This morning we began the day with another dive, this time on the ocean side of the north pass. This was definitely our best dive yet. The coral here was extremely colorful — light blue, lavender, bright yellow, dark yellow, black, white, various shades of beige. No single color was dominant. The coral also had a lot of variety in shapes, including some formations that looked almost flower-like in addition to all the shapes we had seen before.
S 16-03.4 by W 145-37.6 – This morning we went scuba diving. Special Blend had highly recommended the Fakarava Dive Center and we had booked an appointment the day before while in town. The dive master and his wife picked us up from Kosmos and took us out to a reef inside the lagoon near the north pass. It was just the two of us. The dive master adjusted Christi’s weights, saying she had too much. We loaded into our gear and jumped in.
We made it to a place with semi-decent wireless Internet! Before we continue on with the daily updates, we need to get you caught up on pictures from blogs past. The last photos were leaving Taiohae, Nuka Hiva on our way to the remote Anaho Bay. Here is a view of Anaho from where we are anchored in the bay. If you look carefully, you can see the buildings that make up the village (click on images for larger versions):
View of the bay from the shore of Continue reading
Today we went snorkeling in the reef near the boat. There are a lot of areas with coral around here, and yesterday on our dinghy ride yesterday we staked out the spot that we thought looked best. It is huge, has lots of coral, and is shallow so you can see everything snorkeling and don’t need to actually dive. We agree the reef here is better than both the ocean and the lagoon in Manihi.
The coral wasn’t quite as good. It was mostly shades of beige, with some dark yellows and purples here and there. There were a lot of cauliflower looking coral and a lot of long, skinny ones that look like a thorny plant. In the ocean at Manihi there was more color and more shapes of coral, like brain shapes. We also forgot to mention that there was a little bit of black coral in the ocean in Manihi. Continue reading
We awoke at 0600 after a restless night. The closely set anchor alarm had gone off a few times in the night due to movement around the anchor. We were quite securely anchored! With wind and movement of the chain we did get closer to the 7 foot deep coral, but never got right over it.
We had decided to go SCUBA diving down together to check out the anchor and see if we could free it from the wreckage. Eric wanted to wait until the sun was higher in the sky and the visibility was good, so we nervously sat for three hours, too on edge to do anything else. At 0900, put on our SCUBA gear and jumped in. Christi was having a hard time on two fronts. One, she was sinking too fast, and then would float back up to the top without inflating the buoyancy compensator (inflatable vest). We couldn’t get the amount of weight set properly to get her down normally and keep her down. The up and down was wreaking havoc with her ears. So, Eric wound up going down alone, with Christi monitoring him from the surface. Continue reading