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Firefly - Relaxing in Rangiroa



Firefly arrived in Rangiroa on the morning of Sunday 12th April. Leaving Fakarava via the north passe, due to the flood there was some disturbed water but we managed to sail through it ok - but did so very carefully. From then on we had a dream passage - broad reaching and then running wing on wing. The moon was practically full and the wind never went above 20knots or dropped below 10 and we were gently weaving between the various atolls in our path, leaving about 10 miles of sea room for each one. Despite a lot of information to the contrary - so far the Tuamotos have been ok to navigate around with the GPS spot on position wise and the passes marked well with transits and posts.

The anchorage at Rangiroa is just east of Passe Tiputa. Its lined with white sandy beaches and palm trees and is quite spectacular. Here we have met up with about half of the World ARC fleet. There is no formal rendezvous here so everyone is doing there own thing.

Rangiroa is renowned for its World class diving so the place to meet up with the other rally participants is at the dive centre here - many of the yachts with keen divers are here. We are diving with Top Dive again and will have completed 4 dives during our stay - 3 in the Pass Tiputa and 1 in Passe Avatura - all exceptionally beautiful with huge amounts of fish and also sightings of a variety of sharks, turtles, eels, barracuda and manta rays. The 'sunset dive' on Monday evening actually took place during a rain squall so there was no sight of the sun at the end - however, this is the time the fish feed and reproduce. We had an amazing view of a huge shoal of 'convict' fish breaking off into swirling groups and releasing eggs. The dive finished with about 20 reef sharks having a frantic chase after some fish about 10 metres below us.

Our plan is to depart for Moorea on Wednesday and we hope that we can complete the 200nm passage in time to enter Baie de Cook before nightfall on Thursday. The wind is relatively light at present although there is more wind forecast for later this week.

Paul, Peter and David


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