Our next dive would be a nice easy drift dive on ‘North Save-a-Tack’. During the dive briefing, James took the time to drawl a very detailed map of the dive site on the briefing board. This would give us a better idea of where the current would take us and what we should be looking for during the dive. The map looked more like an obstacle course than a drift dive, but you have to figure that these guys have done this before… right?! We dropped in on the seaward side of the channel and found ourselves on a beautiful bottomless wall at around 100 feet of depth. As we drifted along the wall we saw all sorts of small critters and schooling fish; there was even a small White Tip Shark hiding in a small cavern under an outcropping on the wall.

A view of Namena Island from North Save-a-Tack Passage.

We quickly came upon the cut-out or channel in the wall that James had mentioned earlier in the briefing. You could easily see the white-sand seafloor that gently sloped upward and onto the reef which we were suppose to follow for the next leg of our tour. Before moving on with the dive, we spent a few minutes hanging out on the corner of the wall taking pictures of the schools of Barracuda, Jacks and Tuna that were every where. We also spotted several Gray Reef Sharks and a couple of large White Tip Sharks patrolling the waters just off the wall.

The underwater archway at North Save-a-Tack

Moving along we came to our next turn at a set of bommies which were spanned by a large arch-way. Here we found several species of colorful Butterfly Fish, Spotted Sweetlips, Angelfish, Lion Fish, large Triggerfish and a variety of small gobies. After swimming under the overhang and snapping off another 50 to 60 pictures we continued along the navigationally challenging course that James had laid out for us earlier and finally found ourselves back at ‘Kansas’ where Sam was waiting to pick us up with the skiff. This was a really fun dive… we have to do it again!

A small adult Lion Fish at the archway

Julie at the ‘Kansas’ bommie!