The Blue Lagoon, Rangiroa

We motored down to the Blue Lagoon and anchored in 41' of sand. We anchored about 1.8nm past the anchor symbol on the C-Map chart, and ended up much closer to the Lagoon. The chart marks a fairway from Ohutu all thew way to the Blue Lagoon, and there were no obstructions. Minimal depth in the fairway was 55' for just a short bit, but most of the time it was 80'-100' depth. The first night the wind was about 10 knots right on the nose, and we pitched a bit thru the evening, but there was, thankfully, no roll. In the morning, we awoke to rain and squalls, but at about 1030 we launched the dinghy and decided to go exploring. We had to portage the dinghy over the shallow areas, although there are four mooring buoys to tie off to that the tour boats use to bring folks to the Lagoon to picnic, relax and feed the sharks. We found several picnic tables and BBQ pits set up on both islets, obviously for the tour boats. The black tipped sharks must have been expecting to be fed, as there were about 30-40 of them, from 1'-4' in size, that hung out in the shallows and didn't bother us. Matt waded out to take pictures, and it was funny to watch them circle him! We then toured some of the various motus that surround the Lagoon, seeing little signs of habitation, but you're never quite as isolated as you think! We snorkeled some of the coral formations in the lagoon. The fish were colorful, and the shape of the coral heads was interesting, but the coral didn't have a lot of color or health. We returned to the boat, and in the afternoon were joined for a potluck aboard by the crews of Slip Away and Loon III who arrived in the afternoon, feasting on homemade pizza, chili and peach cobbler! Do we eat well, or what! The night was quite calm, and the boat was surrounded by black tip sharks; we counted 13 of them just off the stern! The next morning we departed to go back to Ohutu to hunker down for the expected blow coming our way in a few days. There's a fairly strong high pressure area SW of Tahiti pushing those isobars pretty close together, so this entire patch is expecting stronger winds and big seas for a while.