Minerva North, Haven in the Pacific

©s/v Taurus

Of all the places Allora has taken us, North Minerva Reef, is a stand out. The reef literally emerges only 90cm at low tide, and when walking on what feels like the Pacific’s very precipice, we had the surreal sensation that we’d been transported to another world. I urge you to read this article from New Zealand Geographic, which lays out the inherent hazards and contentious history of this fascinating ‘land:’

empire-of-the-sea

We, like many others, made a stop at Minerva North, to break up the often difficult  passage between Tonga and New Zealand. Most boats poise themselves to try to stop, but the weather conditions have to be right to enter the pass and take the time in ‘pause’ mode as opposed to continuing onward, so we felt lucky to manage 3 days in the fold of the protected lagoon. We weren’t alone, though! The 30 boats at anchor around us were dubbed, ‘The Minerva Yacht Club!’

Wyatt and I freedove the pass and found a wonderland of color and life.
Marcus sought some Giant Trevally in the surf, but the surf almost sought him!
Remnants of a less positive interaction with the reef.

Sweet Tuamotus, Last round through …

 

The majestic Humphead/Napolean Wrasse. This guy is 3.5 feet!

I’m going to ask Marcus to wax poetic about our final weeks in the Tuamotus. Suffice it to say that this region of French Polynesia is most definitely a favorite of ours and I even heard Marcus say he could live there. If fresh produce was available, I might be on board! For the time being, these pics can be a placeholder. These are shots from Tahanea, Fakarava and Rangiroa.

I shot a gazillion shots to finally snag this one! Thanks, Katie, for holding such enthusiasm!

 

 

Elizabeth and Michelle, Mom/Sis team 2, Gambier!

cerulean seas

rain storm snorkel,

diving (with and without weight belt),

sharks, shells, sand, sailing in the lagoon 

bugs on the beach, turtles

coconuts and an ancient village

Taravai petanque, ukulele and guitar

gusts from the mountain

anchoring pandemonium, 

slow time and quick time 

Valerie’s painting with sand

more fish more music

more fish more fish

damsels, butterflies, leatherbacks, grouper

parrot fish, sling jaw, guinea fowl puffer

canyons of coral, warm water

singing, laughing, lazy days

~MS

First Round: Gambier 2019, with Wyatt and Maddi

 

DIVE IN!We’ve been to the Gambier before, this little Archipelago on the southeastern edge of French Polynesia, clinging to the tropics by a few minutes of a degree. From any place to any other place in the Gambier it always seems to be six miles. Motus, reefs, mountain islands, all of French Polynesia on a small scale. Not a lot of people anywhere, basically one road on Magareva, no traffic lights, or stop signs or yield signs. No internet to speak of. 

The business of the Gambier is pearls. Its cooler water temps and open lagoon are ideal for cultivating that one particular oyster which has captured the imagination of the world’s great connoisseur and collector ape, an irredeemable species with a bizarre obsession with grading things according to their level of perfection, and assigning abstract value. Toiling like 49’ers, cleaning the oysters, nurturing and counting them, performing delicate surgeries to create little iridescent balls of nacre.

We had lots of company in the Gambier this time around. Lots of time to go explore some of the places we missed the last. We thought it would feel like lots of time in general, but I guess Time doesn’t exactly work that way. First to arrive was Maddi, followed a few days later by Wyatt’s girlfriend, Heather. All passionate outdoors people, crazy about running over mountains and diving with sharks and mantas. Heather kept a diary of the fish she identified (as a scientifically trained person would). She and Wyatt would pour over Diana’s books at the end of their dives. Diana’s pretty good at this, but I’ve been slower remembering the names of (non-game) fish. One that Wyatt and Heather found that has stuck and is easy for me now is the Piano Fangblenny. Nice name for a fish with what sounds like a mean habit of eating other fishes scales. We had lots of music and card games for the rainy days. Maddi hooked a giant bonefish right off the shore in front of Eric’s. It charged her fly and then ripped into her backing. She landed the next one. Wyatt landed a nice fish there, too, a few before having eluded getting their picture taken by slipping off the hook at the very last second. We dove, exploring new places in the Gambier, had some gear trouble, and then got that fixed. We played volleyball in Taravai and climbed Mt Duff in the pouring rain. It felt quick (as almost everything seems to these days) but filled with memories.

The weather was unsettled during most our stay this year in the Gambier. Everyone says so. It’s a thing. We had great weather and we had rainy weather. We had calms that made it possible to swim with mantas at Ile Kamaka and spend a wonderful Sunday afternoon relaxing in the shallow water beach in front of Eric’s pearl farm. We also had the worse wind we have ever experienced at anchor, a glancing blow from a depression that plunged the barometer to the low 990’s. Top gusts of 54 knots and sustained winds of 40 knots. A proper gale. Other sailors certainly got tired of us commenting that it wasn’t like this last year. 

Christmas day the festivities were held at Edouard and Denises, at the southern end of Taravai. We wore our hats from the Australs, and like everyone brought food to share. Herve supplied the pig for the roast (he introduced me to the doomed prisoner the day before) and Edouard made Tuamotuan-style bread on the fire from coconut heart and flour wrapped in leaves (delicious). We brought guitars and ukuleles and I backed up Maddi on few songs, then Wyatt came in. For me the best song of the afternoon was the one Wyatt and Maddi sang together “Wildermen.” It starts, “my brother and I”… but Wyatt sang “my sister and I.” They stopped and tried again, laughing when they each switched the line, and then on a third try got on with the song. Funny and relaxed, what a great afternoon! The song Maddi wrote for mother’s Day  “Anywhere You Are” was also a big hit. We played the chorus a few extra times so everyone could sing along. After awhile, Herve brought out his Marquesan style ukulele, which confounded us at first because he’s left handed, though he hasn’t restrung the instrument to match, so he plays it upside down and backwards. It didn’t make it easier that here they use the do re mi system of notation in French Polynesia instead of A B C chords that we’re used to. But after a bit of mental gymnastics we were able to share some songs with him, too. 

And Tahitian dancing to round off the impromptu concert!

KAMAKA is a small, steep island on the south edge of the Gambier. Because the reef is submerged along this border of the archipelago the ocean swell is free to move in. There’s a patch of sand that great for anchoring (though watch out for a lost anchor on bottom about one third in from the east side), but the conditions have to be pretty calm for it to be comfortable. There is almost always a south swell breaking on the west side of the beach (in case you’re a surfer).

Tehoto shared his island and told stories of being raised and homeschooled here. He now lives in Mangareva, but comes to tend to the place often.
Thanks Heather, for taking this group shot, but we’re sure missing HALEY!

 

Taravai is a sort of sailors mecca in the Gambier. It’s a good anchorage in most normal weather even big southeast isn’t too bad. But the real attraction is Herve and Valerie. They live on this island with their son Ariki, the only child on the island. Herve’s uncle, Edouard and his wife Denise live at the other end. It’s kind of amazing in the 21st century to see such a gorgeous place so simply occupied. Gambier’s blessing for being enough off the beaten track and a place where sweaters maybe required in winter. On Sunday’s they put on a pot luck BBQ, usually chipping in some fish that Herve has speared and sailors bring food and drink to hang out, play petanque and volleyball. Hard to beat. Valerie greets newcomers with a warning not to beach their dink under the coconut tree which is tall and would be lethal if it let go a coconut as just the wrong moment. The games of volleyball are played with Taravai rules, which include a slightly lower than regulation net and an easy going vibe … Herve’s secret weapon, besides his wicked sense of humor, is the headshot. It never fails to unnerve the opposition. Valerie is a committed player, too, always giggling, saying “Fakarava!” when she misses. Herve calls her “my lady.” The games often persist until it is just too dark to see, so Diana had the idea to ask Wyatt to find a glow in the dark volleyball to bring along as a gift. It lights up when hit, and stays lit for some period of seconds. The first night we played until the only thing people could see was the ball.

Lovely Humans ©MPS
The spectacular setting of many a volleyball game and Di’s mean calf pull at Herve and Valerie’s idyllic Taravai setting.

 

 



 

Ah, Tetiaroa!

Aka Marlon Brando’s atoll, aka where Obama went to write his memoirs, aka the weekend get away for Tahitian royalty for hundreds of years before those two. This is a difficult atoll, not very often visited by sailors. There is no pass to get your sailboat inside the lagoon, so you have to find a place to be on the outside, which means that conditions have to be just right. There’s a bay on the southern side, but the prevailing swell in these parts is south, and it has to be less than a meter and a half, or it’s just not tenable. The trade winds are east-southeast, so those have to be mellow too. The other big, big problem is that it’s super deep right off the reef. There’s not really a place to anchor. Charter operations out of Papeete have put in five mooring balls. Only one of those is really good for overnight, and if the conditions are right, the charter boats are guaranteed to be using them. We sailed in from Makatea unsure if we were going to be able to stay. In fact we had to plan our schedule so that we arrived in the early morning. Then, if we had to move onto Tahiti, we’d be able to get there before too late in the day. 

As we approached after an overnight sail from Makatea, we could see two charter boats already arriving. Our only choice was to motor up to the catamaran that was unloading his guests to take ashore and ask if we could use one of the other moorings. 

Now it’s really easy to imagine the response you might get to such a request in much of the rest of the world. Even a polite, sorry, these are private buoys would not be surprising. Less polite, not surprising either. 

Obviously, we got an altogether different response. The captain of this catamaran had twenty or thirty guests that have paid $150 each to get there and were lined up to get ashore. He’s a one man show, from running the boat to making sure everyone has a life jacket. So he’s a bit busy. Nonetheless, without hesitation he pointed to the closest buoy and said, that’s the one you want. We asked are you sure, not one of the others, no that’s ours and it’s the best one. Can we stay the night? Absolutely, no problem. His name was Moana. 

After he ferried all of his charge ashore he came over to talk. Remember the thing about Tetiaroa is THERE IS NO PASS. Meaning, no break in the reef that will allow you to sail to the protection inside. That includes shore boats. Marlon Brando and Obama got there by airplane. The only way to get ashore is to time your approach with the waves and surf your dinghy across the reef. When the surf is out, there’s a three feet wall of coral wall to slam into. This is what we’d been watching Moana do – dinghy runs with his guests. Seriously, it took our breath away. Obviously, it was possible. No doubt centuries ago Tahitian royalty were paddled across the same section of reef by young, strong paddlers. Moana offered to take us in, but he was leaving at 2:00 (we preferred more time on the inside), so we decided to launch Namo (our dinghy) and go for it. We went over to ask for tips and instead of letting us just try it, he took me in his dingy and showed me how to surf across. The key is to line up with a palm tree that has no top. The other key is that the waves roll along the reef so you can see them coming and gun it at the right time. It’s too late to just wait for the water to cover the reef, you have to be going full speed by that moment. Then to get out, the key is to know which coral heads you might hit with your propeller if you don’t aim right. Spot them, then gun into the white water of the breaking surf.

So we did it, surfed in with Moana cheering us on. Basically, you get across the reef and land in a pool, then if you turn hard right you can wind your way through the coral heads and tie off on shore. It’s also possible, but very complicated, to wind your way along the royal Motu (small island) and into the lagoon. We opted for anchoring Namo up at the spot where Moana left his guests and walking around the motu (the opposite way from which he took his clients) into the lagoon. 

And what did we find there? Huge bonefish, as big as I’ve caught anywhere. Diana got lots of pictures. It’s illegal to fish inside the lagoon, but catch and release bonefishing is allowed. However, all of the charter companies have signed an agreement NOT to bring fishermen. So the only way, other than the way we did it, to fish in Tetiaroa is to go the the hotel. Where Obama went. Yep, $4,000 per night, not including airfare, for the cheapest room in the off season. 

The next day another charter boat showed up. A smaller, private charter, same company, POE Yacht charters. They took the same buoy as the other captain had, but then once he’d off loaded his guests he came over to tell us that he needed the buoy we were on for the night. Once again, sorry sir, but this is a private buoy, you need to get lost. Right? Nope. He said that since this was the only safe buoy for overnight (capable of holding five boat in deep water off the reef), we could tie up to him and be his guest. He also offered to ferry us across the reef, and if we wanted we were welcome to come on the tour. When we asked if his guests would mind, he suggested that it was his choice and they wouldn’t mind anyway. These very friendly people were there to celebrate a daughters 25 birthday, so other than some Karaoke late into the night who could possibly complain?

I took him up on the ride in because Diana had discovered that the best snorkeling was on the outside reef edge anyway, plus, the sharks we’d been seeing circling Allora were Lemon Sharks, which we hadn’t seen before. Diana cannot resist swimming with sharks. While I was away, doing what I do, a mother and calf humpback whale swam right by the boat. Diana was so torn about whether to grab a camera, get snorkeling gear and a wet suit, or what, that she wasn’t able to get in the water with them before they passed, but she had a wonderful close encounter anyway. 

We were so reluctant to leave the next morning, but the swell was up, and the forecast was for building southeast wind… time to sail for civilization. In case you’re there already and don’t quite realize, civilization equals ice cream, chocolate and internet. Not to be taken for granted. Especially since we were completely out of coffee, too. 

Visitors in the Gambier and Fakarava

“This time is hard to find heaped under a mountain of machines and motivations all founded on hours and minutes.” ~Wyatt Stevens

The decision for Shannon, Josh and Wilder (3, almost 4) to visit came down fast, and within a week and a half we were picking them up at the little motu off the eastern side of the Gambier Archipelago. They dove in, they played, they pushed themselves. We laughed, we learned, we loved. It was a 3 week plan, which, in  hindsight, should have been simply spent in the lagoon, but Josh was keen to take an ocean passage, so we gave it a shot. Shannon was facing some real demons by even considering the feat. There’s a superstition in the sailing world about not undertaking a passage departure on a Friday. Well … not only was it a Friday, but guess what the date was?! Yep, the 13th!! Needless to say – we ended up shifting gears; they flew instead and we met them with Allora in Fakarava, 5 days later. Plan B worked out great! The memories from this adventure have been distilled into flashes of Wilder being wonderfully true to her name, snippets of her remarkable imagination with words (notably ‘Shit Bullet’) and scores of her laughter as she’d commune with the fishes. We were struck by a force from which we will never recover. Oh, and yeah, her parents are sensational, too!

“To see the world as it awoke in its own defenseless candor.” ~WS

Gambier Archipelago, FP, Cyclone Season

 

We underestimate gravity

living mostly in a flat world

or buoyed by the sea

or by the power of internal combustion engines,

jet turbines

until the boat heels just fifteen degrees beating to windward in moderate seas

and making coffee becomes a heroic adventure

I’m still trying to understand, to viscerally know 

how gravity is mass bending space time

I do get that gravity is like time, in this crazy wingding world

falling toward the future

resisting it is an illusion

even our thoughts are not free of gravity

normal looks strange, titled just a little off angle.
~MS

Haraiki to Hao, Tuamotus

“Today” is a song my mind sings to itself.
~MS

“I am neither happy nor sad, neither really tense nor really relaxed. Perhaps that’s the way it is when a man looks at the stars asking himself questions he is not mature enough to answer.”
~The Long Way, Bernard Moitessier

Swept Away

Ian likes to plan and he has a knack for thinking through the details, even when the boat he’s planning for is not his own. He’s also devilishly persuasive. Long before we’d given any real focus to the question, he’d figured out that we needed to know where Maddi would fly in and out of when she came to visit in December. His suggestion turned out to be Fakarava, where by incredible coincidence, Makara (Ian and Erika) and Starlet (Jennifer and Mark) both intended to be for Christmas. We regretfully explained that while we didn’t really have a plan, per se, we would be much too far east by then, well on our way to the Gambiers. But every once in a while, he’d gently ask if these poor, confused American sailors had a plan yet. After luring us to join them in Moorea for an unplanned (by us) detour, we burned up enough time that, as predicted by Ian, Fakarava actually did make the most sense.
Lo and behold, we found ourselves Christmas eve, faced with an unusual northwest turn in the weather, sailing upwind and backwards (as in north and west), to get to Fakarava according to Ian’s plan, for a delicious Christmas dinner with Makara and Starlet. 
This was only the beginning. Jennifer and Mark had their own devilish ways of derailing our plans, mostly involving Mark’s boyish grin and sentences like,”Let’s sail to Kauehi, dive the pass!” Why not? More north. Then all voices raised the call, “On to Toau!” West.
Ian, meanwhile, had been doing some more scheming. He was willing to concede that we did indeed need to start logging some south and east miles but… rather than sail back to Fakarava in April after visiting the Gambier (as planned?) it would make much, much more sense for us to sail north and meet them in Hawaii to join them for a northwest cruise up to Alaska and down the coast of North America. Back to our beloved Baja and from there, almost a year later than planned, we could hit the Palmyra and the Line Islands on our way to Tonga.
We actually got out Jimmy Cornell’s World Crusing Routes to check it out. Ian’s plan was diabolically clever (it sill sounds a little tempting).
It was only an extra 12,000 miles.
It was difficult indeed to finally turn southeast (as planned?) and leave our friends to continue their northwest journeys. This is the very hardest part of sailing. These goodbye’s feel so sudden and irrevocable. We will almost certainly see Starlet more, which is great, as they are circumnavigating along the same route, more or less, that we will be. But after Alaska, Makara is headed back to the Caribbean and then home to England.
And that’s a long way around for Starlet and Allora.

~MS 

Madison’s Tuamotus Visit

We’ve fallen in love with the Tuamotus, as most people do, so getting to share this utopia with Maddi over her winter break was really special. We’d promised a much needed rest, but ended up playing pretty hard, so hopefully her soul was recharged and enriched by the warm, turquoise waters brimming with life and the sun kissed days filled with simple, yet active goals. We ended up hanging out in Fakarava and Tahanea, two atolls with abundant wildlife/wilderness, (always appreciated by Maddi) and we just may have spent as many hours in the sea as out of it! We’d been renting diving gear from a local provider in the south of Fakarava, but once we met up with our cruising friends, m/v Starlet, they ‘hooked us up’ with tanks and together, with s/v Makara, we dove daily.  Pics of these shared adventures will be on the next post, but here we focus on our middle daughter, the shark whisperer.~DS

“Groupers Shining in the Light”

Fakarava, famous for sharks
rows of teeth, sinister, graceful
ominous patience at the top of the food chain
keen senses for a slip-up, a moment of inattention
fish hide in the coral after dark
unaware of a tail poking out
sharks imprinted with curiosity
follow every lead, investigate every anomaly
de facto enforcers of the status quo
stick to the rhythm
you’ll be alright, maybe
it takes attitude to be a grouper
shining in the light
defending your rock
even more attitude to be a grouper at night,
You should try living among swarms of predators
try to sleep or procreate, try to enjoy a little leisure
not surprising that groupers get a little touchy about their neighborhood
food funnels with teeth in their gills,
they present themselves to the world mouth first
Prettier tropical specimens keep a wary eye
slip between branches of coral as though sipped by a straw
everybody seems to know
that the sharks know
they’ve traded decent eyesight and speed
for jaws and uncanny 3D senses for smelling fear and panic
traded chewing teeth for biting teeth
Six Gill sharks eat as little as once a year
(you don’t want to be reincarnated as a Six Gill shark)
Triggerfish, with beaver-like teeth
flopping, rooting, peering under rocks
Bluefin Trevally terrorize the shallows, manifesting classic symptoms of ADD.
Parrotfish seem to know that they’ve been named after birds
fluttering over the reef
crunching coral, shitting and spitting sand
along with their groupies, Maddi and I call “friends of parrotfish”
Moray eels scowl from their caves
Moorish Idols parade along the branching staghorn
huge green Napoleon Wrasse contemplate a sex change
an octopus camouflaged in the rocks
how much brain power it must take to run eight arms
and change color and texture instantly?
I can barely pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time
those unblinking eyes
that gambler’s mouth breathing tube
shoals of shimmering, blue, wide-eyed baitfish
birds above, predators below, strength and peril in numbers
bobbits with scissor-like jaws lurk in the sand
800 species of deadly cone snails
Everything that can be eaten
is
iridescent ink glows in perpetual darkness
volcanic vents in ocean trenches are planning for the future
human concentration suffers from lack of predators
evolution is happy to start over
when our moment of inattention
gets the better of us
~MS

South Pacific Moods

Last night with the moon just one day past full

you could see the sandy bottom and coral bommies in forty feet of water 

chalky white like the moon

trade wind clouds shuttled gently overhead

and the surf on the reef seemed content and quiet

it’s good to be awake in the middle of the night

 

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We are anchored in an atoll in the middle of the ocean

blue candy water

the haunting possibility of bonefish

Diana is not wearing clothes

when this winter front from down under passes and the wind settles back in again

what a beautiful place this will be

the passage down was textbook, two 180 mile days back to back 

before the wind died for long enough to get a bunch of water made

and top off the batteries

arrived early to see the “pass” out of Raroia roiling like white water in Yankee Jim Canyon

 

 

 

 

When the internet is everywhere will all these remote places cease to exist

will they be like the color “dunia” of Otto-Raul’s Ten New Colors

undone by the ubiquitous web, always visible, available, knowable

 

 

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Water makes us vulnerable to weather like nothing else

The wind swings and makes waves even in a protected lagoon

we put a lot of faith in our anchor rode

catching on coral rocks at the bottom

what does it take to break a piece of chain

if a pin works it way out of a shackle

everything we have could end up on the rocks

in a place too distant to recover it

 

 

 

 

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Death by Coconut

 

Coconut palms are a funny weed to have so beguiled a species

they count as an invasive species here in the Tuamotus

a government subsidized invasive species 

I guess so people have something to do, making copra

They are also incredibly dangerous

death by coconut is no joke

death by true love

is real too

you can keep looking up

but you can’t move fast enough

 

 

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The stars above the motu shine in shrill dissonance

to conversations about digital apps

we are utterly dependent on GPS 

and the stars wonder how they’ve become just window dressing

but nobody wants to hit a reef at night

the water sucks away from the cliff like edge and then hammers on like a threat

Kon Tiki wrecked here

 

 

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Two boats sailed in today from the southern end of the atoll

tandem, tacking upwind in a light breeze

at a distance it looked like one boat 

sailing as close as lovers, which it turns out they are

She eased her jib a little to fall back and follow
as they found a way through the coral heads

They moored to one anchor, one with a dark blue stripe, one light

tethered together with a boat length of line

He’s been single handing for six years

she wanted to learn 

and when they met she’d already been looking at getting this boat 

the same boat

So they sail together, she learning to sail alone

he’s not giving up on single handing,

since they are the same make of boat, they carry spares that work with each

on passage they can take turns watching each other’s boat sail by autopilot

watching for traffic and the hazards

they certainly have more space than they would with just one boat 

no one has to climb the mast if there is an argument

but there are risks and downfalls to the arrangement

it’s much more expensive

if something goes on with the other boat, they can only help as much as they are able

they are still truly single handing

they admit that at some point they will move on to one boat

she says it will be hers

a point he is not yet willing to concede

 

 

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Shadows In The Shallows

RS IMG 2038

RS Happy place

As we sailed south from the Marquesas, Diana was looking for sharks, calm lagoons protected  from the ocean swell, turquoise water and coral, safe anchorage within earshot of the surf breaking on the reef. I was looking for flats — wide expanses of water that doesn’t rise above your knee in depth. Ideal for flyfishing. To reach the Archipelago of the Tuamotus, you sail by the Isle du  Disappointment. We wished we had the time to detour, to see it for ourselves, if nothing else so we could say we’d been to the actual Island of Disappointment, but it was night when passed and low lying atolls are dangerous in the dark. We slipped by beneath the whisker of a moon.  

Disappointment is a prerequisite for flats fishing. You must be comfortable in the waters of frustration. Particularly, if you go looking for fish that might or might not even be there. Bonefish inhabit the tropical oceans of the world, but they are not on every flat. And on the flats they do visit, they are not there every day. And when they condescend to haunt that ephemeral world, they come armed in ghostly mail, reflecting the dazzling world around them, barely visible. Liminal shapes. But you have to see them to catch them. You might spot a bonefish and she will turn and disappear right before your eyes. You will wonder if you have seen her at all. Often the only thing you can see is not the fish itself, but its shadow on the sandy bottom. 

RS P1750022

These atolls have long been known by sailors as the Dangerous Archipelago, and before GPS and Google Earth came along, most gave them a wide berth on the downwind run from the Marquesas to Tahiti. They get more visitors nowadays, but their isolation means that beside a select, well known few with air strips, the only practical way to visit is to sail there in your own boat. It took us twenty-five days to reach the Marquesas from Panama and another three days of fast sailing to reach the first of the atolls.

It’s a long way to go and nobody sails that far just to go bonefishing. Not even me.

We chose the Raroia atoll as our first stop because it was the most windward of the Tuamotos that we could easily reach from the Marquesas. It also has a well known, well charted pass for entering through the reef. We had no idea what we might find on the flats there, and nothing in google earth showed up that looked like the classic sandy bottomed expanse you’d find in the Bahamas. I expected something like the gentle reefs of Turneffe flats in Belize, but what we found was not like either. The reef itself looks like a rocky moonscape when the tide is out. It is hard bottomed and the rocks and coral are viciously jagged. Near where we anchored, there were the rusted remains of a shipwreck, the massive engine block and parts improbably strewn through the shallow water. It was easy to imagine the churning caldron that this South Pacific reef would be in a storm. The surf breaking over the reef at high tide sent wavelets rippling over the flat and the current in the cuts reminded me of wading the Madison River. It was a live, active environment. It did not look like a place you’d find bonefish, and I did not.


RS Raroia wreck
What we did find, was first and foremost, sharks. Black tipped reef sharks make a fine living in the Tuamotos. As a top predator, they seem like the sign of a healthy ecosystem. The coral here teems with fish like an aquarium. The closest I could find to a “flat” were some sandy shallows on the lagoon side between the fast running Hoa’s (Tuamotan for the cuts in the reef). There were also lots of other fish, and I quickly hooked my first Bluefin Trevally which went screaming across the shallows just like a bonefish. It happened fast and was so easy, I initially underestimated this species. These crazy, nervous, spooky, wild fish have since put me in my place. Bluefin Trevally is a beautiful fish, and the couple that rushed in and grabbed my fly, as opposed to the dozen that bolted away at the speed of light when they heard the line hit the water, were as powerful as any bonefish, maybe a little less fighter jet and more raw power, but ripping into my backing nonetheless. One of the first I landed broke the tip of my new eight weight rod. I also caught some smaller blue jacks that were fun (one shadowing a shark), and a less than gorgeous but hard fighter called a Long Nosed Emperor fish. On Raroia, I found a version of flats fishing, but not bonefish.

RS 540x960 Bluefin Trevally

RS Blacktips cruising the shallows

RS Toau Tuamotus Eastern anchorage N of the pass

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I had read that we might find bonefish on Kauehi, another atoll due west from Raroia. A Montana fly fishermen (like myself) posted a short article about catching them there years ago. He and his wife had crewed on a sailboat crossing from Panama to Tahiti, and Kauehi is a natural, first stop in the Tuamotos. A beautiful island with a charming village, the seductive if elusive promise of internet at the post office, and baguettes on Saturday and Wednesday (a slightly chewy “wonder bread” version). This is one of the atolls with flights from Papeete.

RS Location location location

 I saw what I thought must be a pair of bonefish almost as soon as I waded out onto the town flat. But they disappeared quickly and soon I was questioning if that’s what I’d seen at all. It took more than an hour to find another pair. I blew the cast completely, trying to compete with 15 knots of wind. Now the question was if I’d get another chance to cast, or if I’d just botched a very rare opportunity. When I finally spotted the next fish, I forced myself to slow down and tiptoe quietly into a crosswind position and wait until I could make a short cast. It paid off, and I had my first Polynesian bonefish on, ripping way across the flat throwing rooster tails of water as it unspooled line like no tomorrow.

An old man (well, not that old, but with a gray beard like me) was taking a Sunday afternoon nap under an awning at the beach. With the southern winter trades, the temperature in the shade is perfect. I felt bad disturbing him marching across the beachfront of his idyllic bit of paradise, but he waved me over in that friendly Polynesian style, and I showed him a picture I’d taken with my phone of the bonefish I’d just caught on the flat in front of his house. He confirmed that they are called kio kio here and told me (in French) that they made excellent Poisson Cru, which is a yummy dish we experienced in the Marquesas, made there with raw tuna, lime and coconut milk. He didn’t seem particularly startled to see me out wandering around the two mile long flat near town, but when I asked Gary, the french dive master of Ephe Mer Plongeé, who’d been living aboard a sailboat in Kauehi with his wife and son for five years how often he saw people fishing out on the flat, he said, “Never. Nobody ever fishes out there.”

Obviously the locals do, I saw them come in with parrot fish and trigger fish they had harvested with a spear. So that’s not what Gary meant by nobody. He meant no off-islander with a fly rod. The young Polynesian man who showed me his spearfish catch, thought the triggerfish would eat my fly when I showed him what I was fishing with. And they did, though it wasn’t quite that easy, though certainly more than it must be stalking these skittish fish with a spear.

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RS Toau Tuamotus Eastern anchorage 1
 
 

RS2 Tikehau Tuamotus 9 17

RS Marcus bonefish fly kiokio

 

Fishing here is a way of life and it’s about food. It fits most people’s image of fishing — casting a baited hook into the dark water and waiting to see what you might happen to drag up. Flyfishermen are not that different from other fishermen, in most basic respects. Their attraction to the game varies according to the particular part of it that keeps bringing them back, the aspect of flyfishing that rewards and maybe also torments them. It’s like other games, like love even (yes, I did say that). For some size matters. For some it’s the battle and the conquest. For some it is the flirtation and the take. It’s first sight, the beating heart of the approach, the cast. The strategy and the plan. You only have to walk into any fly shop to realize that for some, it’s the fashion. For me, though there’s no doubt, it is true love, for all of the above.

RS IMG 0940

 

A passion (or possibly an addiction) for salt water flats fishing, particularly bonefish, is something one comes to naturally as a fly fishermen for trout. It’s particularly seductive for a dry fly fisherman whose been bitten by the bug of rising fish sipping small dry flies in the gin clear waters of Montana.

Seeing the fish, stalking, presenting the fly. Precision. Timing. Delicacy. The take and the set. Those are the common elements of the game. A dry fly fishermen must remove himself from the fly, and any hint of current that might pull on the line, so the presentation floats naturally on the surface. The bonefishermen needs to learn how to move the fly the way the bonefish expects it to move, learning the timing of their body language to know when they’ve taken the fly and give them enough time not to pull it from their grasp.

Dumb luck will catch a certain percentage of fish anywhere. But it won’t work often enough to keep it interesting. If a game is too easy, it’s not really worth playing, right? On the flats, like so many things in this concentrated environment, mistakes comes fast and furious. Miss the cast, miss the set, break off. Bonefish almost never give you a second chance. 

RS Kauehi Tuamotus Tearevero Village Middle Anchorage 1

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In Toau, the next atoll we visited, Diana saw bonefish swimming under the boat. In general they were concentrated closer to shore, probably because even though the flat is huge, most of it has three feet or more water even at low tide. Also, nobody lives here most of the time. The shallow edges go on for a couple miles. This atoll is one big step further away from the world. You cannot fly here. It’s only seventeen miles from one of the biggest and most populated atolls, Fakarava, so it isn’t that far. I saw the first pair before I really stepped into the water after taking the dinghy ashore. Another single within a few minutes after that. I landed the first fish within an hour of stepping onto the flat. Which was a nice start.

RS Camouflaged Bonefish Toau Tuamotus Eastern anchorage

 

It hasn’t been non-stop like that, by any means. These fish aren’t easy. They spook at the line more than the fly, but they don’t like to hear it plop down. I started using a long tippet and tying my flies with lighter bead eyes so they can land more quietly. The colors that look right to me in this environment are tan with a touch of orange. It needs to belong but can’t be camouflaged — just sparkly enough to get some attention. They bead eyes are heavy enough to make sure it sets on the bottom which I think is crucial here, but not so big that they make too big a splash. In my previous iteration, I used ‘bunny fur,’ which I thought would be good for the splashdown, but I think it was too white. My final pattern used tan squirrel with 6 strands or so of iridescent flash. I caught 7 bones in total, six on this fly in less than three hours on the flat. I’ve been catching fish in water with no ripple on it, right up against the long beach, so I can watch them investigate the fly. Occasionally, they are pretty aggressive about grabbing it, but mostly they follow first, then take it only after it drops like it’s trying to hide. They seem to be used to the idea that whatever it is they are eating, shrimp or crab, is going to try to bury itself in the sand, not swim away. You really have to wait on the set. See them root down on it.  They don’t take as long as the Triggerfish, which flop back and forth over the fly like they just can’t get ahold of it, and no wonder with that little mouth which looks overdo for a visit to the dentist. I try to resist casting to them now, because they almost always mangle or break off my fly, and I have a limited number of hooks in my fly tying kit. There are no fly shops for hundreds if not thousands of miles. That said, the other day I couldn’t resist, stupidly, casting to a grouper when I reached the rocks at the far end of the flat. He grabbed the fly in a dash and then didn’t seem to realize he had it, chasing away another small fish that had come out to investigate. I had to give him a tug for him to feel the hook and then he was off, straight for his favorite rock. After walking over reeling up all the line, I could feel he was still on, but I couldn’t pull him out from under the rock and eventually broke him off. After a bit he came out, the fly gone from his mouth, and glared at me like he was considering picking a fight.

RS This grouper came up to LOOK at Marcus while he was fishing Toau Tuamotus East side

RS Kauehi Tuamotus Tearevero Village Middle Anchorage

 

Probably the most exciting thing about Toau bones is that sometimes I find tailing fish. It’s not like smaller Belize bones tailing in groups on the flat, these are pairs or big singles. Big tails. They don’t work a spot for very long, but they aren’t in a hurry either. I hooked a really big one in about eight inches of water. I was lucky because he was moving directly at me. Even so I spooked him and had to recast as he scooted along, now broadside. This time the fly hit the water in the right way and he turned to find it. The take was clear and obvious, an easy set. The fight was unforgettable. He was off at warp speed (of course) and ran toward the shallow without stopping until he reached the shore. Then he turned a hard one eighty. I started reeling frantically (as you do) wishing at that moment I had a large arbor reel instead of my classic old Abel. But nothing was going to keep up with this fish. I reached for the line to start stripping by hand out of desperation, and then jumped. This huge bonefish nearly ran me over in his panic. I still had backing out, and he was zinging past my feet. I assumed he was long gone, but then he hit the end of the line, still on, and turned on a rocky shallow spot. Some poor fish there leapt skyward to get out of his way as he ripped across less than six inches of rock strewn water and in a second it was finally over. Somewhere the tippet had found a sharp piece of coral.

Day 3 on the Toau flat, I think (nice to be losing track), the fish conspired to humble me. My first big theory that it would be good to have low tide in the middle of the day turned out to be exactly wrong. Despite great visibility, and probably because of it, I did not see nearly as many bones. Fewer sharks even, until the tide started to come in as the sun dropped. After three thirty it gets hard to see at any distance except over by the shore where the windless water reflects the darker trees. I finally landed one fish out of a pair, but before that, it was either, wrong time, wrong fly, wrong cast, wrong presentation. They followed but would not take. I could see their eyes as they came in that close, but they wouldn’t pick the fly up. 

With their 3D world reduced to two dimensions, and the sun a glaring light, Trevally are a nervous wreck in shallow water. They don’t know what they want to do. They cruise at high speed looking for an ambush with none of that sharklike cool. When they blow up at the slightest provocation, they streak away and then seem to worry that they’ve made a mistake and streak back in to see what they’re missing, then blow up and away again. They dart at the fly as if they know they are making a mistake. I cast to a pair of Trevally cruising inches off the beach and they left so panicked, I think they moved to the next atoll. But then later, I was able to get a cast fifteen feet in front of a pair coming toward me, a little further off. The first fish charged the fly from that distance so fast I have no idea whether I was stripping or what I was doing, but he was on! Another Trevally half an hour later startled me by bashing something under the ledge of the coral right at the shore and then came racing out my way. I cast to him, but I don’t think he saw the fly. He was too busy looking right at me. 

RS Tikehau Tuamotus 9 17 Like all atolls those of the Tuamotus are necklaces of perfectly flat islets enclosing crystal clear lagoons
 
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I guess I have been a little skittish on the flats, too, and maybe for the same reason. There are always lots of black-tipped reef sharks everywhere I wade. Curious as cats, with (presumably) bigger teeth. Early on, two of them, inspired by my splashing in shallow water charged in and hit my leg. Unnerving to say the least. Several others came swimming in at high speed, and finally I ended up bumping one six footer on the head with the butt of my rod to stop it. So there it is, full disclosure, there are lots and lots of sharks in the Tuamotus. I started carrying a walking stick for discouraging sneak attacks. 

8:30 is about as early as the light works. The water feels cooler in the morning, but I think the light is more significant. These bones seem to stick to the very skinny water and so when it’s straight overhead they are skittish or not around. I saw more bonefish early, including tails. But I was having trouble getting the sequence of things right. Fish headed the right direction. Cast close enough, but not too close. Fish seeing fly but not spooking because it’s moving too fast. Timing right on the set, not too soon, not too late, not too quick, but quick enough. Tight line on the fight, keeping fish away from any rocks. Landing and releasing the fish without alerting any of the bigger sharks. It’s a long list. I headed back a little later than I had planned, around 10:30, Cast, hooked, landed two fish on the way back. The sharks found me after releasing the second one. I thought the bonefish must be okay, but the bigger shark, darker in color was very aggressive in swimming directly up to me. I think he could smell the bonefish in the water about me and he was sure he would find it at my feet or in my hands. I still don’t think he would bite me unless that bonefish was actually there and he could take it from me. That might be a different story. Though, I told myself, since evolution would not have designed them to bite human legs, standing ones anyway, I wonder if he would or even could be able to turn sideways in the shallow water in order to take the bite. So maybe he couldn’t bite my leg even if he wanted to. These are the kinds of things you think about on a Polynesian flat. I had to beat the water with my shark stick a couple times and then it tore off. I assumed it was because I had taught it a lesson about messing with a stick carrying member of homo sapiens. But then he started zig zagging at high speed. My heart sunk. He was chasing something. What’s truly astonishing about these sharks is how far away they must be able to sense a panicked or tired bonefish. Somehow they know the fish are too fatigued to outrun them. I’ve seen them working the flat where I’ve just released a fish like bird dogs in Montana.

Because of the couple of sneak “attacks,” I’ve developed the habit now of turning all the way around ever so often to make sure I’m not being stalked. It seems like a good idea anyway. On a flat, unlike a river, a fish could be coming from anywhere. One of the things I’ve noticed is that sometimes there’ll be a couple of nervous blue jacks following my mud trail. I think the sharks come from that direction for the same reason. They investigate all anomalies on the flat. You (if you are a shark) never know. This time about twenty or thirty yards behind me at the end of the faint trail I was leaving in the sand was a bonefish following me. I turned and made the short cast to an easy fish. He tailed on the fly nicely. Now I was sure that this new fly pattern, which had evolved from my short experience in Toau and in Kauehi, was the perfect Polynesian bonefish fly.

RS Baby Blacktips 1 2 come RIGHT on shore

RS First attempt with the Dome Marcus was NOT casting to the shark
 

Day five on the Taou “town” flat. We explored “town” today. So far what we can find are the remains of a half a dozen structures. There are a couple of hard hats around that must be for the safety of working in the coconut groves, but the shacks are falling down. This was my most successful day fishing so far. The High tide was 6:52 and low tide was 13:06.  I didn’t leave until 10 because we spent the morning doing some boat work. I scooted off, guiltily, leaving Diana finishing the job, cleaning oven parts on the stern. As soon as I started toward the flat after tying up Namo (our dinghy), I came upon two Trevally working quickly up the beach, as they do, not two feet off the edge of the water. I moved up the bank and walking as fast as I could without running I was just barely able to catch and pass them. I kept moving until I had time to get down to the water’s edge and strip off enough line for a cast. I made the cast at least ten or fifteen feet short, so I could move the fly when they got close. Even at that distance they reacted at the speed of light. My thought process barely had time to catch up with what was happening. They spooked right? Even with plenty of wind to hide my line noise and even casting way ahead of them. They are so hyper sensitive, they just blew up. No way to catch them in this scenario. Except that… my body was moving ahead my conscious thought process, and I stripped out of habit. And, unbelievably, a fish was on. Besides sailfish in Mexico, these are the most beautiful fish I’ve ever caught (okay, maybe not the mug, which is a little dopey) but the coloring is spectacular. The second Trevally did not abandon his buddy for a good part of the fight and I found out when I landed him that these Bluefin do have small teeth, like a brown trout. 

RS MS in stealth mode

 

 It was a nice start and it got even better but then worse. I had barely waded onto the flat when I spotted a pair of bonefish. They were moving slowly enough that they were clearly looking for food. When I’ve cast to fish here that are really moving across the flat, they spook, or if they follow I get a refusal. These fish were in 6 inches of water. Really. I was lucky with my cast. The wind subdued any line splash down, and the fly went into the water without too crazy a plop. The one fish turned on it followed and took the fly without hesitation. Because I didn’t want to lose the fish to a shark and because I knew my tippet was stout, I pressed the bonefish pretty hard and when he was close I leaned heavily into the rod to get his head up and bring him in. I slipped the barbless fly out of his mouth and as soon as I let him go, I noticed what had happened. I had broken my rod tip. I’d already broken my eight weight at Raroia on a Trevally (also no spare tip, yes I’m that foolish). Looking at the tip of the rod was a lot like looking at the water when you’ve dropped some crucial boat part overboard (like the oil drain plug on the outboard for instance). Something you can’t just replace with a clever substitution. You just can’t believe that something so irrevocable has happened so quickly that could have such major consequences. The most immediate consequence was that I had to stop fishing after a late start with low tide just two hours away. I had one more rod. An eleven weight, which was going to make delicate casts a challenge, but at least, I had something to fish with for the next two weeks before the Lawsons, Maddi and Wyatt meeting us in Tahiti could rescue me with spare tips. 

RS Bonefish

 

 

RS Not hard to find a place to drop anchor

 

 Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice… right? Two Titan Triggerfish on the flat, doing their clowny triggerfish thing. I’m thinking, this is exactly where I saw them yesterday. This must be their “spot.” But I don’t cast to triggerfish, right, that’s my rule, especially when I have just one left of my amazing new fly design that has been working so well. Nope, not doing that. I should also be remembering what happened the last time I hooked one of these goofballs, right here where I am. Just yesterday. The fish didn’t run, just swam casually over to a hole under a rock that you would not imagine was there out in the middle of the big flat. How’d that work out, Einstein? No, I’ll only cast to this triggerfish, if he makes it so tempting I cannot resist. What? Yep. When he ended up under the same rock with my precious fly again, I could see there were only a few inches of tippet ahead of the leader. Still I did not feel like reaching under that rock. I haven’t been touching the triggerfish cause I think they have some mean spines on their dorsal fin and I definitely don’t want any of my fingers anywhere near that mouth of theirs. Those beaver teeth could snap a finger off, I’m sure. I tried goading him out with my shark stick to no avail, so I finally resigned myself to losing my fly and walked away, glad there was no one… absolutely anywhere for miles and miles who could have been watching me behave like such an idiot. 

RS Titan Triggerfish are rare view of a very frenetic fish

 

But on the northwest side of Toau we moored next to some friends, Rand and Ellen on the catamaran, Golden Glow. Rand was curious to see bonefishing firsthand and we ended up visiting a flat south of there — Rand Ellen, Diana and me. It was a little nerve-wracking because I’m not used to having an audience and there were obviously no guarantee we’d even see fish. I hadn’t even see the flat before. It just looked right on Google Earth. Luckily it didn’t take too long to find a group of bonefish which were waiting for the tide to get deep enough to get through a shallow pass to an inner lagoon. With camera’s trained on me, I hooked one and then, miraculously even landed it, giving everyone a completely wrong impression about how bonefishing usually goes. I hooked another a bit later, but lots of sharks started showing up and I felt lucky to allow the fish to throw the hook before they found him. 

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RS Kio Kio Bonefish Toau Tuamotus Eastern anchorage

 

RS Ellen and Rand and the sharks hang out with Marcus to witness the art of flyfishing to bonefish

Sharks add an element to fishing here which I have never experienced in any other kind of fishing anywhere else (no toothy predators on a spring creek, though there may be other hazards for your sanity). The first adjustment requires getting comfortable with their constant presence and relentless curiosity. That can make being on the flat a little edgy. Constantly reminding yourself that sharks are best dealt with calmly. Escalating is always a bad idea. There’s the occasional really big shark like the one I had to bonk with butt of my rod in Raroia, that makes you question if what you think you know about them is really accurate. And then there’s the dilemma of trying to practice catch and release in a fiercely competitive, predator rich environment. The Tuamotos teem with fish like nowhere else I’ve ever been. The ecosystem feels as close to undisturbed as I can imagine. Sharks are everywhere and they are a part of that. When we dive the pass, there are hundreds of them and they demand our attention and fascination. They are not dumb fish. But looking over your shoulder when you hook a fish adds an unwlelcome extra challenge to the fight. Watching a fish explode in a puff of red, when a shark gets him, and then watching the shark really getting his sharks instincts up, makes you at least momentarily question the whole game. Obviously its not a game the bonefish want to play, and it wouldn’t be a hard argument to make to suggest that maybe it’s unethical. I’m sure it’s a coming argument that catch and release of any fish isn’t ethical treatment of animals, especially when it endangers their lives. On the other hand, sharks need to eat, too.

 

RS Can t get enough of these snorkeling buddies 1

 

 

RS Fish On Toau Tuamotus Eastern anchorage

 

RS Raroia Tuamotus East side of atoll

Anaa is an atoll without a pass for boats to get inside. This means we could only visit in certain conditions which just happened to occur as we were sailing back from Tahiti to Tuamotus. We tied up to the massive buoy that used to be used by the weekly supply ship. It wasn’t a great situation, and eventually we dropped anchor, but the bottom’s rocky and we had to worry about getting our anchor back. To get inside you shoot a tiny little pass in the dinghy between waves breaking on the reef a few feet to either side. The first time it was a bit hairy, not knowing how deep the water would be once we cleared the gap. Inside the atoll is an absolute bonefish heaven. There are flats everywhere. Diana tooled around on her bike and found one of the ‘magasins’, which turned out to be connected with Anaa Flyfishing. The woman who ran it said there was a small place, Pension Anaa To Ku Kaiga, where flyfishermen came to stay and fish the atoll. There’s a small airstrip with weekly flights. I found fish quickly, though they seemed spookier than the fish on Toau or Kuehi. I discovered soon enough why. After breaking one off on the set, and then losing one on the only branch stuck in the sand for miles, I got another hooked properly. It screamed off the flat into the deeper water and then came back. I was just getting ready to pull it in when two sharks showed up out of nowhere. They definitely were not messing around. They knew this game. I tried loosening my drag which only made a mess of my backing and the sharks got the fish anyway. I decided to move on rather than risk losing another fish to the sharks. What I ran into instead was a school of thirty to fifty sharks that were chasing baitfish under birds in the shallows. They literally churned the water in their frenzy. I watched one small shark run a baitfish right up on the beach and grab it. The anchorage was too uncomfortable to stay another night, so that was the limit of my experience in the only atoll with a flyfishing business, Anaa. Though the fishing seems endless, figuring out a strategy for dealing with sharks that have learned from a dozen or so people fishing each month that bonefish are vulnerable when hooked, would be key to fishing there. So is it strong tippet and try to bully them in, or light tippet and break them off if the sharks show up? I’m not sure. 

 

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RS Toau Tuamotus Eastern anchorage 4

 

Curiosity is an essential element of the flat. All the creatures there are looking for something in that thin slice of a watery world. A human being walking a flat is an unusual event, and so I should expect a little attention. Of my many curious visitors, a beautiful red and rust brown turtle was the most conspicuous creature I’ve seen on the flat. From a long distance he was indistinguishable from a rock, except in that he moved. The first time we met, I followed him for a little way until I could tell what he even was. I’d never seen a brown turtle before. At about twenty yards I stopped to watch him, and then he turned and began very slowly swimming my way. I wanted to take a picture, but I didn’t want to spook him by taking my phone out, so I left it in my pocket and didn’t move. At about fifteen feet he poked his head out of the water and looked at me. And then he kept swimming over. Who knows what he might have been thinking. When he was literally about to touch my ankle with his snout, I blinked. I moved my leg just a tiny little bit, in case he was thinking of pecking at my foot. I wish I hadn’t because that settled it for him. Whatever kind of tree he thought I was, its roots were not supposed to move. He turned at a turtle’s version of light speed and swam away. We bumped into each other the next two days, but then as soon as he poked his head up out of the water and saw it was me again, he was out of there. So I guess he didn’t want to be my flats buddy after all. 

RS This turtle came right up to Marcus feet as he was fishing and later to me while snorkeling

 

RS This obsessed fisherman barely remembers to eat and drink

 

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