Fakarava Atoll

It’s almost 9pm and the anchorage is lit by the full moon. There’s quite a few boats anchored here, maybe 25, and they’re all so different. There’s quite the super mega yacht way out in the harbor with it’s masts lit up at each spreader, 5 on one and 4 on the other. The cute little steel boat that came and anchored nearby looks cozy,  its cabin is glowing and I imagine the 3 crew inside playing games. How bold and adventurous they are to have gotten to this atoll in the middle of the ocean! What kind of people do that? The realization hits me that we Rocket Science crew are also here, woah. All of us boaters are so different and yet here we all are sharing space in our unique ways. 

The breeze is relatively cool in the cockpit, feels great. We got wrapped up in fixing our windlass motor and leaky water maker filter cartridge holder and didn’t go swimming today, not even to clean the rest of our waterline. We need to keep eating our onboard stores so we’re not so low in the water. At least in this anchorage there are hardly any waves and the boat is still. Without all the rocking side to side hopefully there will be less growth above the bottom paint. 

I’m getting ahead of myself though- we are is in a new island group! We left the Marquesas with only seeing one island, we’ll be back up there at some point during hurricane season. The Tuomotus are a huge chain of atolls that if you haven’t checked out on a map, you should. They’re what’s left of volcanic islands that have sunk back into the sea and left behind their surrounding reefs. (They don’t come back to life despite that “I Lava You” song.) The “land” here is coral beach, sometime with a little strip of vegetation in between the ocean facing beach and the inner lagoon. There’s not much dirt, coconut palms are the only thing grown and harvested that I’ve seen so far, though apparently there’s a guy that sells bananas. Fakarava is one of the bigger atolls, when you’re inside you cannot see any other side of it- it’s a 20 mile long and 5 mile wide oasis in the middle of the ocean hanging out with a bunch of other atolls.

We set our anchor with floats for the first time here. On the bottom there are “bommies”, what everyone calls the small heads of coral scattered about. If anchors are set the normal way you risk wrapping or catching your chain around these bommies and having a super hard time retrieving it as well as breaking and killing a bunch of coral. Instead, to float our chain, we put out just a little more than it takes to get the anchor to the bottom, then attach floats (or fenders if you don’t have any floats yet) every so many meters to keep your chain from just dragging around on the bottom. If it’s calm the floats gather at the surface, if it’s windy they get pulled under as the boat pulls the chain to a nice angle to keep the anchor set. If the water is clear enough or shallow enough you can try and find an area without any bommies and anchor normally, we’ll see if that ever happens. 

Our friends on Ohana have been here for a while already and they were happy to host us for dinner and grill the tuna on their convenient built in grill. We brought half the fish that had been marinating all day, it turned out pretty delicious despite being a low grade skipjack. Even just half of it gave us leftovers for both families for lunch the next day. We had a day of drizzle, it was nice for cleaning up after passage but the next day was beautiful. We rented beach bikes and rode all over the town, up to the airport and down south a ways. Every chance we got we detoured out to a beach to look for floats to use on our anchor chains, Niclas and Ellie found one foam float which will work but the ideal floats are hard plastic. Every property has them decorating their trees like ornaments or lining their fences. There were even art installations featuring the floats! But none on the beaches. We need to go somewhere less populated. 

Pearl growing is a big thing inside Fakarava and many floats mark the strings of shells hanging about 5m below the surface. The pearls here grow in many different colors and the process in which they’re farmed takes quite a few years. One local business grows pearls, has a little restaurant, hosts guests in little cottages, and gives tours. We went to the tour and listened to a lot of French and a little bit of English with a group of guests. At the end you could buy a lottery ticket, choose a clam, and they’d open it for you. If there’s a pearl you get to keep it and they put it on a bracelet or necklace for you. Griffin got 2 tickets and 2 pearls, what fun and a good way to keep the memory. We went back to that beach and bar a few times and even sat at one of the in the water tables while the kids swam around with the nurse sharks that gather there. Super picturesque!

The big bommie in the anchorage has a marker on it and we went snorkeling on it a bunch. One side has a sandy face so we anchor the dinghy there and then swim around. Right after jumping in the first time I saw a school of immature unicorn tangs, a few big needle fish, a huge school of unknown teeny tiny fish that swam around me at the surface making the most interesting dancing curtain, and Tridacna clams of every color living in the coral. I could snorkel and observe the reef community for hours, it’s so fascinating watching all the inhabitants interact.

We found gyoza/potsticker wrappers in a store and invited Ohana’s crew over to make and eat them. Everyone tried folding some and the girls did the majority of it, totally the way to go. My friend from middle school, Kirsty, mom was Japanese and she taught me how to make them a long long time ago. She passed away recently and I love that her cooking lessons get to be shared and enjoyed internationally. We ate well with cheers to Fumi.

After a number of days and no more fresh produce appearing after multiple ships arriving we took off for the southeast corner of the atoll. There’s a marked channel most of the way down and we had a previously traveled route to follow that another boat shared. The light was perfect for seeing any bommies in our path and we motor sailed down with no issues. Funny how I’d never said or heard the word bommy or it’s plural and now we talk about them continuously. Either we’re swimming to them to snorkel or avoiding them while underway or talking about that other boat that anchored to close to one, it’s endless. It’s refreshing how calm the water is in here compared to the outside.

The new anchorage is in a nearly uninhabited place except for a kiteboarding school on a boat and hut on shore, a pig farmer who feeds her herd on coconuts, and one or two other huts/shelters that seem uninhabited. Tourists come down here to dive the pass to the west and apparently have a pig roast on shore. A speedboat came by and invited us to one which we happily agreed to. Dinner was delicious and there was a poisson crux salad with lettuce and tomatoes! Amazing vegetables, our stores are dwindling. The roasted pig was moist, crunchy on the edges, and so tasty. We enjoyed our food with a few other groups of sailing friends. The hostess seemed to have fun serving us and chatting. She brought out a baked pudding with different fruits in it to finish, too much delicious food. 

When we first got here there were a few other kid boats that we got to hang out with but they’ve gone down to the south pass to do some diving now so it’s us and Ohana which is fun, Morning Stars will catch up soon. We’ll likely head down to the south pass to snorkel, it’s a famous dive sight where you float through with the current and a film called “700 Sharks” was shot. Griffin is still feeling pretty nervous about sharks but I’m hoping to be able to snorkel it and see some of the action. We’ll see what the weather the next bit brings, it’s been cloudy and rainy the last few days and felt great. We get a sunscreen application schedule break too! Next up, birthday week!