Tahenea – Our Favorite Atoll so Far – May 30

We arrived at Tahenea on Monday May 27 and we have been in awe ever since we arrived!  Tahenea is an uninhabited atoll and a nature reserve and it is absolutely gorgeous.  It has palm tree lined beaches and crystal clear water. The water is so clear you can easily see the bottom in 40+ feet of water.  It makes it a bit scary when coming in to anchor because the water is so clear it's very hard to judge the depth when looking down into it.  You think you are going to hit bottom even when its 30+ feet deep!

The bottom in the anchorage is white sand covered with small to medium coral heads.  We had to be careful when anchoring so that we dropped the anchor in a sandy spot without hitting the coral.  All the cruisers here do the best they can to avoid hitting coral and causing damage.  One of the things we do to avoid damaging the coral is to attach floats or fenders to our anchor chain so it floats over the bottom and above the coral patches.  If we did not do this our anchor chain would scrape across the coral as the boat swung around in the wind.  This could cause a lot of damage to the coral.

Since this was our first time “floating” our anchor chain so we had to read an article published by a fellow cruiser on how to exactly do it.  After about an hour of sorting through how to attach our floats to our chain, we put down our anchor and attached the floats.  I later went diving and checked on everything to make sure our anchor was set well and not causing any damage to the coral. All was good.

We have been snorkeling among the amazing coral gardens each day.  The coral is all healthy, colorful and FULL of fish (and sharks!)  We’ve enjoyed several gatherings on the beach with fellow cruisers and have meet boats from Australia, South Africa and Portugal.  This is truly an international community out here!  We also caught up with several boats that we had meet at while we were staying at Raroia atoll.

I took my drone out and got some arial shots so you could get the full perspective on the beauty of this place.  It was nice to have a day with the wind low enough that I could fly the drone.  I am not a very good drone pilot, so I launch from the beach and not the boat.  I did manage to get some very nice shots though! 

So I will stop writing and I will let the pictures do the talking!