In the Lee of Kon Tiki Island

Well, they didn't say it would be easy. We got a early morning start from South Fakarava on Nov. 6th sailing through the pass with our friends Ryan and Nicole on Naoma (which for some explicable reason I can never pronounce correctly). We were a little late on timing for the pass but the two knots of current against us wasn't too bad. 

Ryan had a great strategy of trying to get as far east as possible before turning north to the Marquesas. He’s a weather guru and watches the weather files we receive several times a days (called GRIBS). His idea was to try to make Raroia and if the wind was south of east we'd continue on to the Marquesas, if not, then we’d bail out to Raroia and wait for better weather.

We'd expected 10-knot south easterlies but got a steady 20 to 24 knots just off the nose. That meant sailing close hauled (something we don't prefer to do) with the bow raising up on each wave then crashing down in the troughs. This results in a virtual shower of salt water on whomever is sitting on the weather side of the cockpit. This happens several times a day and usually when you least expect it. 

A couple of hours of sailing into the wind isn't bad, but we did it 24 hours a day for two days, making 189 miles good to the east. This was quite a coup, but totally wiped out Meryl and I. Poor Meryl has a hard enough time sleeping off watch, but the waves constantly crashing into the hull right next to were she slept (like someone hitting the hull with a huge baseball bat every minute) didn’t help things. We sailed for a day and night and hoped to arrive at Raroia with enough light to transit the pass, but unfortunately we got there two hours too late — in the dark.

Following Ryan’s sage advice, we elected to “heave to” for the night in the lee (the downwind side) of the island. Now this would be fine if we'd done it before, but we hadn't. So in the dark, with waves crashing over the boat and a very dangerous reef just to windward of us (and an ocean full of big sharks if you fall off the boat), Meryl and I got the main down and practiced with different configurations of staysail trim. We finally got the staysail to back wind (pretend you tack the boat but don't let go of the sheets for the head sail and it back-winds). In this configuration the wind is pushing the bow down to the right, but then you lash the helm over the opposite way so the boat wants to sail to the left. If it works correctly, the boat "stalls" itself out and you slowly drift downwind. 

The amazing thing is the boat totally (totally being a relative word in this case) calms down inside and you can actually cook a meal, walk around, etc. This was a godsend to us after the long day and one-half pounding into the waves (you have to remember we’d been sailing at an average speed of 8.5 knots with our fastest being 10.5 knots — that's hauling bananas for a boat our size). With a two-knot current and wind and waves against us, however, we only netted out about 5.5 to 6 knots to weather.

Having sailed right up to the leeward side of the reef (somewhat scary in the total dark), the waves weren't too bad so we traded off on watch — each sleeping 3 hours — and we got finally some much needed rest. No more slamming baseball bats to the hull.

In the morning I checked the pass at 8:30 am, which our Tuamotus Current Guesstimator software said should be slack tide, but it was rocking and rolling like a Class Five rapid in the pass. We elected to sail back and forth in front of the entrance, finally entering the pass at 11:00 am. Going through any pass in the Tuamotus is always a traumatic event, but luckily the currents weren’t too bad this day. We did a zig and zag to clear some reefs and soon we were inside the relatively calm waters of the atoll.

Naoma elected to sail straight across the atoll to the site where the Kon Tiki with Thor Hyerdahl crashed (we'll go there in a couple days), but Meryl need some supplies so we sailed about one mile south to the very small village on the leeward side of the island.

You would never find this grocery store unless you knew exactly where it was was ahead of time. Reggie, the outgoing owner, has a limited supply of goods -- the selection of which is always limited to when the next supply boat arrives. 

The most sought after foods, and naturally the most difficult to find, are fresh vegetables. You literally have to be at the store the day the supply boat arrives to get any selection. Lettuce is just about non existent in the islands.

Luckily we ran into some friends of Naoma's (Chris and Jessica on Silent Sun) who had been staying in Raroia for a month. Jessica (from Silah, Washington!) took us into the village and showed us around to some hidden away grocery stores that we would have never found on our own. These stores never have much, but we did get some eggs, carrots, and potatoes. Plus it was interesting walking around the village with Jessica telling us all the local gossip.

We sleep very lightly at night when the wind piped up knowing we had a reef just in front of us and a concrete wharf just behind. When checking our GPS navigation one morning it showed (erroneously) that we were anchored about 100 ft ashore.

We anchored in a very tight spot, right behind a reef but in front of a large concrete dock. Not much leeway if our anchor were to drag.  We'll head over to the other side of the motu in a couple of days and see Naoma and Ole (Paco is the Spanish guy I helped rescue the French sailboat with in Moorea).

If you want to buy black pearls, you have to know the right house to go to. It's not like they post huge "Buy Pearls Here" signs on the shops.

This is Calico's mom, Senya, and her sister Moea, who showed us their selection of black pearls.

A selection of the famous Tuamotu black pearls. They come in all shapes, sizes, lusters, and colors.

After perusing the morning weather GRIBs we determined the weather still wasn't favorable for the crossing to the Marquesas so we're chilling out here in Raroia. Today we went in town, following Jess’s instructions to find some of the famous local black pearls. She told us to go to Calico's house (a guy we had met the day before ... this is a tiny island with about 300 inhabitants and everyone is related). We meet his mom, Senya and her sister Moea. Senya brought out a small match box with about 10 pearls and then sent her seven-year-old daughter to get some more from a relative. Meryl hemmed and hawed (anyone who has gone shopping with her will be familiar with the process) and in the end we bargained (a little) for seven black pearls. These are grown at pearl farms out in the lagoon and I suspect the men who work on the farms secret away a few for themselves along the way. I even traded two of our blue 5-gal. water jugs for a pretty tear-drop pearl.

With the wind increasing to 20 knots, we decided to head to the other side of the island for better protection. We upped anchor and motored back to the pass then hung a right and went straight across the lagoon about six miles. There are no accurate charts of these lagoons so you just have to keep a careful eye out for the reefs that are scattered helter skelter. Luckily most of them are easy to spot and we marked them on our charts for the trip back.

The beautiful and pristine Kon Tiki Island.

The memorial to the 4,300 mile voyage of the Kon Tiki raft from Peru to Raroia.

We watch a documentary on the voyage of the Kon Tiki and were able to locate the exact location of where the raft crashed on the windward side of Kon Tiki Island.

Raroia is considered a very "sharky" island by divers. Here a small black tip inhabits the shallows until he is big enough to fend for himself outside of the reef.

We're now anchored with Naoma and Silent Sun in front of Kon Tiki island, a tiny island about 300 yards from where Thor Heyerdahl crashed (or landed the raft depending on who you talk to) the Kon Tiki on August 7, 1947 (a month after I was born). There is a small monument on the location with a stainless plaque mentioning the crew member’s names. Heyerdahl wanted to prove that ancients from Peru could have made the 4,300 mile ocean passage in reed rafts constructed from local materials (current thought is the inhabitants of French Polynesia originated from Southeast Asia). He and his crew constructed Kon Tiki in Peru and successfully completed the voyage in 101 days.

Beautiful Fairy Terns populate Kon Tiki Island where they breed and raise their young.

The Fairy Terns can hover in mid air, most likely trying to distract us from a nest or a young chick.

Fairy Terns don't build nests, they just lay the egg on a flat spot on a tree branch. 

A Fair Tern chick, probably in the exact location the egg was laid.

Kon Tiki Island is populated with hundreds of pure white Fairy Terns that fly aerial acrobatics, at times hovering in mid air with a million flaps of their wings like big hummingbirds. They are typically watching their eggs or chicks who are placed on barren branches low in the trees. There is also a rare species of Grey Tern that is found only on this atoll. The next motu south has 200 Tuamotus Sandpipers, the last birds of this species left on earth.

A relatively rare Grey Tern who lays her eggs directly on the coral strewn shore.

You have to be careful walking around on the broken coral as the Grey Terns place their eggs directly on the coral. There are no natural predators on the island which allows these species to place the eggs without benefit of protection or even a nest. The Fairly Terns lay a single egg on a low handing branch of a local tree and when the egg hatches, the newly born chick continues her vigil on the branch until she is ready to fly. You can approach them relatively close and they just sit perfectly still and try to ignore you.

The crews of Silent Sun, Naoma, and Flying Cloud get to know each other at a beach fire on Kon Tiki Island.

That night we had a bonfire on Kon Tiki Island with Ryan and Nicole from Naoma and new friends Chris and Jessica from Silent Sun. Chris was a little tight lipped about his background but as the night (and more beers) progressed we learned his mom was a Pan Am flight attendant in the late 60's / early 70s. He mentioned his dad actually met her in the First Class lounge of a 747 flying from London to New York and secreted her into an alcove where they kissed. They were later married, so the story has a happy ending. What he didn't initially tell us was that his dad was the famous British actor and Tony Award playwright Anthony Newly. He wrote the theme song to the movie Goldfinger and wrote the Broadway plays Stop the World, I Want to Get Off and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. He said his dad had been sitting with Buddy Hackett, the comedian, on that flight and one thing lead to another with the flight attendant (Meryl tells me this sort of stuff never happens on flights). Anyway, it was a great story with a Pan Am connection.

The next morning on the Polynesian Magellan (Radio) Net we heard from the sailboat Libby, who had left Fakarava sailing direct to the Marquesas a couple of days after us, that they were sailing hard on in 18 knots of wind and could not lay their original destination of Fatu Hiva, so sounds like our decision to sail to Raroia and wait out the weather was the right one. 

Currently it looks like we will leave here on Saturday, the weather window looks about as good as it's going to get so we'll take advantage of it. It is getting scary late in the season to be sitting here so all the boats are anxious to be heading to a safe hurricane location.