Ocean Echo 1: June 2013

Dear friends.

I am writing these lines in Bora Bora, waiting for favorable winds to continue sailing west. Passage from Marquesas to Ahe atoll in Tuamotus was good with lighter winds. It is a change of season here and so called trade winds pattern has not developed yet. Cyclone season is officially not over yet, but many boats have been on the way already. We did have tropical cyclone/depression at Southern Cook islands during my passage to Ahe. It is better to stay North to have an option to sail towards Equator if the weather goes wrong way. There was an other TC (tropical depression) in Southern Cooks later on, when I was sailing to Bora Bora.
Ahe is a small atoll not far from Rangiroa. Nice thing about this atoll was a very clear water near the passage into the atoll. I could see my anchor at 20 meters (60 feet). I was lucky with the light winds for a few days, which allowed me to snorkel around the passage and near by coral islands. I had to leave, when the wind picked up, because there was nowhere to hide and the wind waves became too large for safe anchoring. I did enjoy the clear water and the coral islands.
Speaking about corals. I have noticed, that there are much more dead corals in populated areas, than in pristine waters. After visiting many remote atolls and islands, I believe that human pollution kills the corals, not the ozone layer or sun rays. Reef sharks are good indicators of healthy reefs.
Rangiroa atoll is supposedly 2nd largest atoll in the world. It is 40 nm (80km) long and 17 nm (35 km) wide. It is a busy place with a few small resorts for diving holidays. Drift diving is done in 2 passes at flood (in coming) tide/current. Rangiroa can be quite windy and choppy, because of it's size. Only one anchorage at East side offers reasonable protection. I have enjoyed drift snorkeling at 2 North East side passes, when the current was coming in. Interesting thing about these atolls. Larger Ocean swells push a lot of water into the atolls over the low reefs. There for currents in the passes get all changed and delayed. Some times there is very short flood current or none at all if the swells and wind offshore are too high. It happened to me a few times, when I was entering atoll's pass from offshore, that I was motoring against strong ebbing (out going) current. However calculated time and conditions from tide tables and tide programs were showing middle of flood current at present time.
Tikehau atoll's village was very clean and organized. Anchoring near the village gets difficult, when the winds pick up. There is a beautiful lagoon near the passage at NW side. Anchoring in the lagoon is dicey, because there is a channel in the middle of reef, which allows nasty waves to come right inside.
It was nice to come back to familiar places - Bora Bora. Life gets easier, when we know where to buy food, get Internet, fuel etc.. There are about 6 anchorages in B. Bora. Some of them are in 20-27 m (60-85 feet) depth. Paid mooring buoys are available at Maikai marina (near main town), B.Bora yacht club and Bloody Mary's restaurant. Beautiful colors of blue and blue-green water are the main attractions here. It is a busy place, 2 grocery stores are good.
An other reality check, while cruising. Access to Internet makes cruising boats to do crazy things. They anchor in very dangerous areas or very close to other boats to get their WiFi connection. Some times they all jam in one corner of the bay/anchorage, not being polite or friendly to the neighboring boats. A lot of them do not carry strong enough WiFi antennas to be able to connect from some distance.
My next stop should be Beveridge reef and Niue about 1000 nm (2000 km) away. Weather has to be watched carefully for this passage, because it gets influenced by strong winter lows deflected North from N. Zealand. I would like to spend a few weeks in Tonga before heading South to N. Zealand.

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Maintaining this blog could by complicated time to time, because Internet signal/connection for uploading pictures, will not be as good/fast as it is in large cities/communities. Please, excuse my poor writing skills and grammar. Google translate does good job converting text to other languages.

I hope, that you will find something interesting in this blog – enjoy.

Jara (JJ) Holcman s/v Ocean Echo 1