Day 53 The Blue Lagoon

... or practice sailing
One of the sights of Rangiroa is a feature called the Blue Lagoon. Coral has created a lagoon within a lagoon and the depth of the water creates a unique blue color.
For $100 per person, you can get a day tour from the hotel that includes lunch. We decided that since we had our own boat we would make the trip by ourselves.
At 9:00 AM we weighed anchor and headed south across the Rangiroa lagoon. Some parts of the lagoon are well marked but others have coral heads sticking up just below the surface of the water so the trip required at least one lookout in the bow to warn of shallow spots.
The procedure on a sail boat is to use the motor to leave the anchorage. Once safely underway, everyone scrambles about to remove the sail cover and gaskets (tapes that tie the sail when it is down), raise the sail, raise the jib and then get everything tidied up and put away for the sail. When the boat arrives at an anchorage, the process is reversed. You will see in a moment why I mention this.
After 3 hours of sailing we arrived at the Blue Lagoon. From a distance it certainly looked blue but the abundance of coral heads kept us from approaching too closely so we looked for an anchorage from which we could see the it by dinghy. Looking for an anchorage requires dropping the sails as described above.
After an hour of looking at various alternatives, the wind and waves picked up so that anywhere we anchored would put Southern Star at risk of being blown ashore. We quickly decided that we would have to forego this sight so we raised the sail again and headed back to our original anchorage near the hotel.
By the time we returned (and dropped the sail again) it was almost dark.
So what did we do all day? We raised the sails, lowered the sails, raised the sails and lowered the sails. In between we did a little sailing and some anchoring.
Oh well, who said every day would be paradise?
The savior of the day was the “pasta surprise” that Mark made for dinner. It was delicious!
After dinner we watched a movie for the first time in the trip. We had talked about a movie night several times so it was nice to finally have one.