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Lydia - Lydia at Rangiroa and on to Tahiti



Well, Nigel has left the ship after 3 months and 6000 miles, our thanks to
him for all his help and entertaining company.
We spent a thoroughly agreeable 3 days in Rangiroa, a charming and colourful
little community which effectively lives along a 6 mile strip of road. The
circumference of the reef encompasses an area bigger than that of Tahiti,
but it's
mostly a string of atolls, or motus, separated by unbridged channels, only
two of which are navigable. The people are partly French, partly Chinese,
mostly
Polynesian, all charming. Almost all the girls and ladies wear a flower in
their hair, over the starboard ear to indicate unattached, port ear to
indicate married or commited. We swam and snorkelled in a pool of clear blue
water by the reef known as the aquarium . It's what its name implies,
crammed with fish and spectacular colours. We drank and dined at two small
restaurants on the end of our bit of atoll. As you drink your beer you look
over the balcony and see reef/black-tipped sharks, rays, groupers and all
sorts, in one case with a bunch of kids frolicking unconcernedly a few yards
away. A NZ catamaran anchored close by on our last day and provided
friendly and lively company. Ever seen a dinghy strewn with empty cans of
beer?
Getting in or out of the lagoons is a question of timing, get it wrong and
you will meet strong currents and vicious overfalls. There are no tide
tables, but the Pacific Crossing Guide offers a rule of thumb for
calculating slack water geared to a time before or after moonrise or
moonset. Going in I found the recommended formula to be almost right but a
little early. Going out the formula said 3 hours before moonrise, which I
calculated at 06.40, but the local dive shop
recommended 07.00, which tallied with my theory. And so, on Sunday morning
we motored out through the Passe de Avatoru, past the pretty village church
and the early-morning fishermen, at exactly 07.00 and in perfect slack
water, coral heads clearly visible 6 metres below our keel.
Papeete in Tahiti is an inconvenient distance at 200 miles. If you leave
early in the morning, as we did, you need to average 6 knots to get there by
evening the following day, and with just 10 knots of trade wind we weren't
going to make it without burning a little diesel. So we motor-sailed,
cruising chute up during the day, 3 white sails up at night, engine bubbling
along at low revs, lovely tropical conditions. Tahiti hove into sight at 32
miles on Monday morning and we pulled in to the new Papeete marina at 14.00
in the afternoon. Marina? Yes, shore-power, showers and a steady keel for
the first time since Shelter Bay in Panama, two months, 5000 miles and a lot
of geography away.
Listen, and you can even hear the unaccustomed rumble of taffic, and just as
I write the dooh-daah of a French ambulance/sapper-pumper!
Rgds from Donald, Steve, and Alvaro.


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