N 01° 49.014
E 173° 00.896

Navigating into and across an atoll is always a challenge. Relying on the Navionics charts with their daily updates of useless, unedited pissmarks left by sailors, is playing Russian Roulette. One can’t simply rely on them.

Unfortunately, there is no Soggy Paws Compendium for the Kiribatis. However, they have a downloadable document from Mr. John about the Kiribati including Abaiang. He explains and gives WPTs of his own route and of a Kiribatis guide, which shows a pretty different route.

In the Navionics map there also recommended routes through the pass and across the atoll to the few villages scatter over the very narrow but long land surface.

Which route is the best?
What do satellite maps show?

First I plotted both routes and saw that both crossed areas, which are indicated by Navionics as too shallow.

Then I took screenshots with coordinates of satellite images and tried to correlate these with the Navionics maps at my chart plotter. Sometimes, I could see a shift of shallow areas in a certain direction but this shift was inconsistent.

This put another question mark behind the Navionics Charts.

Which route to take?

In the Mr. John document is a statement, that the reduction of depth in the Kiribati atoll is slowly and not as sudden as in the Tuamotus. This means, if navigate MaRe slowly, I should always be able to stop her.

I plotted a route following in the pass the one of Mr. John, then changed thereafter to the recommended route towards Tebero village because this could be the route taken by small ferries or small supply boats.

The most important thing I wanted to rely on is eye ball navigation. Tobi, using my polarizing sunglasses, stood at the bow and looked for shallow spots coming up in front of MaRe. For this we needed to arrive at the entrance of the pass about 1400 – 1500 to have the sunlight from behind.

For Friday, a pretty clear sky and winds in the range of about 10 KN from E were forecasted.

We lifted the hook around 0620 to have enough daylight to see unmarked mooring barrels for fishing boats floating on sea level. We left Tarawa Atoll along the track we made when we came in. Outside of the atoll, it first looked like we need to run the engines all the way to the Abaiang Atoll. However, then we got enough wind to sail almost all the way N and NE until the wind died and we had to use the engines again.

We were well prepared for going inside and across the atoll. Already in the pass I recognized that the depth indicated in the Navionics maps are completely off. This continued until we dropped the anchor at the other inner side of the atoll.

From the outer entrance of the pass until we dropped the hook, it took us 0110 h. This was more tiering than sailing a full day outside somewhere with night watch duties. Tobi needed to look into the water to see if there is an obstacle or to shallow area, and I had to watch our position, direction the depth meter, Tobi, and the water in front of MaRe.

We made it safely, dropped the hook, cleared up the boat and were exhausted.

We both fell asleep outside. When I woke up again, it was dark already. Tobi slept deeply on the outer cushion on PRT. I took my 1 l shower and went to bed. Tobi did the same but somewhat after midnight.

The safe end of a difficult passage.