Rangiroa

It was a quick and easy sail, less than 24 hours, to Rangiroa. My book says 'second largest attol in the world' and we all immediately want to know, but are not told. You lucky people with google at your fingertips will know already but I must wait to learn where the biggest is! Attols are formed as a mountain sinks under it's own weight and the fringing coral reef grows apace. Coral can't grow as quickly in the calmer water of the lagoon, so you have a fringing reef and a quick drop to a few thousand metres, a string of 'motus', coral and sand islands surrounding a lagoon which might be twenty metres deep but studded with big coral heads making navigation difficult. You must move about with the sun behind you. There are many shallow breaks between motus and in this case, two deep passes. Tides bring the lagoon water rushing in and out of the passes, currents up to 7 kn. The passes here are on the weather side, so with wind and swell coming in against the outgoing tide you can get very nasty conditions at the entrance. Now, I've given up trying to understand this, but my tide program lists two Rangiroas, one in Samoa, one in Tuamotus, with the same map reference so they are in fact the same place, but.... they have tide times two hours apart. I know this now. As we approached the pass I thought we were half way into the incoming tide, not the best time but far from the worst, but in fact we were in the last half hour of outgoing tide! It wasn't too bad, just 2 or 3 knots against us, but there were some interesting wave effects and sitting high and dry above the waves pounding onto the reef on the lee side was the hull of a yacht that got it wrong!

We dropped the anchor where the chart had a little anchor symbol, a truly terrible spot but I wanted to find the Gendarmery. I've been breaking rules again and had chosen this island as a likely place to get away with it all.
There was a moment in Fatu Hiva heading back out to Ellida past a newly moored vessel. I wondered if this might be the fabled police boat that would fine us, it did have a 'P' in it's registration number.. A warrior like Polynesian climbed up onto the bow and I started to feel sure this was not a police boat. He held both hands with fingers together but split in the middle, a solid 'V', saluted us with one, then roared and saluted the setting sun out to sea with both hands high in the air, then dangled himself from the railing and went to the toilet!
Meanwhile... I'd checked in with the policewoman at Manihi, she was extremely nice, but obviously didn't care too much about the official protocols. She almost forgot to write our names down to phone through to the Gendarme in Rangiroa. (Police are Polynesian, Gendarme are French military, paid triple French wages to suffer in the tropics.)
Mr Rangiroa Gendarme had quite an odd manner and I wasn't at all confident... he said that actually we would have to go to Papaete to check in, we said, actually, we don't want to go to Papaete, just to Tahaa (I must mention here, that i also want to go to the village of Faaaha on Tahaa) to buy fruit and vegetables, we are going to Fiji. He said, the problem is the bank. Rangiroa is an official port of entry, so we should be able to check in, but the bank is refusing to handle the 'bond'.
This bond is the equivalent of an airfare home that I, as a non-european, must pay. I get most of it back when I check out, so we were asking to check in and out on the same day....that is why we avoided checking in at Marquesas.
So in the end he simply looked at our documents, apologised for not being able to stamp our passports and wished us a good journey!
I'd love to know why the bank is behaving so badly!