Well we finally made it – our plane was delayed in Los Angeles for eight hours longer than the already scheduled five hour connection window, and we left at 1:30 in the morning instead of 5:30 the previous evening. Total time spent at LAX was 13 hours.
Apparently the flight was incoming from Paris, but a passenger had a serious medical emergency so they diverted to Iceland to take him off and send him to the hospital. Because at that point the plane was still heavy with a full load of fuel, regulations required a complete inspection of the aircraft to be sure no damage was caused by landing with so much extra weight, which was the cause of most of the delay.
We arrived at 7 a.m. in Papeete, Rod standing by with a waiting cab, and drove straight to the Papeete waterfront where Raven was tied up stern-to the seawall. We saw her from the cabin window on our descent into the airport. The taxi dropped us off on the sidewalk, we hustled our suitcases across the main street, threw them into the boat, took off our shoes, cast off the lines and departed! 200 miles nonstop (took us about 26 hours) from the Society Islands (Tahiti, Bora Bora, Mo’orea etc.) to the Tuamotus, an island group of atolls (still part of French Polynesia). We are now anchored inside the lagoon of Rangiroa, the second largest atoll in the world. Atolls are created when volcanoes sink beneath the ocean and coral reefs build up on the sunken perimeter of the crater. As a result, atolls are circular with an interior lagoon and only rise up above the water level a few feet, covered with palm trees. Very different from the steep, rugged, lush islands of the Societies. The lagoon of this particular atoll is so large we can’t see the shore on the other side.
The night sailing was beautiful – lots of stars, no moon, phosphorescence sparkling in the boat wake, just the right temperature. A few small squalls but nothing overly exciting. We saw a huge school of hundreds of spinner dolphins just outside the Papeete harbor, and met another school just as we were approcahing the pass into Rangiroa’s lagoon.
Water temperature right now is 86 degrees. Any warmer and it would be too hot. The color of the water is a spectacular turquoise, as usual.