We planned a sail from Saipan to Tinian the next good weather window. It just happened the San Jose Festival was scheduled to take place that weekend as well. So a few of us boarded UNA early on Saturday morning and made the sail down. The winds were fairly light so the trip took longer than usual, but was very relaxing.
Even crossing the Tinian Channel was almost completely flat, which doesn't happen very often. We used the whisker pole for the sail almost all the way to the north side of Tinian until the winds picked up.
We did some freediving/spearfishing after we anchored off Taga Beach, swimming out to the reef from the anchorage. I saw some large fish but they always kept their distance.
Crystal clear waters of where we anchored for the night. We swam to shore to attend the San Jose Festival so I didn't get any photos or videos of that. It was a mellow, family-oriented event with at least 200 people in attendance. Not bad considering it there was not much advertising for the festival.
Taga Beach is directly ahead, so was just a short swim to land. We were not sure if there would be any slips available at the small boat harbor on Tinian and we arrived right around low tide. The 5 foot draft of the boat had us thinking that anchoring was the best bet, especially since we were planning an early morning sail back to Saipan.
The sail back to Saipan had great conditions, so it actually took less time to sail back upwind than down to Tinian! We were greeted by around 50 dolphins when entering Saipan harbor. You can view the video footage here or by clicking the video at the top of this article. Was a great experience that hopefully will happen again soon.
You can see more sailing and travel videos at our youtube page @illusionadaslides.
You can see more sailing and travel videos at our youtube page @illusionadaslides.
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