Category Archives: Daily Lime

Sunken Treasures

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I am ashamed to admit this but I have never snorkeled the sunken treasures site located less than 5 minutes from our Tahiti anchorage.  You are probably thinking, WTF?  Yes, we have anchored in the same spot in Tahiti for 3 years at least 2 dozen times!  Yet, I have never been to this super cool spot!

We gather our friends Thomas and Marika (from “Scooter”) and we make the short trek to the snorkel spot.  Directly under the dinghy is the first of two sunken ships.   I jump in to see the shell of a rather large ship.  The smaller of the two ships is located 30 meters away near the airplane.

Strategically placed together are the Cessna 172 airplane and the smaller ship.  The two ships did not prove to be very interesting as they had no coral growth or wildlife on or around them.

Matt decides he wants to fly the plane so he snorkels down 10m (30’+) while Thomas goes down with my GoPro. 

Matt has to wiggle into the cockpit, but manages to give us a thumbs up.

The plane proves to be far more interesting to shoot from all different angles.  If you look closely, you will see that the tires are still on the plane!

Rumor has it that on April 16, 1995, following an emergency landing, this plane sank near the runway of the Tahiti airport.  Now it remains at the site of the Aquarium with two other boats and a work station in 10 meters of water.

Working Remote?

Next to the plane is the strangest thing….a small desk with a lamp, adding machine, pencil cup and an apple computer (complete with keyboard).  We’ve been saying that internet is hard to find in French Polynesia – but this shows we exhausted all possibilities!

Just because it is such a cool shot, here is a single photo of Matt at the desk after he pounded it when he realized he had no connectivity.

We also had lots of super curious fish coming to check us out.

And we found a beautiful heart made of coral because we love Tahiti.

We say farewell to Fakarava after some fabulous shark dives.  Events from this blog post occurred toward the end of March 2022.  Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind actual events.

Farewell Fakarava

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O’ Fakarava!  We return to the South Pass anchorage for internet and sharks!  I know, I know, you are probably thinking I’ve lost my mind.  Probably true, but not in this instance.  The Fakarava South Pass is known all over the world for its amazing Shark Wall and its incredibly diving.

The Fakarava South Pass dive is considered a drift dive which means you drop in at one point and slowly drift to another point.  So, we partnered with a few other cruisers who dropped us off at the outer edge of the pass and picked us up on the inside edge of the pass. 

We dropped down to 70’ and meandered to the famous Fakarava shark wall!  It did not disappoint!

These black tip, white tip, gray, and nurse sharks just swim back and forth and back and forth.  The little fish seem to not care one bit that man-eating sharks are in their way!

Sometimes the sharks are curious and come close….

And sometimes they just don’t give you the time of day.

A small octopus was playing hide and seek…

Snorkel Adventures

Matt and I snorkel the pass several times.  Each time is a new episode in a fascinating series of the underwater world. We still see lots of sharks, but now we focus on all the beautiful fish.

A few sharks who came close enough to check us out.  We gave each other the “eye.”

We came across a lot of napoleon fish.  They have a large bump feature on their head.  These guys are the beasts of the sea.  In the top photo you can see how large they are compared to a normal fish.  I’d say the largest one we saw was at least 1.5meters long!  We also came across a large grouper and trigger (center left), another large trigger (right) and a smaller napoleon (bottom)

I liked to swim close to and under the docks.  Matt captured this above and below water photo while I was near one dock.

A school of rays swam by.  We were not sure if they were spotted or eagle, but they were gorgeous. 

And it appeared to be school day as all the other fish were in schools.

South Pass Beauty

We enjoyed many happy hours at the local dive shop which offered lunch and dinner buffets.  We did not eat with them as they were pricey at $30/$35 respectively for buffet of pizza and raw fish.  But their happy hours were amazing with a beautiful view of the sunset and sharks. 

For the most part, we had absolutely calm conditions to enjoy paddle boarding, swimming, and snorkeling the south pass.

We had many beautiful sunsets and sunrises

We had absolutely lovely weather at the South Pass in Fakarava.  No wind, literally no wind, flat seas and sunny skies.  We just hung out as there was not enough wind to go anywhere else.  Not a hard ship at all.

North Pass – Rotoava (the main village)

Our friends on Agape (Josh and Rachel) were arriving to Rotoava (the main village) soon so we decided to make the downwind sail to town.  It was a lovely 35nm sail with our parasail.  It surprised us by how fast we made it to the new anchorage.  Averaged 7-7.5kts and made the passage in 4 hours.

It had been awhile since we hung out and enjoyed Josh and Rachel!  We had a lovely lunch at a pension (hotel) on the water.

The many happy faces of my husband…

Josh and Rachel had a friend visiting, Kelsey.  We walked the beaches combing for sea shells and picking up trash.  Top photo: Kelsey, Matt, me, Rachel, Josh.

Dinner on Agape with their cat, Gilly.

Rachel and Gilly

Rachel and Gilly

A local “takes care” of a few nurse sharks.  They come around to his house around sunset for some lovin.

We had an opportunity to pet some beautiful nurse sharks.  They felt like sand paper and just enjoyed the soft caress.

It was a lovely visit to Fakarava.  But it is time to move on to Tahiti.

Ta Ta to Tahanea was our last blog post (see passage post).   Events from this blog occurred in March 2022.  Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind our adventures.

Fiji Bound Day #11 – Squally Tuesday / Spinny goes for a dip.

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After a beautiful night time run with the spinnaker running all night. Day broke and there were some dark spots appearing on our sunny days. A really dark spot off our port side where the wind was coming from. Looked like rain was already falling.

Christine is the net controller this morning. The net is time and frequency on the SSB radio where all sailors from around French Polynesia can checkin for safety and local advice and basic jib jab chatting. This Tuesday is her last day as a controller and there are lots of boats checking in, so just before the net we took the spinnaker down so _IF_ the squall got closer I wouldn’t have to interrupt the net. All good squall came and went with some wind and rain and Christine received a bunch of accolades for running the Tuesday slot for the last couple of years.

The day wasn’t the best on the passage, patches of blue sky. Wind was a bit strong for the spinnaker and the waves were building. But the boat was doing fine, every hour or so we’d take a hard look at the skies to see if would hoist the spinnaker again, but ended up just going slow and I was napping quiet effectively.

One hour just rolled into the next, until the sky looked inviting and the wind has stayed down for the past hour. Time to hoist the small spinnaker again. All was going to plan till the spinnaker decided it had had enough of me and decided to jump ship and go for a swim. What a fickle little guy. Yes, I know Sugar Shack is heavy with all our live aboard gear, but its his job to just pull the boat along. I guess he had had enough and needed to cool off! Grrrr..

So now that means we have to coax him back on board with uplifting banter and jovial promises of going on a diet, and when that didn’t work brute force ensued. Some profound language I’m sure was used as well. The connection inside the sock that the spinnaker lives had failed but luckily everything was attached to the boat. With the boat cruising along at 5 knots its impossible to pull a wet bed sheet for Shreck out of the water.. The jib was still pulling the boat forward so we had to roll that up and that was enough slowing the boat down that we were able to pull it all out of the water. Now waiting on daylight to see the state of the spinnaker.

So we were going to knock out some more miles with the spinnaker between dark clouds to give us a little wiggle room on the Thursday arrival (Friday in Fiji) so that we can avoid overtime charges for the government officials to come out to the boat to check us in. We will have to see what our options are for speeding up in they day time. Probably not going to take the short-cut through the islands and reefs as we will be hitting them at dark, opting instead to go for the Nanuku Passage as its the widest on the charts and doesn’t add too much to the distance to go.

180 miles to go to our waypoint, then another 5 or so to get to the town to check in.

[tag Live,Passage,underway]