August 3, 2007, Friday, Day 29
Passage making. The winds have shifted and it is time to pull up the anchor and head north. It took us seven hours to travel the 30 miles with just the jib. The passage was calm and easy, passing beautiful motos of Fakarava along the way. About 5 miles from the north anchorage, we sailed into several sets of buoys that hold the frames for the pearl oysters. Twice, men in pangas approached us wanting us to deviate our course so we would avoid entanglement with the pearl farming nets. In addition to watching for reefs, we were watching for pearl buoys.
Anya remarked that she felt like she was watching a game of charade as Captain and crew communicated back and forth through the water mines of buoys: left, then right then left then right, port then starboard, then port again. It was so tricky that we had to roll up the jib and motor through the mines of buoys marking the oyster nets. Later, we would learn that the oysters are 8 meters below the surface. We draw 2 meters so we easily cleared them, but one still wouldn't want to bump into a buoy or its line.