We SAILED to Tahiti! | French Polynesia | Ep 115
December 18, 2023 · 14 min · 4K views · Tahiti
What this video covers
Meraki departs the Tuamotu Archipelago after three weeks and sails to Papeete, Tahiti, navigating a final atoll pass on the way.0:28 The crew uses OpenCPN overlaid with Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Navionics to identify bombies (coral heads) inside the pass, and cross-references a cruiser-made spreadsheet called the "tide guesstimator" to time the slack water.1:03 They note the guesstimator ran two hours late on a previous pass, so they aim to arrive an hour before predicted high slack to build in a buffer.2:11 The pass goes smoothly with no current resistance.2:47 Approaching Papeete at sunrise, the crew contacts the harbour master on VHF channel 12 for entry permission, waits for a fast inter-island ferry to clear, then receives clearance to cross an active runway that bisects the harbour approach — a procedural step specific to Papeete's combined port and airport layout.5:56 Inside, a thin fringing reef creates the lagoon where boats anchor and marinas sit.8:59 Ashore, the family's first priorities are a large supermarket (their first since Mexico in February, now nearly June), laundry, fuel, and McDonald's — which the kids had been anticipating for months.11:10 Atoll pass timing in the Tuamotus requires building extra margin into any tide calculator because no published system is fully accurate for these passes.2:36
Boats in this video
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