Sunday 18th April 2010 Rangiroa
07.00hrs All up and about, and all went for a swim, wonderful.
08.30hrs A & S set off in the car for Mass, the Church being 12 km away. When we arrived, things looked mighty settled and on entering the church, we find Mass coming to an end. Oh feck! (not Aileens comment) we were obviously given the wrong times. Damm that, but we did get some of the singing, and had a bit of a sign language chat with the Priest when most people were gone.
10.00hrs Stephen and Donal went to the Dive center for our introductory session. "Top Dive" a well organized outfit with centers in lots of the "French Polynesian Islands". Our Diving Instructor was a French Lassy called Kathy...a fine lassy too.
The lesson took about 2 hours in total, half of which was the do's and dont's before we ever got near water. It was great fun, and Fats really enjoyed the whole thing, even though the weight's kept falling down his body (because he has no waist) and the lovely Instructor spent much time pulling up his things.
We saw 4 sharks, 1 sea ray, lots of butterfly fish (mainly bright yellow with blue stripes). Click your fingers and the butterfly fish will come and swim all round you. even nibble the hairs off your legs. Lots of Morea eel's and thousands of other fish types, just magic!
The real laugh was at the end of the session, trying to get Fat's back on board the big rib.
A Libhert Crane would have been handy, but as that was not available, it was all hands on deck and we succeeded
through sheer perseverance. It was a great morning and Aileen came with us to observe the dive and also enjoyed the thing. Later the Skipper signed up to do a diving course (Padi) so at 14.30 hrs off again for more diving... this could become addictive. The course consists of 6 dives over three days, plus exams, Chrips.
17.00hrs Skipper returned to A Lady, totally exhausted, and only just in time to get ready to go to "Voyageur" for drinks & dinner. Plenty of wine and a lamb chop dinner went down just perfectly, and capped off with some fine scotch Whiskey,before discovering that "Ronja" never tied their rib to "Voyageur " properly and it disappeared in a very strong breeze into the middle of the night.
Fats and Jan Ruud (owner of Ronja and rib) spent an hour looking for it, but failed to find her, too dark and windy.
Ohhhh my god, they are expensive bits of kit, not to mention the sheer inconvenience of not having the rib for going and coming to shore.
We all eventually retired to the bunks and ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZ
Thats it for today,
Stephen Hyde (Skipper)