Three Amigos in the Tuamotus
- labadiemichael
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
After 18 days in the Marquesas, we set off on our next offshore passage. Our destination: the Tuamotus, a group of breathtaking atolls some 400 miles away. The journey began smoothly, with the gennaker keeping us at a steady, satisfying pace. During the day, we passed the time playing cards; at night, we stood our watches beneath a crystal-clear sky, mesmerized by the stars. Midway through the passage, the wind gradually faded, and we switched to motorsailing.
In the early hours of April 10th, the silhouette of Raroia emerged on the horizon. We had spent quite some time beforehand thinking through the challenge of navigating the pass—the narrow channel connecting the open ocean to the lagoon inside the atoll. In the end, however, it turned out to be less daunting than expected. Even though we entered a few hours before slack tide and had to push against a current of nearly six knots, the transit was surprisingly straightforward.
The sheer beauty of the atoll left us speechless. The water shimmered in brilliant shades of turquoise—the very image of the South Pacific you dream about. We spent our first night near a small settlement right at the pass, where we met incredibly welcoming locals and, by chance, stumbled upon a pearl farm. There, we traded a bottle of rum with one of the workers for six real black pearls. The next day, we moved to an anchorage on the northern side of the atoll, where we made the most of paradise: swinging from a rope into the lagoon, diving among coral bommies, making fires on the beach, and eating more coconuts than we could count.
After four days in Raroia, we continued to the next atoll, Makemo. Because the daytime heat was intense, we chose to make the passage overnight. By morning, we reached the pass, which was easy to cross thanks to accurate charts and multiple navigation markers. The real challenge came afterward: navigating to our anchorage. The lagoon was largely uncharted, and coral bommies rose from the seabed to just below the surface everywhere we looked. Tony climbed the mast for a better vantage point, but even from the spreaders, the glare of the sun made spotting these hazards difficult. More than once, we only narrowly avoided hitting a coral head.
The anchorage itself made every bit of effort worthwhile. We had the entire place to ourselves. The water glowed in vibrant shades of blue, and blacktip reef sharks circled gracefully around the boat. Tony managed to spear a few fish with the harpoon, which we grilled for dinner that evening.
After two days in this stunning spot, we returned to the pass and anchored in front of the nearby village. There, we found a well-stocked supermarket, a laundry service, and even a pizzeria, where we treated ourselves to dinner that night. We also explored underwater: diving a small wreck directly beneath our boat and attempting a drift dive in the pass itself, towing our dinghy behind us as a buoy. The current, however, was incredibly strong—the dinghy ended up pulling us rather than the other way around—so we called off the dive after twenty minutes.
On Saturday at noon, we left Makemo and set course for Fakarava, the second-largest atoll in the Tuamotus, about 120 nautical miles away. Throughout the night, we encountered several squalls. In the early morning hours, one of them caught us off guard with winds exceeding 30 knots, damaging a block on the gennaker halyard. Not long after, the palm-lined shoreline came into view, and we arrived in Fakarava. Once the anchor was securely set, we turned our attention to the repairs, with Mike being hoisted up the mast to fix the damage. After exploring the island, we ended up in a small restaurant over a bottle of strong locally made punch. At the time of writing, we are just preparing to dive the world-famous “Wall of Sharks”, but that will be part of the next post. Stay tuned!
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