We left Makemo in the morning, caught the exiting tide and had an easy time going out the passage. We mostly motor-sailed the first day but the wind filled in early evening and had a nice sail through the night and were outside the south passage into Fakarava mid morning. The map shows the 135 nautical mile passage.
Makemo to Fakarava, 135 nm overnight passage
Tides had just started going in. The passage is plenty deep and well marked. We had no problems with the entry but I turned to stbd soon after entering and we ended up with rough shallow water between us and the intended anchorage. I did a u-turn and came back to where we were just inside the passage, then continued deeper into the lagoon, around a couple small islands, and then turned to stbd and into the anchorage just off Tetamanu Village.
As soon as we were anchored we had a bit of a rainbow.
The first night was a bit rolly. Fakarava is a big lagoon, roughly 37 by 13 miles, with lots of fetch to allow waves to grow. The next morning we dinghy’d in for a walk around the very small town. It is really just a church, maybe a dozen homes and two dive shops, each with a dining room and a few bungalows.
The ‘roads’ are grass paths, sometimes marked by a few stones along the border. There were no cars but a few bicycles and a couple of motor scooters. It is a bit sad to see how much less activity there was in the village now vs when I was here in 2016. At that time there were frequent dive groups going out, people in the small dining room / bar at one of the dive shops and a small store. Now there were very few people around and some dive groups but much less. The cook / bar tender said they are still trying to recover from Covid shutdowns and times are hard. They appreciate any business they get.
A supply ship came during the night, unloading onto smaller boats from about 10pm to midnight.
