WATCHING FOR CORAL BOMMIES AS WE TAKE THE SHORT-CUT TO FAKARAVA'S NORTH PASS.

Weds 28th November: This morning’s weather forecast still promises us easterly F3 breezes by late afternoon, going F4 by lunchtime tomorrow and staying like that at least through to next weekend, there aren’t even many squalls forecast. That prediction sounds perfect, though we’ll have to take it on trust – not easy given the way the prediction’s gone out day-by-day over the last week - as the last period of slack water through the reef’s pass during daylight today closes at 14:30, before the wind’s due to arrive. A busy morning in Rotoava, as besides the weekly supply ship being in port, both the ‘Aranui’ and’ Wind Spirit’ Cruise ships are in here today too; we were heading ashore soon after 09:00 in search of fresh bread and fruit & veggies and hoping not to get held up for too long chatting to cruise ship passengers – they’re invariably interested in talking to the Yachties and whilst we’d normally be happy to oblige, today we have that tidal gate to catch.
We managed to get all we really needed at the store closest to our preferred dinghy-landing beach, a good job too as we met Al & Beth – Aranui passengers – as we came ashore and far from brushing them off, stayed chatting far longer than we’d really got time for: They’re retired sail-cruisers themselves – sailed here fifty one years ago! - and part of the reason for this cruise, or at least the timing of it was to visit Toby & Juliette on ‘Sunflower’ whom we met in Ecuador and Juliette at least, again in the Marquesas. Sunflower’s currently in Nuku Hiva and Beth & Al are her original owners, having sold her to Toby in Malaysia a few years ago – yet another reminder that it’s a small world. With shopping finished and a cold beer quaffed we quickly headed back to Moon Rebel, hoisted the dinghy and dropped our mooring lines; with the still light winds and glass-flat water within the reef, all the other pre-departure tasks could be completed as we sailed slowly across to the North Pass.
Away about 11:30 and no more than 5-7 knots of breeze going across the lagoon, but in flat water we were managing 2.5 – 3 knots and felt sure that ‘it’ll be 5 knots more out at sea’; we bounced through the pass around 13:45 and found the wind was less! Actually it was probably about the same, but with an ocean swell – even a small one – added to the mix we soon had Moon Rebel rolling and the sail spilling wind, so a slow and uncomfortable afternoon and sadly evening too as it was around 23:00 before the promised F3 breeze arrived and filled in. Not great, but enough to keep us moving at 3-4 knots and smooth out the ride to enable whomever is off watch to get some sleep; proper breezes should be with us tomorrow.
Thursday 29th: There were a few squalls through the night and the additional wind helped with the boat speed, though the squalls set-up yet another wave train (about three running at the moment) so we were spilling more of the wind too; speed up to 4 – 4.5 knots though and looking better until about 09:00: The wind dropped-off and whilst we went through the morning and then the afternoon too working hard to at least keep the sails ‘filled’ whilst telling ourselves ‘the wind’s coming/it’ll be with us soon, those assurances were repeated with ever dwindling confidence. We’d managed 68 miles in the first 24 hours, perhaps not too bad today given that we’d only achieved 24 miles in the first twelve hours.
Friday 30th: Other than a few squalls – we weren’t making any course changes to avoid them! – giving us the odd push we slopped our way through the night too and come first light we finally waved the white flag: I rigged the spinnaker pole out square and we tightly sheeted as much jib as we could out to it and simply put everything else away. With just that scrap of sail out It’d probably need half a gale to get boatspeed over five knots, but at least nothing can slap, bang or rattle; we’ll just sit here reading books and listening to music whilst burbling along in the right direction for Tahiti and go back to working at it if/when the wind gives us something to work with. The DMG for the last 24 hours was up to 74 miles, so merely piss poor, rather than appalling.
We plan Moon Rebel’s passages based on an average 4.5 knots/110 miles-a-day, but after the long haul from Ecuador to the Marquesa islands taking almost five weeks, we dropped that to 100 miles a day for the trip down to the Tuamotus only to fail once again – we barely averaged ninety! This time around we were going to win, so set out a plan that needed to make just 90 miles a day – about a brisk walking speed! - to arrive at Porto Phaeton with ‘plenty of daylight for anchoring’ on Saturday and knowing full well that we ought to be there soon after dawn and perhaps even making one of the more southerly anchorages before dusk today? Not much to ask/expect, given that the normal/time-honoured 110 miles/day would have put us into Phaeton by this evening, never mind Saturday!
Saturday 1st December: Another night of slopping along at around 3-3.5 knots with the occasional squall lifting speeds to 4+ knots for the odd twenty minutes – Lesley claimed to have seen 5 knots logged but I suspect that was just a hallucination – and longer spells were the wind fell away and we were back down in the twos; grindingly slow, but at least it required little effort from us. We knew by dusk last night that Phaeton before dark today was now only 50/50 and by dawn it looked as if even the reef passes at Vaiau or Havae some 20 -30 miles nearer were also looking dodgy. Come noon we’d managed our best 24-hour DMG of the passage – a whole 80 miles! Phaeton almost forty miles away had long been discarded, but with the wind easing we were no longer even confident of managing to cover the dozen or so miles to Vaiau; the entrance there’s narrow/needs good light, so we can’t afford to cut it fine.
We pressed on for another couple of hours before pulling the plug, the engine was fired-up and the sail rolled in and with a bit of tidal assistance we’d soon doubled our speed and were buzzing along at 5.5 knots. Rolled in through the Havae entrance at just about exactly low/slack tide at 16:00 – tidal gates aren’t as vital here as the Tuamotus, but being at slack water can’t do any harm – and turned north into the buoyed channel inside the reef. Here has an easier reef entrance than Vaiau, but an intricate and very narrow route through the reef once inside and that’s where our plan fell apart: We made the first couple of turns only to discover that the next and narrowest/twistiest section of the pass was absolutely straight into the setting sun and we couldn’t see a damned thing! We had two attempts before deciding that we were sheltered from the ocean swells and there was an adequately (just) sized ‘pond’ of water that we could anchor in just where we were, so we dropped anchor and let out all the chain we dare – barely 35m in 14/15m depth – even then we were swinging within 10-12’ of the reef (6” below the surface) in one direction. We’ll be fine provided there’s no strong winds through the night, but hell we’ve not even had a ‘moderate’ wind in weeks!
77 hours to manage just 238 miles, a 3.09 knots/74 miles a day average; despite all the assurances we heard before coming through Panama, when it comes to sailing in the Pacific, for us at least it continues to be just too pacific to offer much fun.