After a few days on the mooring ball near the southern pass of Fakarava and diving the Wall of Sharks, we headed easterly along the southern rim of the atoll to an anchorage called Harifa Bay. It was an easy sail and we got there a few hours later but were saddened to find about 10 other boats already there. Apparently, we had happened upon the Outremer World Rally again and this was another one of their scheduled meetups. Since we had sailed most of the way and hardly used the engine, we needed to charge the batteries and Eitan fired up the generator. Shortly after, an older man came over in a dinghy and scolded us for using such “old and dangerous technology” and for creating so much noise in the anchorage. Eitan corrected him saying our generator was a brand-new high quality low-emissions model and had a much smaller carbon foot print than motoring with the diesel engine, especially when we had wind to sail and all we needed was to top of the batterie. Eitan told him that we also didn’t like the sound of the generator and would do our best to run it as little as possible.
Using an external generator seems to be a source of contention since it is noisy and disruptive to the anchorage, and we totally get it. We do our best to run it as little as possible, but you can never make everyone happy. Believe me, we would love to have enough solar power and battery bank to supply the whole boat, but there is only so much room for batteries and solar panels on a boat as small as Sierra Wind, and charging is reduced on cloudy day. Some catamaran owners don’t seem to understand the space constraints of monohulls, since they often have internal generators installed and room for plenty of solar panels.
We ended up meeting the guy onshore later and, unsurprisingly, he turned out to be a bit of a prick. He bragged to us about all the niceties of his fancy, expensive Outremer catamaran and how it’s so light and fast and energy efficient. But the joke’s on him because we have the exact same view out our windows and paid a fraction of the price. Eitan bookmarked his tracking page to specifically avoid him if we crossed paths in the future. We later found out that he had to be medically evacuated to his home country after scratching his foot on some coral and getting an infection. Karma?
The next day Eitan and I went back to the beach to do some relaxing. There were a bunch of hammocks and slacklines set up on the beach near the only restaurant, which appeared closed. I tried my hand at slacklining which was much more fun than expected despite being horrible at it. I could only make it about three or four steps without losing my balance, but since no one was around, it was great to keep trying and falling. I recently read a book called Beginners by Tom Vanderbilt about being a beginner again and how it is so important for your brain to constantly be learning new skills and or hobbies. Even on a boat sailing around the world, it’s easy to get set in a routine and then stuck in it.
Next, it was a rainy and squally sail from Harifa to the main town of Fakarava at the northern end of the atoll. We were shocked to arrive at an anchorage with over 50 boats. We hadn’t seen this many boats since arriving in Nuku Hiva but we managed to find a spot in the anchorage and threw out a stern anchor to make sure we didn’t swing into anyone. We headed to shore and made our way to Fakarava Yacht Services, which was similar to Nuku Hiva’s in that they help coordinate all the cruiser needs.
Eitan had mailed a small West Marina order to Fakarava Yacht Services to see how difficult the import process would be if we wanted to place a larger order down the line. He ended up spending $300 to import $200 worth of products, so any hope of receiving goods from the US was limited to having people pack it with them when they came to visit. We picked up our package, dropped off laundry, and confirmed, once again, that our propane tanks could not be refilled there. We also coordinated to have a welder meet us in the morning to fix the stanchion that broke during our crossing to the Tuamotus from the sail going into the water.
We woke up quite early to get to the fuel dock to meet the welder by 8 am. We didn’t know it yet, but it would be another unproductive day of disappointment and inconvenience. Both the bow and stern anchors got stuck so I had to get into the water much earlier than I would have liked to unstick them. Then the welder was late and didn’t have the right equipment to do the job properly without damaging the boat, so Eitan pulled the plug on the work. I did some grocery shopping but the supply ship that was supposed to have come the day before didn’t so there wasn’t much at the stores.
We had heard from some other friends there was a farm about 4-miles down the road with fresh produce, so Eitan and I rented some bicycles. I love riding bikes and really enjoyed the 45-minute ride to see the lesser inhabited parts of the island. Eventually, we arrived at a plot of land with some raised garden beds and pulled into the driveway. The woman there agreed to sell us 3 heads of lettuce, 2 heads of bok choy, and 3 cucumbers for around $15. The price seemed a little steep but we hadn’t had any fresh food in weeks and a salad sounded amazing.
We biked back towards town and happened to run into Simone and Martin who had just finished their morning dive at the north pass with the dive charter company. They had an incredible time and even got to dive with some manta rays. Their second dive would be in the afternoon, near the same site. We had heard diving at the north pass was just as good as the south so Eitan devised a plan to move SV Sierra Wind up to the northern pass and we would see if the dive charter could just drop Martin and Simone off at the boat on the way back.
Eitan and I rushed back to return the bikes and prepare the boat for moving. Once again, I had to dive in to unstick the anchor but ended up scraping my knee on some coral, while trying to get the chain free. Once out of the anchorage, we received word from Martin that the dive company does not do pick-ups or drop-offs from any boats. Since we were already underway, we hoped that maybe they would allow for some flexibility. We picked up a mooring ball and geared up as fast as we could to try and SCUBA dive, then come up early and grab Martin and Simone from the dive boat. We had a nice, quick, dive but the dive boat ignored our calls to stop and zoomed off with our crew.
So, we had to drive an hour back to town to pick up Martin and Simone. We figured, at least we could top up on gas but the gas station closed promptly at 5:00 PM and we were three minutes too late. Then we turned back around and motored another hour back to the mooring ball. Our time in Fakarava north turned out to be a bit of a bust and our time in the Tuamotus was coming to a close, but we still had one more atoll to visit!
