Today was amazing. We paddled 14 km (8.5mi) around the lagoon, out of the lagoon and into the open ocean. We did outside reef paddling downwind and mat even saw three sharks. one of them was right between us as I was learning to stand up paddle surf shoulder waves.. no pressure haha. we also did underwater surfing (dolphin surfing) and on the swim from the lagoon out to the left break mat saw two smaller reef sharks. now mat is not scared of sharks, i am not so much either, esp the black tip reef sharks.. but mat said to be careful of my arms because in white water the sharks might bite them thinking that they are fish haha. well then, i did keep my eye out for the sharks during that session lol. but actually i was more interested to just see a shark again out here. i saw some mega big fish in the pass channel, and a ton of colorful tropical fish in the surf zone on the reef. the fish dont seem to care at all if we are near them. they are just going about their lives, picking food off the reef and could care less if we snorkel around them. this area is also very turbulent because it is shallow and the waves go right over you here (see underwater pics below). i want to go back and take a lot more fish photos.
The paddle after we dove was pretty hard. its so choppy and you have the ocean swells coming by at a weird angle that just makes it hard to stand up on the board. after some tips from mat i got better at it and even started to ride the downwind waves pretty well. we were looking for whales because sometimes they are known to come up to that area with their babies, but we didn't see any.
the paddle back was done in the lagoon, except the wind was much stronger than we expected haha. we stopped at the sandbar in the lagoon to chill, and then made the 1 hr paddle back up wind. i slept pretty good last night haha. I rode the oc1 back in and mat took over the nuifourteen sup in.
after the ocean session we hung out at the house and then went out to test the kite and gopro. it worked so good!! can't wait to get it over the water and some coral. hopefully we dont lose another gopro like the last time we used a kite haha.
we also went over to the factory and Yvon made us a new kite string spool. i got to play with his dog named Are, who is so playful and friendly. you simply say her name and she starts to roll excitedly under you. We grabbed some mangos from the tree and then went over to Yannicks house to say hi.
Yannick is a older guy but wow, he has charged in his whole life on every water board sport. right now he is injured so hopefully he will be back in the water soon once he heals. at his house i saw pics of him doing kite surfing in triple overhead teachupoo, where his kite lines are dragging through the lip of the wave.. and similar sized barrel shots of him SUP surfing the same wave.
At night we chilled and crashed early, i was pretty tired and sunburt from all the sun time haha.
Dinner was corned beef, pasta and cheese. pretty good! i slept good! minus the cat jumping onto me a few times haha.
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