This covers my passage from Nuku Hiva to Toau in the Tuamotu Islands, together with Chris, and our stay on Toau. Toau was the only island in the Tuamotus that we visited. From there we continued straight to Tahiti (in the Society Islands),




Introduction to the Tuamotus

The Tuamotus are a large belt of about 60 islands lying between the Marquesas and the Society Islands (which Tahiti and Bora Bora belong to). See map below. I was going to pass through them from the Marquesas on my way to Papeete in Tahiti, where I intended to leave the boat for a few weeks and go home for some arrangements, and to pick up my spouse.


Both the Society Islands and the Marquesas are the product of relatively recent volcanic activity, and are mountainous in nature, whereas the Tuamotus are also the result of volcanic activity, but much, much older, and the mountains have sunk back into the earth, and what is remaining is only the coral reefs that grew around those islands, so called atolls. I.e. a ring of remainders of reefs sticking only a few meters out of the water, and in the middle a lagoon. This remainders of the reefs are called "motu's" (literally "islands" in many Polynesian languages).

So all of the Tuamotu islands are atolls, with lagoons inside them. With many of then there are one or more passages between the motu's, through which a yacht can enter the lagoon. But there are also a lot of islands where the lagoons are inaccessible by boat. Some of the atolls are inhabited, with villages on the motu's, some are empty. Altogether, the Tuamotus have about 13000 inhabitants.

Main reasons to visit the Tuamotus is for snorkeling or scuba diving, and to visit the villages, for example to buy pearls. A yacht will generally want to enter and anchor in the lagoon, because inside one is protected from the wave action of the big ocean around them, even if not from the winds. The navigation through the passages into and out of the lagoons can be tricky, as there are many times strong currents flowing into or out of the lagoon, associated with the changes in tide.

Inside the lagoon itself, the water is many times deep enough to sail, but there are many coral towers, commonly called "bommies" that have grown on the bottom, and in many cases, they reach close enough to the surface to be a real danger to yachts. Therefore, it is many times necessary to have someone standing as high as possible on the bow of the boat to warn the helms man of bommies ahead.



My itinerary through the Tuamotus

I had several reasons why to limit my time in the Tuamotus:

1. Even though the sight of motu's, the white beaches and palm trees of the motu's is beautiful, I had already seen such landscape in the San Blas Islands, on the Atlantic side of Panama.

2. I love snorkeling, but also find that my enjoyment is limited. I am too afraid of sharks to aggressively pursue finding them.

3. I could not look forward to sail/motor long distances through lagoons with the real danger of running into bommies.

4. I was really looking forward to get to Tahiti and collect my spouse from home.

So in the end I decided to visit only one Tuamotu island, Toau, which was almost directly on the straight line route from Nuku Hiva to Tahiti, and is unique in the Tuamotus in that it features a "bay" called Anse Amyot, on the outward side of the atoll, i.e. one doesn't need to enter the lagoon, and (I expected) no problems with bommies. See chart above, showing our route from Nuku Hiva all the way to Tahiti, via Toau. Further enlargement of the area around Anse Amyot can be found below. The bay is well protected in prevailing winds, Furthermore, the bay houses a restaurant, ran by Valentine and Gaston, who had installed some permanent buoys in their bay that visitors can tie to.








I had verified with Chris, before taking him on, that such limited exposure to the Tuamotus experience was acceptable to him, and indeed it was.


The passage Nuku Hiva to Toau

Before leaving Nuku Hiva, I had of course shown Chris around the boat in detail, to make him familiar with the layout and its equipment. The passage was to be sailed with regular sails (Main and Genoa), and we were going to be at the helm sharing the 4 hour shifts shifts between the two of us equally.
Also the cooking shifts we shared between the two of us.
As it was, we covered the 542 nm in almost exactly 5 days, i.e. 108 mile / day, which is quite slow, significantly less than my usual planning speed of 120-140 mile / day. I don't recall what was the reason for this, but most likely there was lack of wind, or the wind direction was less than favorable.
On the way we made some nice sea pictures, which show a lack of wind,





as well as a really nice sun set.


Chris was active fishing, and indeed caught a very nice Wahoo fish (very similar to the barracuda).


Not only did he know how to catch the fish, he also was expert at filleting it:


with this result:


After 5 days of sailing we saw Toau in front of us:


and a little later we picked up an available buoy in the Anse Amyot bay:


We immediately went on shore in the hope of being able to eat at the restaurant run by Valentine and Gaston, but were disappointed to find them exhausted from a period of hard work, and closing the restaurant for a few days.

We walked around and explored the island a bit.


and looking back at our boat from the island:


The next day we came back and I let the drone up to get an overview of the scenery:






Chris made some more artistic pictures, which he kindly shared with me:




as well as a great picture of the boat:


Later that day we decided take the dinghy out of the bay to do some snorkeling outside the island on the other side of the Anse Amyot.
This is the track of our dinghy ride.


We threw out the small folding grapnel anchor in front of the island:


I think we both were a bit reluctant to jump into the water, not having a good idea of what we would encounter.


In the end there was nothing very exciting to see in that location.
It took me quite some time to find a good place to put the anchor (between some rocks on the sea floor), to make sure that the dinghy would not float away into the open sea while we were snorkeling around the area...

The next day we took the dinghy over to that same island, and went on shore.

Here a view on our anchorage from that island.


There was not much to see on the island. The most interesting were the crabs running around on the beach, doing their thing:


At some point we asked Gaston, if he could take us to a nice snorkeling spot, for a fee of course, and he agreed.

So he took us on his launch a few hundred meters into the lagoon, to a place where he apparently knew that he could catch some good fish and lobster.


We were moving very fast, and Gaston effortlessly avoided the many bommies on the bottom of the lagoon:


When we arrived to the spot of choice, Gaston tied the boat to a bommie, and Chris and I went snorkeling around the bommie, while Gaston went hunting with his spear gun. The following pictures are all by Chris, who had his GoPro camera with him:
A nice Coral:


There were many of these blue shells embedded in dead coral rocks:


Chris saw a small shark. I actually never saw it, but Chris told me that it was swimming right behind me...




It was amazing to watch Gaston expertly hunting: he would let himself sink down to the bottom and hide behind some coral to shoot at the fish from there:




After we came back, near sunset, Gaston brought some grilled lobsters to our boat, which we bartered for a couple of cold beers that we still had on board...

The next day, we were on our way again, heading for Tahiti.