We’re on the island of Ua Pou in the northern Marquesas waiting for a weather window to head south to the Tuamotus. For the next two days the wind is forecast to be 4-6 knots between here and there. Then it kicks up to 15 and the low 20’s after that as far as the forecast goes out. Which is perfect for the 500 mile passage, but totally suckful for a landing in a Tuamotu atoll.
It will be our first experience making an entrance into a coral lagoon through a narrow pass with fast flowing current. We’ve been reading and reading and talking and asking lots of questions and have finally come to the conclusion that figuring out slack tide in the passages is just pretty much a crap shoot. There are, of course, some real definitions based on a lunar cycle. Supposedly four hours after the moon is at it’s peak is when the current will change from outgoing to incoming, which means it’s somewhere near low tide. Which is good so you can enter on an incoming tide and be with the current and also a rising tide to push you off if you bump the bottom.
However, and of course there is always a however, if the lagoon does not have much of a southern rim and/or if the southern swell is running really high, then the lagoon will fill up more than normal and the outgoing tide will never stop. And if the wind is really howling and the waves are big all bets are off about whether the pass will be navigable anyway.
So there we are. We want some wind for a good passage south, but we don’t want much when we get there. And nobody can forecast more than 7 days out. So if we leave today we’ll have to motor the first two days and we’ll get there before the 20+ knots arrives. If we wait until Thursday as planned there’ll likely be more wind than we want when we get there. Hopefully the forecast tomorrow shows it easing up and maybe we’ll wait until Friday to leave.
On the way south we’ll figure out which atoll to visit first, and that decision will be based on how easy the pass is and whether there’s a shallow outside the reef in case we need to just hang out for a day or two on a hook and wait for the weather to settle. We want to sail from here to the southernmost atoll and work out way north through the island chain. There are 70+ islands/atolls, but relatively few with a navigable pass for out little boat. We’ve picked about 10 we want to visit and hopefully we’ll have a nice mix of wind and calms to help us get there quick and into the passes safely.
Teresa
