Commodore
April 24, 2023

Monday 24 April – Safely anchored amongst the dead coral heads

When Rowan came up to take over at midnight we decided to take Baby Spice down as the wind hadn’t died as much as predicted and we have gone too fast. We can only do the pass at Tahanea at 7am, at slack tide. So we took Baby Spice down in the dark, the new moon not giving any light, thankfully it all went smoothly, and the two of us operated like a slick team. We continued with no sails up, incredibly we still went between 1.5 and 3 knots, just pootling along, most probably slower than walking pace. I was back on watch at 4am and had a wonderful sunrise. I could see a Catamaran behind us but no sign of Spirit of Argo. There are 3 passes into Tahanea, the biggest is in the middle and that is the one we aimed for.

At 6:30am Rowan was back up, we thought the other Catamaran was going to go through the pass but they just went motoring past. We went and had a look and although there was quite a lot of turbulence we decided it looked fine and we went through smoothly, clocking the usual 4.5 knots of current. We were also escorted by dolphins which was great fun, amazing how they were riding our bow wave and the current. The other Catamaran turned around and followed us through, obviously waiting to see how we managed! Once inside we turned into the anchorage on the right hand side, we were surprised to see 6 other boats, this place is meant to be off the beaten track! We struggled looking for a good place to anchor as the seabed is covered in coral heads, eventually we just had to go for it and got our fenders tied onto the anchor chain to try and keep the chain off the ground so it doesn’t snag the old coral heads. It took all morning to get sorted as our anchor dragged and we got too close to a departing boat, we had to wait for it to move on. We heard from Kane on Spirit of Argo, he came through the first pass, narrower but calmer by the sounds of it.

At slack tide at midday we went and snorkelled in the main big pass, on all the atolls, the passes have the best coral and marine life. It was so disappointing the coral was 70-80% dead, bleached or gone black, and very few fish, it looked like an ocean desert. It was very disheartening, so we went to the first pass which is not far at all and there the coral was in much better condition. In fact Kane was out in his dinghy and had seen some Manta Rays but they had gone by the time we got in, there were dolphins too, which we were not in time to swim with either. But we had a lovely drift snorkel on both sides of the pass, with plenty of fish and our usual Black Tipped Reef sharks always coming up to check us out.

We had defrosted a half chicken that we had bought in the Galapagos market, I deboned it an got it into the slow cooker for the afternoon, great smells on the boat all afternoon. I went to throw the carcass for the fish who always come and live under the boat when we anchor, Rowan decided to video it, which I have put below, watch it to see our guest appearance.

Rowan discovered the Catamaran Rolling Stones had just anchored, they are the boat that rescued the Raindancer crew from their emergency raft when their boat sunk. They invited us to drinks and a beach fire, but we were too tired, I had so little sleep last night. Plus we were hugely looking forward to our chicken supper, so long since we have had chicken!