I always wanted to go for a dive with Phil "no-fins" Clayton. He is one of the club's founding members and as the name suggests, a no-fins specialist. No-fins spearfishing anyone? Phil does that.
That elusive Leigh Reef
One bright summer morning, Hillary (our guest from UK), Phil and I launched from Leigh marina in Phil's little boat in near-perfect conditions.
Our only predicament was lack of instruments to find that underwater Leigh Reef. No instruments at all, to be precise - no sonar, no map, no Navionics subscription. We knew it was somewhere there, just not where we were.
We abandoned the search and set up a diving rig in 20-something meters of water for a spot of good old freediving.
Line diving in the sea
Line diving in the open sea is a completely different beast from what we do in the lake. There is chop, current, more buoyancy and a million other little things that kept me anything but relaxed. I did make it to 20m in 22m deep water. It was the deepest I dived in the sea that far (30 easy meters in the lake).
My reward for getting all the way down was a red moki grazing right under the bucket. No kingis, though. I kept diving with confidence all the way to the bottom without a line after that. A small school of demisels kept me company. Still no kingis.
We chased some kahawai, landed 2 and dived some more. Phil is a phenomenal diver. He looks so natural and so relaxed in the water after all his years of training. Dive with him if you get a chance.
A map to the rescue
Not being able to find Leigh Reef was disappointing.
Apparently, if you draw an imaginary line between Cape Rodney and Elephant Point, and then another between Little Barrier and the Matheson's Bay reef, the pinnacle we were looking for would be where those lines cross. I only figured that out after getting back home. How did they manage to find anything at all before GPS is beyond me.
Not a happy ending
The day ended on a dissonant note after an evening visit to the Goat Island Marine Reserve.
The contrast between the reserve and the free-to-pillage remainder of Hauraki Gulf was depressing. Sure, the fish in the reserve is used to seeing humans and come along for a swim, but there is just more life, more reef noise, more action in the reserve.
Evening is the best time to go there as well. It was just before twilight when all the fish were out feeding and we were the only humans in the water. I felt like all the "locals" came to entertain us. Or was it us entertaining them? I wouldn't mind either way.
Big thanks to Phil for taking us out! Looking forward to diving there again.