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| Manihi: inside |
TUAMOTUS CRUISING
February 3, 2014
Manihi Atoll (Tuamotus)
S 14 27.87 – W 146 02.187
A dream come true! After 19 years of dreaming of cruising the Tuamotus, here we are, resting in a quiet lagoon, the only yacht at anchor. What a contrast from the Marquesas! The lofty peaks covered with emerald vegetation have been replaced by low-lying “motus,” these coral-sand mini-islands that fringe the lagoon, spiked with coconut trees and a few villas or shacks. Postcard perfect!
We spent our last day in Nuku Hiva (Marquesas) in the company of Mathias and Monette, in the village of Hakaui, Taioa Bay. Seriously, we couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to the wonderful couple who was waiting for us with flower crowns (don’t call them “leis” here), a roasted pig and Monette’s famous “Beignets banane.” Another grand “Kai-kai.” We finally took leave of our friends, but not before swamping the dink with the 4 of us on board, loaded with 40 pamplemousses, a case of sweet limes, 2 banana stalks, a handful of caramboles and passion fruit, and a bag of watercress, mint and ginger. Landing on or leaving any beach of the Marquesas is a sport. It was all good fun and once the produced rinsed and put away, we were ready to go.
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| Leaving the Marquesas |
We left Taioa (Daniels’ Bay) with a T-storm chasing us, 20 knots of wind on our tail and rain, storm clouds peppering the radar screen, and we headed southwest. Little by little, the wind dropped, the sky cleared up and the 12’ swells shrunk to 4’. Just 48 hours later, we had covered the 485 NM from Taioa to Manihi in the most pleasant and relaxing crossing in a long time! We even hooked a marlin some 150 NM off of the Tuamotus, played with it for over an hour, brought it alongside and finally let the beautiful striped thing go. As always, the Pacific Seafarers Net followed our progress every day on SSB (14300 kz, 0300 Zulu) and our Iridium/gmn/Xgate delivered the weather like clockwork.
CRUISING THE TUAMOTUS - “A yacht graveyard!” - Bad reputation indeed, confirmed by the locals in Manihi who still remember the single-handler who crashed his catamaran last year, having fallen asleep as he “almost” cleared the atoll. Well, the Tuamotus are not as easy to navigate as they seem and we prepared thoroughly.
I - Guides:
- Charlie’s Chart of French Polynesia (7th Edition – Cpt. Holly Scott & Jo Russell)
- The “Yachtsmen’s Guide to French Polynesia” distributed by the Port Autonome de Papeete - http://www.portdepapeete.pf (There is a French and English language version) – Email for details: capitainerie@portppt.pf
II - Charts:
- Navnet 3D for TZT (on our chart plotter) – We are finding them accurate for the area. (C-Map)
- iSailor for iPad – We’ve really like this product: inexpensive, correct so far, and accepting comments and changes from the users.
III - Season – The cyclonic season roughly runs from November through March-April. For that reason, most cruisers remain in the Marquesas or New Zealand and avoid the Tuamotus altogether. But since we can escape in a hurry, we decided to spend February through April in the Tuamotus. We are the only yacht around. It’s summer, the water is warm (29c) as is the air temperature and the winds are really mild, never more than 10 knots, except when a cloud decides to burst overhead. It’s paradise! Since this week’s weathergram (see Bob McDavitt below) announces a “La Niña” period, we’re not too worried about the eventuality of a cyclone in the area.
IV - Tides: This has been a very frustrating and challenging research that JP tackled with utmost energy… This is what we’ve found from studying the various resources.
- SHOM – Difficult to use and inaccurate
- Marees du monde – Just don’t make any sense of it
- NOAA – This is what we are using, with one caveat: the base times on the NOAA catalog are wrong and need to be adjusted, but no worries, JP has a table. We used the Graham Schweickert (S/v Visions of Johanna) method and are adding our own observations (see the Soggy Paws Compendium.) As we go through the atolls, I’ll update this worktable. You can build your own in Excel or use the formulas for simple calculations.
NOTE:/DISCLOSURE: These are our observations… and every cruiser has his own method… Use your own discretion!
TUAMOTU TIDES WORKTABLE
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | ||
NOAA Hi** | NOAA Lo** | Local Hi | Local Lo | ∆T Hi *** | ∆T Lo | Slack Hi | Slack Lo | Cur- rent | MLW | ||
1 | Hao* | A1+1h | B1+1h | 0 | 0 | ||||||
2 | Ahe | A2+1h | B2+1h | C2+64mn | D2+64mn | ||||||
3 | Fakarava | A3+1h | B3+1h | C3+65mn | D3+65mn | ||||||
4 | Makemo | A4+1h | B4+1h | C4+31mn | D4+31mn | ||||||
5 | Manihi | A5+1h | B5+1h | C5+61mn | D5+61mn | E5+1:10 | F5+1:30 | 8 kta | 7’ | ||
6 | Rangiroa | A6+1h | B6+1h | C6+78mn | D6+78mn | ||||||
Example | |||||||||||
Manihi | 6:15 | 12:34 | 7:15 | 13:34 | 8:16 | 14:35 | 9:26 | 16:05 | |||
* We’re using HAO as a time base for all calculations – Always ADD 1 hour for local time (Tahiti time)
** Hi & Lo NOAA values are for tide values outside the pass
*** ∆T is the time differential between Hao and the selected atoll – Add this time diff. to the local time
**** MLW – Mean Low Water
a – We entered Manihi at low tide on King Tide day: new moon when the moon was at its perigee = maximum tide/lo. We still had 2’ under our hulls and we draw 4’ -
We also consider wind and waves as per Soggy Paws’ recommendation:
“Wind Wave Current Factor Suggestions”
• Add1kt for every day the wind has been blowing over 20kts from a S or W component
• Add .5 kt for every day the wind has been blowing over 15 kts from a S or W component
• Add .5 kt for every 1/2 meter increment of southerly-component swell over 1.5 meters (ie 3 meter swell = +1.5 kt)
• Cap the Wind Wave factor at 1.5 times the Normal Max Current
• Subtract .5 kt for wide/deep passes and for each extra pass that an atoll has
With all these considerations, what do we really do? Since we can travel at the speed we choose, we plan to be at the pass about 1 hour before our predicted slack time. Once there, we take a peek and decide hold…or not! With her 600 HP, DOMINO has the power to go through just about anything, save monster standing waves. Yet, we like to play it safe. Once anchored inside the atoll, we take time to go to shore and talk to the locals, observe the pass, the current, and the differential to our predictions.
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| Manihi in sight: barely above sea level |
V - Weather Info: The Tuamotus fall within the zone of possible cyclones, and we are cruising the area during the cyclonic season. Thus, we must be over-vigilant about weather. At any suspicion of cyclonic activity, we’ll high-tail it out of there and rush back to the lovely, cyclone-free Marquesas!
A) VOICE: There is no VHF weather info for the Tuamotus. There is, however, an SSB broadcast on 8803 KZ at 0730 and 1630 (Tuamotu/Tahiti time). Weather info every morning on the radio, Polynesie Premier, AM 740 (in French.)
B) e-MAIL: We don’t have Sailmail on board. Although all the files listed below are available through Sailmail, we get them delivered to our IRIDIUM/GMN/X-gate Mail address via SAILDOCS. You can get more info from Saildocs by sending an email as follows:
Subject: (anything)
Text: send info
send index
1) These is my daily saildocs request:
subject: (blank)
text: send fr.poly
send fleet.nadi
send FZPS40.PHFO
- “fr.poly” is the 1-day weather report for all of French Polynesia. Download the general grid of FP at http://www.meteo.pf/images/carte_zones_mar.jpgwhile you still have Internet.
- “fleet.nadi” is the weather report (surface analysis) from the Fidji meteo office. Just drag the email into your PhysPlot icon and pop! opens the program. To download the PhysPlot program (free), go to www.pangolin.co.nz while you still have Internet!
- “FZP40.PHFO” is the text report from NOAA-Hawaii
2) GRIB: I have subscribed to a user-defined GRIB that I receive at 1800 UTC every day. YOU define your area. I asked Saildocs to send me a GRIB from 10S to 35S and from 135W to 160W, 30 days in a row, at 18:00 UTC. This is how it was formatted (careful with the formatting, refer to the saildocs GRIB info gribinfo@saildocs.com )
subject (blank)
text:
sub gfs:10S,35S,135W,160W days=30 time=18:00
I find these GRIB files better than the standard GMN files we had been using.
3) Weathergram
I also subscribed to the weekly report from NZ weather guru Bob McDavitt. Wide overview of weather patterns in the South Pacific are helpful. You can subscribe thus:
Subject (blank)
Text: join weathergram
WEATHER RECAP: OK, so that’s it for weather info received on our Iridium:
- French Polynesia weather (en francais),
- Surface Analysis on PhysPlot,
- NOAA text report , and
- the weekly McDavitt weathergram.
- If need be, the SSB broadcast can help in emergency.
IN MANIHI – XAVIER MICHEL is the local contact for cruisers info, either by VHF16/77 or by email/sailmail at xavier.michel@mail.pf
NOTE - An excellent read to understand the weather patterns in the area is David Sapiane's Weather for the Yachtsman, available on Pangolin at http://pangolin.co.nz/jetsam/view_article.php?idx=19
VI - ANCHORING in the TUAMOTUS
(Source: Soggy Paws)
“PATATE!” What is usually understood as an insult in colloquial French, also means “coral head!” The atolls are strewn with them. Sometimes you see them, sometimes you don’t. So, JP rigged 2 big fenders in an attempt to prevent our ½” chain from wrapping around the coral heads. Will we be successfull? Time will tell!
VII - Navigation Inside the Lagoon
"Tricot Vert"is the mnemotecnic aid to navigation in French waters, meaning Triangle Green to starboard when returning to port. In the atolls, it means GREEN towards the reef. So, keep the green triangle to starboard as you enter the pass, and if you go counter-clockwise in the lagoon, keep the green on your starboard side.
EXCEPTIONS exist... For example, in Ahe the western side of the lagoon between the pass and the airport is also TRICOVERT, so be careful there!
Well, we're here and it's time to go swim, dive, hunt, and enjoy the fabulous sunsets, the green flash (yes indeed, saw it last night), and just the natural calm and beauty of these islands... before Caro and William and the kids join us again for another little fun cruise!
Until then...
dominomarie