Timshel - No Manta Rays

From Vitogo Bay we headed up threading our way through the reefs to the Yasawas, not much wind for sailing though we tried. Saw Sandvita and Atla coming down. Through the Mocelutu passage, shallow in places but nice sandy bottom, there are resorts and an anchorage and what looked like the |N\Z triathlon team swimming the channel. Then to the marked anchorage near the Manta Ray Pass, but there were several boats there (including It Started with a Kiss from ARC+ 2015) all facing every which way with the tide, it was far too deep in most of the vacant space or else there were coral bommies and it was suddenly too shallow, so we decided to head on North, a bit worrying as it was getting late in the day. We spied a nice looking bay with sandy beach and 1 motorboat anchored also small resort boats and a diving platform inshore and nosed our way into the centre of the bay between the obvious reefs off both sides of the entrance and anchored in sand in 13 or 14m. Timshel and Taistealai spent a quiet and peaceful night though the boats did meander about a bit alternately lying to tide and wind. Our bay - Baltira Bay after the small resort on shore, or perhaps TT bay (Timshel and Taistealai) looked even more lovely in the morning and both anchors were buried in sand, so we set off in Teddy Bear (Timshel's dinghy) back down to look for Manta Rays. Coffee on ISwaK who said they had had a rather rolly and uncomfortable night (so glad we went on!), Skyelark had also arrived, then took the dinghy through the Manta Ray pass and Chris, Helen and Anita did a couple of drift snorkels with Steve manning the dinghy, the tide was rushing through the pass. No Manta rays, but we did see a barracuda leaping out of the water and spectacular snorkelling over coral. We motored back to our bay in Teddy Bear where we were soon joined by Skyelark. In fact the snorkeling in the bay was pretty good and we tried to make a start on cleaning off the hull - need a better scraper to attack the tenacious weed. Skyelark entertained us for cocktails (apparently they have a gin lake?) then in the morning had everybody over for a magnificent full English breakfast - wonderful, Dan and Em are so kind. Much discussion re navigating by Google Earth, also an app called Motion X GPS HD for ipad (plus the android equivalent), you definitely can't rely on the charts.