Each day we check the weather looking for a break in the easterly winds and we found our little hole. South of 20 degree latitude is a large storm that has caused a trail of wind that disrupted the prevailing east winds. This morning we set the alarm for 4:09 AM and sadly prepared for departure from one of our more favorite anchorages. We started to see light around 5:00 AM but there was no wind. The water was like a mirror reflecting the clouds above, which made for beautiful pictures, but horrible coral head visibility. We are pretty diligent about marking waypoints on our chartplotter so that if we had to follow the track out blindly we are apprised of obstacles. Which came in handy for this morning because our bow lookout could not see 10 feet in front of the boat.
Leaving the pass of Tahanea was nothing like our arrival. There were a few standing waves but not over 4 feet. The outgoing current pushed out nearly 2 miles before subsiding, giving us a boost of 8 knots for a few miles. Sadly we had to motor sail the whole way to Makemo because the local squalls messed up our wind direction that was predicted. We did handline fish and had a couple of bites but couldn’t get the fish in the boat soon enough.
We were a little nervous about the Makemo west pass because we had heard from other boats that tried for an hour to get in the pass to no avail. Of course right as we were making our approach to enter a 4 mile squall hovered and picked up the winds to 14 knots out of the north. We were very blessed to have the current with us and our boat speed topped at 8.7 knots at 2600 RPM. Generally 2600 RPM we average 6 knots, so the extra boost was a nice push to get us to our anchorage sooner and miss the squall. The Makemo north west anchorage is only inhabited during copra production, so we are currently on our own again. We’re not sure if we plan to wait out the southern weather disturbance here in Makemo or if we are going to make a run for Raroia.
Boat Position: 16 degrees 26.645 minutes south and 143 degrees 56.985 minutes west.
Cheers,
Wade and Sara
