NORDLYS - Final Days in the Tuamotus

Final Days in the Tuamotus

NORDLYS

David and Annette Ridout

Wed 2 Jul 2003 19:05

Toau Atoll

Tuamotus

This webdiary is not designed to make communication one way. Comments, questions and your

news are very welcome to us. nordlys (at) mailasail.com

We are now in our last atoll, the almost uninhabited circle of reef and palm trees that goes under the name of Toau.

Since I last wrote this diary we have been in five anchorages, two of which were in places that were devoid of human

habitation. The present one only has an old man and his wife plus one of their sons. They are from the permanent village

at the other end of the atoll and come here to harvest copra. We spoke to them yesterday and they showed us the small

groupers they had caught for supper. This they did in only a very few minutes by dangling

a hook overboard with part of a hermit crab, minus his shell, skewered on it. The trouble was that we had been snorkelling

around the coral head they went to and the girls were sure they had seen the individual fish swimming happily past them

only a few minutes earlier! . We ourselves do not touch the reef fish as we are not prepared to risk the chance of ciguatera

poisoning even if the locals say it is alright. We know that it is widespread here and probably the smaller versions of each

species are safe but the results of suffering the disease are so unpleasant we do not experiment.

One of the reasons for visiting these atolls is, in our opinion, to experience the snorkelling and diving. Both of which, mostly in the passes

are fantastic. In the southern pass of Fakarava Atoll there was a three hundred yard stretch along one side of the pass where the

mass of fish could only be described as breathtaking. The highlight probably being a large Napoleon Wrasse who was almost

always present. About five feet long and eighteen inches deep he was quite a sight. Snorkelling in the passes is always

made interesting by the ever present sharks. Mostly black tip and white tip varieties. These usually run to about six to eight

feet in length and while they are often curious they do not appear to attack man unless severely provoked. I dived this pass

with an instructor. We were driven out to sea in a launch then drift dived in on the incoming tide. At one stage we passed

a whole shoal of over a hundred sharks. The most frightening object to my mind was however an evil looking barracuda

that had to be eight feet long. By far and away the largest I had ever seen. This forty minute dive cleverly ended up exactly

at the dive school hut on the waterfront and was at that stage probably the most enjoyable dive I had ever done. The great joy

of this particular pass was that the snorkelling was also just as good so we all had a great time.

One evening we had a party with some twelve other yachties at the house of a local man. Going by the name of Manihi he has lived

with his wife on this small motu for over twenty years. He has built the house, his boat house and sorted out his small two acre domain

to the highest standard. I do not know his story but judging by the standard of the house and the books, satellite TV

and other possessions he surrounds himself with he is far from poor or uneducated. Staying with him was a Belgian free lance

diver/camera man. This guy had one of the new re-breathable diving sets that enables him to spend up to three hours under water

without making bubbles. He was almost at the end of a project of capturing much of the life of the sharks, including mating and

birthing. I had no idea that some sharks, unlike most fish, do actually have intercourse and do produce up to three babies at a time. We have seen the babies, about eighteen inches long, swimming in small shoals in shallow water near the beaches.

The northern part of Fakarava is undergoing some development. Large black pearl farms and their attendant shore facilities.

An hotel and we are told a golf course are being built. To say it is ribbon development would be stating the obvious! The land is

almost endlessly long and at the widest about five hundred meters . Chatting to a French yachtie when we were anchored off the

main village of Rotoava we learnt that all is not as peaceful as it appears. The locals do not want this development forced upon them

and they bitterly resent the outsiders. Revolution is in the air apparently. It is interesting to note that in a few weeks President Chirac is due to visit them as part of his Polynesian tour. Annabelle and I did a pass dive with the local school and it turned out to be the experience of a life time. Straight down to over thirty meters then a series of drifts from 'valley to valley'. A lot of the time was spent holding on to the seabed in these valleys as one was out of the current which ran at about five knots over the top of you. When in the current I felt rather like a leaf must in an autumn gale. The three instructors for the nine of us were very proffessional. Doing the decompression stops while hurling along in the current was an intersting experience to say the least. All the time we were surrounded by sharks, huge grouper, barracuda plus all the usual smaller fish.

Usually we have had to go overnight sail between islands. This is a bore as there is invariably a lot of hanging about as all night is not needed

for the sailing. However we were able to leave the north of Fakarava on the last of the ebb and arrive off the pass at Toau some

thirteen miles later for the first of the flood. What has caught us by surprise is the money the French have thrown into marking

all the passes and much of the inner routes of the atolls. Literally thousands of solar panelled marks have been erected on many

coral heads. Who uses these 'lit' facilities is not clear in most cases. The weather has been kinder than it was at first. We still get thirty

knot squalls and accompanying rain and the wind has had a lot of north rather than the usual east in it. As I write the wind is actually

just west of north at fifteen knots. This keeps us on our toes re lee shores and the other great curse of the area - coral heads. The latter

are a phenomenon that were new to us. Basically the sea bed averages fifty percent sand and fifty percent coral. These areas are

sometimes fairly low but often rise up over ten feet and act as very efficient snares for the anchor chain, especially if the ship is swinging

to differing wind directions. Getting the anchor up is always an exciting, rather tense few moments. Even in calm conditions the strains

on chain and windlass, bow roller and chain stopper are frightening. Invariably we use at least a five meter nylon snubber and often two

of these. If the bow is plunging and the chain to boat fixing takes the strain the results are horrible to watch. Our nylon snubbers work

like mad and do not last that long. Entering and leaving passes has proved to be easier than we were expecting. Anchoring and finding safe all weather anchorages has proved a lot harder than we thought it would be.

Since I wrote the above we have been visited by the local trio. A great success. They came with coconut bread for us and left happily with twenty five litres of water, some rope and a variety of tins. This evening they are going to go lobster fishing for us.

Another two days have passed happily away. We dined, all five of us as Troubadour was with us at this moment, on excellent lobster. We walked the shore and eventually managed to get across to the windward side of the atoll. These places look very picturesque with their swaying palms and masses of green undergrowth but in reality are almost devoid of soil and walking on dead coral makes lava seem almost benign.

We left Toubadour to her own devices and sailed off outside the reef to an inlet in the north west corner of Toau. A distance of twenty five miles. Here we have found a large number of yachts. Some fifteen boats being either on buoys or anchored here. The two village families are apparently happy to immerse themselves almost totally into the life of the yachties. There are two British boats in total and in fact English is rarely spoken as Germans, Scandinavians, Dutch and a lone French yacht make up the numbers. Last night we dined off fresh Mahe Mahe or Dorado. This was given to us by an American yacht that was just a couple of miles ahead of us when they caught a five foot specimen. Tonight we are all going to tackle it on the shore.

We have been told that since I wrote about Chirac's visit to Fakarava it has been decided to cancel the same as the authorities feel they could not prevent local demonstrations marring his visit. While we were anchored off the main village there was a tremendous noise that apparently was a nasty road accident. These have started happening because the new metalled road put in for Chirac's visit has caused traffic to travel

much faster than either the drivers or the pedestrians are used to. Progress?

Tomorrow we will set sail for Tahiti and the metropolis of Papeeti. A strange experience as it is over four months since we left Balboa, our last sizeable town. The Galapagos, The Marquesas and now the Tuamotus. All islands in this vast ocean but all so very different in both geological and social make up. It has been quite a period of new experiences for us and we still have many miles to go before New Zealand.