We spent four pleasant and busy days Toau. Several other boats that we knew from previous anchorages converged on Toau resulting in a hectic social calendar with cocktails and/or dinners every night on one boat or another.
The highlight was definitely a dinner ashore with Gaston and Valentine. Gaston and Valentine offer a dinner three or four nights a week for 3,000 XFP, about $35, and BYOB. The dinner far exceeded expectations and included seemingly unlimited lobster and poisson cru (French ceviche), complimented with fresh coconut bread and a number of side dishes all finished off with a delightful coconut cake. Then the fun began. Gaston seemed to have unlimited energy to match Valentine's unlimited laughter, so after dinner the dancing began and they had the moves! Soon everyone had joined in and we danced the night away, well past cruiser's midnight (9pm).
Toau also had some nice snorkeling. One of things we hadn't see up close before was a fish trap and Gaston had several. A fish trap is sort of a maze that fish swim into and get trapped. It looked to be built of a wire mesh on metal poles driven into the bottom in 10' - 15' of water. Gaston's fish traps had a huge variety of fish, I think half the fish that inhabited the entire area were in his traps! There was everything from schools of small reef fish to a huge moray eel, massive Napoleon wrasses, a spotted ray and several sharks ranging up to 6'. We snorkeled around outside peering into it like an aquarium while the fish swam around trying to figure out how to escape. One shark was quite agitated and seemed to be trying to figure out if he could leap over the fence (probably not).
As we've seen elsewhere in French Polynesia there were plenty of sharks outside the fish trap as well. It's pretty much impossible to go in the water and not see sharks. Sometimes this bothers me more than others. We snorkeled around Anse Amyot and there was almost always a shark or two within sight, and certainly more than we couldn't (being lowly humans with weak sensory systems). There were also a wide variety of reef fish to keep Fay's camera busy and not as much current as in Fakarava so it was a little more relaxing. But when we returned to the boat and I was scrubbing the waterline I saw two of the largest sharks I had seen yet circling below the boat. Enough for one day, I forgot the grass on the waterline and got out of the water.
We departed Toau on Sunday night and sailed overnight to Rangiroa. We arrived at the Tiputa pass a little after what was supposed to be slack current and still had about 3kts of ebb current against us, but fortunately no large standing waves. Just as we almost committed to entering the pass the engine began sputtering. A quick look at the panel showed the vacuum gauge was almost maxed out; the dirty fuel we had purchased in the Galapagos was still causing problems. I spun New Morning around and headed back out to sea while Fay flipped the valve on the fuel filters. With a clean filter the engine was soon settled down and we were able to transit the pass without further drama.
We really didn't sleep on the passage to Rangiroa so after we were anchored (or more accurately just hooked on some coral) we collapsed on the bed and slept for four hours. Within twenty minutes of rousing ourselves from our mid-day sleep we were invited to a cocktail party! Cruisers from Jersey (the channel islands, not the state), Australia, Canada and the UK, including two dive masters. We drank, chatted and faded early, taking a rain check on dinner.
Yesterday morning we re-anchored, getting the anchor into a nice patch of sand, then floating our chain above the coral so that it didn't get fouled and also didn't keep us up at night as it dragged across the coral. Fay went pearl shopping one more time, then we joined four other cruisers for a dive in the pass. The dive was a bit more challenging than we would have preferred, but also rewarding.
We went out the pass in a large inflatable boat and then turned right and ran down the atoll some distance. The waves were only about 4' - 6', but large enough to toss around the big inflatable and all of us within it. We struggled a bit to get into all of our dive gear, then all flipped backwards off the inflatable on the count of 3. Into the water and down we went to about 50'. The reef wall was almost vertical and dropped off to several thousand feet so stopping at 50' was somewhat arbitrary. We swam along the wall while the dive master ventured out "into the blue" in search of dolphins. Soon several dolphins appeared and we swam out towards them, but they didn't stay too long and didn't seem that interested in us. We see dolphins all the time from New Morning, but it was quite different to be in the water with them. These were bottle nose dolphins and they are quite large, well over 6' and very fast. Magnificent to see them under water in the wild.
We swam back to the wall and continued towards the pass, exploring the wall as we went. Once we got close to the pass the current picked up and we were swept into the lagoon with the current. As in Fakarava the bottom of the pass was thick with sharks, but this time they were below us and we didn't swim right through them. Not a relaxing dive, but certainly memorable.
Today was more relaxed. We checked the weather this morning (the outlook is poor), then Fay and I took our dinghy out to a small motu (aka island) just inside the pass and dove in 30' - 40'. Although as soon as we reached the bottom we were greeted by a large moray eel flexing his jaws for us, the dive was generally quite relaxing dive with lots of reef fish and one very large barracuda, as we swam through an assortment of canyons between massive coral formations.
Back on New Morning we did some boat chores and started packing up. We had planned to stay here for a week, but the weather is not going to cooperate. A very large high pressure area to the south is going to create some strong winds by Sunday (25kt - 30kt), pushing 10' - 12' waves into the area by Saturday. The atolls only provide protection from the normal trade winds, a wind shift of just 30 degrees can turn a quiet anchorage into a lee shore with large waves. Worse yet, the passes can be essentially closed as the winds push water into the lagoon which then flows out the passes continually, creating large standing waves which are quite hazardous to attempt to traverse. At that point we would just be trapped in the lagoon getting pounded by big waves. As one cruiser wrote, it's "no fun atoll".
Despite the fact that we're now enjoying the calmest weather we've seen in two weeks (we've had a steady supply of squalls day and night), we need to bail out tomorrow and complete the 200 mile passage to Papeete before the waves arrive on Saturday and the big winds shortly thereafter. Ironically we'll probably have to motor much of the trip because this is the proverbial "calm before the storm". The marina has advised me that they won't necessary have room for us when we arrive since our reservation was not until July 7th. So we plan to be behind the reef in Papeete by mid-day on Friday, but were not sure exactly where!
