Tuamoto

Bill

Here's my journal for the last week or so.

I'm anchored out for free close to the Tania Marina, it's great here. Lots of people lots of surfing, I'm looking for anchor chain (I'm short about 100 feet or so), a surfboard, some provisions, some small parts, those parts you sent me. I might go up to Papeete tomorrow, Saturday and anchor there so as to be closer to the touristas and the possibility of inviting a very shapely one out for a sail.

Excellent news about Katherine working for the Canadian Space Agency, but does that mean that I won't be able to learn to parasail for free??? I hope that she gives up on this responsible route she seems to be on and gets back onto the "Daddy, can you set me up with a parasailing outfit in Whistler"???? Maybe if you won't I will set her up. Oh well, maybe some day she'll be an astronaut, probably pays more than crashing tourists into the cliffs of Whistler. Oh to be young and foolish and dream of dumb things like surfing in Tahiti.

OK, I'm off for the usual first day in port, laundry, shopping, hunt for parts, hunt for surfboard. Life is tough out here. I'm working on chapter two of the book, the one that goes after 'Mom and her new boyfriend'. also working on the screenplay for 'Slapshot 3', that's gonna make me a lot of money when it goes to bigscreen and DVD. without further ado:::

Have arrived safe and sound at the Tuamotus, specifically Anse Amyot on the atoll of Toau. This is more like the south Pacific we all think about. The Marquises were big huge volcanic mountains with big cliffs around the anchorages. The anchorages were open to either the South Pacific Southeast trade winds, or the swell generated by such. Anse Amyot is wide open to the sun and sky, there is nothing higher than the coconut tree. Nonetheless, if stood beneath, they are especially tall when shedding 15 pound coconuts. The one I saw shedding could have killed you with its height, if it hit you on the head.

At the last minute in Ua Pou, a french guy in a catamaran with a beautiful African wife, told me go to Anse Amyot, C'est superbe! Well OK, and for me the greatly added feature is the strong mooring buoys so no tense anchoring in coral, and all it is in a little bight in the coral reef, so there is no pass involved. Just approach by the open ocean, line up 2 navigation buoys (keep one exactly in front of the other one on the way in and you are right in the middle of the short channel, and then simply tye up to the mooring buoy.

In fact it wasn't that hard for me, the local proprietress of the local restaurant came out in her speedboat, with her mother and her sister and her sister's two kids and her friend and her two kids, and they guided me in and picked up the mooring buoy and handed it to me. It was très facile, and perfect for my first landing at the Dangerous Archipelago.

The Dangerous Archipelago, so named because of the many shipwrecks here. The currents are strong, we are at the receiving end of the currents generated by the 3000 uninterrupted miles of South East trades. The Islands are very low, you can't see them until you are very close, generally about 8 miles. The islands raise up from thousands of feet of ocean, in a vertical cliff of coral, so if you hear the waves splashing, you have about 200 feet to the rocks ahead and 2000 feet to the rocks below. In many places the reef is not visible, it is just a couple of feet below the surface. Not like the entrance to Bamfield, were you can come in by watching the shore. Or the depth sounder if the fog is in. Or the radar. In the olden days of sextant and compass, a lot of ships were wrecked.

Today though, I got both GPS's fired up and so I was able to sail 4 days from Ua Pou, beam reach across the south Pacific Southeast Tradewinds and come to an X on the chart (paper). I was a little early since the trades were very strong for me. I set up a beam reach about an hour out of Ua Pou and 4 days later I dis-engaged the wind vane and sailed to the X. I was a little early, it still being 3 AM on a very dark night, last day or two of this moon, and so I hove to on a double reefed main, no headsail, helm down to lee and had a short nap. At dawn I proceeded into the pass, well really it was 15 miles wide between two outer Islands, their names are Polynesian, I called them A Island and K Island. I only saw K Island, the other was never visible to me, but the radar did see it. but the GPS's were in agreement, and the wind blew unabated by the coconut trees 7 miles off, so I sailed down between the two islands, turned and ran downwind until I saw the North end of Toau, and then here into this aforementioned nook in the reef.

I came bearing lots of gifts. I gave Valantine, the proprietress, a dozen ripe avocados from the Marquises. They were great to eat, I ate at least one every day from the Marquises, but they are a bit rich for my system, though they are certainly painless as they seem to pass right through. Anyways, I had enough of them, and there was no need to save them since they were ripe. She gave me a tour of her village, Matarina, built on the shores of Anse Amyot. Her mother Violet lives right behind her, and her sister Leesa has the 'pension' next door. There is a radiopayphone, but as yet I can't get it to dial North America. The pension is empty but very nice, Leesa runs it with her two teenagers and two sub teenagers. The guys were sitting around drinking beer out of coolers from the village of Fakarava, but pronounced Fukarava. I said goodnight to the drinking and came home to bed. Later that night one of the guys from away came around to buy some whiskey, but I said no, I'm not selling any whiskey. I was selling fruit that I came from Marquises with.

Next morning I got up and went for a swim in the coral around Prism. I can see at once why the anchoring in coral is a very strictly an all chain event. That stuff is sharp and it is huge. Great round balls, 15 feet across and high grow out of the sandy bottom, I'm sure that chain will survive, but even then you would have to dive to retrieve chain wrapped around one of those. One of those, there are about a million of those. I tried to get down to my mooring ball's anchor, but couldn't dive that deep, I will try again tomorrow with more gusto. Prism looks great underwater, but getting some growth around the spots where the bottom paint wasn't very thick. The prop had a bit of a barnacle patch on it in the Marquises, I knocked that off then. I have two flat headed remores attached to the bottom of the keel, but they wouldn't stay on the same side as me, they kept going to the other side and I couldn't get a good photo.

I packed to two shopping bags of fruit one for Valantine and one for Leesa and went ashore, but neither were there. Leeza and all her family were on the boat headed back for Fakarava, Valantine was out tending her fish traps with her husband Gaston. I met Torowa, and he and I smoked a couple of cigarettes before going fishing. To go fishing, we tied a floating plastic box to the front of the dingy and we both snorkelled. Me towing the box and boat, him diving and spearing. As he speared, I brought the box to him, he threw in the fish and we kept fishing. I had my camera with me and took some great photos of him and then a shark came by and I started to get some great photos of the shark, I thought, but as it turned out the camera was gone blank. I turned it on and off, to reset, but when it reset it was gobbley gook on the screen and then it was dead. I personally think it was dead, it's always a bad sign when a digital underwater camera goes wonky underwater. But we will never know. Shortly some unknown time after that, the stupid thing slipped out of my velcroed back pocket and is now some where on the bottom of Anse Amyot.

In the end, I'm not sure why we took the dingy, because we only drove to the other side of the Anse Amyot, about 100 yards and swam back. We saw that shark again and Torowa threatened to shot it and it took right off. Not like the other stupid fish, that would slowly swim away as Torowa slowly overtook them, until he was a couple of feet back and he could easily shoot them in the back of the head. Into the bucket. Then a big parrot fish came into view, and it took a couple of dives before it got caught up with. First shot, just a flesh wound and now it became a bit more of a chase and the fish was a bit more spooked. It would have got away, but I played my part and swam ahead forcing it back to Dick for the coupe de gras. Torowa got alot of fish. The last were rather small but very tasty. They just tried to camouflage into the coral, but Torowa could see that. He simply put the spear to their heads and that fast he had 5 in 5 shots. And surprise we were right in front of his house, so onto his wharf, have a coffee and a smoke and clean fish. Torowa gave me the grunt job, I had to reverse scrape all the fish to get the coarse scales off. He did the final cleaning.

After that I went over to the other sailboat, Jean from Papeete and he gave me lots of good advise on how to get into the next port. I can't stay here for long, I have to get to a post Office to get a stamp for a visa. My month is about to run out, on 10 April, so I have to get a simple visa extension from the post office for another two months.

I returned to Chez Torowa and ate the fish. I must admit, I ate only the cooked fish, I left the poisson cru or raw cooked only in lemon juice fish for Torowa. I might have liked it, but Torowa's sanitation was near zero and I prefer my chances with cooked fish.

I also gave the fruit to Valantine as she did return with her husband Gaston, and since Leesa and family was gone, Valantine's mother got the other bag.

I met Gaston, he was an interesting fellow and I was invited to the Pentecostal service to start at 10 AM sunday, a much better time than the Marquisesian 8 AM. So far the Pentecostal crowd is easier to wake up to, than the Catholic crowd.

Next morning it was up at my convenience and off to the church, I landed at Torowa's dock at his waved in invitation, and he had two guys as guests and they were having an early morning smoke of marijuana, I quickly declined and off to church. the Church was very small, big enough for a dozen chairs and a kitchen table as the pulpit. We sang some hymns, I wasn't much help with any of the singing and then Valantine took the pulpit and commenced the Pentecostal sermon, in french rather than Polynesian, so I had a chance of following. It was good that the church was in the middle of the village because the sinners were easily pointed out, to her left and her right. Her brother Dick was smoking too many cigarettes, too much marijuana and selling the marijuana to the workers on the pearl farms. Off to her left her sister Leeza, four children and no husband. All was not well in the little village in paradise. She asked us each when we had seen the light and accepted Jesus into our hearts, I was a bit ambidextrous on this one, hoping that He would soon come to me etc etc etc. Her husband Gaston gave some good answers, but also a couple of wrong answers, and had to be corrected from the pulpit. We prayed for a lot of people, not Leeza nor Dick, and gave thanks for lots of stuff and sang some more and then after two hours, out of church and back to her restaurant for coffee and cake.

Gaston was called when some jackfish were seen from the front porch, and so he quietly slipped into the water and hid under his dock, until he speared a nice one. In a couple of minutes, a couple of feet away, he speared another, quite a large one, and that was the end of the days work. A bit of fish cleaning and I even got one piece and then I retired to my boat. I invited them out for a visit, and I kept part of the fish back from the frying pan and Valantine was asked to make poisson cru with the remainder, the raw fish cooked in lime juice, the limes from the Marquises and it was very good. We had some Canadian Club to go with it and an enjoyable visit all around, my french being sort of passable. Gaston was amused and in complete agreeance with my assessment of Torowa's sanitation, and Valantine gave Dick some more trouble. Leeza was spared a bit, she was a good pension manager it seems. Then, the small amount of Canadian Club in the bottle being exhausted, they travelled over to Jean's boat, later I joined them to take on some Glenlivet.

The storm that has been worrying me these past 3 days has intensified and thankfully seems to have travelled off to the south of us. I thought that it might come straight down the trades and develop into a late season hurricane, but it went southwest and looks to just send us a lot of swell but no wind. I am pretty afraid of these Dangerous Islands, the navigation is no problem with the accurate GPS, but the anchoring in coral with rope and chain remains as dangerous as it ever was. These lagoons are 15 or 10 miles across and the waves can build in those miles, and I am nervous of being shipwrecked like all the shipwrecks before me on the chart. They were shipwrecked when the wind switched and came down that long lagoon and then the short steep waves wore their anchors out of the sand, into the coral and they ended up on the shores of the lagoon.

I left Anse Amyot this morning with Jean in his boat Vanessa right behind, and sailed in a lovely North breeze to this small village of Apataki. The pass was very easy and at the end of the pass is a cement pier, and we are tied up, Prism behind Vanessa, and we can remain here until tomorrow at least. Tomorrow, I must go to the Post Office to get my visa extended to three months, on the 10th of April, my visa is expired. Apparently it is very easy to get the visa extended at the post Office, and that is why I am here in Apataki. So another night in the Dangerous Islands, tied safely to this dock, but tomorrow night it's either face the southern storms swell and off to Tahiti or return to Anse Amyot, or go upstream into the lagoon following Jean and face my coral anchoring fears.

Since it seems so lonely in Paradise and since it is a bit boring without a camera and since I'm nervous of the Dangerous Islands and since there are likely to be alot more little bits of Paradise in this huge south Pacific (the Friendly Islands are after Tahiti and they speak English), I am leaning towards Tahiti. Midnight is another weather check, see what the heck that intense Low pressure is doing south of us. If it's just swell to bother me on the way to Tahiti, I think I might just go to Tahiti.

Tuesday the 8th of April

After a noisy night at the cement pier of Apataki (the power house, the kids, their boombox and beer being right here), up early to the post office. Alas no, he couldn't extend my visa, but he directed me to the municipal office. There the gentleman patiently heard my request, but on seeing the stamps in my passport were from the Gendarmerie, he declined to issue any visa. He referred me to the Gendarerie in Rangiroa or Papeete. Well, enough discussed, I left at once and set course for Papeete. No charts of Rangiroa in the Dangerous Isles and no desire to visit anymore lonely paradise, I'm on course Papeete as I type and you read.

That little storm had me vexed for a couple of days and that was the real reason for my delay in the Tuamotus, as well as everyone saying how lovely they were, and I must really stop there. I, inexperienced in the ways of hurricanes, was concerned that the tight little low was in the forming grounds of late season hurricanes. I was worried that it would catch me and I would become a statistic of a late season hurricane, but no, it seems that I was worried for nought. The low did intensify and then it has charged off to the southwest, giving the Gambier Islands a damn good pasting.

The Tuamotus are lovely, the water is very clear, the fish are everywhere and brilliant colours. but I'm leaving them behind, and the small breeze is drifting me towards Papeete, wing on wing, at 3.5 knots on the GPS. At this rate, Papeete in about 3 or 4 days. Prism is behaving very well, just enough wind to keep the sails full in this south swell, steering by the Raymarine tiller pilot hooked up to the Cap Horn windvane water rudder. And now I live another day typing my message on my own computer instead of penning it on borrowed paper from the Wayward Home for Lost Seamen after a late season hurricane in the Dangerous Islands. Luck, good planning, or good worrying?

Editor's note: Anse Amyot is located at 15d 48m 08s S by 146d 09m 00s W, pictured below: