Week 92: Taha’a to Maupiti (53nm)

We were fortunate enough to get appropriate weather conditions to sail to the remote island of Maupiti, which is not a place many cruising sailors end up getting to visit, and we discovered a welcoming local population and a picture perfect lagoon complete with its own resident manta ray colony.

Captain’s log

Monday 8th June: We awoke to delightfully flat conditions in our new anchorage, which is what we had been hoping for as it would improve the conditions for our snorkelling over the nearby ‘coral river’. We decided to swim up current for a bit of exercise before relaxing and enjoying the float back, and were overjoyed to see such colourful diversity of fish (including a real life Nemo–aka clown fish–in an anenome), even though the coral was clearly on its last legs. Came back and spent the afternoon fashioning a new lever for the outboard as the previous repair had given way – Laura’s ‘add more epoxy’ solution as always was a messy but effective strategy.

Tuesday 9th June: With the wind starting to freshen and the chop picking up in our anchorage, we motored 1nm across the lagoon to pick up a mooring buoy in a nearby bay, where the sea was flatter but the wind seemed to be even gustier. I ventured out in the dinghy to replenish our jerry cans with duty free diesel (only available in the gas stations willing to fill out a lot of paperwork), and then we returned once more to shore in the afternoon. This time was to visit a local distillery that gave us a fun tour across the varied operations that culminated in tasting their passion fruit infused rum that we immediately invested in. The rest of the afternoon was spent preparing the boat for the passage to Maupiti as it needed an early start.

Wednesday 10th June: An long but rewarding journey to Maupiti (see Story of the Week below), and after dropping the hook we were immediately invited for a drink on S/V Galawa by Phillipe who proved to be a font of knowledge regarding local fishing and island contacts and helped inspire our plans for our time here.

Thursday 11th June: Headed into shore early to try Maupiti’s summit hike, which was very much one of two halves. The first was an amazing if hard ascent up an infrequently marked but forgiving trail that yielded some incredible views from the top; however, the descent was less enjoyable as we first discovered that the path across the island didn’t exist (after 30 minutes of bushwhacking), and the other return trail that we discovered was also far harder going. The positive news was that the one little cafe was open upon returning to the town, so we loaded up on veggie chow-mein and fries (only things they had) and returned to spend a chill afternoon on Serenity.

Friday 12th June: After a morning pottering on the boat, we revisited the snack bar early enough to secure ourselves some delicious poisson cru. A lazy afternoon working on pet projects then turned into a fun evening getting to know our neighbours David and Dara on S/V India.

Saturday 13th June: Moved the boat down to the anchorage near the pass as Phillipe had told us about the manta ray cleaning station down there, and were treated with our best snorkelling experience to date. There were five of these massive creatures at a cleaning station (where small fish come and clean their skin and gills from growth and parasites) and the mantas where so engrossed in getting clean that they didn’t mind us going down for a look (video highlights in Parting Thoughts below). Came back and hosted Silke off S/V Ocean Maiden for a coffee as we kept crossing paths without having had a chance to speak, before taking the rest of the day to work through some aesthetic repairs to the hull and lights.

Sunday 14th June: Tried the mantas again, but the current was so much stronger that the effort of staying in place became prohibitive after only five minutes. This was clearly being driven by the increased size of waves now breaking over the reef, and Fergus and Nev from 2D went to check it out in their dinghy and witnessed a fishing boat only just make it. Spent the evening along with them on India, who cooked a delicious shrimp risotto for us to share.

Story of the week: Sailing to Maupiti

Whilst Maupiti is not technically the most remote of the Society Islands, it’s distance from the other main islands in the Leeward group still sets it apart and its accessibility is limited by factors other than pure distance. Specifically, it has a single, fairly narrow, shallow channel to access its inner lagoon, and this channel faces south into the predominant wind and wave direction during non-cyclone season. This is the only way for any water breaking over the reef to exit the lagoon, and so peak outgoing currents up to 9kts (i.e. more than our top speed under engine) have been reported during the major swells. Whilst the specific guidance on what conditions render this pass ‘impassable’ varies, it is obvious from both the charts and multitude of other cruisers stories than trying to get into Maupiti when there is any meaningful southerly swell could be suicidal – timing would be everything.

I decided to trust in the advice of our most consistently reliable cruising guide, which suggested the pass was within a regular cruising risk tolerance provided any S/SW swell was below 2m in height. As swells go, that is not particularly high and the lack of good windows is the reason why many people do not get a chance to visit Maupiti whilst cruising the Society Islands, especially when you consider that you also need a similar set of conditions when you decide to leave – we’ve also heard some stories of boats being trapped in Maupiti for several weeks if not a month longer than they had desired.

The good news is that with the border restrictions still firmly in place across the South Pacific, we weren’t in a rush to get anywhere and being ‘trapped’ in Maupiti sounded like a fairly benign experience given the abundance of wildlife, tropical fruit, friendly people and spectacular scenery. We quickly decided that, having reached Taha’a, we would take the first window we were offered to see Maupiti and then work our way back through anything we had been forced to skip over. So I started monitoring the longer range wave forecasts a bit more closely.

As we approached the NE side of Taha’a it started to look like there might be an good opportunity in around five to seven days. Some of our cruising friends from Tahiti on Two Drifters, who were currently in Bora Bora, confirmed that they were also lining up the same window with another boat there called S/V India, which gave us a bit more confidence that we would at least have some company in our attempt. The only challenge for us was the relative distance of Maupiti from Taha’a (c.50nm vs. 25nm from Bora Bora) when combined with the preference to arrive in Maupiti around midday for best light and current conditions. The other boats could depart from Bora Bora around 7-8am, whereas we would need to leave Taha’a (and transit a personally unknown pass) in the hours of darkness. We could decide to go later and deal with poorer conditions, but if we then had to abort for Bora Bora we would then be entering that lagoon in the dark. It seemed like a case of ‘six of one,’ and so I decided that I’d prefer to give us the best conditions in Maupiti and accept the penalty on the Taha’a pass. Fergus off 2D then helpfully confirmed that the Taha’a pass was well marked and accurately charted, which put any final fear to rest.

We slowly worked our way round the top of Taha’a so that we were as close as possible to our exit pass the night before we planned to leave – thankfully the forecasts continued to support the day that we had chosen and the wind element suggested we might get a also good sail on the way over. So after confirming our timings with the other boats, we set our alarms for 02:30 and tried to get some sleep ahead of what we knew would be a long and potentially stressful next day.

Thankfully Laura and I are both pretty good early risers and are comfortable enough in our boat preparation routines that we slipped our lines in set off from Taha’a without incident. Nighttime sailing in coastal waters still feels like a very novel experience for us as we work so hard normally to avoid it, and as such it felt closer to the previous sailing course exercises that we’d done back in the UK than any of the other cruising we’ve done to date. I called out what lights I was expecting to see and where based on the charts, and Laura was in charge of spotting and confirming them. It only took us 30 minutes to reach the pass and, whilst having the disorienting sound of unseen breakers crashing around you in the darkness was a nerve-wracking experience, everything was where it was meant to be and we reached clear waters without any dramas. The wind was building nicely, so we switched the engine for the sails and Laura took over the watch as I tried to overcome an unsettled stomach (I’m still maintaining this wasn’t seasickness but instead linked to a lukewarm cup of tea…).

After an hour or so, I was feeling much better and so we swapped over but pretty soon Laura was back on deck as sleep was proving elusive. The wind kept building and favourably shifting in direction such that our average speed gradually crept up from 4 knots to around 7 – we were absolutely flying and enjoying the best open ocean sail we’d had in ages. There were plenty of little rainstorms around, but most of them seemed to miss us and we were treated instead to an endless succession of rainbows. We made radio contact with the other boats as we reached Bora Bora, and agreed that the swell we were experiencing lined up with the forecasts; however, just to make sure, David off S/V India called ahead to a contact he had on Maupiti and got the thumbs up that the pass looked very calm, and so we could all relax even more into the sail.

We had the lines out, but nibbles were not to be had and so as we got closer to the pass we reeled them in as the last thing we needed to distract us now was a fish. Somehow we had managed to beat both of the catamarans to Maupiti by around 10 minutes – our high fives at this sailing success were short-lived as it dawned on us that we would therefore be going in first. I’m very much of the mindset that its ‘better now than never’ and so we got ourselves in position, fired up the engine (although left the mainsail up in case of the unlikely event it failed), and lined ourselves up with the various markers.

The silver lining to the difficulty of the pass is that additional markers have been placed to help boats navigate – in addition to the red and green channel markers at the edge, there are two pairs of ‘leading-lines’ in the toughest section, which are posts that come into line with each other when you are in the centre of the relevant section of channel. Monitoring the first set of these whilst looking for the second set to make the turn was a critical role and so Laura headed to the bow to be my eyes, whilst I steered from the helm. We quickly realised that the current was less than 3 knots and the waves were not breaking across the pass, and as such our transit was pretty straightforward – all the research had paid off. Two Drifters and India quickly followed us in and we worked our way up to the main anchorage like a set of ducklings.

As the interior of Maupiti opened up to us, we witnessed all that we had read about – a lagoon exhibiting every shade of turquoise imaginable and a dramatic, mountainous central island surround by flat sandy motus. There were a handful of other boats already here, but the anchorage was so big that we didn’t feel any threat to the exclusivity of our experience. We knew that the next window was at least a week away and were ecstatic to have been granted this opportunity to see our first island that is truly off the beaten track.

Parting thoughts: Manta from Heaven

I’ve found it difficult to do justice to our experience with the mantas in words, which is why I’m grateful we took so much GoPro footage whilst we were with them. As you’ll see, the largest rays we saw had wingspans of around 2.5-3m although these must still be fairly young as they can reach 7m and live for around 50 years. With the largest brain to body weight ratio amongst fish, they have a claim to be one of the smartest fish in the sea, as made obvious by their willingness to queue in perfect British fashion whilst waiting for the cleaning station. Seeing something that size move with such grace is akin to encountering a ballet dancing rhino, and we know that this will be a memory that we will never forget.