I like my fish shy please

My heart beat is high up, I'm swimming for life, kicking with my fins like crazy. I'm calling for Tod, who's inside the boat to come out. He thinks I'm being attacked by a shark. So what's all the commotion about? A 6 inch remora, also known as pilot fish, or love bugs by other sailors here, has decided he/she likes me, and has almost attached herself to me, and I don't like it a bit. No matter how hard I swim, it seems stationary between my legs. I really like my fish companions to be shy, not like puppy dogs.

All three of us did this amazing snorkel drift dive on the South pass of Fakarava atoll. You bring the dinghy as close to the ocean entrance pass as possible, tie it to yourself, jump in, and you just slowly drift with incoming current past colorful schools of fish, large and small. Reef sharks are common there too, and they are really shy. At one point Tessa and I had about 10 of them swimming closeby, and it was really an amazing experience. The incoming current started to pick up, and then we all floated fast inside the lagoon, just like the lazy river experience at the pool in Shaker Heights. Great fun! We had such a great time, that we repeated the whole thing the next day. This time I jumped off in the deeper part of the entrance pass, about 60 ft, and saw a school of reef sharks below me, my guess between 40 and 50. A little much for my comfort level, even though they are shy, so I snorkeled quickly to shallow waters.

The next day our anchor decided to give us a hard time. It got stuck, wedged, near a rock, and didn't want to come up. This anchorage was 55 ft deep, too deep to do some free diving and get a good look. We were about to call our back up option, divers on a neighboring boat, but after 30 minutes of trying several ways to get it up, we were finally free. Glad it worked out, as we got to see our friends aboard Big Finn one more time, and the girls got to do their highly anticipated sleep over on their boat. Tod had a blast that day taking a kite surfing lesson, and will do another one this week.

So are all our days just like one big party? Oh no, the saying "cruising is fixing boats in exotic locations" is still true. Right now, Tod is doing a boat project, trying to see if he can fix our flaky radar connections. Tessa did school (it's sunday!), and then got picked up by her new 8 year old friend from Norway (he drives the dinghy himself), to go play in the water with our paddle board. We will go back to the South pass to do the snorkel drift again when the wind dies down mid week, after that it's time to find a store again to get some fresh stuff to eat. For that, we need to sail north for 5 hrs, and this is fun sailing inside the huge lagoon without any ocean chop!
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At 2019-May-20 06:08 UTC the position of Bliss was 16°27.108'S 145°22.196'W, at the Harifa anchorage in southeast corner of Fakarava atoll.