Toau

We’re on the atoll of Toau. 

Pronounced “toe ow” – which is something I often say on this boat, on this journey.  Ask Bill.  Well, actually, it’s just Ow! – I’m constantly shrieking Ow! – having stubbed my toe once again on some hard metal or other boat thing – always my toe, almost daily. 

Anyway … Toau.  Population:  3.  Seriously, just three people live on this atoll.  Valentina and Gaston, who have lived here for decades.  And now Valentina’s sister lives next door.

They keep a pig pen. And chickens.  Two dogs and a cat.  And a small apiary – Valentina makes honey for sale.  They run a small pearl farm in the lagoon.

Yesterday we were ashore, taking vegetable scraps to the pigs, when the two dogs exploded in chase after the chickens. One of the dogs prevailed, and the chicken wished it hadn’t forgotten how to fly. 

Sometimes Gaston goes out on the lagoon, comes back next day with lobster, and he and Valentina offer the yachties a home-cooked meal.  We were hoping for a lobster dinner, but Gaston and Valentina left the day after we arrived – they needed supplies, which for them involves a 40-mile trip to Fakarava in their little motorboat.  They left over a week ago, and they haven’t been back since – we’re still hoping they come home soon.

Gaston has installed mooring balls in the lagoon.  Yatchies who stop in the lagoon tie onto a mooring ball, instead of dropping an anchor – instead of worrying about getting a good bite with your anchor, instead of floating your chain, instead of all the damage that boat anchors can do to the coral reef.  It’s a sweet solution.  And a real gesture of hospitality on Gaston’s part. 

When we arrived at Toau – after a lovely 6-hour passage from Fakarava – the wind was blowing hard and the current in the pass was strong.  With me at the helm, never having moored a boat before – well, let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. 

We approached the ball gingerly enough, and Bill expertly grabbed it with his boat hook – but then I just couldn’t hold us there long enough for Bill to tie on.  In a matter of seconds, the wind and the current swung us around, and our hook pole broke in two – one half still in Bill’s hands and the other half still hooked onto the mooring ball, which was quickly getting further and further away from us.  Oh dear!  Bill sprang into retrieval mode, lowered the dinghy and zoomed over there to save our hook, while I held the Bones in place as best I could. 

Before we could complete Take 2 of the mooring manoeuvre, a boat neighbour – Spanish family whom we’d met in another harbour a few weeks earlier – zoomed over in their dinghy to help us out.  Bill threw them our line, they pulled it through the mooring and threw it back to Bill.  Et voila!  Then there ensued a long game of pay-it-forward.  Every boat that arrived that day in those conditions lost their hook, at least once, and then struggled with the mooring until a boat neighbour arrived by dinghy to help tie-on.  Bill was on the button, and he got out to two arriving boats to help them retrieve their hooks and tie on.  From there, it was lovely to watch each of them zoom out to help the next arrivals.  And so it went. 

This pass is not really a pass, it’s called a “false pass” – meaning, a wide deep gap between two motus, it looks like a pass and behaves like a pass, but the gap doesn’t go all the way into the lagoon.  There’s a gap alright, but the lagoon-side edges of the motus are connected by a coral reef, and the depth of the water at the inside edge of the pass is very shallow, mere inches in places. 

On a sunny day, in calm conditions, the water here is crystal clear, and a small motorboat could pick its way across the reef into the deeper lagoon waters, skirting the coral bommies.  But the reef is always completely impassable for a sailboat.  So, the harbour at Toau isn’t actually in the lagoon – we moor right out here in the pass – which you’d expect to be bouncy and uncomfortable.  But the pass faces northwest, and in these dominant southeast winds, we’re well protected and it’s super comfortable. 

In this drone footage, Turtlebones is in the middle of the anchorage, third boat from the right. The clip is courtesy of our boat neighbours, Chris and Michelle on Beleza, next boat to the left.

Many hues of blue surround us, and they’re constantly changing, depending on the time of day, on the tides, on the clouds and the mist, on the surface of the sea. The blue of the ocean can get confused with the blues in the sky, and your perspective shifts – the horizon can play tricks on you.

In this picture below, check out the motu in the distance across the lagoon – it’s in between the two masts on Monsoon, looks like it’s floating there above the sea – looks like a spaceship, or an atomic bomb burst – but it’s just a mirage of the blue hues.

Sometimes it’s so calm in here, the water is as smooth as an inland lake – and crystal clear.  On those days, we paddle out onto the reef, and from our kayaks we can see all the colours of the coral and fishes of many species and sizes – like snorkeling on the reef, but without getting wet! 

On most days though, there is at least a surface ripple, and we need to don our masks and fins to explore the wonders of the reefs.  And the wonders are endless.  The coral itself is healthy – though not much varied in terms of the shapes and configurations – no branching coral “gardens” here – mostly bommies of stony brain corals, large and small, greens and browns and purples. 

But, by contrast, a huge variety of fish species inhabit the reef.  Large schools of tiny iridescent fish, turquoise and orange and yellow – armies of them, on the move.  Smaller communities of palm-size fishes, endless shapes and colours, calmly lighting on the coral, in and out of crevices.  Small schools of bigger fish, parrot fish and grouper, picking their way along the bottom, darting in and out under bommies, escaping bigger predators. 

Sharks of different species and sizes – mostly black-tipped, white-tipped, and grey reef sharks – harmless and not huge – maybe up to 6 feet long – but still large enough to take your breath away when they swim in your direction. Often solitary, sometimes in small groups – moving slowly between coral heads along the sandy bottom – moving with confidence and elegance. Harmless to us, but nonetheless top predators in their world – they have no need to hurry. 

[This is where I should insert all of our wonderful underwater photos.  But we don’t have any!]

The water temperature is perfect – warm enough to be comfortable for an hour or two, but still cool enough to be refreshing.  Thank goodness, because it gets so hot down here, hits you like a hot flash- you need an hour in the water to re-set your core.     

We’ve been here over a week, and getting low now on fresh produce. Down to our last pamplemousse and half a cucumber. Back to baking our bread.  It’s time again to re-provision.  

Sadly, this may be our last stop in the Tuamotus.  Our visitor’s visa for French Polynesia expires on July 25.  Soon we’ll set out for Tahiti and the Society Islands – the last archipelago in French Polynesia that we’ll have time to visit. 

From here, it’s a 30-hour passage to Pape’ete, the main city on Tahiti.  We’ll leave early one morning and plan to arrive mid-day the next. It will be our first overnighter as a couple – just the two of us to cover the night watches.  Another new adventure. Should be just one night though, just a small taste of crossings to come.

We’re back on weather watch, looking for the right day to leave – it’s looking like it may be tomorrow.