What a wonderful day. The sky was blue, the sea was flat and there was a gentle breeze. We had a nice morning getting the dive gear setup and filling tanks.

We sent Sam's Tours a text message a few days back and they had a dive boat bring us out a bunch of eggs and new park passes. What great service. It also enabled us to invite Whistler over for Eggs Benedict this morning.

After brunch we headed out around the reef to German Channel. German Channel is a channel made by the Germans about a hundred years ago. It connects a bay that reaches to the sea with the lagoon. Just inside German Channel is a lovely 10-20 foot sandy area where we anchored. Once secure we dove in threes from the dinghy.

Both groups had great dives with sightings of Cuttlefish, Leopard Sharks (along with the more mundane Grays and Whit Tips), Sea Turtles, big schools of Bat Fish, and many others. We dove on an inflow which gave us pretty good visibility and a nice drift back toward the big boat. There's a lot of dive boat traffic in the German Channel so you have to be careful in this area. Both groups ran into Manta Rays in the German Channel and got a chance to jump in and snorkel with them. It was a wonderful day.

We left the channel with the big boat around high tide, an hour before sunset. For fun we took a B line straight back to the anchorage by Bablomekong. Nothing in the area dried at low tide and we had 5 feet of additional water so I was pretty sure we would have no problem in the flat conditions. The shallowest we saw was 7 feet and we had a fast trip home, I would only take that route at high tide and calm seas though.

The weather is looking crumby in the days ahead so we may head back to Sam's to reprovision before long.