THIS is what we traveled 5,000 miles for!!
We left Rikitea harbor yesterday morning to go out to the outer reef and hang out for a few days. Bill on Visions of Johanna had gotten some waypoints from a French boat (Steel Band aka Asterix) for going up into the 'unsurveyed' part of the atoll. And we could see a light wind period coming up, for a few days.
So about mid-day, us and Infini and Visions and Steel Band all headed out of the harbor, east to the edge of the reef, and north along the reef. We left first and ended up in the lead. It turned out to be a 'no-brainer' for us (we don't need no stinkin' waypoints!)--the water is really clear and easy to read. It is mostly very deep--60-80 feet. There are brown spots that are submerged coral heads at about 20 feet.
There is a solid reef all along the eastern side of the Gambiers atoll, with periodic 'motus'... little sand/coral islands. A few have palm trees... they look JUST like that Windows background with the sailboat and the island.
When we arrived at the island that Steel Band had put an anchor waypoint on, we worked our way into shallow water. It turned out to be a little harder than we anticipated to find a good anchor spot. There are too many very shallow coral heads. We picked the largest open area and dropped our anchor in what we hoped was the middle. The depth was only 10 feet, nice sand, so we didn't need a lot of scope. When Visions and Infini arrived, they didn't like the shallow coral-studded area and went back out into deeper water.
Ooops... we forgot to factor in the weather. All we had taken note of was wind SPEED when we looked at the forecast. It turned out that the reason the wind is dropping off is because of an approaching front. Last night the wind backed about 180 degrees. It left us sweating how close we were to a specific coral head. Just at dusk we had the foresight to swim out a second anchor to help keep us centered--we ended up hanging on that anchor all night long.
Fortunately, this 'front' was VERY mild. We had one rain shower and clocked 20 knots, but it didn't last long. Though the wind was most of the night coming from across the atoll, it was under 10 knots and so not a problem. Now, 24 hours after we arrived, it has back on around to the SE, and we are now hanging behind the reef again.
We are still getting used to this 'upside-down' weather. The cold fronts come from the south. And when they approach, the wind goes NE-N-NW-W and then blows cold air from the South after the front passes. Weird. And there is no Herb/Southbound II or Chris Parker here to explain the weather to us. Once we get a little further west and north, there are more nets and some weather gurus, but especially in this part of the Pacific, it's just us and the GRIB files. We are finally in the French Polynesia weather area. But the weather we can get from Saildocs is sparse, for only 'today and tomorrow', and in French. Here's yesterday's forecast for our area:
GAMBIER
SECTEUR EST 11/16KT MOLLISSANT 07/10KT A MI-ECHEANCE PUIS REVENANT AU SECTEUR SUD-OUEST EN FIN DE PERIODE, RAFALES 25/30KT SOUS GRAINS, MER AGITEE DEVENANT PEU AGITEE, AVERSES EPARSES OU GRAINS ISOLES.
Yep.
Anyway, where we are is just GORGEOUS. Sand beaches, palm trees, aquamarine water, beautiful coral, warm water, sunshine. It doesn't get any better than this.
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At 4/10/2010 5:48 AM (utc) our position was 23°01.09'S 134°55.21'W
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