May 11 – June 4, 2014
We left Anaho Bay on Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas late morning on 10 May, and we had an uncomfortable yet speedy 3-night passage down to Raroia (write-up to follow). We timed our arrival pretty well (totally lucky), and we made our way through the pass and across to the east side of the lagoon to a most spectacular anchorage. After a few nights, we moved just a bit south to yet another spectacular anchorage, but we stayed there only one night, since the weather was looking good for a pass dive, which meant moving over to west side of the lagoon near the town and the pass. We had a bit of trouble finding a suitable place to anchor, but we finally settled on the north side of the pass anchored on a bombie (a coral head) on a lee shore. Luckily, the wind cooperated and stayed under 20 kts, so we were comfortable staying there a couple nights before heading out the pass for an overnight passage to Makemo.
When we arrived in Makemo, we stern tied to the wharf at the village of Pouheva near the pass. We ended up staying there a full week, because we had so much fun with the people of the village. Afterwards, though, we spent two days at a more secluded anchorage a bit north of the village to decompress from all of our interaction. Finally, we moved near the northwest pass to do some pass diving, and once again we had a hard time finding a suitable place to anchor. It wasn’t the best anchoring situation, so we stayed only one night before leaving on a very slow overnighter to Tahanea.
We had to go intentionally slow, so we didn’t arrive to early, in fact, we were flying only a triple reefed genoa. We still arrived too early, so we waited for the sun to come up before entering the pass. Once inside, we decided that the sun wasn’t high enough to safely navigate the lagoon and all of its coral heads, so we anchored at a nice spot just inside the pass for a few hours. Later, we headed over to the southeast side of the atoll to a pleasant and protected anchorage where we hung out with a few new kid boats for a couple days. When the weather window looked right for the passage to Tahiti, we moved back to the anchorage near the pass for one night and the next morning we said good-by to The Tuamotus.
Gresham Family Exodus 