Helpful Insights for South Pacific Cruising
A Few places we enjoyed::
Marquesas. Powerful first island group after being at sea for 3+ weeks. Great hiking adventures, beautiful islands, and excellent fishing.
Tuamotus. Huge contrast from the Marquesas with amazing lagoons, bountiful fish and shark populations and healthy coral. Friendly locals and amazing, secluded motus.
Aitutake, Cook Islands. If you draw 6 feet or less and go in the pass at high tide, it shouldn't be a problem. We draw about 5'6" and plowed through a tiny sand bar in one small section of the pass, but we didn't even wait for high tide. Extremely friendly locals, secure anchorage, and amazing lagoon adventures. Don't miss snorkeling the giant clam sanctuary.
Niue. Incredibly unique island in the South Pacific. Landscape is fascinating, great hiking adventures, and ocean visibility is unreal. Most interesting scuba diving we did with crazy cave dives, lionfish, and giant crayfish.
Ha'apai Group of Tonga. Most healthy coral reefs we saw outside of the Tuamotus. Very serene and beautiful island group. Great shells.
Places we wished we would have made happen:
More Tuamotus. We only visited 4 atolls: Kauehi, Fakarava, Rangiroa, and Ahe. Another couple of weeks there with a couple other atoll visits would have been great. We loved being in the water so much.
Huahine, Society Islands. Poor planning on our part forced us to get to Bora Bora early to check out of French Polynesia. We ended up spending almost 10 days in Bora Bora after legally "checking out" of French Polynesia with no consequences (and so did so many boats we met). If we would have known this beforehand, we would have just gone to Huahine for at least a few days and not stressed about the check out formality.
Beveridge Reef. We had big intentions to make it here but weather wasn't so nice and we didn't know what conditions inside would be like. We met one boat that said they were in there for a month straight, and it sounds like it really never gets too rough inside and is an amazing place.
Minerva Reef. Weather dictated not stopping here this year, but next year on the way to Fiji we will definitely make this happen.
Maupiti and Morelia in the Society Islands. After talking to other sailors who went to these special places, they sound pretty great too and the passes aren't very difficult as sometimes talked about.
Our Best Diving:
Fakarava, Tuamotus. Go with a dive company and dive Garuae Pass on the north shore. Very cool. Also, the south pass is an awesome drift snorkel or dive with your dingy in tow. So many sharks. We couldn't get enough.
The Island of Niue. Really cool caves, rock features, lionfish, crayfish (lobster), and so many sea snakes! The visibility is at least 100 feet and gorgeous. You may even get the chance to see dolphins or whales.
Ha'apai group of Tonga. Beautiful healthy reefs with an abundance of coral types, pelagics, clownfish, eagle rays, and lionfish.
Weather
We have been really succesful using saildocs through our SSB modem. Pulling weatherfaxes, grib files, and local french forecasts are pretty easy if you use the Ham/Sailmail catalog.
In addition, we have been extremely lucky to have an Iridium Satellite Phone with a data connector and email service provider. It was a family gift to us to use for staying connected and emergencies, but having the email service (We use an organization called UUPLUS which has been awesome) has been an incredible efficient way to stay in touch and pull weather files when our SSB has spotty propogation. If you have the funds to buy a sat phone and can afford the few hundred bucks for the annual email service, then each connection runs around $1 a minute where you can often send/receive 5-20 emails or so, depending on length. If you want current weather info back within minutes without spending hours on the SSB dealing with propogation, having a sat phone and email service is the ticket.
Internet Access places
We didn't have a good external antenna this past year and it was often pretty frustrating as we couldn't really pick up wireless from our boat. So if you can, get an external antenna, as there are a few places out there you will be able to connect to.
Gear we love:
Monitor Wind Vane. Amazing piece of gear! Because Nicole and I are always double-handing, we love our Monitor as it is truly like having a 3rd crew member. Any time we actually have wind and don't feel like hand steering, we use the windvane. For motor-sailing, we use the auto-pilot, as the power is keeping the batts charged up and we don't have to worry about the energy use.
(To be continued....)