Known as the Low or Dangerous Archipelago

Arriving in the Tuamotus the boat was truly salted. Little hard rain in the Marquesas which are experiencing drought and a four day passage to get here with frisky waves swilling the decks meant we were caked. The windows were like crackle icing and the white fibre glass coach roof looked as if spattered with tiny hailstones, the crunch was audible; the teak was well pickled together with lifelines and deck rigging. Now we are fresh as a daisy with sparkling windows and clean everything thanks to plentiful Pacific rainfall and spasmodic howling winds which have washed and blown the salt away. Under the waterline is another matter entirely, it is a battle to keep the creeping growth of weed, barnacles and algae at bay. These warm waters encourage this unwanted sea life to clamp onto our hull with horrible tenacity so it's scrub, scrub, scrub whenever time allows.

A group of 78 islands spreading almost 1,000 miles, all but two of the Tuamotus are coral atolls. Making landfall is a tricky undertaking, they are extremely low coral atolls, usually the highest point is a palm tree or the church steeple if there happens to be a village on one of the islets clustered on the northern and western sides of the reef, the southern side is usually bare reef awash with crashing waves. Getting into the atoll lagoons and finding an anchorage means sailing through a pass in the coral bank and conning for coral heads whilst up the mast as the helmsman follows shouted directions. A number of yachts each year end up on the reef, it has happened to one catamaran so far just before we arrived.

These atolls are the result of coral growth atop the sides of sunken volcanoes. The fringing coral reef gets higher and higher as the volcano subsides until all that remains is the coral enclosure and a lagoon is formed. The passes are where the water from the lagoon , which is continually replenished form seas crashing over the reef has found a way out to sea or in a few cases has been deliberately removed for transit. Either way these are entrances into the lagoon which test navigation skills, call for good observation and a strong stomach because it is usually turning over when going through. Because there are usually only 1 or occasionally 2 passes through an atoll reef, the water rushes in and out with fearsome speed, in some atolls up to 9 knots. This creates overfalls and high tumbling waves either inside or outside the pass depending on the tide. Entry and exit for most passes is only possible during slack water so arriving at night or when the passes are in flood means a very long wait outside. One crew who achieved a night time arrival had to heave to until morning but as dawn broke their boat had drifted so far on they had to carry on to Tahiti missing out on the Tuamotus altogether.

Kauehi (pronounced Koweyhee)

Our journey to Kauehi was frustrating with very light winds and scrabbly seas to start with sometimes giving us as little as 2½ knots. We laboured on not wanting to run the engine as we don't enjoy the monotonous thrum for hours on end, also we didn't want to use up diesel which is difficult to obtain and has to be hauled in jerry cans in the dinghy as these islands don't have suitable quays for going alongside. On the third day we gave in and started motoring otherwise we would take 5 days and nights instead of our planned 4 and also ran the risk of arriving at night. Eventually the wind came up giving us a fast, rough sail for the last night when neither slept for more than two hours altogether. Dawn gave way to a grey sky and sea looking more like the North Sea instead of tropical Pacific latitudes.

By 0900 a.m. land was sighted, such an unlikely landfall – a thin line of palm trees seemingly floating on the surface of the sea. Our problem now was to find the pass into the atoll where we hoped to find a calm anchorage in the lagoon. We skirted the offshore reef keeping well out as the waves rushed over it with crashing foam flying high. Then we saw the break in the palm trees and spotted a red beacon marking the pass. The sea became rough outside the pass but going through required great trust in the charts and pilot books. Seeing the water boiling up as it was being squeezed through into the lagoon one could fully imagine that it was rushing over reefs as the boat ploughed forward hurried on by the current but no the pass was deep and we were soon through the thrash into the calmer lagoon.

Whew! What a surprise this was, we knew about the formation and geography of the atolls and lagoons but we just hadn't reckoned on the sheer size of them. Some of these lagoons are up to 30 miles long, we expected to get inside and be able to see all sides but it is more like being on an inland sea with its own sea conditions, pleasantly benign after the ocean swells. Such was the size of Kauehi, which is one of the smaller atolls, that we had another 8 miles to go to our anchorage but it was worth it – flat, turquoise, scattered with coral heads ready for snorkelling, fronted by a palm fringed village and silver sand.

This really is the heart of French Polynesia, lying 500 miles from the Marquesas to the north east and 200 miles from the Society Islands to the south-west, the low lying nature of the islands makes them feel very remote indeed and we just cannot get to grips with the fact that we are here.