Fakarava Yacht Charter

Fakarava is the atoll divers cross the world for. A rectangle of coral some sixty kilometres long, it encloses a lagoon with two great passes, and it is what happens inside those passes that has made its reputation.

Tumakohua, in the south, is the site of the wall of sharks. Several hundred grey reef sharks hold station in the current at the mouth of the pass, ranked in the blue in numbers no photograph adequately conveys, and divers drift through and past them on the incoming tide. In June and July the phenomenon intensifies as thousands of camouflage grouper mass to spawn, drawing the sharks into a feeding aggregation filmed by every serious underwater documentary team of the past decade.

Garuae, in the north, is the widest pass in French Polynesia, and drifting it is a faster, more open experience: manta rays, eagle rays, napoleon wrasse and dolphins, with the reef falling away on either side.

The atoll and its neighbours form a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, which has kept the coral in good condition and development to almost nothing. Rotoava, the main village, has a handful of pensions, a church built of coral blocks and a road that runs out into the palms. The southern end, at Tetamanu, is a former capital reduced to a few buildings, a nineteenth-century coral church and a dive station on stilts above the water.

For a yacht, Fakarava offers sheltered anchorages inside the lagoon and the ability to dive both passes without ever leaving the reef. It is the finest single destination in the Tuamotu, and for many guests the highlight of the entire voyage.