Wednesday 3 March. We left Nargana mid morning sailing N. The plan was to sail by Ogopsibudup and if it was deserted, go there. If there were other boats there, we would keep going to the Eastern Coco Banderas which would certainly not be deserted, but might have better snorkeling if we have to be with other boats anyway. (The guide really says very little about Ogopsibudup.) Well, it was deserted, so we swung in carefully avoiding a shoal the rises from 90' to 2'. The water was so calm that it was NOT breaking, making it very hard to spot. Finally one wave did break, revealing its position just as we were approaching. It was a bit unnerving to see breaking waves on a reef less than 100 yds. from were we sailing in 90' of water. After passing that obsitcal, it was clear sailing right up to the island. In fact, it remained deep (60'-80') until quite close. I was beginning to wonder if we would be able to anchor, when the depth jumped to 20'. We crept forward until we were over sand (still holding 20') and dropped the hook. By the time we had 100' out, we were back in 30', so we set the hook and then returned to the sandy area and dropped the kellet and bridle. There is so little wind that we will probably remain “anchored” by just the kellet, but if it blows, we have plenty of scope and a well dug in anchor. It is a technique we have been using a bit down here where the depths change so quickly. After we were settled, I donned fins and mask to swim the anchor and kellet. I was amazed to find a wonderland of soft and hard coral 20' below our boat. The anchor was well dug in and the kellet was doing its job, holding us on the edge of the sand. I returned to the boat and told Deb to get ready for a fantastic hookah right off the boat. Our dive was a bit different than most. It turns out we were anchored on a ridge of coral running diagonally away from the island. On the island side it dropped 5-10' to a sandy bottom and on the outside, it dropped to 80' or so. Strangely, the outside wall was not all the interesting. But the ridge itself was fantastic. It was so densely packed with hard and (mostly) soft coral that it was more like we were snorkeling above it (at 30' depth) rather than swimming on the bottom around and through the coral as we usually do. We followed the inside edge out until it ended in and abrupt drop. There we saw a pair of barrel sponges, each bigger than Deb. I wanted a picture of them so badly, but we were at about 40' by then and the camera is only good to 30' (which is why I didn't have it with me, I knew we would be deep.) We then swam back to the boat along the outside edge of the ridge. Along the way we saw a spotted drum that was the biggest we have ever seen and at 10-12” as big as they ever get. We also saw another fish that I swore was a 14” Sargent Major, but they are not supposed to get over 10” so I'm not sure. We couldn't find anything else in the book that was similar. After we got back to the boat, Deb was still game for more, so we followed the ridge N toward the point of the island. It got progressively shallower and we lost a lot of the soft coral and had a much more typical scene with hard coral on a sandy bottom that we could swim in and about. Quite different in each direction, but equally great. After lunch, we went ashore to beach comb. Because of the short distance and the issues with the broken motor mount on dink, we took a kayak in. The beach was powder soft and beautiful. Deb found several shells and seed pods, but I made the find of the entire trip – a Kuna mortar. This piece was carved from a tree and stood about 4' tall and was nearly 2' across. It was shaped roughly like a wine glass with the top hollowed about to a depth of about a foot to make a recess for threshing the rice. (We had seen one in use on Tigre.) It was mostly buried in sand, but I dug it out just out of curiosity. Deb insisted we bring it home, but how? The monster weighed a ton! Well, fortunately, it did float, though just barely. I pushed, swam, dragged it around the island to where the kayak was. We tied it to the kayak and paddled out to Always, dragging it behind. There, I tied a line around the base and Deb used the winch to lift it as I guided it up and over each step. Once we had it on deck, I walked it over the the cockpit and lowered it in with Deb keeping tension on the line. It fits just nicely on its side under the cockpit table. How we will get it out of the boat and up to the house is for the Indian workers at home to figure out. We had no sooner stowed the mortar than an ulu approached with Venancio, the Master Mola Maker. He had more than 100 molas for sale from $15 to $100. The work was incredible. Better than any we had seen. Although we had already bought plenty of molas, we had to buy some of his. We ended up buying two of the more expensive ones and he gave us a third, smaller, one. Shortly after he left, another ulu approached offering lobster. I queried about the prohibition on lobstering and was assured that these were caught yesterday before the ban went into effect, but that the lobster plane won't take them now. They were the liveliest day old lobsters I have ever seen, but I bought 7 nice big ones for $15, so who am I to complain? In the evening all the stars were out and the wind came back just enough to cool things off and make it perfect.