It’s almost 2 am June 5 and we’re less than 18 miles from Makemo. We pulled anchor from Raroia around noon (with considerable difficulty, having misjudged our speed when dropping the anchor so that it ended up stuck in rocks) and exited the pass around 13:00. We would love to have stayed longer, enjoying the warm clear water. It also would have been nice to visit the town (some locals going by in a small boat said, with big smiles, and in pretty decent English, “come visit the town.” And if we had more time we would have gone across the lagoon to see the Kon Tiki monument. But we need to get to Fakarava soon, so we are on the move again.
The Arikitamiro Pass into Makemo looks like it is more than 200 ft wide and 70 ft deep. The charts don’t show many markers or beacons until you are well inside the lagoon, but the pass is wide and straight so it should be no problem if we enter at a relatively slack tide. High tide is at 9 am. We are sailing slowly using only the jib. Even so, we should arrive at least 2 hours early so we may do some zig zags on approach or heave-to and wait. Going in early would probably be safe but once inside, the sun would not be high enough to give us good visibility into the water looking for a good sandy patch with no baumies to anchor.
We will try the “string of pearls “ anchoring technique for the first time. This is where you attach a number of floats to the anchor chain to keep it off the bottom. This is important in areas with baumies to prevent the chain from damaging the coral and reduce the likelihood of getting stuck on them. It’s particularly challenging on this boat because our anchor chain drops from a roller behind the trampoline, just in front of the mast. Lines for each float need to be tied to the chain above the roller while the float sits at the front of the trampoline. This means each line must be fed from the float, over the crossbeam and under the trampoline back to the roller. That’s quite a bit of work for 4 to 6 floats. Our solution is to setup a continuous loop, much like a clothesline, from the crossbeam, under the trampoline to the roller, then back above the trampoline to the crossbeam. A carabiner is attached to the line. Simply clip it to a loop at the end of the float line and pull the ‘clothesline’ around until the carabiner comes up by the roller, unclip and tie the float line to the chain, and let out the chain while throwing the float over the crossbeam, into the water. That’s the theory anyway. I set it up yesterday. We will see how well it works later today.
Once anchored, we will decide whether to stay one night and leave for Fakarava Monday morning, or two nights, leaving Tuesday.