We had a day out on the water today. Everyone came over to Swingin' on a Star and we loaded up our dinghy and Angelique's with scuba and snorkel stuff.

Our first stop was the position of the Japanese ship wreck from WWII. We pulled up on a lovely beach and hit the water. It was nice snorkeling but we never found the wreck. Eric finished his Navigation dive and only has one more to go for his Advanced Open Water cert. We went out on local advise targeting low tide, but the visibility in the lagoon wasn't fantastic at this time.

After an hour at the beach we packed up and headed out to the anchor site outside the pass. When it comes to local knowledge, I feel like I am really getting there as far as this pass goes. We anchored the dinghies at the waypoint for the spot where the anchor was cut loose. We did another snorkel recon but turned up nothing. Our next step was to scuba across the wall with one diver at 100 feet, one at 85, and one at 70. Nothing.

After a fair amount of effort in the area of the waypoint we can only suppose that the anchor and some 10 meters or more of chain are in deeper water. At is telling us to give it up. I know he would really like to get that anchor back though. The problem is that at about 100 feet the wall goes sheer and just drops away into blackness. If you were a scuba diver and only knew this place you would think it was a pinnacle rising from the void and that no other place in the world was above water.

As sad as we were that the anchor didn't make itself known it was an amazing dive. We saw a turtle, an eagle ray, various sharks, lots of really big parrot fish, just to name a few. The coral growth is very impressive, rich with life and diversity.

We may get one more shot at recon but I'm beginning to think that the anchor is the price for getting Angelique off the reef. Back at the big boat we started to unload and rinse the gear down when we noticed At and Dia weren't at hand. Then we heard them hail us on the radio. They had run out of gas but were getting a tow from Solomon. You have to watch your gas out here because you can't refill and the distances are large and gas goes faster than you'd like.

Solomon came by after our dive to say hello. He brought us three different kinds of bananas, bread fruit, bread, coconuts, and some other stuff. It was an amazing amount of food. We thanked him heartily and told him that we would catch up with him tomorrow before we left. I think he wishes the officials in Pohnpei were a little more reasonable. That said he is doing his best to do right by them and us. It has been a little odd but we have still had a great time in Kapingamarangi.

We are likely to head for Chuuk in the next couple of days.