Commodore
February 26, 2023

Sunday 26 February – refueling while Han and Dani go diving

Dear PolePole fans, once again, I, the Gunner, have been recruited to assist with the blog to help mum with the backlog of entries while we’ve had an action-packed run up to our Pacific departure.

After a great two weeks of celebrations, we were very sad to wish Phoebe goodbye and safe travels as she returns home to New York. Phoebs and Dani somehow ended up flying on different days, so Dani only heads off tomorrow, destined for a rodeo in Houston! Luckily for me, he was keen to dive and we set off for an underwater adventure. Meanwhile, mum, dad and Megan spent most of the day on the boat pootling around and organising things, including overseeing the refuelling, with dad managing to squeeze in the long walk to a beautiful stretch of white beach known as Tortuga Bay, and Megan leaving to organise her gear for her dive (she has opted for the dive at Gordon Rocks, whose famously strong current means it has earned an alternative nickname of ‘the washing machine!!!’)

The day started off early, with myself and Dani nervous about the availability of ‘taxi-aquaticos’ to take us to land. Well, after a 5.50am radio call, we needn’t have worried as this was the quickest turnaround of the taxis so far and we ended up being 30-minutes early for departure (very uncharacteristic for both of us!). Luckily, after 10-years without practice, this gave me plenty time to google the essentials: how to descend, how to ascend, or, more simply, how to scuba dive. Dani has dived much more recently and was also desperate to get in a dive while in the Galapagos, so very sweetly offered to be my buddy as I refreshed my memory.

We joined the rest of our group and headed towards our boat with a great stop at a café for a local breakfast of ‘Tigrilla’ – smashed plantain with gooey cheese, fried eggs and coffee. A delicious and dense start to the day, which certainly helped with our buoyancy control. Our first stop was North Seymour and our instructors gave us a thorough brief as we bobbed around above water. Luckily, I think our poor sea-sick diving partner attracted some great fishes with her regurgitated breakfast, and as we rolled backwards into the water it was like entering an aquarium. We sank down and came to a rest on the sandy ocean floor and were amazed to see thousands of sea grass eels surrounding us, looking exactly as the name would suggest. Our guide described them as ‘raving’ and with their heads bobbing en-synchronised-masse, it was easy to see why! As we floated over them, they retreated into their holes with just their eyes poking out looking at us suspiciously. They were very cute.

We (literally) crawled along the ocean floor, following our guide, as a beautiful hammerhead shark passed just on our right. We swam over a sadly tailless spotted eagle ray gliding along the floor, and bumped into a number of other black-tipped and white-tipped sharks. My favourite sighting of all was a lovely silver fish with yellow eye-lids that took a real fancy to its own reflection in my goggles, and gave me the fright of my life when a dark shadow descended over my goggles as I was surrounded by sharks. He stayed there for a minute or two enjoying his own reflection before moving off. After 46-minutes, we ascended and got back on board the boat.

Our next dive was in Mosquera, another gentle dive with good visibility. We descended and found ourselves a little too close to comfort to some Galapagos Sharks, which Phoebe had kindly let us know just before diving are the man-eating variety! Dani made a great diving buddy throughout the day but I noticed at that point he was particularly attentive and made sure to stick close by (albeit on the shark-free side of me!!!) We skirted along the ocean floor, seeing more eels, countless sharks and weird and wonderful fishes, until we reached a beautiful cliff covered in coral that disappeared into a dark abyss below, reminding us of Finding Nemo. Just as we were about to return to the surface, we spotted a gorgeous bright green eel lurking in the coral and I managed to catch Dani’s attention to point out a beautiful hammerhead shark wishing us goodbye before it dived into the deep. I was feeling very relieved to have brushed up on my diving skills pre-French Polynesia (Wall of Sharks, here we come!) in such a beautiful spot, with Dani making an excellent dive buddy. If you ever end up going to Galapagos, I would definitely recommend Galapagos People in Santa Cruz. That being said, they had all found out about the Kicker Rock drama on the grape-vine and couldn’t believe that we were the local celebrities involved, so I think they treated us with extra caution.

To celebrate, we treated ourselves to two huge passion fruit cheesecake ice creams, with a side of banana bread and the thickest chocolate cake with a 1-inch-thick layer of dulce de leche icing. This was arguably not my best decision 15-minutes before ladies’ night, where the ladies of the ARC gathered for a drinks and dinner celebration. Everyone (except Megan and I) looked very glamorous, and it was great to meet some of the other intrepid ladies crossing the Pacific alongside us. There is just one female skipper, an Italian lady named Cristina, who is particularly impressive. I also managed to massively put my foot in it by innocently asking one of the ladies why she was swapping boats so close to the departure date… turns out there is a bit of gossip!! Outside of ladies’ night, rumour has it that Dani still managed to eat a burger – we will certainly miss our human Labrador on board to hoover up all our food waste.