On the move again..

…. This time to the atoll, Toau! To my surprise, the wind is delivering more knots than predicted so we raised the sail right away in Rotoava and sailed past two Super Yachts. One of their tenders is longer than my boat!

We had beautiful wind and slight outgoing current pushing us through the pass without using the engine. I didn’t even have it running in neutral. Sarantium sailed straight as an arrow through the pass on a beam reach and continued this way all the way to the pass of Toau!

The incoming current was scheduled aprox 6 hours later so we had some time to kill outside the next atoll, Toau . The sail from Fakarava to Toau only took 2 hours at our speed of 5-6 knots. At the end we dropped part of the mainsail and rolled in the Genoa and let the staysail out… we needed to slow down to wait for slack tide! We slowed down and sailed back and forth outside the pass entrance to catch the slack. The entrance is really shallow and water rushes through there at an outgoing tide.

A pleasure boat, with a helicopter on the roof motored right towards us so I tacked away from it… and then it also changed direction. I decided to call them to see what their intended destination was; to continue past me or to go into the pass entrance. They answered and said they were heading into the pass. “Ok, I’ll tack back to original direction then as it’s too early for us to enter the pass with large standing waves” they answered “oh, is the tide going in or coming out right now?” 😳… this is when you know you got a big boat. How do you not know??? …tide was ebbing and current running MAX at 6 knots. I said “ looks like your boat can handle the standing waves, I’m waiting until slack, see you in there” ha! The captain laughed and said “have a great sail”I was amused to watch them go in and to see them slow right down as they too was affected by the strong current! An hour and a half later I set my engine to full speed and we surfed in on the large surf waves! That was fun!! I zigzagged in between corral heads and sand banks and finally anchored in 5 m off water! Another great day!!