We have been exploring Nono Lagoon for a few days. The official significance of its name is unknown to us but for AVATAR it stood for no rain and no wind! The high pressure pump on our watermaker has failed and we have been reduced to collecting rainwater to refill the fresh water tanks. This is not really a dire situation; AVATAR holds some 1,800 gallons of fresh water (the average cruising sailboat carries only a few hundred gallons). The net effect is that we have cut back on laundry and shortened our showers. However a good rain squall can add hundreds of liters to the tanks in a relatively short time. Rod waits until the rain has rinsed the deck of salt and dirt, then opens the port and starboard intakes and lets the rivulets of water running along the gunnels top off the tanks. We’ve seen our fair share of rain this trip but of course as soon as we actually want it to rain, all the visible squalls seem to pass us by on either side, or fizzle out just before a direct hit.
And today, as we aspire to depart Nono and head back to Marovo Lagoon, the wind is non existent as well. The sea surface is glassy, reflective as a mirror, displaying sky and clouds to perfection but completely wiping out our coral spotting capabilities. A local freighter was cruising through the lagoon in our general direction so we waited until it passed us by, then fell in behind to follow his track. Unfortunately this didn’t last long as it stopped at a small island to load lumber. We coasted on a bit further, following the arm gestures of crew members on the ship, and finally gave up and anchored for a snack break (pineapple and papaya) while we waited for a ruffle of breeze to fill in.
However Nono did offer us one of our finest dive/snorkel adventures ever. There is a shortcut from the lagoon to the nearby open sea that we read about in a book but without specifics. On our first day of exploration we took the dinghy and went on a wide-ranging search through the maze of islets asking directions from passing canoeists, and finally found as torturous meandering shallow channel that wound through the mangroves, passed by a homestead whose waterway was signposted ‘Slow Down’, flowed under a bridge of indeterminate age buttressed withy massive felled rainforest logs, and eventuallyl opened up to an awesome blue water chasm paved withy colorful corals under the overhang of a 50 foot limestone cliff draped with heavy stalactites.
We worked our way back to AVATAR along the same shallow waterway at dead low tide, barely scraping clear of the sandy bottom and watching for sunken logs lying in wait to snag the outboard motor. Next day we returned, this time on a rising tide and with foreknowledge of all the ‘gotchas’ along the route. We made much better time and beelined to our dive destination.
From the dinghy Rod dropped Mike and me into the water outside the reef alongside a mind-boggling sheer wall that dropped straight down into the deep blue with no hint of a bottom. We had to keep a close eye on the depth reading on our dive computers because we had no meaningful visual reference. We followed the reef wall until it turned the corner into the channel, an awesome locale in its own right, and floated back to the waiting dinghy on the incoming current. Then, not having had enough of a glorious time, we shed our scuba gear and snorkeled the channel a second time! Without a local guide, it turns out we missed ‘the tunnel’ and the sunken Japanese ship, but even without those extras we still enjoyed one of our dives of a lifetime. After the fact, for any of you planning to follow in our wake, we learned the name of our underwater paradise was Rapichana Reef.
PS The breeze finally filled in and we made our way confidently out of Nono Lagoon and into Marovo Lagoon. At dinner time multiple rain showers were visible on the horizon. They converged over the top of us and poured down buckets of rain. In four hours Rod collected three tons of rain water and our holding tanks were full to overflowing. It rained steadily all night and in the morning from scientific observation of our half full dinghy and formerly empty buckets on deck, we surmised that it rained some four inches overall. Today’s activity – laundry!
