Huahine - Baie de Avea 16 48.691S 150 59.592W

Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Sat 14 Aug 2010 08:12
Left Moorea on Tuesday evening to do an overnight passage of around 90 miles to Huahine - the first of the Leeward Islands within the Society Islands. The wind had been quite strong while in Moorea, but dropped a bit to give reasonable seas and a relatively fast passage. The target was to arrive around 08.00 - we didn't want to get there much earlier as the sun would not be high enough in the sky to see what was under the water in the pass to the lagoon and the lagoon itself. With 2 reefs in the main and a rolled genoa we made between 6 and 7kts most of the night. It was a good sail until close to the island when squalls came across with rain and wind (not so pleasant) and we continued under main alone, arriving close to 08.00. We decided to try and reach Baie de Avea - a lovely anchorage in the south of the island - and slowly (sometimes very slowly - no more than a knot!) made our way along the 4 miles channel inside the reef to get there. The water all the way down inside the lagoon between the channel and outer reef was a fantastic deep turquoise whenever the sun came out, which wasn't that often. Being overcast most of the time it was not easy to see under the water, but we made it okay and it was worth it - it really is a lovely big bay with a depth of around 40ft on a sandy bottom. Today we got up to find the anchorage completely flat and we could easily see the anchor chain most of the way to the anchor - all in 40ft!

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