Tuamotus
The trip to the Tuamotos was approx 500 miles, and we greatly appreciated Brendan’s help and company en route. These islands were formerly known as the Dangerous Archipelago. We had debated whether or not to visit these islands as they have the reputation of being tricky to navigate and at one time were notorious for shipwrecks. Hiscock (a famous
All the islands are similar in character and have great sameness of feature. This is the difficulty Hiscock experienced – it is very hard to determine where you are in the group as the atolls all look the same. The general form is a broken line of white coral beach around the rim of the atoll, with the highest feature being palm trees. Most of the atolls have a pass, or channel, through the reef into the lagoon. There are many breaks between the islets in the rim, and you really need to be sure you are heading into the “correct” pass! In addition, the atolls can be are within a few miles of each other and sometimes the islets (or motu) of one atoll are so far apart as to appear to be part of other atolls. The GPS is, obviously a great help, and we found the charts to be fairly accurate – although at times there a divergence of up to a mile, and you might find the chart showing you sailing across land.
We visited 3 of the lagoons – Ahe, Apataki and Tuoau. In order to enter an atoll, you must positively identify the island, and then positively identify the pass. Having found the pass, you need to enter as close to slack water as you can – the currents in the pass are alarming –the guides warn of currents up to nine knots, standing waves and strong eddy currents. Within the lagoons isolated (and generally unmarked) coral heads (or 'bombies') are a danger which require a lookout on the bow all the time. In order to see the coral, you need the sun behind you to cut down the glare, a slight breeze so the surface of the water is not too glassy and polaroid sunglasses are a great help. We went to 3 atolls, and hit them all at slack water – heaving-too overnight in one case – so we were saved any dramatic entrances, though the turbulence even at “slack-water” was very impressive.
Inside the lagoon, the water colours are amazing, as is the clarity of the water. You can see the bottom easily at 20m, and the tones vary from deep blue, to turquoise, to green, to pale green - as the depth changes. There are amazing numbers of fish in the lagoons and particularly in the passes. Apart from fish, the lagoons are famous for their sharks - we haven't seen so many of them, one fairly close up before I dove on the anchor to check it was well stuck in. I just kept telling myself that they must be well fed. Pearl farming is big in these atolls - a function of the purity and the temperature of the water. The pearl farms represent another navigational hazard, although after a few days we got quite good at spotting the small bouys from a distance. Any ideas Henri might have had of choosing some pearls as a souvenir were dashed when we discovered that perfect pearls are much dearer than diamonds, and had to agree that our cruising budget could not stretch to such expenses.
We spent several days anchored off our own motu, with only had a family of wild pigs for company which was fantastic. We then tied to a town quay in Apataki- we think the first quay since Lefkas in