We woke up after a not very comfortable night. The wind had picked up a little and a chop had picked up that was rocking the boat on the mooring ball. We saw a monohull come through the pass just after 7am and it galvanised us to move on. There has been a lot of chat of big winds coming through tomorrow, the forecasts are all in the low 20’s so it doesn’t seem too bad. Rowan was quite keen to spend another night here as it is beautiful, but after last night we decided to move on.
We headed to the next atoll along called Toau. We are going to a blind pass, in other words there is a reef so you can’t enter the atoll. It is a good spot to be for the winds that are predicted. A couple run a little restaurant that people have raved about and they have mooring balls. Rowan has tried to contact them but had no reply so we headed there anyway. Only about 20 miles away. The winds initially hovering around 10 knots so we got the sails up and started off doing a slow comfy pace but the wind soon dropped and we had to get the engines on.
We got in around lunch time, two other boats were here, I made rather a botch of picking up the mooring line, we have this clever thing where I pick the ball up at the back which is nice and easy as it is so low and then on this very long line I run it forward to the front cleat. But the rope got tangled, and while I was sorting it out the long leash on the mooring ball got caught around the propeller. Luckily Rowan is such an expert at diving under and getting the rope off, as we have done it a fair amount of times over the years. At least it was wonderfully calm. Second attempt was much easier, as I knew the mooring ball had a long leash, I picked it up at the front and all was good.
Safely on the the mooring ball we got JeldiJeldi down and went to see Gaston and Valerie, at the house/restaurant. Turns out they have just arrived back this morning after being away for two weeks, which is why they did not answer Rowan’s messages. They are not serving meals at the moment which is disappointing, but if we get 6 people they may do something on Friday. On our way back to PolePole we stopped off at the Aussie monohull called PitPony, and met Judy and Fred. They have been here a while and clearly were keen to talk! We asked if they wanted to join us eating at the restaurant and they politely declined saying they would not support the couple, because they have all these enormous fenced fish traps that had dead fish in them because they are not being managed, plus an alive turtle and shark. They found some young lad and asked if they could at least release the turtle and he said no. They have been sailing 6 years slowly circumnavigating, and had tales of where they had been locked down during Covid. They loved being stuck in East London, South Africa where Rowan is from, they landed up being forced to have Christmas there in Lockdown and were treated very well. Not a place I would relish being, up the Buffalo river which has an enormous township further up the river. This is where Rowan used to row when he was at school.
It was extremely hot talking to them out in the sun in JeldiJeldi, we went and had a good cooling snorkel afterwards, going outside the atoll and drifted at pace with the current. I did not think the coral was in that great shape but Rowan thought it was ok, we seem to have different views on the state of coral. Plenty of fish but nothing too exciting, we have been spoilt.
It was a great relaxing evening, Rowan got his little magic BBQ going (not the weber) and we had our lamb chops. I think it is a Japanese BBQ, it is insulated and can go on a table and has a little battery operated fan at the bottom, it requires a few pieces of charcoal and works like a treat. We marinated the chops which were delicious with a bit of lime juice and our new supply of veggies. We watched what I thought was a pretty weird movie called Amuse Bouche with Ralph Fiennes, he was excellent, but a bit too much blood for me!
Heading through Fakarava North pass, beautifully calm
The right hand spit on Fakarava North pass where we snorkelled yesterday
Our little mooring spot on Toau, easy to see the reef that makes it a blind pass into the atoll but hopefully nice and protected for the big wind coming
The restaurant and fenced fishing trap in the background
Our view out the back
The sea is like a mill pond, just big white fluffy clouds
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