An excellent sleep last night.  Because I went to bed first my French roommate assumed (correctly) that I wanted the A/C on and so I slumbered blissfully while she froze all night.  I told her this morning I thought she’d adjust it when she went to bed (the control is under her bed) so I’m sure tonight we’ll be back to sleeping in a sauna again.

The engines started up at 6am to head towards our morning dive site so our dream of sleeping in to 6:30a was never realized.  A cup of coffee and our morning dive briefing and we were ready to dive by 7am.

This first dive was at “Moofushi”, or the Manta Cleaning Station.  We’ve moved over to the western side of Ari Atoll and are diving inside the lagoon.  We descended to about 80’ and let the light current guide us to the edge of the coral reef so we could drop to the bottom, kneel in place, and look up to the reef where the mantas will slowly swim over, having little fish come up to nibble away at any algae clinging to them.  We saw several mantas, or at least 2 many times over, who can tell?  They swam right over us, at first seemingly curious if our oxygen bubbles weren’t some new kind of yummy plankton, swooping past if we were just more clumps of coral.  Then afterwards back to the business of being cleaned.  Behind us several black tip sharks lazily swam back and forth, checking us out; and in front of us, on the reef, masses of different fish gathered in clouds, as if protecting their patch of coral.

When our time getting short at depth we slowly ascended diagonally to the coral station, over the outer edges of the reef, checking out some pretty nice corals, reef fish, and a very curious turtle to use up our allotted dive time of 60 minutes.  That’s something curious I’ve noted on the few dive trips I’ve been on: divers want their monies worth.  They want their one hour per dive.  I’d been fine coming up after 45 minutes but most want to maximize their bottom time.

Once back on board we relished our own feeding station, almost a frenzy in fact.  Although paddling around underwater doesn’t seem to expend much energy, it definitely makes one hungry and you don’t want to be the last one to the table, as I found out.  I had to stick my head in the kitchen door to ask for more eggs!

Next dive briefing was at 11am, “Panettone”.  Why it was named after an Italian dessert, I never found out. We dropped in to a killer current, fastest I’ve ever experienced.  It was a shame as were pushed along a spectacular wall of soft corals, anemones, sea fans but I couldn’t get a good look as we sped by.  A couple of times we used our reef hooks (metal hooks with a thin line of about 4-6’ of line, the latter attached to your BCD) and we were yanked to a sudden stop.  Swung around to face into the current I felt like I was standing on an airplane wing, with all my limbs flung out behind me.  When turning my head to check out the others in my group I had to hold on to my mask for fear it would be whisked off.  Given the OK to continue, we unhooked and let fly. It was quite fun really, like riding an express train through an aquarium.

Gradually the current abated and the reef petered out, as our briefing had foretold.  This was our chance to stop and stare a bit at the macro side of marine life, checking out the little guys who stay close to home to protect their little patches.  It was also another Manta Cleaning Station and sure enough, 2 huge mantas eventually swooped by out of the plankton-rich water.  Another great hour spent underwater.

Lunch was ready as we returned on board Theia.  Only time for a quick rinse before eating, then to be told our next briefing will be at 2:30p, in just an hour’s time!  “If your hair is dry, it must be time to go diving!”  

Francesca, the dive master, has lent me some stiffer fins which help me more in the strong currents but my ankle muscles are tired so I’ll skip the third dive again today.  No sense pushing things when there’s still several days to go.

It turned out the 3rd dive was on the same reef, Panettone, in the same area where we finished the 2nd – the patchy reef.  And it had clouded over with a high grey ceiling blocking the sun so the reef wouldn’t have been as colorful as usual.  Double reasons for not regretting my decision not to dive.

We motored to a new anchorage a further hour south, and everyone just chilled until dinnertime.  A few people tried their hand at line fishing off the stern, with more laughs than luck.

The Corsican divers bought everyone a rum & lime drink before dinner so we had an impromptu Happy Hour about 7pm.  Dinner wasn’t served until 8p so I’m afraid my tummy was very unhappy, LOL.  I’m going to have to dig into my emergency stash of granola bars if these late dinners continue!  Straight to bed after for me.