We spent a very pleasant four days here at Hanamoenoa Bay on Tahuata Island, only two hours mototoring from Atuona, Hiva Oa. Our main objective, scrubbing Sunny Spells’ bottom, was achieved in the first two days. It was not as bad as I had feared, but she still has a big bottom to scrub! The diarrhoea-yellow algae above the waterline I had rubbed off while we were still in the harbour at Atuona.
The snorkeling here was a little disappointing. Visibility was about 10m over sand, and the reefs are very degraded. There is virtually no coral in the bay. I headed out towards the northern headland where there is said to be a few manta rays, but stopped short as there was a bit of a current running out to sea and I did not have the dinghy with me.
I went up the mast to check out the rigging and lubricate all the stainless fittings with a thin film of WD40. Fortunately, everything checked out fine. I was treated to this drone-like view from the top of our 18m mast.

The plan for our next leg to Fakarava was to do a little detour south of the rhumb line to give us a better wind angle the last day or so when the winds are forecast to be a bit stronger.
The passage started with motoring as there was zero wind. I nearly turned back to Tahuata as the prospect of 3 days motoring, as forecast by two of the models, appeared to have materialised. Fortunately, the wind soon picked up and we were reaching with just the large #2 genoa for a few hours before setting the two poles as the wind started going aft of the beam.
The bottom scrub has paid dividends, as Sunny Spells is quick to accelerate in the light breeze. The sea state was generally very pleasant, with a long period ground swell of about 1.5m from the south on our starboard bow and very little by way of wind wave on top.
The weather on this passage turned out to be flaky, with both wind speed and direction changing a lot and quickly. We are in a transition zone between the southern winter weather nasties and the equatorial trade winds. There’s also a weak trough in this area, so lots of little cumulus that upset the wind direction and speed and threaten to rain. Here, we are between two squalls with 25 knots of wind on a broad reach, making 6 to 7 knots, only have 58 miles to go to the north pass at Fakarava Atoll.

We arrived at the north pass into Fakarava Atoll around 9:30AM, and just motored straight in without any current, turbulence or other nasties. We proceeded to the town anchorage at Rotoava village and briefly went ashore (after inflating the Zodiac) to pay the tourist tax.
Around midday we started motoring south inside the atoll and anchored at Kaukuraroa for the night, about halfway to the south pass anchorage. I’m hoping to arrange a drift dive through the south pass for Saturday, so that’s where we’ll be heading tomorrow.

We are the only boat here in the anchorage and we cannot see any other boats out in the atoll or buildings/people on land. Quite surreal after the crush of boats everywhere in the Med, Caribbean and even Hiva Oa. We sat on the back watching the sun set in the west, with a couple of manta rays surfacing over the reefs about 250m away. The real deal…
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