We found a piece of paradise

Perigee in Paradise.

 Two years, eight months and one day after moving onboard Perigee we found paradise! We moved onboard on February 16, 2017 in Le Marin, Martinique one of the Caribbean Islands and found our paradise on October 17, 2019 in the Raroia lagoon, one of the Tuomotu Islands of French Polynesia. We put 12, 548 nautical miles under the keel in that time and spent many hours preparing Perigee for this kind of remote area cruising.

Raroia Atoll (Rah-row ee ah). We're the red arrow top right. The entrance is in the middle of the west side.

Raroia is remote, being as it is pretty much in the middle of the Pacific Oceans. Altogether we sailed 33 days to get there from Panama. 30 days to Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas and another 3 days to Raroia in the Tuomotus.

That's Panama top right and Australia bottom left and Raroia in the middle.

Actually we can't claim to have found this piece of paradise, it was already discovered by our friends on Capall Mara who were waiting for us there. And before Capall Mara, on August 7, 1947 Thor Heyerdahl on the Kontiki raft smashed into the reef a little further south. Thor did not stop nor did he think to establish a yacht club but Capall Mara did. Not only did Capall Mara start up the Twin Palms Yacht Club but also set up a tide station so that they could monitor the tides for our arrival.

Twin Palms Yacht Club with the Tide Station (aka sticks) at the waterline.

 Monitoring the tides is important as there is only one entrance to this lagoon and a huge amount of water flows through it with the tides. Going through the pass at the wrong time can have serious consequences, therefore trying to determine slack water was of upmost interest. As it was we had about 3-4 knots of current when we came through.

Tide racing through the pass. It's much more spectacular in reality.

Here Perigee is moving at 8 knots through the water and making 4.6 knots over the grounds. The difference being due to the current.

Once in the lagoon there are numerous isolated reefs and coral outcrops to be negotiated. Fortunately for us, the intrepid Capall Mara had already scoped out a safe track from the entrance to the north east corner of the lagoon - about 10 nautical miles / 2 hours. We also found our iSailor charts to be very accurate. Entering in the afternoon with the sun behind us also provided us with good visibility of any potential dangers. Having arrived the first order of the day after getting Perigee settled was sundowners on Capall Mara. The outlook was so stunningly beautiful that there were many "WOW"s expressed. And the WOW factor never left us. Not in 54 days and not a day would go by without at least a couple of "WOW"s.

Perigee in Paradise

There's not much out there. At night the only lights other than ours were the stars and the moon and two or three dim lights from a pearl farm some 2 miles away. By the time we arrived Capall Mara had been on anchor there for a month and we were happily able to bring fresh produce for them - along with a special order of rum and chocolate sauce. We had everything we needed - while it lasted except for internet. Capall Mara had being making the trip to the village (2 hours there and 2 hours back) about once a fortnight for internet and a bit of shopping so we joined them on the next foray.

Approaching the village. JP on the bow.

Looking toward the village

Looking toward the village, we anchored in the light blue stuff and could clearly see the anchor 8 metres down.

Looking out from the village.

Looking out from the village. Imagine growing up with that view everyday. The Village consisted of an outdoor church, Marie, school, post office and airstrip.

Dave in the 'Magasin'.

The small shop (Magasin) consisted of two sparsely stacked shelves and a couple of freezers (out of shot). No fresh vegetables to be found. A box of decaying oranges on the floor. Some not so fresh onions and garlic were to be had. Processed cheese, cream crackers (SAOs) and tinned meats in good supply. Plenty of beer out the back and chicken legs in the freezer. A surprising amount of 'junk' food including Oreos and Twisties.

The weekly plane. Seems the whole village turned out for its arrival.

Alas after having spent the morning to get to the village, the internet was down. So we bought a few items at the shop and made our way back to the anchorage to arrive before last light. We made this trip three times in 54 days and each time failed to get a proper connection to the internet. 

Two weeks after we arrived our friends, the lovelies on Leela joined us. So now we were 3 boats. Dave ran a radio net in the morning called "not the 9 o'clock net" which was at 9 o'clock more or less. Here we generally organised our days. There are always boat jobs of course but also plenty of time for fun. So what did we do all day?

Twin Palms Yacht Club nature walk

Well, we organised nature walks to the windward side of the island. We explored the shallows at low tide and discovered eels, fish, sponges, corals etc. The rope for the sign for the Twin Palms Yacht Club was found on one of these exploratory wanderings.

Windward side of the reef.

The windward side of the reef is rocky and forbidding. This is what the Kontiki would have struck on their arrival in 1947.

Swoodling outside the yacht club. Photo by Graham on Leela.

The afternoons were generally a more relaxed affair. Here we are swimming/noodling outside the Yacht Club. Note the uninvited guest bottom left - a black tip reef shark. There were also schools of baby mullet that used to swim around us and who fearlessly would approach us.

On another of our forays we discovered a Booby breading colony on one of the scrub covered Motus (Islands). The chicks, just learning to fly were not so stable on their wings and provided us with much amusement as we watched their antics. Bird photos by Graham on Leela.

Fledgling Booby

Booby in flight

A booby in the bush

Booby banking

Having been curious about the pearl farm we took ourselves off for a visit. There are 5 employees and one child living there full time in little huts. They harvest the pearls daily and produce around 30,000 per year. It is black pearls that they cultivate here for the wholesale market.

We were joined in the anchorage by 3 other boats eventually. Here is Paul from Dodo, a fluent French speaker explaining the process of harvesting the oysters to us non French speakers.

Black Pearl Oysters

Preparing the oysters to go back into the water.

Here is the operation close up. This is the skilled part of the job and the man who did this came out from Hong Kong for 10 months of the year. The black pearls come out and the nuclei onto which the oyster excretes its nacre goes in. Do it wrong and there's no pearl or it's misshapen.

The black pearls aren't actually black they are a variety of colours ranging from grey greens to grey blues and everything in between.

Raroia black pearls, the nuclei are white

 This is the mornings work, harvesting the pearls. The white beads are the nuclei that are inserted into the oyster and on which the nacre is layered by the oyster. It takes between 8 and 12 months for a nucleus to be coated and then the oyster can be harvested again. Oysters that produce nice pearls are harvested 3 times and after that they are eaten.




Most of our morning adventures involved snorkeling. Searching for new and interesting fish, looking for them in our fish books and swapping photos of them. Graham from Leela was by far the most successful in capturing underwater images which he freely shared and for which I am very grateful. Here is some of the wonderful underwater life we saw.

Unicorn Fish - I don't think she knows how funny she looks!

Rock-mover Wrasse

This little guy (about 20cm) goes around picking up small pieces of rock and coral with its mouth in search of food hiding there.

Pipe Fish. About the size of a drinking straw.

Christmas tree worm.

Grey reef shark and his Trevally friend

Black tip reef shark

Shrimp Goby and its shrimp.

This pair are interesting. The shrimp is blind and looks after their underground home bring up bundles of sand. The goby stands guard. Whenever the shrimp is outside the hole it has at least one feeler on the goby.

The reefs are covered with these most colourful clams. Each one is unique.

Fish Conversation

Here three butterfly fish gossip about the "goings on" on the reef.

A grouper a squirrel and a snapper swim into a bar, the grouper says to the snapper . . .

Vogel fish

Here we are snorkeling around a coral head. The visibility on this day was probably 60 metres, just incredible. Dave has discovered a Nudibranch approximately 5 centimetres long, this is what is was looking at.

Dave discovered this little creature

Dave and I dinghying back from a snorkel trip

Boat work with benefits.

Dave does a rig inspection and takes in the view. This is SV Leela on anchor in 4 metres of water, her shadow clearly visible. Most of the coral heads seen here are more that 2.5 metres below the water which gives us plenty of room to swing on anchor. We surveyed the area with a hand held depth sounder just to be sure.

A favourite stretch of sand

 This is the sand bank near a little reef close by that we liked to snorkel on. The inlet, top left leads our to the windward side of the island.

More Swoodling - adult beverages normally involved

Feeding the fish

 We had sharks sucker fish and surgeon fish  who took up residence in the shade of Perigee. They would stay all day and leave at night. Here we are as part of our morning ritual feeding the fish. All veggie scraps were cut up to fish bite size pieces and fed to the fish. The shark suckers would come out to greet us when we returned in the dinghy or if they had any sense that we where on deck We affectionately named them 'the puppies'.

'Our' Motu, the sunrise was over this group of palm trees.

Perigee as viewed from a small lagoon on the Motu.

After 54 days in our isolated piece of paradise it was time to leave to return to the Marquesas. The winds in November and December become more north-easterly making the passage back north more difficult later in the year. It was always our plan to be north of 10 degrees south (i.e. in the Marquesas) by the start of the cyclone season (November 1st) so when a weather window presented us with some nice south-easterly trades we packed up our snorkeling gear, said goodbye to the Twin Palms Yacht Club and set sail on a 4 day passage to Fatu Hiva.

Dramatically different to the Tuomotus but non less dramtic.

Wandering around Hanavave, Fatu Hiva

Hanavave Bay, Fatu Hiva