After a fantastic time in the Marquesas it was sadly time to leave. We are on a very tight time schedule across the South Pacific. This is to ensure we are ahead of the weather systems and able to complete our circumnavigation in 2.5years. 

Although we were sad to move on we are also very excited about where we are headed. The Tuamotus is an archipelagos of 700+ atolls in the South Pacific. They are tiny islands surrounded by reefs with crystal clear water. 

The trip started with a solid breeze from the south east. With our course set to 205degrees the wind was slightly forward of the beam, making our point of sail a close reach. As a result the boat maintains a steady 45degree angle. This has its advantages when it comes to sleeping as it is more stable and you can easily secure yourself in position. However it doesn’t make daily tasks such as cooking and washing up easy! 

Penny also took a bit of a beating with some of the waves. Most of the time she glides through them and makes solid progress. However every so often a wave would catch her off guard and send a torrent of water over the bow. And even occasionally soaking us in the cockpit! One wave was so powerful it flew over the spray hood dumping itself all over me and as a result I had to change my clothes😂

As we got closer to the Tuamotus, we needed to slow the boat down. This was to ensure we arrived at the atoll in daylight and the correct state of tide. Each atoll has what’s known as a ‘pass’ from which you can enter into the reef. This needs to be timed accurately to ensure you arrive at slack water, ensuring you aren’t fighting any tide. As a result our ETA needed to be at 5:30am on the 16th May. We used our current distance to go and the ETA to calculate what speed we needed to travel at  so we arrived at the pass on time. 

However much we tried, we couldn’t slow Penny down. As a result we arrived at the edge of the atoll at 3am and drifted around until sunrise. We were not the only boat to do this, two other boats arrived at a similar time and also drifted until dawn. At 6am it was finally light enough to enter however due to the strong winds the pass had other ideas. 

As the atoll is a lagoon of water, in strong winds and high seas it fills up like a bath. Most atolls only have 1-2 entrances and as a result the water only has one way out…through the entrance! So even though we arrived at slack water the water was still flooding out of the lagoon at a rate of 3knts! 

On our second attempt, we were determined to get into the lagoon. It took roughly an hour and we still had a lot of current against us. At moments we were stationary, with Penny fighting the tide with all her engine power! It was a very tense hour with reefs all around!! We had taken the lead out of the 3 boats and the other two followed us in, copying our every move. We finally anchored around lunch time and enjoyed some sundowners with one of the boats who followed us in! 


Ua Pou to Makemo

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