Floating in Outer Space at Apataki

This morning when we woke up there was no wind at all and the water was smooth as glass. The water was actually a mirror, reflecting the clouds in the sky above. On the horizon, you couldn’t see where the water ended and the sky began. Up until the last couple of days the trade winds have been very strong. We thought around here the wind never died, so the calm has been something of a surprise for us.

Manihi had no bugs that bit, so we were surprised to find that Apataki has a serious mosquito problem. They must breed in the pools of water. A few mosquito had managed to sneak aboard and just about ate us alive in our sleep. Continue reading

Apataki Search for the Village

Now that things have calmed down with our anchor rescued, we can go back to our regularly scheduled program.

Like Manihi and most other atolls, Apataki is a thin ring of land with a huge lagoon in the middle. Apataki is sort of square-ish in shape. In Manihi you could not see all the way north from the south, but you could see all the way west from the east. In Apataki, you can’t see the end in either direction. It just looks like endless ocean beyond the L of land visible and it is hard to believe there is more land so close by. Continue reading

The Ultimate Anchor is Definitely the Spaghetti Anchor

We awoke at 0600 after a restless night. The closely set anchor alarm had gone off a few times in the night due to movement around the anchor. We were quite securely anchored! With wind and movement of the chain we did get closer to the 7 foot deep coral, but never got right over it.

We had decided to go SCUBA diving down together to check out the anchor and see if we could free it from the wreckage. Eric wanted to wait until the sun was higher in the sky and the visibility was good, so we nervously sat for three hours, too on edge to do anything else. At 0900, put on our SCUBA gear and jumped in. Christi was having a hard time on two fronts. One, she was sinking too fast, and then would float back up to the top without inflating the buoyancy compensator (inflatable vest). We couldn’t get the amount of weight set properly to get her down normally and keep her down. The up and down was wreaking havoc with her ears. So, Eric wound up going down alone, with Christi monitoring him from the surface. Continue reading

One Heck of a Welcome to Apataki

It is not everyday we find a sunken boat, or we get really close to a shallow reef. Such is life cruising on a boat.

This morning we were up before dawn. Our next atoll destination, Apataki, was possible to reach during daylight if we left early enough. We held our breath as we started to pull up the anchor because two boats had gotten stuck on the coral and needed divers to get them out. Cruisers: We suspect “Charlie’s Charts” are just a little off for the anchorage in Manihi. You may want to mark your books to anchor just a touch south of where “Charlie’s” recommends to avoid getting stuck on the coral. The two stuck boats were exactly where “Charlie’s” said to go, and the boats that did not get stuck were a little south.

Continue reading

Welcome to Mahini

Monday, June 4, 2007 – This morning the seas calmed down right before dawn. Once it calmed down, it was actually a pleasant ride. Too bad we pulled into the bay at 11:00.

From a distance it looked exactly like we expected. It is a very low island with lots of palm trees. We were anxious as we approached our first South Pacific atoll. A nice calm lagoon is supposed to be inside the islands. The atolls in the Tuomotus are renowned for being tricky to get in and out of. There are always stories about this or that boat that hit coral and sank. One of the reasons we chose Mahini was because it is one of the easier ones to navigate, but you still need to use abundant amounts of caution. Continue reading