Ok, we caught up on pictures, now back to general updates… 

This morning when we tried to pull up anchor, the chain didn’t come up at all. As we suspected, it was tightly wound around the coral. We had to do a lot of maneuvering of the boat to get it unwound, but we got the anchor up without having to go in and untangle it.

As we left, the water was very calm in the lagoon. Until we got to the pass. At the pass it looked the same as when we came in. Big, calm eddies around the land, with the water between the eddies so agitated that it looked like it was boiling. The current was going with us. We hit a new Kosmos speed record of 12.0 knots! We are ready to paint flames on the sides now.

The water was fairly calm and the ride over was pleasant. We could see it raining really hard on three sides of us. The squalls showed up clearly on the radar. It looked like the squalls would all converge together right on top of us, but they didn’t. We made it the whole way without getting hit with any wind or rain.

We’re beginning to think Kosmos has developed some kind of special force-field shield. All week the rain has missed us. On Monday, we could see it raining just to our north. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we could see it raining just to our south. Christi is disappointed by this new anti-rain force-field. It means the boat is getting dirty and she will have to wash it soon.

Anyway, we went around the outside of Apatiki and never did see anything that looked like buildings anywhere on the island. Our destination was Fakarava, entering through the north pass. As we approached, Fakarava looked like two islands set very close together, with landscape much the same as Manihi and Apatiki. The charts said it was one island with a giant opening to enter the lagoon. The pass into the lagoon was easy. It was a mile wide, didn’t seem to have a lot of coral, and only had two knots of current going against us.

We pulled in close to sunset. Fakarava is rectangularish in shape and, like the other islands, is only about a quarter mile wide with a lagoon in the middle. Fakarava is the second largest atoll in the Tuomotus, so we knew we would not be able to see the other side at all. We could see a large horseshoe of land, and beyond the visible land it looked like open ocean. All the land we could see had buildings scattered along the shore, with lots of coconut trees and foliage amongst the buildings. The majority of shoreline was just dirt, with only a few small stretches shining white from sand or rocky coral. The water of the lagoon is sapphire blue, and from where we were, we didn’t see any other colors within the water.

The main village on the island is called Rotoava and is on the northeast corner. According to Lonely Planet, 700 people live on this island, with the vast majority of them in or around Rotoava. At the heart of the village is a concrete sea wall. We med-moored along the sea wall right next to Special Blend. Med-mooring was actually pretty simple because there was lots of room. Lesley, thank you for posting and telling us where Special Blend was.

Just after we pulled in, the storms converged in the distance. There was tons of lightening. It was really neat to watch. But, thankfully, it by-passed us. We want rain without lightening. Special Blend invited us over for dinner and we had a great time with them.

We went to bed happy. Once again, many things could have gone wrong today, and none did. It was a good day. Until midnight, when we awoke to odd sounding noises. The wind had picked up and shifted, and the anchor was dragging. We had to untie ourselves from the dock and leave our lines behind, then pick up anchor and re-anchor out in the bay. It was really windy and, surprisingly, cold. We re-anchored with no problems and went back to bed, but Eric didn’t sleep well worrying about the anchor dragging again.