OFF GRID LIVING On South Pacific Atoll

OFF GRID LIVING On South Pacific Atoll

welcome to another update from Elixir Voyage around the world and Welcome to our cute little uninhabited atle in the middle of the Pacific if you’re new here my name is Max and I’ve spent almost four years sailing around the world on Elixir a Sparkman Steven Swan 37 with a constantly changing group of friends we are currently making our way across the South Pacific and right now we’re in the two otus which are the largest chain of atos in the world for the last 3 weeks we have been living a very off- grid lifestyle making our way through the vast archipelago it’s been a while since we last saw any form of civilization and we’ve been in complete awe at the beauty of our surroundings don’t forget to like this video And subscribe to this channel if you haven’t already join the patreon to hear about crewing opportunities on board Elixir the goal of this Voyage is to share the sailing lifestyle with as many people as possible and we’ve already had over 50 different crew members join along the way I hope you enjoy the video what book are you reading seant how is it it’s pretty good so far um I’m not too far in but talking about the mapping of the world’s oceans and the development of the tant it’s really cool I’m reading the crossing my journey to the shattered heart of Syria about the Syrian war and to be honest it doesn’t feel quite right reading it in a hammock on the beach but here we are I’m informing myself what book are you reading I’m reading about the coral reef fish so I know what I’m going to shoot shark or what’s going to steal my catch the two emot are atos which means they are ring-shaped islands with a protected Lagoon on the inside not all of them are accessible with a Sailing Boat however some have a deep pass into the atle allowing us access to the sheltered Anchorage on the inside because of their remoteness most of the islands are uninhabited in fact we’ been in the islands for 3 weeks and we were still yet to meet any locals at all the tootus are part of French Polynesia an overseas teror of France and up until 1996 the French used these islands to test nuclear weapons and access is still prohibited to some of these islands due to very high levels of radioactive [Music] contamination so we’ve just made landfall on the island of tahena it’s a beautiful smaller toall with white sandy beaches loads of coconut palm trees and Crystal Clear Water I’m just out here going for a little walk some steps in I haven’t been on land in probably a week maybe so it feels good to walk around even though sand isn’t really soft it’s kind of just a bunch of broken Coral it’s quite a beautiful island oh look at that I want like it’s got a face oh mocking around trying to find some easy picking coconuts but they’re all quite high up some of them are falling as well oh Brooke I found some that are kind of short maybe we can climb the [Music] tree oh that was a good P oh you got it pretty good no coconut hunting mission is it’s going well we’re finding coconuts problem is we can’t really get them down they’re too high up we’ve tried throwing stuff at them we’ve tried climbing the trees I think we’re just going to make the Walk of Shame back home without any coconuts what are you up to Max did you find that one or did it was it on the ground I climbed up a tree it’s a lot of eff yeah we couldn’t figure out how to climb any trees I picked you one over there if you want to oh if you want to open it thank you you want some coconut I’m right I’m going to crack mine open yeah good idea looks like the chest spot ever just lay in a ham eat a coconut feel like I’m on Survivor right [Music] [Applause] there there’s so much in there how is it it’s good it’s a little grainy I don’t know if it’s sand or coconut chunks but it’s really delicious Max that’s the content you [Applause] want got it there now it t a salty oh ooh nice ni oh I missed oh the first one was so [Music] good Dy choke if you know how to open a nut comment below we’ve got salty nuts I might be in I’m just going to eat mine like this m he’s in sort of is the juice worth the squeeze yes well crack the nut the next bit is also quite difficult getting the fuing flesh out of this oh how is it it’s all right I don’t really like it that much I don’t know if it was worth the effort but you guys are welcome to try it you want to try some of the young one that a it [Applause] no maybe oh watch your fingers yeah I know I just think why did they make coconuts so hard to get into but this is the only fruit or veg that you can find on these in the two emotes and it’s like Max’s already had to scale a tree now it’s like activity hour trying to get into it just watch your fingers yeah I’m probably going to lose a finger you’re giving me anxiety our favorite activity in the ATO was free diving in the pass which was a quick dingy ride away from the Anchorage as The Tide Rises and falls all of the water inside the Lagoon is fast out through this narrow Reef pass as a result most of the time the current is tearing in and out because of this we could only really free dive at slack water otherwise you’re just at the mercy of the current which is just too strong to swim against you’ve probably gathered this by now but the marine life around these atoles is like something from another world the water is warm and as soon as you jump in there’s some interesting animal swimming around right in front of you it was teeming I almost didn’t know which way to look as there was so much going on rising sea temperatures have caused a lot of coral bleaching in the tuamotus and many fragile reefs like this one have suffered massively the result is a whitewashing of the reef where much of the coral dies and loses its vibrant color that is so but thankfully this Reef looked healthy to me and the fish seemed happy and I couldn’t see any signs of coral bleaching we made the most of the abundance of fish and decided to take a few for dinner spear fishing is risky in these islands as a lot of the fish carry a toxin called Cera I know a few people have been poisoned with it and honestly it sounds like torture we decided to go for a parrot fish honestly I felt a little bad at first as these fish are important for cleaning the corals they’re also just beautiful fish but we were told that here they are abundant and okay to eat as well as being one of the few fish that don’t have the risk of carrying Cera hey Max can you come get [Music] us so we’ve just filleted a fish and now we are uh teasing thear teasing the sharks with a bit of it oh they are hungry touch it back oh little I do love them they’re so sweet okay so I’m from the UK and I’m not used to constantly having sharks around but they were definitely starting to grow on me these black tip reef sharks are actually like cute sea puppies I wish we could have kept one as a pet and it was always fun to feed them the rest of the fish [Music] the next Hop was a 50 m sail to one of the more populated atol in the tuamotus the sail would take around 10 hours and we decided to leave in the middle of the night so we could be sure that we’d arrive during daylight so we’re just arriving into the South pass of fakarava in the Tes it’s 10 to 11: uh we’ve had a 50 m overnight sail we pulled up the anchor around half midnight last night it was a nice smooth sail mostly downwind and we had to time it really carefully because we had to get the right tide leaving tahana Taha sorry and coming the right tide coming into paba but it looks really cool there’s some waves right at the edge of the pass which look a little bit messy but kind of exciting cuz it’s been a while there’s this cool little town as well like village with some Huts that are coming out stilts in a very picturesque Manner and a good few other boats anchored at this South Anchorage as well really excited about what’s going to happen here shark time so we’ve just got to fakarava and we’re here at the Anchorage there’s a couple boat projects we have to do before we go have some fun one of them is to clean the connectors on the windless up button um it kind of intermittently works and it makes pulling the anchor up a pain in the ass so I’m going to clean that right now but if you look here you can see there’s a bit of corrosion on these contacts I’ve sanded them a little bit already before I grab the GoPro but I’m going to give them a nice cleaning and then hopefully it should work fine so all I’m doing is using sandpaper kind of scratch off the corrosion clean off these connections I know I’ve done a good job when it turns kind of a coppery color that’s just the substrate material underneath there we go bit windy out here today they say uh cruising is just doing boat work in beautiful places and they’re not wrong but once I finish this we can go snorkeling play with some sharks there we go so I’ve gotten um probably 99% of the corrosion off so I’m going to put it on here and we’ll give it a little test see if it works but yeah I’m just going to push the button we’ll see if the anchor comes up seems to be okay yep uh I don’t want to hold it for too long because our Anchor’s already set we don’t really need to pull it up right now um it’s tied off to this pleat um and we have our uh our snubber tied on so tested it twice it worked immediately both times so I think we’re good it’s been a while since we serviced the wines I’m just taking them off taking the covers off and giving them a bit of a clean cuz they’ve been getting stuck recently I’m regreasing them you can see that this one is pretty gross inside today we’re in the ATL of fakarava it’s a windy day and it’s a stormy day and we’re going to go and free dive at the wall of sharks it’s a dive spot with a wall and a lot of sharks that’s about all we know but we’re going to again have a little look and hopefully not get chomped the whole thing of like swimming around sharks is pretty new to all of us so it’s kind of a little bit scary especially when there’s more than one I think they’re like a little bit unpredictable but we’ve been told it’s safe to swim here so yeah we’re pretty excited to see some sharks I’m pretty excited yeah um a little bit intimidated cuz I think there’s tiger sharks there and they’re pretty big I think so yeah just hoping they kind of keep a safe distance and we’ll watch them from a a far but maybe we’ll get to ride one who knows are you going to ride a tiger shark yeah I’m going to tame one and call it tiger my friend the South pass of fakarava is a diving Mecca generally The Reef passes are a hot spot for marine life as the ocean’s nutrients are concentrated as water flows in and out of the atos Lagoon like everywhere else with dove in the tuamotus there were thousands of reef fish everywhere as well as a handful of these black tip reef sharks one of the main attractions of this pass is the wall of shark it’s about 50 m is deep which for us is a bit far for free diving but it’s pretty easy to see how it got its name as it’s literally just a wall of sharks there was also a load of these spotted groupers we were only a week away from the grouper spawning which is a huge annual event where all of the local groupers meet in the South pass of fuava under the full moon and make babies [Music] why are you soaking wet in inappropriate clothing you may ask Chloe because we’ve just lifted the anchor in this and me and Nick just got absolutely dunked under the under the surf Elixir bow is bouncing like up to like 6 ft 2 m if you use the metric system and we had to pull up the anchor and also take off all the fenders you can see the other boats here just like bouncing around it felt like we were sailing up wind on anchor and we heard the chain caught on some cor corals we really had to make a speedy exit as we were eating our porridge Mike is still in his PJs wet you’re always a little bit on edge when you’re anchored inside these atos although you are fully protected there is still 20 or 30 mil of fetch across the Lagoon which means that when the wind swings around you can get a nasty chop coming at you from the other side of the atle this is really uncomfortable there’s also a risk of dragging onto the beach and it makes it difficult to get the anchor up we now had to move Elixir all the way to the other side of the atle in order to find a sheltered Anchorage we’d definitely be back at the South pass again but for now the weather didn’t allow it and it was time to get out thanks again for watching another update from our Voyage around the world please subscribe to this channel if you haven’t already if you could just engage of this video like comment share send it to one of your mates I’d be very grateful if you’re enjoying the Elixir content and want to see more then sign up to the patreon that’s also the first place where I’m going to post any crewing opportunities on board Elixir we also have T-shirts and tote bags on our online store and yeah thanks again for watching another one of these videos I will see you next time

Welcome to another update from Elixir’s voyage around the world!

Days turned into weeks as we made our way through the uninhabited atolls of the Tuamotus. They were your typical desert island, with white sand and palm trees, and it felt very remote. And after sailing across the Pacific, it felt like we’d deserved it.

Our supplies were beginning to run low, and we made the most of the abundance of fish an coconuts.

I still can’t get over the incredible beauty of these islands.

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