Leaving the Tuamotu: departing a place that felt like home
Departing the Tuamotu archipelago is never easy when a place has genuinely become home. Lauren Landers Sailing describes leaving with a single weather window, 15 knots of wind from behind, perfect conditions for flying the spinnaker. The plan was to watch the bright pink spinnaker contrast against the deep blue ocean across 300 miles of open water. Even when a passage looks promising on paper, the emotional weight of leaving somewhere special travels with you.
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What it feels like to transit an atoll for the first time without it being too sketchy
After completing the pass entry, Lauren reflects that the conditions were relatively flat, which made for a good first experience. The key takeaway is that if the waves had been bigger, waiting for them to settle would have been the right c
Slowing down deliberately to time a reef pass arrival correctly
As Lauren Landers Sailing closed within range of the atoll, she reefed her jib intentionally to reduce boat speed. She was on track to arrive too early, and entering a reef pass at the wrong time, before the light is good or the current is
Deciding not to fish offshore when the likely catch would be unmanageably large
Lauren Landers Sailing made a deliberate choice not to fish during this particular offshore passage. Her reasoning was practical: anything she hooked out there would almost certainly be very large, a big tuna for example, and dealing with l