Somewhere over the Atolls 🎶

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/a58f19_c59a9c0ab7384617b5e0218c9a884a39/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

We finished the last post moments before we went diving on the world famous dive site, The Wall of Sharks— and it absolutely loved up to the name. The GoPro footage in our video does not do it justice, but it can give you a slight idea of just how many sharks there were. At some points it felt like we had to push them out of our way while we were drifting with the current. The whitetip reef sharks were clinging to the bottom of the pass at about 30 meters, and everywhere overhead there were grey reef sharks swimming against the current. We asked some of the local dive instructors why the sharks choose to congregate here, and the best answer we got was because the current brings in food for them in the months June and July. Why they are here the rest of the year is unexplainable, which makes the whole experience feel even more incredible. This was a top dive for all of us, and it was absolutely one of the highlights of our time in the Tuamotus. 

We entered the atoll of Fakarava through the south pass, where the sharks are, and from there we motored 25 nautical miles north to the town of Rotoava, just a couple miles away from the other navigable channel. Fortunately for us this route was charted, which meant we did not have to send anyone up the spreaders to keep an eye out for those pesky coral bommies. We went to four atolls in total, and none of them were completely charted. Before cruisers started frequenting these islands, they were nicknamed the “dangerous archipelago” because of the hard-to-time passes and the hidden reefs everywhere. Anyways, after an easy trip we dropped the anchor just outside of town-which was probably the biggest town we had been to since making landfall in the Marquesas in Taiohae. Here they had multiple grocery stores, bars with blenders, and restaurants with things on the menu other than reef fish. Paradise. We did some basic provisioning here, including the most important  provision of all: diesel. This time we didn’t have to run around in the dinghy with jerry cans, we motored straight up to the fuel station, tied to the quay, filled the tanks, and got out of there in under an hour. After three days in town we were ready for the next, so on we went to the atoll of Toau. 

This atoll was only 15 miles from where we were anchored in Fakarava, so it was a pretty easy sail. We got in there about mid day, which was pretty close to slack tide. With these passes, timing is crucial if you want to have easy conditions getting in. The hard part is knowing when it is slack. There are several resources available; there is a genius guy on a boat that developed a website to “guesstimate” the tides, there’s the French website, SHOM, and there’s a couple of atolls with the locality providing the information online. All of these we have found to be inconsistent. And at the time of our departure from Toau, it was dangerously inconsistent. We left at slack according to all three of the sources mentioned, however found that not to be the case. We had several knots of outgoing currents opposing the wind, which created 15-20 foot standing waves in the middle of the pass. We were only in them for about five minutes until we reached the other side, but they were some pretty intense five minutes. So far we had been lucky with the passes and we thought people were over exaggerating the reports, so we were glad to get an idea of why they are nicknamed the “dangerous archipelago”. The one thing that made exiting this wild pass worth it was the beach bonfire we had the night before. We had been wanting to do that for a long time! 

We left for Tahiti on the 27th of April.  And now I am writing this from the couch of our Air BnB while the boat is on the hard. A little turn on land is good for all of us, I think. 

One thing we wanted to announce before we sign off is an update to the Itinerary. After much deliberation, we decided we wanted more time in Indonesia. Instead of heading towards Australia from Fiji, we will be heading northwest to Vanuatu. From there, we keep on going northwest until we are north of Papua New Guinea. This new plan gives us almost three months in Indonesia and more opportunities to see other islands in Southeast Asia. Currently, it looks like we will be spending Christmas in Phuket, Thailand! Check out the new Itinerary here!