It was time to leave Rangiroa but not before we had a chance to catch up with friends on SV Sea Tramp who we have not seen for a while. They arrived a couple of days before we left, on their way back to Tahiti.

We left the anchorage with SV Venture Lady and exited the pass (where we had enjoyed much diving) on the ebb, to be spat out into the ocean. It was a trip of about 80 miles which is just about possible as a day trip; dawn here is about 0500 and it's dark by 1900, which gives us in theory a 14 hour sailing day. However, it's absolutely necessary to go in and out of the atoll passes at slack tide, and once inside a new atoll we need good light to spot bommies and rocks; so we had to do this passage

The winds were mostly light but with enough north in them to make steady progress, despite getting messed around by a couple of large squall systems. As dawn broke we were approaching the atoll of Apataki, ghosting in at less than 2kts under staysail only to slow the boat down. That set us up to arrive for the slack water at the pass to enter. At 0630 we had just a knot of incoming tide to bring us in between the palm-fringed white sand shores; a couple of simple houses were tucked into the trees, bonfire smoke drifting from one.

Our first attempt to find somewhere to anchor close by was a fail, so with Venture Lady we crossed over to the north east corner of the atoll where we found a good spot with what should be excellent shelter. This is a seriously remote part of the world - there is absolutely no one here except us; no phone signal, no wifi. We are protected from the ocean by some tree-covered coral motus and are sitting on the inside of a large lagoon. The only sounds are the whistling of birds on the motus, the dinghy splashing astern and the muffled roar of the waves on the ocean side. Classic desert island stuff.

We are now off grid and doing this by satellite coms so there will be no pictures for a little while, but we will post them when possible.