Before my alarm sounded I hear a low pitched hum. Peeking around the corner from our aft cabin (tiny bedroom in the back of the boat) I see Karl seated on the settee (built in couch) reading the last chapter of Melville's Typee while using he pedal generator. "I have to see if he escapes" he notes. Good to finishes the Marquesan 'novel' before reaching the next island chain. Overnight we have continued to make progress the 5.3 knots needed to get us to the pass an hour before slack tide. My job will be to keep us on track until Karl gets up at 9 an hour early = to make pancakes so we are well fed and ready to enter the atoll.

The stars are glorious but a reminder of both the passing time and our movement southward. Orion is no longer dancing at the horizon at dawn as he was when we arrived in Hiva Oa a month ago. He is now high in the shy, hiding behind the solar panels as the morning light fills in. My invented constellations to the north Beryl the climber and Elydah the photograph, with Justin and Danielle the water people are still there to the north but are closer to the horizon now we are close to 14 degrees south. The sun pushes the darkness westward with a gradation of black, blue pink and steely yellow.

The gradation of birds also signals land approaching. A mystery bird, probably a petrel squacks at the sail as the morning light fills in. A large flock of the white capped giant black terns, more commonly known as black noodys fly past us heading east. Because Noddies head home each night to roost they hate to be more than 25 miles from land. We are getting closer. Landfall on lowlying islands is tricky. No urban sky glow as we had with the Turks and Cacoas. No city of giant cruise ships that make Bermuda visible more than 10 miles away. Pico, the tallest mountain in Portugal and the Azores can be seen 60 miles away. The Tuamotos are low and difficult to see. I am working hard to keep the boat on course. Sometimes offshore we are a bit sloppy as who cares if you are a mile of the arboitrary line to harbor entrance. Being a mile off for this 900 foot wide pass would put us on a reef with 9 foot tall breaking waves. Watching the horizon a grey wave keeps on reappearing in the same place. After a few minutes this wave stays right put. I call Land ho - Softly in case Karl is sleeping. He is not. Slowly the grey shape turns green with white wave flashing in front. I can see the break in the trees, the Tiputa pass into Rangiroa. The radar to make sure our maps agree with the real world. Sometime there is a pr0blem with how the mapmakers squish our round world on to flat paper or screen . In exotic places, the map may be havereliable shapes but have the shoreline offset by miles. A big offset while we are aiming for that 900 foot wide channel could put us on the rocks. The fuzzy ref radar returns and the green land map line up nicely We are good to proceed.

Karl watches for a troublesome waves, I line up the range light, white towers that you use to make sure you are in the channel. All looks good so we proceed through the pass. After all our worry is calmer than the familiar East River. The Motu at the entrance changes from a terrifying mess of breaking waves to a curious isle that could have been the set for a movie involving a man and a basketball. Karl steers and soon we are at the safe water bouy where he spies the Danish Divers in need of a rescue. With Sam, Elias and Kerstin safely on board. We round the corner to where all 15 boats anchored.
Now we are in the calm quiet anchorage. The waves still pound but they are far away. We have finally escaped the swell of the Pacific. The boats all sit quietly with no roll. The stemmed wine glasses stay silently in place as we eat dinner. We are ready to sleep. No watches tonight and no plans for tomorrow.