Friday Harbor Film Fest | Explorers & adventures feature, The Last Dive

Best of Fest screens free on May 22

||| FROM ELLEN ROBERTS for FRIDAY HARBOR FILM FESTIVAL |||

Friday Harbor Film Festival’s Best of the Fest Series continues with another powerful, inspiring documentary, The Last Dive,
which will be shown Friday, May 22 at 7 PM at the San Juan Island Library and Lopez Center for Community and the Arts. A
pre-recorded interview with director Cody Sheehy will follow the screening. Free and open to the public, no ticket or RSVP
is required. Details are available at fhff.org.

The Last Dive
The Last Dive follows Terry Kennedy — Vietnam veteran, former Hell’s Angel, liveaboard sailor, and unlikely conservationist — on one final expedition to a remote island in the Pacific. His mission: to find Willy, a 22-foot oceanic manta ray who was his closest companion for nearly two decades. Their friendship began in the 1980s off the coast of Baja Mexico, when Willy slapped a wing against the hull of Terry’s sailboat and refused to leave until Terry jumped in. From that first ride across the ocean floor, a bond formed that neither time nor distance could erase.

Year after year, Willy would return — announcing himself with a bang on the hull, then carrying Terry on his back through the depths. Terry, in turn, became Willy’s devoted advocate, helping secure protected marine status for the island and its manta population. Then one day, Willy simply vanished. Terry never got to say goodbye.

Now in his eighties, Terry makes one last attempt to find him — navigating open ocean, aging joints, and the weight of a life fully lived. The Last Dive is a visually stunning film about friendship, the healing power of the ocean, and the things we search for before we say goodbye

Cody Sheehy, Director
Cody Sheehy isn’t just the filmmaker behind The Last Dive — he’s part of the same world the film inhabits. Right now, he’s
anchored in the Sea of Cortez aboard his 47-foot cutter-rigged sailboat, not far from where Terry Kennedy still lives in
Loreto, Baja. He got his scuba certification at Oregon State University during a winter term in the Hood Canal — snowing,
near-zero visibility –and he was completely hooked by the end of it.

The Best of the Fest Series
Each month through September Best of the Fest presents award-winning documentaries along with Q&As with the films’
directors and subjects. Programs begin at 7 pm. All Friday Harbor programs will be at the San Juan Island Library. Lopez
Island programs will be at the Lopez Island Grange, Lopez Center for Community and the Arts, or at the Lopez Island
Library. Since they’re on Fridays, they are a great “date night” activity. Mark your calendar for Snake and the Whale at
the SJI Library and the Lopez Center for Community and the Arts. Check the full schedule at fhff.org.

The Last Dive is presented as part of the 2026 Best of the Fest Series, with support from the 2026 Best of the Fest In-kind
Sponsor: The Journal of the San Juan Islands and 2026 Best of the Fest Series Presenting Media Sponsor: CascadePBS.