We woke up at first light at our anchorage in the Tahanea Atoll, pulled the anchor, and were on our way. I was on bow navigation looking out for bommies as we crossed the atoll to the pass, but they are much harder to see when the sun is low in the sky in the direction you are traveling. I did my best to navigate us through the atoll by looking at the water surface for any variations or breaking waves that could indicate a shallow reef. We made it to the pass unscathed and sailed north-west on to our next stop, Faaite.
We did another day of 4-hour, 2-person watches and arrived at the pass for Faaite Atoll around sunset. We had tried to plan our entrance with minimal current but it seemed our timing estimator was a bit off and we experienced about 4 knots of current ebbing from the atoll. We slowly motored our way, making only 1 knot of speed over the ground and it felt like we were standing completely still. Eitan persisted and, what felt like an hour later, we finally made it over to the anchorage just inside the pass.
Given the amount of current and proximity of the anchorage to the pass, I stayed back at the boat while Eitan, Martin, and Simone took the dinghy to shore to grab more fuel and groceries. A lighter dinghy is a faster dinghy, plus it’s always nice to get some alone time after living in such close proximity to three other people. Unfortunately, the bakery was all out of fresh baguettes so Eitan preordered 10 of them to pick up our next time in town. Once they were back, we moved the boat to a slightly more protected area near the airport.
The anchorage was nice but paled in comparison to some of the others we had seen, so I spent most of my time in the water cleaning the bottom of the boat. Miraculously, the local store had magic erasers which were the only thing that could remove some of the organic stains on the waterline. I alternated between cleaning the water line and scrubbing the other growth on the bottom, which looked like fine grass.
Without much to look at above or below the water or any great anchorages, we decided to move on to the next atoll which was a short, 1 hour hop. Since we had baguettes to pick up, we planned to stop at the supply ship dock, which is located on the pass channel into the atoll, and run to grab them from the bakery in the morning as we went by. Once again, we underestimated the current and the pass shot us out at a whopping 12 knots! There was no way we could stop at the dock and we had to leave the delicious bread behind.
As we exited the pass, we saw a catamaran anchored on the outside. This was quite strange because the outside of the atoll is normally reef, a very steep drop-off, and completely unprotected. There was a large swell rolling in and it seemed like a horrible place to keep your boat. Then we saw the owner happily surfing just a few hundred feet away, so I guess it was a calculated risk! The forecast showed a large swell was scheduled to come up from a storm in New Zealand and would be hitting the area in the next couple days. Surfers always seem to anchor in the craziest spots!
We traveled two hours north to the Fakarava atoll and entered at slack tide. As we entered the pass, we saw a number of dive boats and dinghies with people geared up and ready to descend. We were passing over the Wall of Sharks, one of the most famous and popular dive sites in French Polynesia. Fakarava is one of the few tourist destinations in the Tuamotus. Not many of the atolls are set up for any kind of tourism and you could not find a room to rent if you tried. As we entered the atoll, it was strange to see waterfront bungalows and groups of vacationers on shore.
We pulled up to the anchorage, hoping to find an available mooring. Not spotting any, we made a couple circles, found a sandy patch and prepared to drop anchor. Eitan called out to a woman on the nearest boat to ask if they were at anchor or on a mooring in order to gauge the holding and how much chain to put out. She said there was actually a free mooring right in front of them but it was difficult to spot. Eitan maneuvered us around and I got ready to pick up the mooring ball.
Looking a bit starstruck, Simone turned to me and asked if I knew who that woman was. I clearly had no idea and she said “it’s Rachel Moore, she has over 30K followers on Instagram!” This woman is a great photographer and one of Simone’s favorite accounts to follow. After showing me her account, I recognized a handful of shots that Simone had been trying to recreate during our trip. Eager to meet her, Martin and Simone hopped in the water and snorkeled over as soon as we were moored.
Eitan and I settled in and eventually made it over to SV Agape to chat with Rachel and her husband Josh since they were the only young cruisers we had seen since getting to the Marquesas. They had been in French Polynesia for a couple of years now, having been stuck there due to COVID, and had spent a lot of time in Fakarava. They gave us the scoop about where to go for most of our needs. I mentioned the one thing I couldn’t find anywhere was dental floss and Rachel generously put a few individual flossers in a baggie for me. They asked if we planned on doing any diving but we responded we were sadly down to just one BCD and unable to SCUBA dive. It felt very kismet when they said they happened to have two of them for sale! We made plans to meet up with them the next day to pick one up.
Coincidentally, we noticed the boat moored behind SV Agape was SV Wastrel, one of the boats we had met in Mexico and they had made the Pacific crossing a couple of weeks behind us. We had only met them in person once but had messaged with them regularly to communicate whereabouts and plans. Even more coincidently, Rachel and Josh said they had been on SV Wastrel several years ago in Mexico before the current owners purchased it. The cruising world is very small!
We settled into this new atoll that we would call home for the next week and a half, waiting out the big swell that was headed our way.