Fw: Huahine ITI 16.47 S 150.59W
Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Sat 10 Aug 2013 17:33
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There is a saying that sailors think that there are
three kinds of wind: one that is to strong, one that is to weak and one that
comes from the wrong direction.
According to the forecast we should have had the
right amount of wind from the right direction.
We started out having not enought of wind, and we
thought that might be due to the islands blocking it. We did catch up some by
going down under the trail of clouds that are created by "mecanical elevation"
on the islands. The wind brings moisture towards the mountains, when the air
rises it cools and the moisture "falls out" to form clouds.
Can it be to little wind? With confused seas that
makes it horrible. And confused seas it was.
Confused seas are waves crashing into each other
from different directions. It makes you feel that you are a toy boat being
tossed about by a baby playng in a bathtub.
Last night the wind started to pick up really
strong, wich made us suspicius on the whole forecast.
As we entered the pass of Huahine the wind had
picked up to 28 knots in the gusts. So we could see Bora Bora but decided to
visit this island instead and go to Bora Bora when it has calmed
down.
The geologi of these islands and
atholls
Before we came here I thought I had an idea of what
it would look like but I had it all wrong.Maybe you know if not...
To help you out, Marquesas are easy to understand,
islands made from vulcanoes that erupted out of the sea.
Darwin had a theory, that as time goes by, these
vulcano islands would wear down becoming an island surrounded by a corall reef.
Thats what these society islands look like (Bora Bora, Huahine, Raiatea). You
enter an atholl and in the middle is the big island, in this case actually
two.
So once inside the atholl you can move around the
island (if luck will have it with depth etc) fully protected by the
reef.
In this case it can be a mile between the reef and
the island.
Then as the islands fall back to the sea they end
up as atholls, just a lagoon surrounded by a reef, and on the reef there are a
pearl of islands (Mutos). That's the Tuamutos. Nobody could prove that Darwin
was right unil the French started drilling in the atholls for nuclear bomb
testing. They went so deep they found the "island" under the atholl, and
he was given right.
Clever guy... Darwin
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