Every place we go seems to have a unique set of sailing challenges either relating to the weather conditions or the geography. In the Mediterranean it was the fierce seasonal winds and lack of shallow anchorages. In the Caribbean it was the poorly charted shallow areas and impending tropical storm season. It is always something different, which is why this type of sailing is such an impossible skill to master…. the more you sail, the more you understand how much you DON’T know. This probably explains why we don’t find many arrogant skippers around the place – those ones have probably finished their sailing careers upside down or perched sideways on a reef somewhere.

The Tuamotus is a place with perhaps greater challenges than any other we’ve been to so far. Skippers in these waters have compared the dangers in the Tuamotus to those of rounding Cape Horn, and although we think that’s overstating things quite a bit (the invention of GPS has made sailing here much safer since those claims originated), the Tuamotus is still a great place to end a sailing career or wreck a boat with a single minor oversight.

There are 78 islands in this archipelago, 76 of which are low lying coral atolls that are nearly impossible to see from further than 8 miles away. These islands were formed by volcanoes that long ago receded beneath the surface of the sea, but as they sunk coral continued growing towards the sunlight, leaving these unusual low lying ringed islands lingering just barely above the surface. It is a bizarre feeling to be sailing among the islands at such close ranges and still frequently see only a totally flat horizon. Because of the curvature of the Earth, the tips of the palm trees start to become visible about 10 miles away, but you’d never notice them unless you were already looking out for them. This is the biggest reason most people sailed way around the Tuamotus before the invention of satellite navigation, and also why every atoll has an impressive number of shipwrecks dotting their outer shores.

With modern technology it’s easy enough to avoid crashing into the atolls. Entering the narrow passes into the lagoons is the real challenge and the one that seems to continue to baffle cruisers here today, including us. Water enters the lagoon, not just through the narrow passes as the tide rises, but also as ocean swells send waves crashing over the outer reef. All of this water has only one way out, which is through the passes, and this causes large currents in the passes, which are sometimes inflows and more often outflows. Depending on the direction of flow, the volume of water, the ocean swell, and the wind, entry can become impossible either because the water is flowing so fast that it overpowers the engine, or because standing waves form which can throw the boat around to the point that they can dismast even large sailboats. Predicting whether the flows will be in our out, and at what speed, is a complex multi-factor analysis, and many cruisers find it easier to just show up at the entrance and wait with binoculars, sometimes for hours, for the moment when tidal inflows or outflows neutralize the flow from the water entering over the reef. This moment of “slack water” when the current slows and begins to reverse, and the water goes flat, occurs four times each day and is almost always a safe time to enter.

After doing this five times now and spending hours free diving in the passes, we’re finally getting comfortable predicting conditions and maneuvering around the Tuamotus. Unfortunately this is not very helpful as we’ve arrived at the far west end of the archipelago and it’s now time for us to head for Tahiti, where our new knowledge about these islands will be completely useless. We might hit one more atoll on the way out of the Tuamotus if conditions permit, but otherwise we’re taking advantage of the ideal wind forecasted for the weekend and making a beeline for Papeete, Tahiti’s capital city, about 175 miles west of our current position. It’s been almost two months since we’ve seen a grocery store or had a decent internet connection, so we’re looking forward to a brief encounter with civilization (with an emphasis on the “brief” part).

As humans, we’re terribly suited for life underwater. Without any ability to take oxygen from the seawater, we’d suffocate in minutes. We’d succumb to hypothermia even in the most tropical seas, and if by some miracle we were still alive after a few days, our inability to take food or fresh water would surely finish us off within a week. These are similar to the problems we’d face if we tried to live on Mars or the Moon, so our interest in life below the surface is understandably limited.

But that is a huge shame, and this is something that’s just now beginning to dawn on us as we start to experiment deeper underwater here in the Tuamotus archipelago. These volcanic reefed islands (“atolls”), each forming a ring with a giant lagoon in its center, are teaming with a huge variety of fish, rays, sharks, and coral formations, almost all of which can be explored within 20 meters (60 feet) of the surface. It’s difficult to imagine how one could design a better place for this type of underwater exploration, and that explains the reputation this place has as one of the best, albeit most difficult to access, diving locations in the world.

On Tamarisk we have no diving equipment other than flippers, masks, and snorkels, which does limit our experimentation slightly. But more than offsetting this (by orders of magnitude) is that we have Javi (aka “Tarzan”) aboard with us, who just happens to be a free diving instructor and, after years of training and diving since he was a kid, now seems almost more comfortable below the surface than he does on land. For those not familiar, free diving is the complex discipline (one part sport, one part art, one part yoga) of holding your breath and diving deep beneath the surface without the help of normal diving equipment. With nothing but flippers. a mask, and a kilogram of lead weight, Tarzan can go to depths of 50 meters (150 feet), which is about twice as deep as most recreational SCUBA divers normally go out here. Even beginners like Piers and I can already reach 10 meters, and can reasonably expect to reach 15-20 meters after just a couple of weeks of practice under Tarzan’s guidance.

But our ambition with free diving is not to achieve world record depths (which, by the way, is an absurd 100+ meters). Our goal, like most free divers, is to experience a new level of comfort below the surface so we can explore the reefs and come a bit closer to the incredible sea life that fills these places and experience for ourselves, even for just a minute or two at a time, what an underwater life is all about. If you’d like a small but inspirational peek at what’s possible with free diving, check out Tarzan’s experience in the Bahamas last year in this video clip.

It’s time for us to pull the anchor now and continue our march west through the Tuamotu atolls. The trick here is to get through the narrow passes in the reef into the protected lagoon (most atolls have at least one or two safe passes), and anchor as near to the pass as possible. The passes are generally deep and safe for us to enter either at low or high tide when the tidal currents are minimal (currents can reach 8-9 knots in the passes and create huge standing waves and washing machine sea conditions at other times) Once we’re anchored safely, we take the dinghy back out through the pass because this is where the impressive sea life is to be found. Once outside, we jump in the water and drift back through the pass with the tidal current into the lagoon, free diving the entire way through. We’ve explored the pass at the Makemo atoll and the South Pass of Fakarava this way, and we’re about to sail 30 miles north inside the Fakarava lagoon and do the same thing at this atoll’s North Pass. The whole thing is a bit addictive, so we need to be careful not to get delayed in the Tuamotus too much…. the Society Islands are next on the list and we’re being careful to preserve each precious day we have planned there.

Tarzan free diving in Fakarava: