7 
In Papeete v/e had the good fortune of meeting up with Jack 
Randall, here with his wife and small daughter aboard his 36-foot 
ketch^the '’Nani'h He and Charles Cutress had been classmates at 
the Uniyersity of Hawaii; no’w he was engaged in studying the fishes 
of French Polynesia and collecting specimens for the Vanderbilt 
Foundation at i^tanford University, -^earning of our venture he aad 
bi-H - fr-RLlly Ytfere on hand -- at tho dook to grrrst up on our an i^al ' " klid 
^encouraged us to visit the great atoll of Tikahau in the %amotus 
With Jack aboard we hopefully set sail on April 8, four days 
after our landing in Papeete. With a favorable wind to begin with, 
and a purring diesel engine, the ’’Mareva” was making good time when 
the engine unexpectedly went "hot”; the flexible line between oil 
pump and clutch had burst. The Captain and Tautu tried mending it 
with tape, but to no avail, ‘‘‘here v/as nothing left but to turn back 
for repairs. With sails alone progress vms so slow that when we 
were about four miles off Papeete, the Captain sent Hr. Rehder and 
Tautu ahead in the outboard-motor— «powered dinghy to arrange with 
the Captain of the Port for a tow to our mooring place. The necessary 
repairs having been accomplished during the follo’wing day, we got Uac/evZ. 
IkstiB-Y again by the mid-afternoon of the tenth of Apri ’ gad oovoro d- 
^ /k/er€ ooverecl. 
che approximately 140 miles to Tikahatuin a little over 24 hours. 
This is the stretch of sea, in part at least, through which 
(S^ 
Darwin sailed on the ^’Beagle "/November 13, 1835. In his diary notes 
for that day he called the Tuamotus the "Lagoon Islands", which 
as characteristic atolls they truly are. 
Atolls lie loviT in the ’water and are not much higher than the 
wave-sv>rept reef enclosing their central lagoon. At irregular intervals 
