Our adventures continue in Tahanea both on shore and underwater. If you missed our last blog on Tahanea, click here.
The winds were shifting so we decided to move to one of our favorite anchorages called “7.” It got its popular name from the reef that forms a “7” which can be seen from google earth (top photo) The lower photo shows the top of the “7” in the foreground.
Matt was able to fly the drone to capture this amazing photo of the reef with Sugar Shack in the lower edge. Our battery was super low so we could not go higher to show you the entire reef, but you get the general idea from this shot.
Unfortunately for us the winds shifted rather quickly. We only got to spend one night here before it was time to move to a new anchorage.
The Pass Anchorage
The exciting thing about being at the pass anchorage is snorkeling the pass with the manta rays. A large group of us went to explore the reef outside the passes and then drifted in the north pass to play with the mantas.
These massive, gentle creatures are super curious and will come up to you if you remain calm and still. They simply take your breath away as they glide through the water collecting plankton. Truly majestic beauties.
A rather large spotted ray also came to pay us a visit but stayed pretty far below us.
We had many beautiful sunrises and sunsets.
One evening, we all enjoyed a beach BBQ and watched the sun set as the moon rose. Nothing like great friends, tasty food, and beauty all around.
Matt broke out the drone for shots of the Tahanea anchorage. We are super close to shore, even though it does not look like it in the photo. Remember, we are only in 1.5m of water. The little black things around Sugar Shack are coral heads which have to be avoided by the boat and our anchor chain.
These photos show the motus near the pass and the passes. In the top photo you can see the middle pass (at the bottom) and the north pass (top). The photo was taken at slack tide which is why it is so calm and “serene.”
A few more sunrise photos.
Diving Tahanea Reef
Matt went diving with our friends on Pico (Andreas and Sandra) while our other friends on Sea Rose and I followed them snorkeling. One of our regulators is leaking so I could not go with Matt. But we had a fantastic time checking out the underwater reef world between the two passes during slack tide.
Happy girl in Tahanea
Sugar Shack is happy in Tahanea (photo courtesy of Sandra on Pico)
And Matt captured this amazing photo with the sun rising and the moon setting. The moon can be seen just off our bow and to the left of the monohulls.
NW Anchorage
Matt and I wanted to explore a new anchorage so we headed to the NW side of the atoll. It is “unexplored” territory as there is nothing in the compendium, nothing on the charts and no tracks. It is about 7.5nm away from the pass anchorage. We encountered no problems even though we left at low tide (not smart for a new path).
The anchorage was littered with coral heads so we floated our chain in the largest sandy spot. Super pretty, untouched motu with a bijillion palm trees.
We explored around the large motu which was difficult to walk on as it was covered in large rock and corals. There were no sandy parts or small pebbly parts. But we did find a little camp site created by a local for his copra work.
Some people have a shoe fetish and others (who don’t wear shoes) have a different kind of fetish…
And this is not all of them
Check out this site for more underwater adventures in Tahanea.
Events from this blog post occurred during the end of May, 2021. Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind our adventures.