After leaving Tahanea, we headed to the atoll of Fakarava. Fakarava was one of my favorite places that we visited last year. The southern pass is known as one of the best dive spots in French Polynesia, if not the world. The fascinating thing about diving the pass is the wall of sharks. I posted a video last year of diving in the pass. If you haven’t seen it, click on the videos link on the front page of the blog and check it out. Hopefully, I’ll eventually get up another video from this year’s dives.
We arrived early in the morning and found an open mooring to pick up. And, as we came in we recognized another boat in the anchorage, Alondra. We got to know Ken, Edith and their two daughters last year and were excited to see them again. Ken and Edith are marine biologists and avid divers, so we knew we were in for a treat to dive with them again. The minute we said hello, we were already planning a dive with them.
There was a lot of incoming current in the pass, so in order to dive we tied up one dinghy to a buoy outside the pass and left another dinghy inside the pass. The plan was to surface in the shallow water near the second dinghy where someone could then head back and retrieve the first dinghy. It’s been fun learning how other people dive on their own without paying to go with a dive operation. It’s a little more work, but it is rewarding to plan and organize your own dives and then successfully fulfill them.
We descended down to the ocean floor full of coral and beautiful reef fish about 60 feet down and then headed to the middle of the pass where there is a deep canyon. The canyon is where all of the sharks hang out. Ken and Edith showed us where there was a cave located at 90 feet down. The cave didn’t extend far inside, but it provided a fun sandy spot to hang out and watch all of the sharks drift by. The sharks really do seem like they are floating in air as they calmly swim against the current. It is a lot of fun to watch.
We didn’t stay that deep for long, especially because once we were out of the cave the current pushed us further in where we could just relax and float by all the fish. As we got even shallower, there was an area Ken referred to as “Superman Alley.” That’s because the current really has you flying over the coral at that point. If you want to stop, you’ve got to grab onto something and hold on tight! It was all super fun, and in all we got about five more dives in there.
Another boat had invited us and our friends Marcus and Diana aboard for cocktails at sunset. We had fun with friends new and old telling lots of sailing yarns, but we got a real shock when we went to leave. It was about 9:00 pm and pitch black out. So, when we discovered our dinghy was no longer tied to the back of their boat, we both had a bit of a freak out.
When you live on a boat, your dinghy is your lifeline to shore. It is a bit like your car to get you from A to B, but also lets us do fun things like dive and snorkel and fish. And, when you are in a remote spot like Fakarava, you can’t just go out to the store and get another one. So, if we couldn’t find the dinghy, it was going to seriously put a crimp in our future plans.
I got dropped off at our boat while Mike in our new friends’ dinghy and Marcus and Diana in their dinghy went out looking with spot lights. It seemed hopeless, especially when Mike got back about an hour later with no sign of the dinghy. Neither of us slept well that night.
The next morning we were up early trying to come up with a plan. Fakarava is an atoll, which means that other than the two passes, it is a lagoon with a fringing reef and lots of motus (islands). We thought about the winds and tides and all came to the conclusion that it would be unlikely, if not impossible, for the dinghy to have gotten out of the lagoon. But, to search the lagoon seemed like an insurmountable task. It is huge!
As soon as it was a decent hour to bug people, I started getting on the phone and email to contact anyone and everyone we knew in Fakarava to get the word out. We figured if the dinghy was found, it would likely be brought to the main town of Rotoava about 25 miles away. In the meantime, Mike and Diana went to shore to see if they could hire a local boat, that would be much bigger and faster, to go searching.
Just as I had about exhausted everyone I could think to contact (boats in Rotoava, yacht services, gendarme, etc.), Diana excitedly came over the VHF to say that they had found the dinghy!
We don’t know how the dinghy came loose. Mike tied the line around the rail the way he always has done, but somehow it came undone. So, the line was dragging in the water as the dinghy blew away. That ultimately was a blessing, because that line just barely snagged on some coral as the dinghy drifted over a shallow reef. And so, the dinghy was just sitting there waiting for us only a couple of miles away. There were all smiles aboard both the boat that took Mike and Diana out searching and aboard Adagio where I was waiting. Whew!
~katie