While on the way to Niue and then further West to Tonga, from Bora Bora, the weather took a turn and being quite light at the time with forecast of strong Westerlies we decided to duck into "Ma-oo-pee-ahh a small Atoll at the West end of the Societies Islands Group of French Polynesia. It is the last one in French Polynesia as you head West that you can get into in a Mono hull like ours. We radioed a few boats anchored inside when we were about 30 miles away (and found we already knew two of them) to discuss the conditions inside the Atoll, but more importantly conditions for the PASS. The Taihaaru Pass, here is as hair raising as anything you will ever do in a boat, my hair is actually starting to grow back. It is a quarter mile long at the most and no more that 60 feet wide and 11 to 18 feet deep with sheer walls of coral reef either side and a perpetual outgoing tide / current that can reach 8 knots. It is not something you can try on your own unless conditions are perfect. Someone said "you need a very powerful engine and nerves of steel" and nothing could be more accurate. One of our friends anchored inside offered to come out and shepherd us in through the pass. When we reached the pass, we hung out there a while trying to figure the entrance out but no way it made any sense and we were simple not going to put our home at risk on this one. So we called him and happily took Jeff on Rock Star, up on his kind offer. He came across the lagoon and out through the pass in his dinghy through the surf and turbulence to guide us in. Watching that show alone was worth the cost of admittance. We stayed right on his ass and he said "you will have to gun it to make it through as it was really running hard and two hours before another buddy boat, Viandante came through and on full power he was making one knot in the pass" that must have been a bit scary. There are two white sticks marking the left side of the pass on the inside but nothing to line up on. Honestly once we started to enter the pass it looked as if we were going to end up on the reef in two seconds but took a sharp turn to port and all of a sudden we were in the flow which was running about 7 knots, just boiling out of there. The sun was full on and all the dangers were abundantly clear. You could almost reach out and touch the reef on the starboard side, it seemed like it was flying by at 20 knots due to the current running out and the reef was frighteningly obvious. The sun blazing through the bubbling water just over the surface of the reef enhanced the visibility and danger of the reef walls and the current tossed us around like a beer can blowing down a dark alley. I hit the power some more and we were started upstream making progress. One glance at the instruments told me we were making 11 knots through the water and 5 over ground, one glance is all I got given the slight attention draw of the pass. One quick glance at the reef edge as we slewed around towards the starboard side was all the motivation I needed to push the throttle some more and get this over with, but then Gwen, who had been up on the bow as lookout since we arrived near the pass, yelled "your running him over", too bad no backing off now, he (Jeff in the dinghy) gunned it to stay ahead but he did disappear beneath the bows for a second. It was truly all I could do to manage the wheel back and forth with that much pressure on it to keep us off the reef. It was like driving a stock car at 200 mph with a blown rear tire Gwen was shouting, "left, right, left,,,gooo llleeeffttt, now right, slow down and so on,,, in no time, we cleared the steep sided portion of the pass and it opened up some but it is shallow 6 to 8 feet unless you are spot on yyyikes! To make matters more challenging, the chart plotter showed us 220 yards to the North running well over the reef, not that you would have time to look at it anyway. Once clear of the reef portion of the pass the danger is far from over and you need to zig zag through the extremely shallow spots to gain the lagoon. I looked, very, very quickly, a couple of times at the depth and once saw 6 feet, which is exactly our draft, I awaited the impending crunch of lead on coral, but it did not come and we slide over unscathed, whew! Once we gained the lagoon proper I took my first breath in over a minute BUT, the fun is not over yet! In order to cross the lagoon you need a look out on the bow, you need to creep dead slow forward and you need to steer around the coral heads and "bombies" which are small pinnacle shaped coral mounds that appear out of nowhere and rise to just beneath the surface, lurking there quietly, waiting to end the dreams of the unwary. The only time one can move around in coral like this is between 10 am and 2 pm with good sun, preferably at your back and not much wave activity on the surface or you will not see a lot of the dangers until it is far too late. In conditions other than that you simply stay put no matter what. We entered the pass about 1 pm and the surface in the lagoon was wavy and rippled with 12 knots of breeze. So we zigged and we zagged with Gwen on the bow shouting turns to avoid the dangers into the walkie all the way across the lagoon, about 1 1/2 miles. Shouting, because we were headed into the wind and the walkie was almost useless. We made it over to where the "fleet" 6 other boats were, and anchored in 35 feet where we could see bottom like it was a foot deep. After doing laundry, (just my shorts) we relaxed a bit then had a swim around the boat. Later that evening when Jeff stopped by in the dinghy, he said that "that pass was really running out of there, way more than when Viandante, or we came through and neither of us would have made it through against that current" Thanks again to our 140 HP Turbo charged Yanmar, down in the engine room. I was silently thanking myself for keeping up on maintenance and for the reliability of the engine over time. Never went past about 75% throttle on the way in and it was nice to know we had plenty of reserve power should we have needed it. This morning was dead calm, like glass out there and when I finally went topside to have my "ducks breakfast", cup of coffee and BIG look around, I saw our anchor just below us near the aft end of the boat, sitting pretty but the chain 10 feet along was wrapped around a coral head, OK no big deal we can fix that. I was gin clear and could have been inches deep. Then as I lifted my gaze a little sort of looking across the bottom like an aquarium and followed the anchor chain along the bottom, a shark swam by and I followed it 30 feet further along like it was in a glass bowl on the table. Then, OH NOOOO there was a huge coral head about 30 feet around, lying just below the surface right beside us, how can this beeee? No way we saw that when we anchored! We had swung around as is normal at anchor but if we swung a tad to our starboard we would be right on top of it and it was no more than two feet below the surface, OK we are awake now, "Gwen, c'mon up, we are moving right now!" No big deal to move really! A bit of finessing to unwrap the chain off two separate coral heads by winching in some chain, maneuvering the boat very gently, drifting back on the wind and generally avoiding landing on top of the close coral head and we were free to inch around looking for a spot to re anchor. An hour later we were comfy again and looking for a real breakfast.

More on this spectacular Atoll later once we meet the local family. Yes that is singular! There is one family living on this Atoll and we have already heard some fascinating stories, so we need to meet them ourselves before we tell you all about it.

Two days later now and we have been sitting out a blow on board since re anchoring and still have not even been able to launch the dinghy. The potential problem with any Atoll, is that the wind can veer at anytime and since you are basically just sitting in a shallow patch of sand and coral in mid Pacific Ocean, with no wind protection at all except the coconut trees when wind is coming from that direction only and they are only 30 feet high. But when the wind veers you are then on a lee shore with the wind building the waves all the way across the lagoon, which in this case is well over two miles of fetch for the waves to build. We have been sitting in two and three foot waves for two days now and our neighbors are bouncing around like they are sailing upwind. It would be a real chore to sleep up forward in one of those boats in these conditions. In fact one boat was a lot closer to us this morning indicating they must have had to move and re anchor during the night which would be another neve racking operation especially in the windy conditions and especially if it was due to dragging anchor. With our long waterline we don't move around nearly as much and we are pretty comfortable but it makes our safe space or swinging room, just that much smaller when you can see the hazards nearby. Looks like it might smarten up in a day or two so we will sit tight, do some chores, Gwen is sewing up a Tonga courtesy flag right now, make water, read a book, eat lots, drink some more and maybe even have a daytime nap followed by popcorn and a movie.