Anchored off the Kon-Tiki Monument, which is located at position: 16°03.873'S 142°21.548'W
Armed with a photo that our friend Jim resized and emailed us, from the article about the monument dedication, we finally located the monument. Of course, it is the only islet within a mile in either direction that we hadn't set foot on, it is the first one south of our first anchorage--which Dave had decided was too far north.
There is a nice plaque on the 'pile of rocks', and people have put shells and flowers on the 'altar'. It's very nice.
Even in the 3 years that have intervened since the photo was taken, the tree topography has changed--the most prominent palm tree in the picture--the tall one on the left--is no longer there. But with the amount of other non-palm vegetation in the picture, it was obvious that this had to be the island.
The waypoint that Jim found on the internet for Kon-Tiki is 16°04.649'S 142°21.980'W. The only thing that doesn't match up is that this waypoint is 8/10's of a mile from the island. The book says they camped on an island 600-700 yards north of the Kon-Tiki, which is more like a third of a mile. So we're not sure exactly which is right.
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At 7/25/2010 9:19 PM (utc) our position was 16°03.85'S 142°21.68'W
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Thanks to our friends Jim Yates and Barbara Emmons, we have a GPS waypoint for the Kon-Tiki landing area, and a description of the 'monument' erected in 2007, with the help of Thor Heyerdahl's grandsons. The description is from this article:
However.. the location Jim gave us, plots out in the middle of the reef area, and was quite 'awash' yesterday afternoon.
We have re-read the Kon-Tiki book several times now--the part about the landing and the island they camped on for a week before they were discovered by the Raroians from across the atoll. And we have studied the pictures in the book.
The biggest problem is this is all windward reef--even the islands themselves can be transient... they are piles of coral rubble and sand, topped with island vegetation. A really big storm could easily significantly change the landscape.
The narrative in the book talks about a big rock they piled all their stuff on, on the reef. The island that they ultimately camped on had much vegetation, the smell of flowers, palm trees, and white birds, with more islands 'distant in the blue haze' to the north, and another island with more vegetation to the south. They talk about eating big hermit crabs. Every islet that we went on yesterday (about 6 of them in total) fit that description.
The book shows pictures of them planting a palm tree brought with them from the coast of South America (62 years ago). We have visually checked every old, tall palm tree. You would think that someone would nail or tie a simple sign to the darned tree!!
The book also talks about them getting help from the islanders and the boat from Tahiti to drag Kon-Tiki in over the reef to the lagoon, and then tying Kon-Tiki up to a palm tree. We found a really big pile of really big rope wrapped around a palm tree.
We also found lots of windward debris--rum bottles, a little bit of plastic, and the inevitable assortment of shoes.
What we DIDN'T find was any sign of any man-made thing that looked like it might be a monument.
Barbara described the monument in the picture in the article as "a coral monument (a pile of coral) about 3 feet high and 4 feet wide", and Jim gave us a few more visual clues to look for on the island. So we're going back today--to exactly visit the waypoint on the reef (just for fun), and check out one of the islands that we visited yesterday that most closely matches this (from Jim's examination of the photos):
"The island they are on appears to be about 150' across and about 40-60 feet wide. It is covered in trees and has about 6-7 palm trees sticking out of the top of the tree line. There is a single palm tree sticking prominently above the other
trees at one end (don't know which end though...sorry) For reference, when exploring the islands, inside the island there is one palm tree that is almost horizontal for about 10 feet about waist high. The monument is not at the edge of the trees, but is somewhere in amongst the trees."
The wind is blowing 20-25 knots out of the east, so we're not going anywhere anytime soon. So this at least gives us something to do. It is as much fun as looking for Pancho Villa's gold!!
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We just arrived after an overnight motorsail from Makemo. Originally we had been waiting for SE winds to sail this leg, but when we saw a low wind opportunity to just motor on through, we took it. That way, we can use the expected SE winds to sail up to the Marquesas.
We left Makemo after 24 hours of light winds, on the slack tide at 1:30pm. The day was sunny and the winds were only 5 knots, and the seas were down--perfect! We were motorsailing directly on course at about 5 knots. Literally 15 minutes after we cleared the pass at Makemo a squall line appeared ahead of us. Oh no! All of a sudden we had 15-20 knots right on our nose, 100% cloud cover, and it didn't look like it was going away anytime soon. We even talked about turning around and going back to Makemo.
But we decided to just tack off and hope it went away. After about an hour of nasty weather, the winds gradually diminished and the skies cleared again. We ended up motoring the rest of the night in about 5kts ENE, averaging 5 knots for the night--not too bad in the open ocean directly up wind.
We arrived off the Raroia pass about 4:30am, and hove to to wait for daylight. At 7:15am, we had plenty of light, but the current in the pass was still running kind of strong. We waited another 15 minutes and then went in. We measured about 4 knots of outgoing current at 07:40. But with not much wind, it was no big deal--we just stayed left, out of the visible 'white water', and motored right in.
Rarioa is the atoll that Thor Heyerdahl and Kon-Tiki made landfall after their 101 day voyage in a raft from the coast of Peru. Our guidebook (Charlie's Charts) has a sketch of the atoll that shows the approximate location of the raft's perilous trip in the surf and over the reef--but unfortunately no GPS waypoint. A few notes we scratched in our book--from some cruiser we don't remember--said to head for the 2 palm trees next to 2 groups of 3 islands. That's where we are.
We hauled out our copy of Kon-Tiki to re-read Thor Heyerdahl's account, and look at the pictures. No help there, except that it was a low part of the reef somewhere in the middle of the eastern side of the atoll, within wading distance of another island that has more land and palm trees. Supposedly there's a monument out here somewhere, but we haven't gone ashore to investigate yet.
Someone might use Google Earth to check our location, and email us if there is a waypoint in GE shown for Kon-Tiki.
We'll stay here til we get a 3-4 day window with some southeast winds, WITHOUT all the squalls that usually accompany SE winds around here. Next stop... Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas (we hope).
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At 7/22/2010 9:27 PM (utc) our position was 16°03.48'S 142°21.47'W
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We did take the nice weather window to go overnight from Tahanea to Makemo--another 50 miles upwind.
We left the pass at Tahanea just before sunset, and were able to sail most of the night, arriving at our destination at the pass at the west end of Makemo about 1am. Then we decided that, rather than loitering around there until daybreak, and then motoring inside the atoll toward the east end, we would keep sailing around the atoll to the east pass. We thought we'd be able to sail most of the way and arrive off the east pass at around 7am.
However, we had not counted on the strong westerly current that we encountered when we cleared the northern tip of Makemo. At our boat speed and tacking angle, we were almost going backwards. So we finally started the engine about 3am. By that time, we'd messed around and lost enough time that we had to motor pretty hard 20 miles against the wind and seas in order to not be too late reaching the pass.
I had calculated slack current to be about 7am, and we didn't reach the pass until about 8:30am--by that time the outgoing current was getting pretty strong. Since the wind conditions were not too bad, we decided to go ahead and try getting in, rather than waiting for another slack in 6 hrs.
We crept into the pass from the west side, getting as close to the shore as we could before actually entering the current stream, and then pushing up to full RPM with sails up. We stayed out of the main channel as much as possible--Dave was on the bow calling the shots. I was fighting with the helm in the current boils, and watching our position on the chart plotter and the GPS.
At one point all three position devices showed us going a different speed and direction. The Garmin GPSMAP 76 CSx was particularly goofy... with the arrow showing us going north, but the position was actually moving south. (This is because the display switches from plotted COG to a built-in compass that activates when you drop to a very slow speed. The compass doesn't work well when the GPS is sitting in it's mount on the helm--it needs to be held level to work properly. I have since disabled the compass feature). Our Maxsea chart program, working from the same GPS, showed us creeping at about 5 knots in the right direction... most of the time.
We could see we were making progress by watching the shoreline. But it was really slow, and really hard keeping the boat in the right place with the strong current. At that RPM we should have been making about 7 knots, but we made less than a knot for about 15 minutes. That means the current was running at about 6 knots!!! Another hour and we would have gotten pushed right back out the channel.
Because of the current, and pretty good light, we decided to skip going all the way in on the main channel, and take the short cut. It looked a lot smoother, but the current was running stronger (shallower water). But we made it through OK.
We anchored off the town dock in what looked like nice sand--but what turned out to be sheet rock, covered by thin sand, and liberally sprinkled with coral heads. When I snorkeled our anchor, it wasn't even set--we had managed to drape the chain over a coral head, and the anchor was just hanging there on the other side of the coral head.
We also discovered eventually that we had anchored almost in the middle of the town outrigger canoe races. This was 'Heiva' week, and today's activities were apparently canoe races. The races started out near our stern and finished in close to the town dock. Everyone in town was out watching the races. There were men and women singles, doubles, and group races. A few times a canoe would flip in the middle of the race. It was fun to watch and we had a ring-side seat.
We should have jumped in the dinghy right away to go hang out with the townspeople, but we were tired, needed to get the boat cleaned up from our passage, and needed to find out what the schedule was for the stores and the post office.
We also needed to do something about our anchoring situation. The forecast for the next few days was for very strong SE winds, and we had poor holding and no protection where we were. We finally decided to go into the dock. Makemo has a really nice new big concrete pier. We had heard from other boaters that you could tie up to it for no charge. There were several catamarans tied side-to to the head of the pier, but we knew that the supply ship was coming in a couple of days, and they would want that spot. So we went in bow-to just in from the head of the pier. The wind was blowing us off the side of the pier, so we didn't need to immediately worry about setting a stern anchor.
After we got the bow secured with 2 lines into two separate stainless steel rings on the dock, Dave dinghied out the stern anchor, and I got in the water to help set it. Again the sand wasn't very deep. As I snorkeled around, I saw remnants of where other cruisers had tied off to the coral heads. So that's what we did eventually--we pulled in the anchor and set 2 lines astern to 2 different coral heads.
The wind has been blowing now for 4 days at 20-25 knots. The concrete pier protects us from the waves, and we are very secure. Eventually we had 3 monohulls and 4 catamarans, AND the supply boat all tied to the pier.
And best of all, we have wifi on the boat. It is the for-pay 'Manaspot', operated by the French Poly Telecommunications bureau, and situation in the post office. If you buy your minutes in bulk, it only costs about $2/hr, and the time is usable in most of the towns in French Polynesia. The internet comes into the island on a satellite link. At times it is so slow that it is unusable, but early in the morning and late at night, it's not too bad.
We plan to hang out here until this bout of 'reinforced trade winds' subside, and then either make a short hop (another 75 miles) ENE to the atoll at Raroia, or directly about 450 miles NE to the Marquesas. Depends on how long the weather window looks. Unfortunately, this time of year, the SE winds don't last very long--and they are usually predecessors to the squally and 'blowing like stink' phase of the weather cycle.
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At 7/13/2010 7:58 PM (utc) our position was 16°37.62'S 143°34.28'W
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Labels: On Passage, Tuamotus
Labels: On Passage, Tuamotus
We had a nice time revisiting South Fakarava again. This time we anchored on the other side of the pass, where we heard from others that the anchoring was much better. Charlie's Charts only shows an anchorage on the north side of the pass, which the electronic charts cover pretty well. But last time we found only depths of 45 feet and lots of coral, with little protection from any northerly winds. Below I'll list a couple of waypoints to get into the south side anchorage from the main channel.
We ended up anchoring in 12-15 feet, with good sand and only scattered coral heads. In this area there is enough space to easily anchor 10 or so boats. There is a shallow coral bar to the north, and another one to the south, and the rim of the atoll to the east, so there is reasonable protection from North around East to the SW. There are a number of uninhabited atolls with palm trees and beaches within dinghy distance of the anchor area.
It is a little longer dinghy ride from the south side to the pass to go diving. We spent one afternoon looking for a shortcut across the shallow reef between us and the pass, but never found much of a shortcut. We could get across at high tide by picking our way very carefully with the engine half-cocked, but at low tide, with tanks in the dinghy, we would have never made it. So it is about a mile and a half dinghy ride to the pass (but the pass is also mile from the anchorage on the north side).
We got very strong E-NE winds for a few days due to a passing high pressure south of us. But we did manage to fit in 2 pass dives and one lunch with Manihi at Pension Motu Aito.
Manihi's pension (guesthouse) is the one with the red roof just ashore from the north pass anchorage. It is much more extensive than it looks from the water. He stands by on VHF 08, and can arrange a very nice polynesian lunch or dinner for groups of cruisers (2000 CFP per person). If you have friends flying in who would rather stay ashore, this is a VERY nice place to hang out. Much nicer than the pension at Tetamanu. Check them out at www.fakarava.org or email motu-aito@mail.pf or PH 74-26-13.
We were waiting for light SE winds to hop up to Raraka, about 45 miles NE. But as the NE winds persisted, we decided to skip Raraka and head straight for Tahanea.
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At 7/2/2010 6:28 PM (utc) our position was 16°31.26'S 145°28.34'W
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