Storm Brewing

We were lazily playing around north east Apataki. Gathering coconuts for an evening refreshment, spear fishing, and barbecues on the beach. We even attempted hunting lobsters to no avail. We knew it was time to start moving on, but we weren’t ready to leave so we pulled our Sailmail weather to help with our decision. We know it is hurricane season in French Polynesia, but we haven’t really been worried. We check the weather often and haven’t been surprised, until today.

Around seven days from now is the strongest low pressure system that we have confronted since leaving Honolulu. Each barb on the wind flags indicate 10 knots of wind and half barb 5 knots. We are the located at the little purple boat figure between 25 and 30 knot wind barbs in the picture attached. Considering we caught this Tropical Disturbance early we can watch for development or dissipation.

Our choices are to hang out and see what happens or tuck tail and sail towards to the equator. We have thought about both ideas and discussed each in great detail but we’re still not sure. Yesterday our northeast Apataki anchorage was a bit uncomfortable because the wind had time to build across the atoll and create breaking waves. Our distance from reef protection or fetch was so great we bounced up and down with each wave. The upcoming weather is supposed to be out of the north and northwest so we are researching the best anchorages to safely weather the storm. Today, we traveled twelve nautical miles across the atoll to scout out the northwest corner of Apataki. In the middle of our two hour transit we were forced to do circles because visibility was poor as squalls quickly passed over us. Now the reef is breaking down the wind waves and our fetch is reduced so our anchorage is much more comfortable.

Hopefully in the next 24 hours we’ll have a better idea of what the weather and we will do.

Boat Position: 15 degrees 18.379 minutes south and 146 degrees 23.213 minutes west.

Cheers!
Wade and Sara

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