2025  Angetau

     Home           Sailing home page                     This page updated 18 December 2025

Track Milvina from while we are sailing at https://share.garmin.com/NeilMcCubbin  Password is Neil

               (Double click any photo to see full size, then use back button to return)

This sheltered side of the island was quite delightful, with virtually calm water. Unfortunately the only possible entry point is on the far side	We left the mountainous Marquesan Islands from Ua Po, heading for the low lying Tuamotu Archipelago.  Our first objective was the atoll of Angetau, partly because it was the second closest after Puka Puka, but mostly because ot Thor Heyerdahl's account of trying to land on it with his Kon-tiki expedition of 1947. This involved a 101 day voyage of about 4,000 miles on a raft built to the pre-European designs of the Peruvian natives. His book is widely available, including on Kindle and is a great read for those who prefer real adventure to "reality" TV.
	Our modern chart, shown here, is of little use, with no indication of the condition of the shore,  which is actually a very steep and dangerous reef rising up from a hundred metres or more depth.
The island is variously called Angetay, Angatau and Fangatau, depending on which chart you choose	This Google Earth picture shows the fringing reef, and a small cut through it (red arrow).  We hoped to stand off in Milvina and go in by dinghy, but when we were there the SE Tradewind was creating breakers across the entrance, so we had to sail on. It would have been interesting to hear what the locals had to say about their grandparents stories of the unheralded arrival of Kon-Tiki 80 years ago. At the time a dozen natives paddled out to the Kon-Tiki raft, and took one crewman ashore, only returning him well after dark when everyone realized that the raft could not navigate to the island and was headed irrevocably downwind.
Home    Sailing home page      2025 home page  On to Amanu