Taravai, Mangareva 26 June 2010 23.1468S 135.0227W
Two weeks in the Gambiers felt way too short. I think that may be my new mantra each time we take leave. It’s not a big place, but so beautiful, so much to see, and such pleasant people. The last couple days we spent on the island Taravai, which has 3-5 year-round inhabitants, and another 3-5 weekend only inhabitants, but it has room in it’s little church for a hundred or more people (none of the 3-5 inhabitants is a priest though). The grounds were beautifully maintained by a hardworking and friendly young local guy. He gave us the tour lamenting that all the other young folks, choose to move or stay in the village across the bay, despite the pristine setting, abundant fruits and great fishing. He grew up on the island, and when his grandfather passed away a couple years back he brought his wife and son to live there. While we visited the island’s population was drastically reduced; she the boy were gone to Tahiti for a month to take care of her ailing mom, and a French couple who lived down the beach, were off on vacation. Apparently they’d sailed there, fell in love with the place, and never left. Even on our short visit I had no trouble seeing how that could happen.
The village at Taravai has it’s own mini lagoon, the reefs of which act as a protective barrier to boats at anchor, or a vicious barrier to boats trying to enter the wrong way as we discovered. Silver Lining kissed a coral head on our way in, the area is not well charted, and the small entry channel was only partially marked, so we strayed a bit from the channel, bumped over the reef and landed safely in the lagoon. We were not going very fast and the wind and swell were calm when we entered. I was below checking our backup depth sounder, and keeping an eye on the known shallow spots on the chart (not all marked exactly). It was a stressful moment, definitely a moment when steel, eases the stress and makes one bolder than maybe one should be. But Frank did admit at one point that the coral just kept coming up and up, and there would not have been room to turn around, backing out is not a precise thing given our prop walk, and the clear water was oh so close, so he piloted her on through (and up and over). The weather had been windy and more wind was forecasted so before the winds came up again Frank and I went back and sounded the whole area, our goal was to make a more graceful exit, especially if we needed to leave in haste. The water was crystal clear and from the dinghy we could see the broken bits where we’d touched. It looked like knee-deep water to me, but our sounding showed a little over 6′ – apparently even though our waterline is looking better than when we left, we’re still a little over our design depth of – 6′. I guess we still need to loose some weight. Let’s just say we widened the channel a hair. I felt guilty about messing with the corral, but given the island’s history, ours was a drip in a vast ocean of abuse the reefs here have seen. All these churches and buildings that crazy priest had built were built from coral dug up from these lagoons. And there’s a huge quantity of overwater bungalows for pearl farming all around Mangareva. No wonder cyguatera is rampant with the reef fish here. Still I’m very sorry and send my apologies to the poor octopus who’s awning we trashed. Silver Lining is of course just fine.
Inside the lagoon, the swell doesn’t penetrate, so the wind can clock around from any direction and the lagoon stays flat. Last night we got a chance to test the safety of our anchorage (and the strength of our ground tackle), when the winds came first from the northwest at 40 plus knots, then did a 180 degree swing at about 3 a.m. turning southeast at 50 plus knots. During the wind shift Silver Lining did a 500 foot dance across the lagoon (or slightly less, our chain is about 250′ and we were anchored in 65’of water), till the chain tightened at the other end, and we were pointing in the opposite direction. There was a moment there, where laying in bed, you could feel the boat sideways to the wind, healing over, normally a sign that the anchor is no longer anchored, but with the radical wind shift we waited, waited, counted, and breathed a sigh of relief, as the anchor held, and the bow spun around into the wind where it’s supposed to be in a 50 knot blow. We were thrilled not to be doing any midnight deck calisthenics. This morning when we hauled up the anchor, we’d gotten most of the scope in, and the anchor and chain were vertical, the electric windlass, gave a groan before the anchor released it’s hold. It came up with the finest thickest glob of light gray mud I’d ever seen. I think Frank said the windless is rated to 1 ton before it gives that groan, so without any scope at all, we had one ton of holding. Logan playing with a wad of the mud afterward said, “The anchor must have been stuck like peanut butter to the roof of a squirrels mouth.”
Even though we’re now a few hours east of here, I’ve put our anchorage position, hopefully there will be a few pretty photos already up on Google earth that you can see since we may not be posting our photos, till we get to a better connected country!
xoxomo