Goodbye Rangiroa, Sailing to Tikehau Atoll in the Tuamotus

Hello friends, my name is James and this is my 1965 Albert 30 Sloop Tritea. We are on a mission to sail around the world and see as much of this beautiful planet as possible. We are currently working our way through the South Pacific and I can't wait to show you everything we see. It is first light. I've been up getting the boat ready for departure. Slack water is at 8 a.m and I want to be right there ready for it. I actually want to be there about half an hour early so we have a little resistance motoring out with the incoming tide and yeah everything's kind of good to go. Just kind of got to stow a couple things, put some lines away and then it's just have more coffee and wait for time to haul up. Excited to move on today. We have a 44 mile passage ahead of us to Tikihau. I think that's how you say the name of this atoll that we're going to and get over there, get in and get anchored at a new spot. I'll show you guys one of these pearl farms if you can see it. That's why it's good to keep a good lookout here in the lagoons and the Tuamotus. There's like little floats, buoys out there and they were like right on my course. I'm heading back. I'm heading out to the fairway. I was cutting just shy inside the fairway but that's a good reason not to. We're about two miles. We're making the pass. Okay we are approaching the pass. You can see the waves running. That's just the fetch from the gnarly winds we've had for the last week because inside the lagoon there's no swell because it's not the ocean. It's protected but you can see how they're still charging and we'll see how that interacts inside the channel. It might be a little lumpy in the channel. It's supposed to be dead slack water when we get there Our timing's right on point and we are half a mile from the pass and let's get it knocked out. Got a two knot current coming in because we're just before slack water and that's what's making all this fetch stand up so tall. We're also in like 15 feet of water so that shallow water combined with the fetch hitting that incoming tide. It's making everything real active. It's not overpowering. We're doing like two knots most of the time but that's what you want leaving these passes. You want a little bit of resistance ahead of you. If you're going out on an ebb tide then you may lose control. You have no steerage or your boat because the current is moving faster than your boat so you want a little bit of resistance. There appear to be two sailboats anchored in the pass. I don't know why you would do that. I think you're allowed to but I don't know why you would want to. It seems terrible but there's two of them there. Cool looking boat. Beautiful rainbow. Goodbye Rangiroa. You may not be my last but you'll always be my first. Had a great time here. Stoked to see new stuff. We're motor sailing wing and wing. We're coming up on the very end of Rangiroa. There's a squall creeping up on us. Probably bring the mainsail and midships when that thing gets closer just to be safe and we're getting ready to be in line with the channel between the two atolls. We'll see what the currents are like in there. I don't think it'll be too crazy but it'll be interesting to see. Making good time and yeah it's very mellow. I wish there was more wind but I'm glad there wasn't as much wind as there has been for the last week so yeah keep an eye on this squall and prepare as need to. We're making really good time even though there's no wind to really assist us but I can already see Tikihau and probably 13 miles or so away from the closest point but I can just see the kind of smudge of the palm trees on the horizon. So that's cool but yeah not much wind but we're doing between like five and six knots with the following seas and the motor going so hopefully that should put us in. Navionics is saying we should be in around 3 p.m so that'll be good to get in before sunset and get all settled. So back in the age of sail the Tuamotus were referred to as the dangerous archipelago because they're so low-lying and they're really hard to see so for ships sailing in bad weather or even worse at night it was very easy to run into one of these atolls and there's a lot of ships wrecked on these um shores in the Tuamotus. I'm going to try to show you guys an example. We are four miles from Tikihau the closest point and you can just barely see a smudge so then if you think about if you're in high winds and bad visibility or like I said sailing at night it would be very easy to run into any one of these atolls or the many coral reefs that that lie in wait surrounding them or offshore. We are currently nine miles you can hear the sail sliding like crazy we're nine miles from rounding the top of Tikihau and then we'll point down to the pass and here's a booby burp. We are approaching the pass at Tikihau should be chill it's a flood tide we're not at slack but there's no coral or obstacles going in so probably just be a kind of a swift current getting us in there but we made great time today and get in and then I'll decide if I want to continue on down another six miles to the village to anchor or if I want to anchor at this anchorage right here at the mouth of the pass. Feeling is I think I have enough daylight to to easily get down to the village and anchor so that's what I'm leaning towards we'll see how it works out. Very narrow pass I have the autopilot on it could hold a pretty straight course but I'll hop it off if I need to and just grab the helm but this thing is such a straight shot I think we'll be okay on the autopilot. Not seeing a speed increase I thought there might be an but this is known to be like one of the most mellow passes on the 202 so but we're not through it yet so I should probably shut my mouth. Okay we are through the pass success now on to the village we are one and a half miles from the anchorage we got a lovely rainbow here welcoming us to Tikihau which is cool because we had a rainbow saying goodbye to us from this morning. Cruising in we're gonna go to a big sandy spot in deep water and drop the hook at the village stoked we made it before dark. Oh boy squally got the hook set we're in about 50 feet of water paid out four scope all chain I floated the chain even though it's all sand because it's easier to haul up life hack boy it's raining okay time to put on some dry clothes welcome to Tikihau. I am making red beans and rice for dinner and I have Sarah on the phone say hello Sarah hi everyone she is um looking up some information for me I have full bars and LTE on my phone and no internet and like zero internet and in Rangiroa if you had LTE you always had good fast internet reliable internet so uh Sarah looked it up and it turns out there is no data on this whole atoll so you can get like wi-fi in like the public area of the resort that's what's the resort you read about from last year I read about latiki how by pearl resorts apparently they have like a public area where you can go get on wi-fi so we'll check that out but um yeah they said on that thing even if you have a local sim card you don't have access to data on cell phones which is kind of crazy it's crazy because the cell service is so good so but it's okay um I just download the weather the weather's looking real gnarly uh in Tahiti anyway it's not going to be too bad here this is Wednesday by Sunday it's going to be on close to 30 knots between here and and the societies are just getting hammered um so we're going to be here for at least four days and hopefully that system will pass and then we can make our way to the societies but I gotta tend to my beans and rice and get to eating thank you Sarah say goodbye if you enjoy the content on this channel and would like to contribute you can consider joining the patreon crew thanks for watching fair winds until next time