Tahanea – More Kids!

May 31 – June 4, 2014

Tahanea is an uninhabited atoll, and it is a national park to protect a type of rare bird, so we thought this would be the most remote of the atolls so far, but we were wrong.  After the slow overnight sail to Tahanea, we still arrived too early, but we decided to enter the pass even before the light was ideal.  This was our first time going through a pass with the current against us, and the max we saw was about 3 kts.  We dropped anchor in a spot near the pass to wait for more direct sunlight before navigating across the lagoon, and while we were relaxing there, we noticed a boat on AIS called Field Trip.  We were pretty sure they had kids, since if we were remembering correctly, we had heard of them from a boat called Tulu that we had met in Nuku Hiva.  So, of course when Field Trip got a radio call from someone else inside the lagoon, Tim had to follow along and listen.  We are once again stalking other kid boats on the radio.  We gleaned that yes, Field Trip is a kid boat, and bonus, they were with two other kid boats across the lagoon.  Tim came out of stalker mode and actually hailed them on the radio (or perhaps he just broke into the conversation on which we were eavesdropping) and talked to them and let them know there were going to be two more kid boats joining them. 

The transit across the lagoon was pretty straightforward, and I think our charts were much more accurate for this atoll than the other two, as I was visually spotting each bombie that was indicated on the chart.

We had a bonfire on the beach that night, and we met Field Trip, Dafne, and Reme De.  They were all on catamarans, and they had all cruised the Caribbean and came through the Panama Canal.

Among the three boats there were 5 girls and 1 boy, so our two crews instantly evened the boy/girl score.  Our boys still, even after all this time and all the experience they have meeting new kids, even still want to just stay in their comfort zone and just play with each other (Exodus and Lady Carolina).  So, the next day Tim and Steve hatched a plan to take ALL The kids to shore to build forts.  Fortunately, all the kids were game for the adventure, and they were all on shore for a while, but it’s unclear who had the most fun, the kids or Tim and Steve.  When they got back, they mused about how boys and girls really are different.  “The girls wanted to make the fort all pretty.”  Anyway, Kyle and Brenden quickly retreated into their own little world and hatched their own plan to build their own wind surfer.  They were more or less successful, but they could only go downwind, so the other one would follow along in the dinghy so they wouldn’t get lost too far downwind of the anchored boats.

We decided to invite everyone over to Exodus for a happy hour, and Lady Carolina volunteered their boat as the kid hangout.  Tim and I disagreed on a start time, and Steve and Carolina stayed out of the argument saying they were good with whatever.  Tim wanted 4pm, but I suggested 6pm, so we could feed the kids dinner beforehand.  My experience with these happy “hours” is they tend to run much, much longer than an hour, and I wasn’t sure when we’d work dinner into the schedule.  Tim won and we started at 4, well in reality more like 4:30 because these things tend to also run on cruiser time.  Needless to say, at 8pm we were still going strong.  Of course, we had plenty of appetizer goodies that we’d been munching on because everyone brought something, but dinner was nowhere in our sights.  On Lady Carolina, Kyle made all the kids pasta since they were all getting hungry.  I think we finally wound down about 10:30, and it was a great evening getting to know new friends.  But after that, I always got to pick the times for our happy hours.  And if we feel like starting early, we always make it a dinner potluck event.

We had a good time in Tahanea, but that mostly had nothing to do with the specifics of the atoll itself.  Overall, it was a bit of a letdown.  It was not nearly as pretty as Raroia, and it had no village to enjoy like Makemo.  Admittedly, we never did a pass dive, so we can’t really judge that compared to the other two, but in hindsight I think Fakarava may have been a better choice.  However, I wouldn’t really change anything, because up to that point we hadn’t met very many other kid boats, and it was fun to have a group to hang out with.