Misto - Days 91-93: Fakarava

We entered through the Northern Passe Garue having about 2.7 knots of current with us and motored to the anchorage off Rotoava, the main village. We dropped the hook with a number of WARC boats in front of the beautiful church. We ate at the Rotoava Grill restaurant that night along with the crew of Sumore and Andrew from Laura Dawn.

On Saturday April 8 we took our bikes ashore to explore a little. We encouraged the small jewelry store in the village to open, although she is usually closed on Saturday. The owner is also the jeweler and Ros now has a necklace and bracelet with black pearls to commemorate this visit. We found the Fakarava Yacht Services and Stephanie agreed to arrange a tour of a small pearl farm for that afternoon. It was a very interesting visit, and we learned how they seed the oysters and hang them in the lagoon - each float that you can see has about 2 000 oysters and pearls attached. They have to lease the water space from the government and are only allowed a certain number of oysters per hectare as the lagoon can only support a certain number. The owner opened one large oyster and inside was a large pearl but it was far from the highest quality, having many rigs around it. In her small shop we could see that all the pearls get used, but of course the price reflects the quality.

Returning to Misto, we took the dinghy and dove around the cardinal mark in the anchorage. The quantity and diversity of the fish was astounding. One bulbous coral formation had hundreds of tiny green fish feeding in all its crevices.

We decided to depart on Sunday and move to the South Pass where Howard could do a drift dive. Also we wanted to get to some more remote spots on the atoll away from "civilization". We enjoyed a quiet motor sail down, sailing under Genoa alone for the last hour or so and picked up a mooring ball off Tetamanu and close to the TopDive shop. Here sharks congregated under our boat! We met Eric the dive master and he agreed to do a drift dive on Monday morning. Owl and Altair had also arrived in the anchorage and Bill and Joe may also join Howard for the dive. We pumped up the kayak and did a little exploring, finding the small "boatyard" that exists here, and decided on a fairly early dinner aboard.
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At 4/9/2017 10:46 PM (utc) our position was 16°29.56'S 145°28.07'W