Kauehi: Not-so-lucky 7

In which we learn a lesson, once again, about weather.

Overnight sail south from Takaroa to Kauehi, picking up our middle-chain exploration once again.

Kauehi started out at a solid disadvantage. How could any place follow Takaroa? But we were hopeful nonetheless, having seen a couple of blog posts about how amazing it is. Our experience was colored hard by bad weather for sure. Suffice it to say that Kauehi is not at the top of our list of places to return to. (I guess this is a TLDR note.)

The pass into the lagoon is wide and pretty easy, a nice change from our last couple of spots where timing was critical. Reports say that max current flow in and out is 4 knots - far cry from the 12 possible at Hao! We arrived after a great overnight sail down from Takaroa and headed across the lagoon to the south anchorage area where we stayed a couple of days, giving Jeremy time to find and refurbish a FAD as a solar light that he left hanging outside one of the copra shacks.

*Love note left on the underside of the FAD light*

With the Mareva Nui scheduled to come in on Sunday morning early, we headed up to town on Saturday afternoon, sailing past one boat anchored in a bay. Another cruising boat! We’re not the only ones out here!

Town

The town anchorage is a thing of bommie maze beauty. With the extensive shallows, we felt like we could have been transported back to the Bahamas. Most cruising boats opt for anchoring in far deeper water, or picking up one of the town moorings, but we like the challenge of tucking in as close as we can. As long as the weather is settled, this works well!

*Bahamas with Bommies. Maybe that’s what we should call this anchorage!*

The Mareva Nui is the same ship that calls on Takaroa. It had done one trip back to Tahiti since we had such a successful purchasing experience, so no idea what was on offer this time around. We do know that the ship stops in Takapoto before coming to Kauehi. There, like in Kauehi, the ship cannot come into the dock itself, needing to anchor off somewhere and shuttle goods in by barge. They even shuttle in that kiosk!

*Mareva Nui at anchor, barge alongside being loaded*

We watched the ship anchor and load the barge. We watched the barge bring in the forklifts, the empty crates for copra, the kiosk, the tower of cases of beer. We watched the first run of crates full of copra go back to the ship. All of this with a background soundtrack of church bells and then the faint sound of singing. Time to go in with our case of beer!

Too late. The store had bought all of the cases of beer, and we needed to buy from the store. Sigh. $70 instead of what we think would have been $55.

The vegetable selection was limited. Cabbage. Or watermelon. The smallest of which was 8 kg. No idea what that watermelon might have cost, but we didn’t have room for it in any case. The atolls that come later in the voyage don’t have much to choose from in terms of vegetables.

*Full extent of the produce offerings from the ship in Kauehi. Note the kiosk in the background!*

Slightly disappointed with our provisioning experience, we wandered through town for a bit before heading back to the boat. Weather was coming, forecast to blow from the north for a while. We picked up the hook and sailed to the north side.

The last time there was unsettled weather in the forecast - unsettled as in the South Pacific version of a frontal passage, with winds moving around the compass in varying strengths, all accompanied by a chance of thunderstorms - we sailed 120 miles overnight to Takaroa to avoid it. This time, we opted to stay where we were, choosing our anchoring spot to do the best it could in the changing conditions.

Not so great, it turns out.

The north side anchorages

One of the big challenges with Kauehi is the very narrow shelf for anchoring, much of which is fairly thick with bommies. We tucked into a marginal spot just west of the airport, dropping the hook in about 10 feet of water just 50 feet from shore in a just-big-enough hole with coral heads nearby. Jeremy set the anchor alarm guard pretty tightly, meaning we’d get an alert if the boat started moving towards the shore. Winds were forecast to keep us at worst parallel to the shore, which would be bumpy and uncomfortable but not unsafe. And the unfavorable winds were only supposed to last a couple of hours, and then shift back.

Halfway through our evening tv episode, the alarm beeped.

Jeremy jumped up and fired up the engine, sitting in the cockpit ready to engage if needed. An hour later, just as he was ready to come back to bed, the wind increased.

From the worst possible direction.

“Gotta move,” he called to me.

The bow was pitching noticeably at this point. Driving rain had me blinking furiously as I pressed the “up” button on the windlass in time with the bucking. Engage as we dipped down, hold on as we go up. The cloud-obscured full moon ambiance at least meant it was not pitch-black.

Please don’t pile up please don’t pile up please don’t pile up, I mentally chanted. A chain pile would jam the windlass, and Jeremy couldn’t leave from his post at the helm.

Up came the chain. Up came the anchor. Right at the bobstay, it stopped. Chain pile.

At least the anchor was not dangling 10 feet below the bow, threatening to smash into the boat or catch on a bommie. Small favors.

A quick trip below to knock the pile, then back to the bow to finish stowing the anchor, settling for hooking it on the bobstay and securing it tightly with the snubber hook. We’d cruised for years hooking our anchor that way; now we prefer a deck-level chock but the anchor shank wasn’t cooperating and I wasn’t about to go out onto the bowsprit to untwist it.

“All set,” I said. “Need the computer?”

“Yes, please.”

I stripped off the sopping wet foul weather jacket and underlying t-shirt and dropped them in the sink. Dried myself off as best I could using one of the dish towels hanging on the stove. Set up the computer on the chart table, plugging it in and firing up OpenCPN, angling the screen so Jeremy could see from the cockpit. Luckily the satellite imagery for this atoll is pretty accurate, we’d determined from exploration.

Back and forth we went along the shore, alternating sailing when there was enough wind to motoring when the wind died. Nowhere in the forecast had there been any hint of south wind, and we were at the north end of the atoll.

The wind gradually settled in strength, though the direction was still unfavorable. We maneuvered to a spot closer to a protective spit and dropped the anchor in deeper water than we usually prefer, hoping we’d hit a sand patch. There are things you accept at 3 am.

We moved to one other spot on the north side before heading back down to the south anchorage for a night. We had a decent weather window (supposedly anyway) to move the 40 miles over to Fakarava, and positioning ourselves closer to the pass helped with that long-ish day of sailing.

Kauehi probably deserved more exploration, especially the village and the shore south of it. It’s not really fair to brush the whole atoll with an unfavorable brush when our own choice of where to anchor led to an unpleasant night. But overall, we’ve had better experiences in other atolls, and there are still so many left to visit.

Onward to the mythical Shangri-La of Fakarava.