Yesterday I was chatting with Zac from the SY Panache on shortwave radio and he complained about the terrible weather, shifting winds and a lot of rain – while we had nearly constant sunshine. He startet half a day later and is about 60 miles behind us. As soon as the light went out, the first black towering clouds appeared. During my whole watch we had squalls hitting us with up to 8 beaufort and of course those also came with a lot of rain. But as soon as I woke Gui to take over, the weather went calm and we were back to our usual wind from SE/ESE.
We’re making good progress and it seems that the timing is perfect to reach Takaroa and Takapoto tomorrow morning. We’ll sail past these two atolls and should arrive at Apataki the next morning. That’s how it’s planned anyway. Sailing around those atolls during nighttime is not safe, so we hope the wind stays constant and our plan works out. We’re also taking notes on moonrise and -set to calculate the tides and the best time to enter the lagoon; although we still hope to get an email from the owners of that ‘shipyard’ on Apataki with exact times for slackwater. We also tried to use the tide tables from Papeete but as those seem to be rather awkward, I’m not sure if they have any meaning for the Tuamotus at all. But in the end it’s a lot of thought about a non-issue: Once we arrive at the pass, we’ll see the outflow and we can wait until it seems to be a good time to enter – piece of cake ! Hehehe.
LATITUDE: 13-26.47S, LONGITUDE: 143-57.36W, COURSE: 225T, SPEED: 6.7, WIND: ESE 5, DISTANCE: 199nm