{"id":15230,"date":"2026-02-17T14:08:28","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T22:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/?p=15230"},"modified":"2026-03-08T18:45:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T02:45:05","slug":"sailing-and-snorkling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/?p=15230","title":{"rendered":"Sailing and Snorkling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Today we sailed for a few hours around the north side of Taha&#8217;a island and ended up on the west side inside the barrier reef and anchored in front of a pearl farm and near a great snorkeling spot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We took the dinghy on a 10 minute ride past a resort with over the water bungallows to get to the spot.  It&#8217;s the most unique snorkeling I&#8217;ve ever seen.  I have a hard time describing it, but basically, the waves crash over the barrier reef, and the water that comes over the reef drains out through a &#8220;river&#8221; that runs through an island.  But the &#8220;river&#8221; is not fresh water, it&#8217;s the ocean water working its way back out to the outlet in the reef.  The result is this ocean river that is a little less than a mile.  You start on the &#8220;upriver&#8221; side and get in, and then the current carries you through this coral forest at about 2 miles an hour.  I&#8217;ve never experienced anything quite like it.  The video does not come close to capturing the beauty of it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/VID_20260217_160821_00_031_2026-02-28_11-06-31_screenshot-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-15232\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/VID_20260217_160821_00_031_2026-02-28_11-06-31_screenshot-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/VID_20260217_160821_00_031_2026-02-28_11-06-31_screenshot-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/VID_20260217_160821_00_031_2026-02-28_11-06-31_screenshot-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/VID_20260217_160821_00_031_2026-02-28_11-06-31_screenshot-1536x864.jpg 1536w, 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https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_135216-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video height=\"1080\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1920 \/ 1080;\" width=\"1920\" controls src=\"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_140406.mp4\"><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_151552-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-15235\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_151552-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_151552-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_151552-768x576.jpg 768w, 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https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_161956-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_161956-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_161956-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162003-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-15237\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162003-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162003-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162003-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162003-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162003-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video height=\"1080\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1920 \/ 1080;\" width=\"1920\" controls src=\"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162109.mp4\"><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162232-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-15238\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162232-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162232-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162232-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162232-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162232-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162403-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-15239\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162403-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162403-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162403-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162403-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_162403-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_163225-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-15240\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_163225-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_163225-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_163225-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_163225-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260217_163225-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today we sailed for a few hours around the north side of Taha&#8217;a island and ended up on the west side inside the barrier reef and anchored in front of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15232,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tahiti-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15230"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15247,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15230\/revisions\/15247"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbranchblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}