July 7 – 8, 2012
After an overnight motor, we arrived at Rangiroa. Again, we had no idea what time the slack tide would be to enter the pass – what’s new? No one seems to know. We called on the radio and the best guess was to try in about an hour. We waited and did. It wasn’t too bad – not like white water rafting in Fakarava! There were waves but we were going with them. Once inside, it’s like a great big lake, really big! Here are some pictures.
As soon as we got in and anchored, a couple of friends from Seawings came over in their dingy and gave us the bad news: there were strong winds due to start in a few days and not let up for at least a week. As the anchorage wasn’t very protected if the wind went at all south, and since we didn’t want to be pinned down and trapped on our boat for a week, we made the hard decision to head out the next day without ever going on land at Rangiroa and head for Tahiti. Here are our friends delivering the bad news – Brian and Juliet.
The next morning, we headed off. A local gave us this sendoff.
Bye Rangiroa! Maybe we’ll get to visit some other day. -Rich
