Me
I love diving and I am so glad that my best friend loves it too. There is nothing better than going for a few dives with someone that knows what they are doing.
Today we planned to do four dives at Stuart Cove’s. A 2-tank dive in the morning and then the shark dive in the afternoon. So we packed our bags and headed off early to the Southwest side of the island. It takes about 30-40 minutes to get there. We checked in, boarded our boat and within about half an hour we were heading off to do some dives.
We had hoped to do a wreck dive in the morning, but word from on high – the management – was that we were to go to Razorback Reef and the Southwest Reef. I had never dived Razorback reef and I was excited to see what it was like. This dive was guided so that meant we had to hang around with the other divers. I am not a fan of large guided dives, especially when you have very inexperienced divers in the group. One woman ran out of air 10 minutes into the dive and had to be returned to the boat. I don’t know how she managed that but that has got to be a record. Several other divers were flapping their arms and trailing though the coral beds. I was quite appalled by it all. Some of the worst divers that I had ever seen. We kept ourselves back and above so that we wouldn’t get caught up in their problems. I was quite glad to finish this dive.
The second dive was to Southwest Reef. I have dived here before and it is absolutely stunning! Words can’t describe how beautiful it is. I highly recommend this reef. You could join the guide on this dive if you wanted to or you could swim around by yourselves. We opted for the later and had an amazing dive. As my buddy still hasn’t seen a turtle while diving we tried hard to find one but we were unsuccessful. We did find lots of other fish: trumpet fish, parrot fish, blennies, conch, and lots of beautiful fan coral. We had a fantastic 50 minute dive and reluctantly returned to the boat.
Now it was back to the mainland to change boats, grab some lunch and try and charge my camera’s battery in time for the afternoon dives. Lunch consisted of a cheese-burger, can of coke and a bag of crisps (chips for you Americans out there), the burgers are surprisingly good and definitely help you refuel for a long day of diving.
Back on the boat and this time we are headed out on the Shark Feeding Dive. This trip consists of two dives and the first one took place on a wreck: Ray of Hope. As the dive leader has seen me on several dives there he said that we could go on our own way and not have to follow him around. So when we descended we went to the stern as the rest of the party went to the bow. We had a fun dive swimming around and in the wreck. There was a HUGE grouper, several sharks, lion fish, and a very strange white sea urchin. The surface interval was short as we were close to Shark Arena and the boat arrived at its destination more or less as soon as it took off.
Shark Reef – I was here before. My buddy was so excited and a little scared. But I have to say that he thoroughly enjoyed it. I feel that the experience has given him a new found respect for the shark. Our group was small so that meant we got a really good show. Lots of playing with the sharks and being hit by them. It was really good. Because we had been stationary for most of the dive my buddy didn’t want to get out of the water, he wanted to continue diving and finish off the air in his cylinder.
I have to say that today has been one of the most successful days diving I’ve had in a long time. I had lots of fun and I really enjoyed myself. Tomorrow we are planning on going back and doing another 2 dives with some of the members of the Bahamas Dive Club – we might do 2 more dives after that. We’ll just have to see.
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