93 - “Tomato Tuamotu”

So, to explain the title of this blog.  A while ago, as we were planning our Pacific crossing, we got a message from a friend who’d sailed this area several years ago listing her must see places. Well, in its infinite wisdom, spell check corrected Tuamotu to Tomato. So, I get a text about the Tomato Islands!  I had no idea what she was talking about.  However, when I read it to Pedro (who at the time was planning and charting our course) he laughed and said he knew exactly what she meant and showed me on the charts. Well, a year later, what was just a funny name and a dot on the map, has been our incredible playground for the last month.  I have to say that one of the most amazing aspects of this sailing journey, is discovering that our favorite destinations are places we knew little or nothing about before we sailed into them.  This is especially true of the Tuamotu chain of island atolls.  When we sailed into the Marquesas, we couldn’t imagine any place more beautiful and while we loved our time there, almost immediately upon arriving in the Tuamotu’s (our second French Polynesian island chain), we had a new favorite.

Now, to catch-up the blog. When I left off, we'd just taken off from the Marquesas for a sail to the Tuamotus.  Well, just as our song says, “the sails go up and Pedro casts a line,” and this sail was no exception.  On our crossing from Panama, we lost 9 fishing lures because the pacific fish that went after our lures, were much bigger than the ones we were used to catching in the Atlantic.  So, while in the Marquesas, we finally got smart and purchased a hand line with 200 lb. test line.  Turned out to be a great purchase. Just about 4 hours after leaving our anchorage, Pedro pulled in an 80 lb. tuna!!!  Our trip had definitely started out right.  However, Pedro's only complaint was that, for the foreseeable future, he wasn’t allowed to fish anymore as we have a rule that once we catch a fish we have to eat said fish before we try to catch another (plus this was a huge fish).

With plenty of fish aboard and great winds, we enjoyed a wonderful 3-day sail to Raroia - our first (and still my current favorite) atoll.  A great definition we heard was “Islands are bodies of land surrounded by water and atolls are bodies of water surrounded by land.”  What they don’t tell you is that the body of water is the most amazing water you’ll ever see and to adequately paint the surroundings, you would need every crayon in the box and then some.  The inlets (called passes here), are quite narrow and as such very suspectable to the changing tides.  We planned our arrival (as best you can when sailing) so that we would be arriving with an incoming tide and with the sun behind us so we could see any impediments.  Once through the pass, we decided to cross to an uninhabited section on the far side of the atoll to visit the site where the Kon Tiki landed in 1947.  After our visit, we again watched the YouTube documentary about the Kon Tiki and her crossing (if you've not already seen it, you should look it up). Anyway, while, it was really fun to stand in such a historical site, what we loved the most was that, as far as we could see, we had the entire atoll to ourselves.  What was originally planned to just be a short stop onto our way to the more known atolls, turned into a magical week of snorkeling right off the boat, exploring the beautiful beaches and collecting coconuts alongside the local crabs.  

After a week or so and somewhat reluctantly, we heeded the call of the sea, pulled up anchor and left our paradise to continue exploring the Tuamotus.  Our next planed atoll was Makemo where we'd planned an arrival at the east pass in the town of Pouheva.  As we were approaching the inlet, another sailboat - Carole and Hugh aboard Carosy - hailed us on the radio to exchange information about the inlet conditions. We sail with an electronic system called Automatic Identification System (AIS), which receives information about other boats in our area as well as broadcasts our boat name, position and other pertinent information.  While designed as a safety feature at sea, this also makes contacting nearby boats easier too.  Mutual friends had given Carosy our name, so by the time we dropped anchor, we already had friends in anchorage.  As this was their second tour of the islands, we took their lead and joined them in town as we explored, went grocery shopping and found the local pizzeria (luckily, they taught us that we needed to pick up beer at the grocery store because the restaurant doesn’t sell drinks).  We stayed a couple of nights near town and then started making our way west through the atoll sailing just a few hours a day and dropping anchor in secluded beach areas. Sometimes we were alone in an anchorage and sometimes we managed to meet up with Carosy and other boats for happy hour and game nights.  It was literally, the best of all worlds and before we knew it, another week went by.

Deciding it was time to explore our next atoll, we took the weather prediction at face value and took off early for a day sail to Tahanea.  Well, once again, the wind wasn’t as predicted and several hours into our sail we realized we weren’t going to make the pass before dark (and there was no way we would even attempt any of these inlets at night).  So, we decided to change course and instead sail overnight to the next atoll of Fakarava.  Wouldn’t you know it, just a few hours into our revised sail plan, the winds picked up considerably making it obvious that we would arrive well before sunrise.  Our best option was to “heave to” - the staysail is backwinded and the rudder turned in the opposite direction so that the staysail wants to turn the boat one way but the rudder wants to turn the boat the other forcing the boat to stop forward motion and rest at sea. We were very comfortable and spent a few hours just watching the stars and floating around in the middle of the ocean. 

The next morning, with the sunrise, we adjusted our sails and headed in to visit Fakarava our next atoll. Thankfully, coming in the south pass was uneventful and we quickly found a great anchor spot just near the very small town area.  We put the dinghy in and went ashore for a walk and a beer at a local snack shack before meeting back up with Carosy at the restaurant for a great local style lunch.  The next day, we, along with Carole and Hugh, arranged for direct from the boat pick-up with a local dive shop so we could dive the south pass and it's famous “wall of shark” dive.   It was amazing!!!  If you ever get to this atoll, this is a dive you don’t want to miss. Thanks to Hugh and Carole's skilled photography, we also got some fabulous pictures.

The next day we motored to a sandy beach anchorage where we spent another blissful week enjoying beach walks, happy hours, a full moon and Sunday morning coffee drinks before motor sailing down towards the north pass section of the island.  This was a very interesting sail.  When we left the anchorage , we had a wonderful rainbow off our port side and within just a couple of hours, we saw a waterspout off our starboard side.  Thankfully no real storms developed and we made it safely to our next spot a few hours later.  This was a large anchorage (for us the largest in well over a month) with about 50 boats anchored around.  While a bit of culture shock, it was fun to see the other cruisers too.  As we were in the "big" town with paved roads, our exploring this time allowed us to take our bikes ashore.  It was great to really stretch our legs and be able to see local points of interest. We also spent time with our friends, enjoying game nights on their boat and great meals at several local restaurants.  While we've loved meeting many of the local humans, our favorite locals on this island were a couple of dogs we met several times who played catch for hours with coconuts, often catching them in the air.  

 

The last item on our Fakarava agenda was to dive the north pass which was almost as nice as the south pass. In addition to numerous black, grey and white tip sharks, we saw octopuses and manta rays as well as a variety of other fish.  We are so grateful to Carole and Hugh who took a ton of underwater pictures that they shared with us. 

 

Well, about this time, our refrigerator stopped working (thankfully we still have a freezer so we were able to keep our food cold).  Finding no one on Fakarava who could help us, we picked up anchor and continued west.  For no other reason that it sounded fun, we decided to again stop in another atoll named Apataki   At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this too was amazing.  While we could see a few houses on the distant shoreline and another sailboat in the far distance, we were blissfully secluded and spent another few days just swimming and snorkeling.

At last we got a referral for a refrigerator repair person, so we pulled up anchor and continued on to Rangiroa.  The main section of town had a small grocery store, a wonderful bakery and several restaurants.  For our morning coffee drink walk we stopped at the bakery (you have to arrive early as they’re completely sold out by 6am) for baguettes and pan au chocolate taking our treats to the pass to watch the sunrise along with the local dolphins frolicking in wake of an arriving cruise ship.  

The island (that is to say the one section between the 2 inlets) is about 5 miles long, so we again dinghied our bikes ashore and went off exploring.  Over the course of several days, we rode from one end of island to the other several times. One of our favorite discoveries was the winery.  Rangiroa has the only winery in the Tuamotus and the only winery in the world whose grapes are grown in coral.  Needless to say, we had to go for a tasting. The wine tasting also happened to include a taste of their locally produced rhum.  When I told the vintner, who had already poured 2 tastings of rhum, that I don't really like it, he simply looked at Pedro and said "I guess you get two" as he poured both tastings into Pedro’s glass.  However, I really came out ahead as he then offered me a tasting of the sparkling wine.  Well, we liked the wine (neither of us loves rhum) so much we bought 4 bottles (including one of the sparkling).  The winery was also selling delicious cantaloupe that they grew and the kids across the street were selling bananas so our backpack was completely full. On our way back to dinghy, the small pizza shop we'd passed was now open.  This restaurant was setup in the Chef's front yard - we actually saw him run into his house from the pizza shop to get some additional ingredients.  The best part was that he had a really friendly dog and cat who kept us entertained while our pizza was cooking.  I can tell you that we were definitely a sight riding our bikes after dark (yes, we had lights on them) loaded down with wine, fruit and pizza!

 

 Not to outdone by the other atolls, Rangiroa also has plenty of underwater entertainment.  We signed up for a couple of scuba dives in the pass and while it was nice, it was not as pretty as Fakarava in our opinion (the couple we met at the winery said they literally swam with the dolphins on their dive but sadly we never got to see them).  However, just a very short dinghy ride from our anchorage was the "Aquarium" which might have been the most amazing snorkeling spot we’ve ever encountered.  On our first trip, the minute we’d tied off the dinghy, we were swarmed with 100s of small fish (and a few reef sharks too) who were obviously used to boats arriving there.  So, daily (often a couple of times a day), we took leftover food scraps to feed the fish (who ate right out of our hands and gave us dirty looks when the food was gone) while we snorkeled around.  Another benefit of the area was that Pedro was able to fish just outside the reef and through the pass catching humpback red snappers twice for lunch.  

Well, the refrigerator repairman finally came but sadly determined that our compressor was shot and he couldn’t help us.  We thanked him for trying and asked how much we owed to which he said "a beer".  Of course, we gave him a six pack (apologizing that it wasn’t cold) and some money for his time but this meant our only hope of a repair was Tahiti. 

So, we once again pulled up anchor at sunrise and continued west.  Since we’d already gone almost a month without a refrigerator, a few more days wouldn’t make any difference.  So we decided to stop at one last atoll named Tikehau.  This atoll is famous for having a manta ray cleaning station.  This is basically a coral reef that over the years has become home to Remoras and other fish who eat the parasites and dead skin off of the manta rays.  We were able to drop anchor very near the reef and took our dinghy over.  The first day we arrived the wind and waves were so strong that the water visibility was very poor.  However, on the second day, we found one.  The ray was about 6 feet wide (actually not big as far as mantas go but looked big to me) and was just casually swimming around the reef enjoying his spa day.  It was absolutely amazing!  He swam within just a few inches of us several times and seemed to not be at all concerned we were there.  I think we watched him for about an hour - before he finally swam away. 

After we got our manta ray fix, we sailed across the atoll to the “Isle de Eden.”  We’d been told about the place by other cruisers. It is a religious sect out of Taiwan who have built a self-sustaining community with various gardens and farm animals.  At present, there are about 10 people who live on the island.  They sell produce and eggs to cruisers and anyone else who stops by.  We were given a tour, a history of the island and even got to play with an adorable dog and cat.  Poe, our host, picked lettuce, bok choy, mint, rosemary, basil, figs and moringa for us.  We also bought pumpkins, sea salt, coconut oil, fresh eggs and I even bought a necklace from the pearls they grow on the island.  This too was a wonderful experience.  We truly enjoyed meeting the people and it was wonderful to have fresh veggies and herbs.  To top it off, Pedro caught a peacock grouper that we had for dinner along with our fresh salad.  It really doesn’t get much better!

 

Alas, our time in these amazing atolls came to an end.  As I type this, we’re sailing under a full moon to Tahiti.  The sail should take a little more than 24-hours.  We’re excited to see Tahiti and the other islands that make up the Society Islands and the remainder of our trip to French Poluynesia.  But I’ll fill you in on that next time.

 

Until next post!