Commodore
May 17, 2023

Wednesday 17 May – off to Motus Faama

Rowan has been studying the winds and conditions, he worked out we will be a bit uncomfortable staying here in Rangiroa main town, with the wind predicted to increase a bit and change direction. We have decided to head straight across the atoll to a string of little islands called Faama. Rangiroa is about 18 miles wide at its widest and 40 miles long. It is 16 miles to Faama, we left before breakfast, ate a delicious cooked breakfast under sail and arrived before lunch. We haven’t heard of anyone coming here, Rowan had got some waypoints off a blog and we dropped anchor exactly on their point, in about 12 meters of water, supposedly safe from bommies. It is an idyllic spot and not a boat in sight, the water colours are phenomenal.

Once settled down we headed off to explore the motus – the local word for a bit of wooded land on the reef edge. There were fascinating rock formations at the atoll edge, that is lava rather than coral, it has been eroded to the sharpest of edges and into extraordinary shapes. The coral reef on the inside has created a lagoon between it and the lava wall at the edge of the atoll. The water colour was incredible varying from aquamarine to translucent emerald green. As we were walking I think Rowan was so taken in by the scenery that he stubbed his toe on a bit of sharp lava and completely sliced the top of his toe off, removing the nail completely. That is how sharp it is! It sounded and looked painful, luckily it didn’t bleed too much, he manfully managed to get his reef shoes on to prevent it happening again, and we continued on our way. We walked all the way around the island crossing bits of the lagoon to get to the lava wall. On our way back in a shallow part of the lagoon we found a very inquisitive baby Black Tip Reef shark, about 60cm long. It was very cute swimming around us and then shooting off when we moved. Behaving just like a puppy!

As we walked out the lagoon a young local couple arrived who skilfully navigated their way through the coral reef into the lagoon, they were going fishing. He had a huge long pole with 3 very sharp, vicious looking metal prongs attached. A home made spear gun! Along the way we managed to scavenge yet another buoy, this one is green, definitely getting more colourful. This one actually has a number on it, it was buried well, so hopefully it has been missing for ages!

We were just having our sundowners when the fishing couple came by, we waved and they came to see if we wanted to buy some of their fish. We saw the net they had picked up, it had caught about 8 good size beautifully coloured parrot fish. Everything we have read say they are full of ciguatera, so we politely declined, which is just as well as I don’t know if I could bring myself to eat such beautiful creatures. They were very friendly and refused our offers of a cold drink. They live a couple of motus further down.

We went to bed feeling like we were really in a lost world all on our own. Stinky being our only contact with the outside world.