It has been a good day (June 3). We flew the asym from 10:00 to 17:00, with the wind and seas behind us. Lots of sun (rare recently) topped up the batteries nicely. And we got lucky taking down the asym when we did. After it was socked and down on deck a squall hit us quickly. We hurried to finish bagging and stowing, getting it done before the rain became a downpour with gusts up to 30 knots. Thanks to Don for seeing it coming so we were finished before it got crazy.
A bit later, just as we were about to sit down for a great dinner of poke, ancient grains and green salad (we had found really good lettuce in the main market in Hiva Oa), the wind had backed so much we decided to gibe. This time we did not time it so well and I got absolutely drenched moving the preventer from stbd to port. And then, after that squall dissipated, the winds clocked back around so we needed to gibe again. Clearly I should have just waited for the squall to go by as they often mess with the wind direction. An hour later the wind had reduced enough that the sails were flogging so we took them down and motored.
Earlier in the trip we had problems starting the stbd engine. We removed the starter motor, put it back and it’s been fine since. Until today. When taking down the sails, it did not start. We don’t really need both engines when taking down the sails so we made do. We do have a spare starter motor so we will put that in soon.
We are now (2:15 am) 63 nm from the Raroia atoll and about 140nm from the Makemo atoll. In the morning we need to choose whether to stop at Raroia or continue on to Makemo. We don’t know a lot about either place. Raroia is where the Kon Tiki made landfall in its historic journey from Peru in 1947. The satellite photos (big thanks to Bruce Balan from “TheChartLocker” website and SV Migration for the mbtiles data files of satellite photos) show very few buildings and a good sized pass to get into the lagoon.
Makemo is one day further and has a bit of a town near the pass into its lagoon. The charts and satellite photos show an anchorage area (although it is deep at 35 to 60 ft), a dock and a couple churches in the town. We plan on arriving at Fakarava June 7 and may go to both Rarioa and Makemo or just one and take more time there. We will decide in the morning. In part it will be about seeing more places vs relaxing and taking it a bit more slowly, but also about timing with the tides. The passes in and out of the lagoons can be treacherous due to currents rushing in or out if you don’t hit them at slack tide, preferably slack high tide. Peggy sent tide info for Makemo and Raroia will be nearly the same. Slack high at Raroia should be just after 9 am which we won’t make. Slack low is about 13:00 which could work for us.
The other timing issue is that these lagoons need to be navigated visually with the sun high so you can see the coral heads lurking beneath the surface. If we do enter Raroia around 13:00, we have 1 or 2 hours of good visibility to get anchored. That should be enough. We shall see.