little nerve wracking. The pass faced into the prevailing wind and swell which made for large rollers that carried us into the pass’ opening while large waves crashed on the reef on either side of us. It would not have been a good time to have engine troubles. Thankfully, we didn’t. Once inside the pass and out of the swell we encountered 1-2 kts of current against us which was a bit of a surprise as we expected the current to be with us. That’s the way it seems to be here. It’s hard to get an accurate prediction of currents in the passes. It is a regular topic of discussion on cruiser forums and email lists.
From the pass we continued on to Hirifa at the SE corner of the atoll. It gave us the best protection from the forecasted winds. The anchorage was packed! It is nothing compared to anchorages back home on a summer weekend but compared to where we’d been the last few weeks, it felt busy. We enjoyed a few days in Hirifa and made a trip back to the south pass to snorkel it. It was an amazing experience and one that deserves its own post.
Cormacks On Cambria 