Category Archives: French Polynesia

Apataki Snorkeling Fun

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Today we went snorkeling in the reef near the boat. There are a lot of areas with coral around here, and yesterday on our dinghy ride yesterday we staked out the spot that we thought looked best. It is huge, has lots of coral, and is shallow so you can see everything snorkeling and don’t need to actually dive. We agree the reef here is better than both the ocean and the lagoon in Manihi.

The coral wasn’t quite as good. It was mostly shades of beige, with some dark yellows and purples here and there. There were a lot of cauliflower looking coral and a lot of long, skinny ones that look like a thorny plant. In the ocean at Manihi there was more color and more shapes of coral, like brain shapes. We also forgot to mention that there was a little bit of black coral in the ocean in Manihi. Continue reading →

Floating in Outer Space at Apataki

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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