The Apataki Boatyard Blues

One of our goals as cruisers is to become more adept at choosing what are known as “weather windows,” those precious four-to five-day periods of predicted following winds and light seas. Unfortunately, this is one of our weak points.  Sitting in Taiohae Bay in Nuka Hiva we were one of the few Magellan Net boats remaining, and our need to get going to the Tuamotus won out over our lack of patience and time.  Some boats simply do not move until everything is in perfect alignment including the wind, seas, swell, no squalls, and a full moon. You need to have a lot of time and patience to wait up to a month for the right window. That is just not us.

The wing-on-wing rig is the most stable downwind configuration for Flying Cloud. Each sail balances out the outer making for a smooth and non dramatic ride.

Even though we knew light winds were predicted toward the end of the passage, we departed Taiohae on Thursday, April 28th with a reasonable 12 -15 knot southeasterly  breeze that would die out in the coming days. Well, one can only hope. After that great first day our luck gave out and we struggled along in five-to eight-knot winds happy to maintain 4 knots or less. Fortunately the seas were very calm which made the sail more comfortable so we could easily do tasks and walk around on the boat. We had our typical double headsail rig out, with the genoa poled out to windward and the Code Zero poled out to leeward using the main boom. It’s a great downwind rig but you do need some wind to get it to work. We weren’t in hurry so we chose not to motor unless we were moving less than 3.5 knots. 

This is what a very large cruise ship looks like when you are very tired at 2:00 am at night.

The voyage was uneventful except for us sighting the Aranui 5 cruise ship on AIS steaming directly for us at 2:00 am at night. I called on the VHF to see if they saw us (we could see their strong Class A AIS signal way before they could see our weaker Class B signal) and they finally spotted us on radar. They passed us about a 1/4 mile off providing us with a scary light show on a very dark night.

The lighter winds and calmer seas allowed us to work easier on deck, although we always wear our safety harness and tether when out of the cockpit.

What should have been a four-day passage turned into a five-day passage and our carefully timed approach on May 5th to the North Pass at Apataki found us navigating the pass at 11:00 am with three to four knots in our favor. Reading eight to nine knots on the speedo, we transited the pass in record time. We then headed a short distance over on the northeastern side of Apataki and found a beautiful anchoring spot in the clearest and calmest water ever, but knew we would be unprotected in south to southeast winds. As usual after a five-day passage, we were dog tired and immediately took a refreshing  dip in the turquoise water followed by a very restful nap.

The peacefulness of this anchorage was very welcome after the long passage.

This sunset changed a thousand colors as we watched the sun sink into the west.

For some reason I thought that most of Apataki would be heavily commercialized like its neighbor Rangiroa but where we expected a large village we saw only palm trees. We were treated to one of the more spectacular sunsets we’ve seen on our voyage, a phantasmagoria of magenta and red overlaid on the dark grey clouds of an approaching front. It was one of those magical evenings of just sitting on the side of the boat, drinking a beer, and enjoying nature’s incredible light show. 

After a day of rest and recuperation we headed due south inside the atoll. As is typical in many of the Tuamotus atolls, our charting software only showed a strip of soundings down the west side of the atoll. Dodging bommies right and left we headed towards the South Pass and the village of Niutahi where our friend Ryan on Soul Rebel was anchored. As we approached we ran into a maze of pearl farm buoys. An aluminum skiff raced out towards us guiding us to a safe route around the pearl farm. Even Ryan admitted the anchorage was too rough in the prevailing winds so we continued around southeast about eight miles to the east side of the atoll. Once again we ran into a lot of buoys, but this time we marked them on our chart so we’d have a fighting chance when we returned this way to leave the atoll.

We felt very fortunate to be anchored in the lee of the southern shore as these squalls came ripping over the horizon. One night boats on the outside reports 40 to 50 knot winds.

The indomitable Franklin and Meryl.

We anchored in the highly protected lee of the southern shore and dinghied in to see how our friend Franklin on Dreamboat was doing with his rudder repair. Franklin is a singlehander from Keemah, TX , who also works full time on his boat as a computer programmer for a health care company. Luckily Franklin is the only guy who knows how the software works so he has some bargaining power as to his working environment. He gets up every morning at 3:00 am to work a full eight-hour shift, providing support and writing new code for the software. I’m always amazed at the people we meet who manage to continue their professional careers while cruising.

Franklin getting ready to dig a pit and drop his rudder down to start repair of the washer.

Franklin is a very optimistic guy, but still a little naive as to how everything works (or doesn’t work) in the tropics. He found a guy in Raiatea to machine a new bottom washer for his rudder and swore he’d have in flown in a couple days and be back in the water by the end of the week. Meryl and I just looked at each other thinking “he’ll be lucky to be back in the water in a month or two.”

The rather large yard at the Apataki Carenage. If you look closely you can see the huge cement blocks they use to anchor the boats.

As in all French boatyards, the only power is 220v which doesn’t work with US power tools or battery chargers. Plus the Carenage only runs their genset when their guys are out in the yard working on boats, so essentially Franklin was without power to do his repairs, and more importantly, to power his computer so he could do his programming job. Being the nice guys that we are we dug out (buried in the deepest confines of our boat) our Honda 2000 generator and gave it to him for the duration. He was a very happy camper.

Assam and his daughter-in-law Pauline who helps run the boatyard.

An extended family runs the Apataki Carenage, lead by the elder Assam who originally ran a pearl farm at the location. Over the years the black pearl industry got more and more competitive and Assam switched over to using the land to store boats during the cyclone season. The Carenage is the only boatyard for hundreds of miles, and more importantly, is in a very dry area of the Tuamotus so that boats stay mold free during their stay. It is still in the cyclone area, however, so they have huge cement blocks they use to anchor the boats.

There is no food or supplies at the Carenage, but Assam’s family does have a large chicken farm (246 chickens) so we had the freshest eggs on earth for the duration of our stay. They weren’t still hot when we got them, but close.

The next day a boat named Huzzah came into the anchorage and I reconnected with a guy from Tacoma, Gerry Gilbert, who I used to race T-Birds with. He had another former T-Birder, Ken, and Fred, a buddy from Boeing as crew onboard. The three guys had helped sail the boat from Puget Sound, down the West Coast, and then joined the BaHa HaHa to Mexico. It was great to sit and reminisce about the good old days racing T-Birds and growing up in Tacoma. I was able to share a lot of local knowledge and computer files with Gerry, and he helped me set up my Airmail software to work with the Iridium Go. Quid pro quo.

We also met several other cruisers, including Jeanne and Colin on Manali. Colin is 80 and has sailed over 250,000 miles, including five Pacific crossings. I figured he was maybe in his early sixties. Amazing what this lifestyle can do for you.

What do cruisers do all day? Try to connect to their email.

During our stay we did some snorkeling and beach walks, but a strong southerly keep us on our toes. The Carenage did have good Internet so most days cruisers would be sitting around the covered picnic table near the yard doing email. We also had a nice potluck with the crews of Dreamboat, Kiapa Nui, Manali, and Soul Rebel. Our Finnish friends on Irene showed up the last day and we reconnected with Topio and Eva who have left their boat in the Carenage for the last ten plus years.

The topic of conversation for several days was the wreck of a boat on an atoll just north of Apataki. I’m going to leave out the boat’s name to save embarrassment, but a friend of our’s was asked over to the boat to check out their chart plotter, which the owner didn’t think was working right. It turned out the chart plotter didn’t have any charts installed, only the world “base map” which shows only outlines of major islands. Our friend suggested the skipper go down to the Carenage and download navigation software for his iPad, or at the very least take screenshots of my friend’s charts for the area. For whatever reason that didn’t happen and later that night the boat ran up on a reef on their way to Rangiroa. They activated their EPIRP and a helicopter from Papeete did a dangerous night rescue of the four crew from the reef. Not much more to say about that, except that the Tuamotus are very tricky to navigate on a clear day with excellent charts, anything less is very risky.  

This is the port side of Bilboa which lost its engine in the North Pass and ran up on the reef.

As an aside:  When we walked around the yard on the first day we saw a 40 ft. sailboat that had lost it’s engine in the North Pass (the safer of the two passes) of Apataki and went up on the rocks. The crew from the Carenage got the salvage contract and patched a huge hole in the side of the boat with fiberglass and towed it back to the yard. Seeing that certainly put the fear of God in us. That’s two boats on reefs in less than a month.

We stayed over two weeks, a little longer than we anticipated, hoping Franklin’s part would arrive so we could leave with our genset, but no go. We finally made a deal with Franklin to keep the genset and hopefully hook up later with us down island. I know if I were Franklin I’d certainly appreciate the lifesaving loan of a genset. That’s how cruisers help other cruisers out here in the middle of nowhere.