Tuamotus Overview

After the Society Islands, our next ports of call are the Tuamotus. From Bora Bora to our first stop in Fakarava some 330 nautical away (1.5 days at our normal cruise).

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The Tuamotu archipelago consists of roughly 78 islands scattered over a 950 mile area roughly east of the Society Islands lying in a northwest to southeast direction. Only 1/2 of the archipelago is inhabited and the total population in 2007 was roughly 17,000 people centered mainly in Rangiroa.

Nuclear tests were conducted by the French on Fangataufa and Mururoa and entry into this area is prohibited.

Our travels took us to the northwestern most atolls between Fakarava and Tikehau including Rangiroa, Taou, and Apataki.

As a group, most of the Tuamotus are low lying coral atolls with lagoons ringed by reef and islets. As such, the Tuamotus are visible to the naked eye only around 3 or 4 miles out. The highest points are generally the palm trees at 50 feet. Generally, the lagoons are only accessible by one or two passes. To quote the Admiralty Sailing Directions, “The whole archipelago requires great care. Most atolls are low lying; the reefs that surround them are dangerous; there are few navigational lights and currents are uncertain.” and “Navigation of passes through reefs into lagoons also require care.” That is an understatement. For a more complete look at the nature of conditions in the passes, you can refer back to my first post on Maupiti as the dynamics are the same in spades. There is usually a race with whirlpools, eddies, and exceptionally heavy seas with standing breaking waves – in some cases this disturbed area extends up to two miles off the pass.

All this is complicated by different portrayals of the nature of each pass in the various guides we use – there is little consistency or agreement between them with one portraying a pass as safe and another portraying it as dangerous. In general, we have come to rely more on the “Admiralty Sailing Directions” as our principal guide as it seems more matter of fact and reliable.

All of this is further complicated by trying to estimate the time of slack water which is the most favourable time to enter or exit a pass. Times for slack water do not correspond to high and low tides and the variances can be as much as 5 hours. Like Maupiti, the lagoons fill with prodigious amounts of water as waves break over the reefs and the exit point for all that water are the few passes or breaks in the reef. This generates prodigious outgoing currents of as much as 8 knots for most of the day with brief periods of slack and incoming. It is pretty much a constant discussion among cruisers about the best way to determine slack water and nobody seems to have a good handle on it. The “Admiralty Sailing Directions” suggests that it can be timed to hours after and before moon rise and moonset but also notes that wind, seas and other factors can alter this by a wide margin. Added to this is the additional complexity of trying to time passages between atolls to make favorable departures and landfalls that correspond to safe times to transit the passes at either end.

As if this were not enough, many of the interior portions of the lagoons are not surveyed so eyeball navigation with good light behind you between 1000 and 1600 hours is the rule (along with our scanning sonar which is seeing a lot of use). Night time travel either in the lagoons or thru the passes is just plain foolhardy even with a solid prior track – danger lurks less than a boat length away in many cases.

Having said that, the Tuamotus were wonderful and worth the sphincter tightening effort to see them. As we near the end of our time in the Tuamotus, though, I am truly looking forward to the more navigationally mundane Marquesas.

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