Fakarava: finally!  Monday, 07/08/2023

Arrived here successfully early on Sunday morning. This was a good test for my repaired autopilot, which happily gave no trouble. It was a very varied voyage, starting with strong winds and high seas leaving Nuku Hiva and then passing through a couple of ideal sailing days – 15 knots of wind, moderate waves and sunny. The wind then fell to the point where we ended up becalmed on Saturday morning! I had expected to arrive here on Saturday, but the forecast proved wrong – the minimum wind expected was 8 knots, but the reality was only 2 knots.

In response, we drifted for a few hours and then motored the last 55 miles overnight, entering the pass into Fakarava’s lagoon at 06:05, which was exactly at sunrise. This coincided with high tide, meaning that there was slack water rather than a strong current in or out of the pass. It was a beautiful morning, so all turned out well.

Fakarava is the second largest atoll in the Tuamotus. An extraordinary place, because it’s very large: 37 land miles (60 km) north to south and 13 miles (21 km) east to west. The land framing the  atoll is a narrow strip: in total 9 square miles (24 sq km) of land against the 429 square miles (1,112 sq km) of lagoon. We are tied to a mooring ball up in the northeast corner of the lagoon, off the village of Rotoava. Surrounded by azure water and at the moment (no wind) extremely calm – the boat hardly moves. The lagoon is not shallow: where we are the depth is 14.8 metres, and further out it’s between 20 and 30 metres deep. Basically, Fakarava is the rim of an old volcano, on which coral has grown and sand has accumulated. This “sea mount” plunges 1,170 metres down to the sea floor and was formed some 55-60 million years ago.

There is some life here. The population is about 850, most of that concentrated up here in the northeast. There is a small airport around the corner on the north coast. There’s a petrol station with shop, two other small grocery shops, a few restaurants, a few churches, the town hall and not much else! Ashore shopping this morning I discovered that the variety of food on offer is somewhat less than that in Nuku Hiva. There are tourists, coming in either by plane or by boat, but modest numbers. Accommodation is small-scale – there are no big hotels. People largely come for the diving. 

This is one of the places that will be in serious trouble if there is a pronounced rise in sea level in the coming decades. On the lagoon side the land is about one metre above sea level. I walked across (maybe 400 metres) to the outside, the Pacific side, and there the land was about two metres above sea level. As it is, in the event of a cyclone the place must get flooded. It feels to me that life here is rather tenuous.

It’s all very interesting: my first atoll! As you can see from the pictures, the place is stunning, in just the way you would expect of a tropical paradise. It can be problematic anchoring here because there are numerous coral heads on the bottom, around which anchor chains get caught. Luckily I managed to avoid this problem by tying up to a mooring ball which was free and appeared to be for general use. There are about 25 yachts here, a decent number given the size of the place. 

We’ll stay here until Thursday and then head off to Tahiti, which is only 250 nautical miles away and with decent winds should take perhaps 42 hours, bringing us in early morning on Saturday. This will be rather like visiting a metropolis, because Tahiti has two-thirds of the population of the whole of French Polynesia.