Sailing Jeannius: Day 104: Nuku Hiva, Marquesas to Manihi, Tuamotus

Mike wakes me from a deep sleep and I take a while to come to, sitting dazed on the sofa like some sort of nautical zombie and he goes to bed. Luckily I don’t get engrossed in a film, and I am staring relatively vacantly towards the navigation instruments when I suddenly see the wind force indicator leap from a force 5 to a force 7. I leap across to check the instruments more thoroughly. A squall has crept up behind us and even with the main reefed in as much as it will go and no genoa out, the sudden increase in wind to over 30 knots is giving us a speed of nearly 8 knots. I have to wake Mike up. He’s only been down for about 15 minutes but he is flat out.

He comes up, putting on his waterproof as he goes outside, for now the rain is coming down quite hard, and I lie down on the sofa to await instructions. I try it on a bit – you know, the “well now you’re up I may as well go back to bed” sort of thing – but he’s having none of it. Apparently I might be needed, so I stay in the salon and await my instructions. After an hour or so, the squalls have passed, and relative calm is restored and Mike goes back to bed, leaving me with one eye on the PC watching a film, and the other warily glaring at the instruments, daring them to change again. They don’t.

As the sun comes up I start to see the tiny islands appearing on the horizon – tiny things sprinkled sporadically on the coral reef – the atoll of Manihi. A couple of hours later we swap place and I fall asleep, to be woken by the pitching and lurching of the boat, announcing that we are into some rough water. A few minutes later Mike comes in and says he needs my help as we are approaching the channel in the coral reef (the entrance to the lagoon). This means I have to stand at the front and look out for any nasties in the water that might try to sink us.

We are in water so deep that the depth gauge cannot read it then suddenly, a couple of hundred yards from the start of the channel, it’s just 50 feet. Unfortunately the sea is too rough for me to see anything, as it ruffles the surface of the waves and screws up the visibility. Still, the channel is wide and deep enough and we have no problems.

The lagoon is littered with pearl farms (little buildings on stilts, seemingly deserted but probably not so) and areas where the coral heads stick up out of the water. We skirt around everything, making our way slowly towards the anchorage where the main village is but as it is so rough, we carry on going. In places, there is just bare coral sticking out of the sea, the only thing separating you from the ocean outside, with no trees or anything to show, from a distance anyway, that you can’t get through, a deathtrap in years gone by. Now of course, there are nice channel and reef markers that are lit up at night (mostly!).

Photo: The Pacific Ocean beyond the reef

We end up at the second anchorage, Tetarefa - there is nothing there that we can see except sand, sea and palm trees – no other WARC yachts, in fact, no signs of life anywhere.

Photo: Today’s view

We put the anchor down and Mike immediately tries to get us some internet connection. He’s successful although the connection is excruciatingly slow. Once e-mails are checked, he puts a line out and almost immediately catches a fish but we are not sure what it is (possibly a grouper?) so he lets it go. It splashes its tail rudely as it swims away. That’s thanks for you!

Photo: The one we let go

After lunch, it’s a sleep (for those who can manage to nod off – not me today) then just an afternoon of lazing around. Although the wind calms down a little, it’s still too rough for swimming. We ‘catch’ something bigger in the late afternoon, but it disappears with our lure having bitten through the nylon line. Maybe I’m glad I didn’t go swimming after all!

The sunset, when it comes, is not through clear skies, but the clouds make it beautiful anyway.

Photos: Sunset from the lagoon on Manihi