We have been at the Swain Reefs for 10 days and relishing our time offshore with buddy boat Roobi. We have stopped at six reefs to date, enjoying small hops and sweet little sails. The mosaic of reefs is a place of extremes. As we have said before, the reef can break your heart or blow your mind and we are experiencing both.

This is our third foray to these remote reefs, the first serious one for Roobi. We have included the overview satellite map as a reminder of what the ‘boot’ looks like and where it is located in relation to other familiar spots. The itinerary will come later!

Each day we have a slow sail to our next destination, meandering through the maze of reefs. We drop the pick at our chosen anchorage, fly the drones to check our surroundings from up high, go for a snorkel, catch a feed, then move on the next day, unless we have found a particularly good spot worth staying at for longer, which is happening more as we move north. We are exploring as many different anchorages as we can while the weather allows.

In 2017 the Swain Reefs were devastated by a Crown of Thorn Starfish outbreak. Because of their remoteness, the infestation largely raged unchecked and spread to many of the reefs, particularly in the southern part of the maze. So we have seen expanses of grey, shapeless substrate where hardly anything is left alive. Barren is how we would describe some of the reefs. And to add insult to injury, repeated bleaching finished off what was struggling to recover. It is very sad.

Yet even at the more damaged reefs where anything inside the lagoon has been decimated, such as Horseshoe Reef, on the outside edges there is some recovery.  If you dare to snorkel along the exposed walls or ‘drop offs’, there is life: many fish patrolling the edge, hard coral and some colour brought by Gorgonian Fans and Carnation Coral. We say dare because it can be somewhat daunting. There is strong current, surge, breaking waves, plenty of pelagic fish species patrolling where the depth drops abruptly down to 50m, so not for the faint hearted. The reward though is what you get to see: variety and colour in the coral species, fish abundance.

And then there are the unexpected new finds, the surprises that give you hope. There are not perfect and the good spots are quite localized, but they stand out and are becoming more frequent as we go further north. And when we find these survivors, we linger there for longer just to soak up the riches, which is what we did at Surprise and Isobel Bennett.

Regardless of where we have been, dinners have been tasty with our spearo catching us a variety of nice eating Coral Trout, Sweetlip and Snapper. Painted Crays have featured on the menu too. Chris spots them, Wade spears them!

We had a couple of days of stronger wind so hid at Star Reef, a nicely protected anchorage although the snorkeling was not very inspiring.

It looks like we have a few more good days for our explorations, so we will keep meandering in wonderful isolation further north.

Enjoy the selection of images in this post, and as usual we will share the full cruise story when we get back inshore. See you further along the labyrinth next Friday!