What an amazing day. We did our first pass dive of the Tuamotus. We stopped by the local dive shop in the dinghy and chatted with Thomas who was very helpful about the local tide times and pass dive. We then dropped off the dinghy at the mouth of the pass in about 100 feet of water, right as the tide started to come in. Immediately, we saw dozens of sharks. In the beginning, mostly 5-6 foot white tips, black tips and gray reef sharks. Also, many nurse sharks laying on the bottom. This was Kim's first shark dive and her first drift dive and her first scuba dive in several years. So, she was amped up before the dive even began. In the beginning of the dive her dive computer went out. She got a little nervous and spent the next 30 minutes hanging on to the back of my BC. But, we had one of the most unbelievable dives I've ever had and I've had a few. We probably had in excess of 200 sharks swimming with us during the dive, one wave would pass then another, then another. When we started, we were barely moving as the tide was just starting to come in. As the dive progressed we accelerated faster and faster until at the end we were probably flying over the bottom at 3+ knots. We tied a 100 foot line from me to the dinghy and just towed it along with us as we went through. At the end of the dive, the depths are up to around 15 feet and the coral and all the tropical fish are just amazing. The reef here is very healthy and the fish population is thriving. That is a good thing to see and seems to be disappearing from a lot of the Caribbean. We saw some Napoleon wrasses, with the huge hump on their head. Moorish idols, triggerfish, filefish and on and on.... Millions of tropicals, many of which still look foreign to us coming from the Caribbean.

Tomorrow, hope for a repeat dive only without equipment issues. The one thing that many people don't understand about cruising is that you have to be totally self reliant. No store to run to for a part. Spares for everything that is important is essential. We have a couple of spare diving setups that we can rob pieces from to keep things going. Then you always have to remember to replenish when you have the opportunity. We haven't been able to find eggs for a couple weeks now, much less a part for a dive computer.

Finally, remember that these posts are from our SSB Radio email account. We send these posts to our blog at about the speed I can type and then our blog posts it to Facebook. So, we can't see them till we are back around real internet again. I say this to remind you that we do really look forward to your comments and emails, but sometimes it may be a week or so before we actually see them. Internet here in FP is very sparse, even by Caribbean standards. These emails are actually sent by SSB radio through our winlink account which right now is using a radio station in Hawaii to relay them to the real internet for posting. We will get back to you when we can, but sometimes it just takes a little while.

Love to all