14/5/12 - 18/5/12 Bye Bye Marquesas, Hello Tuamotu islands

We had a slow 4.5 day 455 Nm sail to the Tuamotu islands, the land of coconuts and tropical marine life. These are small coral islands that were originally volcanic mountains that have sunken back into the sea, ever so slow. This allowed the coral to grow and now only fringing coral remains. 

 The coral reef is a hazard to sailing boats, hitting a reef can result in a sunken boat in minutes! Only until the advent of GPS did sailing become safe enough for boaters to come here. GPS, however won't tell you if you're about to hit a bommie and so you need someone on the constant lookout. Better vantage from high up - See Dennis standing on the boom.

18/5/12 - 24/5/12 Tahanea atoll

Tropical paradise, uninhabited bird reserve.

Time for snorkelling. We snorkel through the little channels, being pushed along by the current. There is heaps of marine life - coral stacked on top of coral, schools of every reef fish imaginable and at least 3 sharks every time you put your mask on.  Can you believe it awesome! See for yourselves!

Excellent spearfishing - Dennis is getting particularly good at catching dinner. The fish tastes best roasted on the barbi.

We had a day out into the middle of the atoll to a small island with thousands of birds. Nice sail but had to keep an eye out for coral bommies. Good snorkeling.

One night, we decided to go coconut crab hunting on an island in the SE corner of the atol. Coconut crabs are large land dwelling crabs which eat coconuts! They are able to husk a coconut and will amputate fingers and toes within seconds. We weren't sure how we were meant to catch the crabs or if it was legal on this island but after spearing some fish for lunch, we wanted some crab for dinner. It turned out to be relatively easy - there are many crabs on this island and they hang out on the beach and move very slowly. The trick is to put a stick infront of them and they will instinctively grab hold of the stick - end of the hunt. We found 4 within 1 hour! Had we been sure it was legal we would have cooked them on an open fire. They have a sac at the back full of coconut oil which makes for nice dipping sauce.  I'm sure it would have been tasty ;-)

We didn't get any pics but this a pic I found of one in case you were wondering what a coconut crab might look like.   They are the worlds biggest hermit crab.   They start out in life using a small mollusk as a home then later on in life they use a coconut as protection.  Finally they become so big they no longer need the protection of an artificial shell.

24/5/12 - 28/5/12 - Fakarava island

Next stop was Fakarava island 47 Nm away - very do able distance by day but you have to time your exit and entry of the atolls, due to current within the passes, and so we decided to do an overnight sail. A large pod of dolphins joined us for sunset, taking it in turns to play with the bow of the boat. Wind picked up to 20-25 knots and we were going to fast despite reducing our sail, so we decided to bare pole and to our surprise we were still sailing between 4-5 knots!

Fakarava island is the one of the larger atolls, 30nm long. The reason we came here and the reason why many come here is to dive with the sharks. You do a drift dive from the entrance of the south pass, towing your dinghy behind you. Down to 20m and we saw 200 sharks eek! mainly black tips, but also white tips, silver tips, black fin and grey reef sharks.

After we had our fill of diving, we decided to feed the shark, within minutes we had around 50 sharks circling the boat, trying to get a bite!

29/5/12- 31/5/12 Passage across Fakarava island

We spent a few days sailing through the atoll to enjoy a beach bonfire and hang out  with the locals.

Ferme and Iris are a  lovely hospitable local couple who live on a coconut plantation that we met half way up the atoll. They invited us over for drinks - Jack Daniels and coconut juice! Like this couple, many locals speak french, and no english. Nikki has audio french lessons which she has been motivated to do for the last two months when we realised that we couldn't get by with speaking just english! The lessons seem to be working, we think we had a basic but good conversation across the evening. Ferme entertained us with his guitar and singing.

Look at the many gifts we received - coconut straw hat, mollusks and of course coconuts!

1/6/12- 5/6/12 - Rotoava, Fakarava North

Onward sail to the most northern part of the atoll and we anchor at Rotoava. This town is large enough to have two churches, two shops, a post office, a paved road and most excitingly a tasty ice cream shop.

The Tuamotu islands were previously big pearl producers and as we sailed through the atoll we had to dodge many pearl buoys that had drifted into the channel.

Our collection of rare and alluring mollusks. 

We took a tour of Hinano pearl farm which was interesting to see how pearls are cultured. The highlight of the tour was Dennis buying Nikki a pearl necklace and set of earrings!