Better late than never! These are basically my notes from my dive log for this trip. Hopefully the detail will help those who are contemplating a Grand Cayman trip in the future:
As a prelliminary, travel to GC is [usually] a snap. I leave from Knoxville, Tennessee, connect through Atlanta, and am on the island by 12 or 1:00. Thus, I almost always have been able to dive the day I arrive, which is great for checking out equipment and remembering how to dive before getting on a dive boat the next morning.
The first dive was on Wednesday, February 20, 2008, shore dive at Sunset Reef, wearing 20 lbs of weight with 3000 in the tank to start and 500 at the end. Because the Sunset Divers' cylinders are only 72 cu. ft., as opposed to the 80 cu. ft. cylinders, it’s much more difficult to strap the BCD securely around it. Often, the tank will slip out of the strap during the dive. Tip: Get the strap wet and then tighten like hell; then hope for the best.
For this dive, I chose not to use the dive skin underneath the wetsuit. It was OK, with only a little transient coldness around the ankles and wrists.
Neither Glenn [Dive Buddy #1] nor I ever have a good feel for the Reef and how to get around it. We always get lost, even after diving it probably 10 times in the last few years. Therefore, we went straight out, like we were told by Tom at the dive shop. We were supposed to go out to the Reef and turn right, which would take us to the Mermaid. Crazily, the dive shop guys do not seem to have compass headings, either to the Nicholson or to the mermaid. Frustrating.
We followed Tom’s directions, but immediately got lost, anyway. By the time we did find some sort of a reef at about 40 feet depth, I realized that my tank had come loose and was just hanging from the regulator. Glenn tried to shove it back up into the strap, and in fact, I got down on the bottom and tried to hold onto some rocks to give him a more stable surface to push up on. He had only limited success, because every time I did any sort of movement thereafter, the tank came loose.
The Reef looked in pretty good shape, but we never did find the Mermaid. Finally after the second time with the tank coming loose, Glenn noticed a stream of bubbles coming from the joint where the tank meets the valve assembly. We decided to turn back at that point. We finally surfaced about 50 yards to the north of the exit point and essentially surface swam back to the ladder. Ultimately, the tank came loose yet again (twice) while I was trying to come up the ladder, so I just came up the ladder with the tank hanging down by the BC.
Dinner that night was at Edoardo’s, which has sadly slipped in quality, if not in price. I had the mussels as appetizer, and they were OK, but nothing special. Glenn got mussels as a main course, and they were inedible. He was very worried that the seven or eight he ate would make him sick; they didn’t, fortunately. They did take the mussels off the bill, but it cost me about $100 for a meal that, frankly, wasn’t worth it. We did go out to the parking lot to look at the total lunar eclipse that was happening.
The next morning, February 21, 2008, was with Sunset Divers. The first dive was on the southwestern side of Grand Cayman, at Big Table Rock. In my experience [12 trips in the last 9 years], this area is almost never dived. That's cool; I like to go where others tend not to go.
Again, I was wearing 20 lbs, started with 3000 psi, ended up with 600. There was a fairly robust current running from the shore, away from the shore, directly out from the shore. That caused the dive to be fairly strenuous, at least for me.
This is a dive where you come right down on top of the “Big Table Rock” and then swim around sandy bottom at around 100 feet. The coral looked nice, and my tank stayed in the strap, which was nice as well. Saw a parrotfish, a blemise, that neat fish that’s dark blue with the sparkles (I don’t know the name).
The second dive that day was at Smith Cove which is also on the southwestern side. It’s a much more shallow dive, obviously, with a couple of nice, though short, swim-throughs. I did notice a neat little critter on the sand at about 45 - 50 feet, something like that. Tom and Sam were the dive masters on the Eagle Ray. Sam is from Texas, Tom is obviously British, based on his accent. Tom told me it was called a nudibranch. It kind of looked like a spotted eel, all flattened out, crawling along the sand with little protuberances sticking up around his more or less oval shaped body with a dark green mottling with lighter spots coloring. Tom thought it was fairly noteworthy what I found, and actually went and got some of the other divers who were shooting pictures to come over and photograph the creature.
The third dive on February 21, 2008 was a shore dive at Sunset Reef, with Richard Bailey [Dive Buddy #2], diving with 20 lbs, started with 3000 psi, by the time we surface swam out to the buoy where the Nicholson is, I only had 2600 left, apparently I blew 400 swimming the last 50 yards to the buoy.
There was a fairly significant south to north current which made it more difficult to get out to the buoy. There was a single masted sail boat moored to that buoy. The people on the boat didn’t offer us any help, which was unfortunate especially because Richard was having problems with his tank strap and his tank coming off. He is a lot more comfortable getting out of his gear while in the water. He took his whole BC off and was just floating there trying to push the tank back up into the strap...something I wouldn’t do unless it was a severe emergency.
After taking a couple of minutes to catch my breath, we descended in relative murkiness to the Nicholson. Visibility was better once we got down to the LST itself.
The Nicholson was the Nicholson, it’s a wreck and not a very interesting one at that. We swam around that a little bit while I played with my buoyancy trying to get neutral with all the weight. Richard seemed comfortable, his trim looked good, he wasn’t flailing a bit. He looked very comfortable.
After we swam around the Nicholson a little bit, we headed out at a left hand diagonal angle towards a coral head I saw in the distance. We were swimming over sand. There were many of those funky sand eels that stick up out of the sand but pop back into the sand when one approaches them. Fairly common around GC, but still neat.
At least my navigation was good because we came right up on the Mermaid, which emerged out of the murk somewhat magically. Anyway, back to the dive. We saw the Mermaid, swam around it a little bit then we headed off on a bearing of 140, hopefully to go back to the entry point.
The coral was in pretty good shape. There was a queen angelfish that was following us around; a couple of parrotfishes. New divers to Sunset Reef take note: you can see some of the biggest parrotfish ever around here. I've seen them 4 to 5 feet long. Enormous!
Richard said he saw a couple of neat little shrimp, which I did not see, but at the same time I was fighting the current and also using Glenn’s split fins for the first time. I found the split fins to feel lighter on my feet but my right knee was still hurting when I was kicking with the knee. I found it much more comfortable to kick from the hip with my knee locked. It seemed to give me sufficient power even though fighting a current is always in vain.
After gradually ascending the coral wall, and essentially doing a safety stop as we were finning, I saw a splashing against the shoreline, but I didn’t see the ladder that signifies the entry point. So, we were at about 7 feet at that point, so I motioned to Richard to hang tight and I just came up the last 7 feet to see where the heck we were. As it turns out, we had overshot the entry point and were by the big oil tanks. Fortunately however, the south to north current helped move us back towards the entry point.
I descended to maybe ten feet because that is a lot less strenuous then trying to kick on the surface on my back. After a minute or two of this, I saw some disturbance: the water was being kicked up off to my right. I pulled my head above the surface and found that one of the Sunset Divers boats was up at the dock apparently picking up night divers and we were swimming right into the propellers. I managed to get Richard’s attention using my tank banger, and we gave the prop and the boat a wide birth.
When we finally got back to the ladder, I was down to about 650 on air, Richard had a lot more, but I was as winded as I have been in some time. I was more winded on that first Cozumel dive in December, but we were both breathing real hard when we got out of the water.
On Friday, February 22, 2008, first dive was at Trinity Caves, at our request. Trinity is one of the grandaddy dives on the West Side. Peter Milburn, the dean of Cayamanian divers, once showed us 12 different species of coral on our first Trinity dive.
It is a pretty long boat ride from Sunset House, about 30-40 minutes. The day started out overcast, so the water itself was inky blue when we first got in. To avoid overexertion while surface swimming to the mooring line, I went ahead and descended right after jumping in and just stayed underwater, meeting the rest of the divers at about 25 feet. The bottom of the mooring line is about 50 feet. We then went to the right of the mooring line into the first set of swim-throughs. The hallmark of Trinity Caves is the swim throughs.
I was stuck, as I have been through most of these dives with the lack of mature fish. Every now and then you’ll see a parrotfish or a queen angelfish. Generally speaking, there is a fair amount of yellowtail snapper as well as some immature chromis as well as squirrelfish and red grouper.
The swim throughs were great as usual, although carrying the 20 lbs, I seem to have no end of trouble maintaining a neutral buoyancy at various depths. After 2 or 3 of the swim throughs, which went down as deep as close to 100 feet, we emerged through a chute-type exit. I was following Glenn and Richard was behind me. Unfortunately, while Glenn was waiting for us to get through the swim-through and up though the chute, he did not notice that the rest of the divers descended, or popped down, into another swim-through. For some reason at that point, Glenn didn’t want to go down into that last swim through, so we just swam above, following the bubbles from the other divers. All and all it was a fine dive. One note is that my computer keeps showing the temperature as 81 degrees while Glenn’s computer and Richard’s computer are showing a wide variation down to the high 70's, 76, 77, that kind of thing.
The second dive was at Armchair Reef, which is a dive we have done before, it seems to be a Sunset House favorite - probably because it’s fairly close to the dock. Again, there was an abundance of yellowtail snapper, no real critters to speak of. It strikes me that on a previous dive I did see a green moray eel at one point; I couldn’t find the eel on this particular dive. Nevertheless, it was a fun dive. It is frustrating, however, that the 72 cubic foot tanks limit your dive time a little bit, it’s about 10% less air than the more standard 80 cubic foot tanks.
(See next Post for Part 2)
As a prelliminary, travel to GC is [usually] a snap. I leave from Knoxville, Tennessee, connect through Atlanta, and am on the island by 12 or 1:00. Thus, I almost always have been able to dive the day I arrive, which is great for checking out equipment and remembering how to dive before getting on a dive boat the next morning.
The first dive was on Wednesday, February 20, 2008, shore dive at Sunset Reef, wearing 20 lbs of weight with 3000 in the tank to start and 500 at the end. Because the Sunset Divers' cylinders are only 72 cu. ft., as opposed to the 80 cu. ft. cylinders, it’s much more difficult to strap the BCD securely around it. Often, the tank will slip out of the strap during the dive. Tip: Get the strap wet and then tighten like hell; then hope for the best.
For this dive, I chose not to use the dive skin underneath the wetsuit. It was OK, with only a little transient coldness around the ankles and wrists.
Neither Glenn [Dive Buddy #1] nor I ever have a good feel for the Reef and how to get around it. We always get lost, even after diving it probably 10 times in the last few years. Therefore, we went straight out, like we were told by Tom at the dive shop. We were supposed to go out to the Reef and turn right, which would take us to the Mermaid. Crazily, the dive shop guys do not seem to have compass headings, either to the Nicholson or to the mermaid. Frustrating.
We followed Tom’s directions, but immediately got lost, anyway. By the time we did find some sort of a reef at about 40 feet depth, I realized that my tank had come loose and was just hanging from the regulator. Glenn tried to shove it back up into the strap, and in fact, I got down on the bottom and tried to hold onto some rocks to give him a more stable surface to push up on. He had only limited success, because every time I did any sort of movement thereafter, the tank came loose.
The Reef looked in pretty good shape, but we never did find the Mermaid. Finally after the second time with the tank coming loose, Glenn noticed a stream of bubbles coming from the joint where the tank meets the valve assembly. We decided to turn back at that point. We finally surfaced about 50 yards to the north of the exit point and essentially surface swam back to the ladder. Ultimately, the tank came loose yet again (twice) while I was trying to come up the ladder, so I just came up the ladder with the tank hanging down by the BC.
Dinner that night was at Edoardo’s, which has sadly slipped in quality, if not in price. I had the mussels as appetizer, and they were OK, but nothing special. Glenn got mussels as a main course, and they were inedible. He was very worried that the seven or eight he ate would make him sick; they didn’t, fortunately. They did take the mussels off the bill, but it cost me about $100 for a meal that, frankly, wasn’t worth it. We did go out to the parking lot to look at the total lunar eclipse that was happening.
The next morning, February 21, 2008, was with Sunset Divers. The first dive was on the southwestern side of Grand Cayman, at Big Table Rock. In my experience [12 trips in the last 9 years], this area is almost never dived. That's cool; I like to go where others tend not to go.
Again, I was wearing 20 lbs, started with 3000 psi, ended up with 600. There was a fairly robust current running from the shore, away from the shore, directly out from the shore. That caused the dive to be fairly strenuous, at least for me.
This is a dive where you come right down on top of the “Big Table Rock” and then swim around sandy bottom at around 100 feet. The coral looked nice, and my tank stayed in the strap, which was nice as well. Saw a parrotfish, a blemise, that neat fish that’s dark blue with the sparkles (I don’t know the name).
The second dive that day was at Smith Cove which is also on the southwestern side. It’s a much more shallow dive, obviously, with a couple of nice, though short, swim-throughs. I did notice a neat little critter on the sand at about 45 - 50 feet, something like that. Tom and Sam were the dive masters on the Eagle Ray. Sam is from Texas, Tom is obviously British, based on his accent. Tom told me it was called a nudibranch. It kind of looked like a spotted eel, all flattened out, crawling along the sand with little protuberances sticking up around his more or less oval shaped body with a dark green mottling with lighter spots coloring. Tom thought it was fairly noteworthy what I found, and actually went and got some of the other divers who were shooting pictures to come over and photograph the creature.
The third dive on February 21, 2008 was a shore dive at Sunset Reef, with Richard Bailey [Dive Buddy #2], diving with 20 lbs, started with 3000 psi, by the time we surface swam out to the buoy where the Nicholson is, I only had 2600 left, apparently I blew 400 swimming the last 50 yards to the buoy.
There was a fairly significant south to north current which made it more difficult to get out to the buoy. There was a single masted sail boat moored to that buoy. The people on the boat didn’t offer us any help, which was unfortunate especially because Richard was having problems with his tank strap and his tank coming off. He is a lot more comfortable getting out of his gear while in the water. He took his whole BC off and was just floating there trying to push the tank back up into the strap...something I wouldn’t do unless it was a severe emergency.
After taking a couple of minutes to catch my breath, we descended in relative murkiness to the Nicholson. Visibility was better once we got down to the LST itself.
The Nicholson was the Nicholson, it’s a wreck and not a very interesting one at that. We swam around that a little bit while I played with my buoyancy trying to get neutral with all the weight. Richard seemed comfortable, his trim looked good, he wasn’t flailing a bit. He looked very comfortable.
After we swam around the Nicholson a little bit, we headed out at a left hand diagonal angle towards a coral head I saw in the distance. We were swimming over sand. There were many of those funky sand eels that stick up out of the sand but pop back into the sand when one approaches them. Fairly common around GC, but still neat.
At least my navigation was good because we came right up on the Mermaid, which emerged out of the murk somewhat magically. Anyway, back to the dive. We saw the Mermaid, swam around it a little bit then we headed off on a bearing of 140, hopefully to go back to the entry point.
The coral was in pretty good shape. There was a queen angelfish that was following us around; a couple of parrotfishes. New divers to Sunset Reef take note: you can see some of the biggest parrotfish ever around here. I've seen them 4 to 5 feet long. Enormous!
Richard said he saw a couple of neat little shrimp, which I did not see, but at the same time I was fighting the current and also using Glenn’s split fins for the first time. I found the split fins to feel lighter on my feet but my right knee was still hurting when I was kicking with the knee. I found it much more comfortable to kick from the hip with my knee locked. It seemed to give me sufficient power even though fighting a current is always in vain.
After gradually ascending the coral wall, and essentially doing a safety stop as we were finning, I saw a splashing against the shoreline, but I didn’t see the ladder that signifies the entry point. So, we were at about 7 feet at that point, so I motioned to Richard to hang tight and I just came up the last 7 feet to see where the heck we were. As it turns out, we had overshot the entry point and were by the big oil tanks. Fortunately however, the south to north current helped move us back towards the entry point.
I descended to maybe ten feet because that is a lot less strenuous then trying to kick on the surface on my back. After a minute or two of this, I saw some disturbance: the water was being kicked up off to my right. I pulled my head above the surface and found that one of the Sunset Divers boats was up at the dock apparently picking up night divers and we were swimming right into the propellers. I managed to get Richard’s attention using my tank banger, and we gave the prop and the boat a wide birth.
When we finally got back to the ladder, I was down to about 650 on air, Richard had a lot more, but I was as winded as I have been in some time. I was more winded on that first Cozumel dive in December, but we were both breathing real hard when we got out of the water.
On Friday, February 22, 2008, first dive was at Trinity Caves, at our request. Trinity is one of the grandaddy dives on the West Side. Peter Milburn, the dean of Cayamanian divers, once showed us 12 different species of coral on our first Trinity dive.
It is a pretty long boat ride from Sunset House, about 30-40 minutes. The day started out overcast, so the water itself was inky blue when we first got in. To avoid overexertion while surface swimming to the mooring line, I went ahead and descended right after jumping in and just stayed underwater, meeting the rest of the divers at about 25 feet. The bottom of the mooring line is about 50 feet. We then went to the right of the mooring line into the first set of swim-throughs. The hallmark of Trinity Caves is the swim throughs.
I was stuck, as I have been through most of these dives with the lack of mature fish. Every now and then you’ll see a parrotfish or a queen angelfish. Generally speaking, there is a fair amount of yellowtail snapper as well as some immature chromis as well as squirrelfish and red grouper.
The swim throughs were great as usual, although carrying the 20 lbs, I seem to have no end of trouble maintaining a neutral buoyancy at various depths. After 2 or 3 of the swim throughs, which went down as deep as close to 100 feet, we emerged through a chute-type exit. I was following Glenn and Richard was behind me. Unfortunately, while Glenn was waiting for us to get through the swim-through and up though the chute, he did not notice that the rest of the divers descended, or popped down, into another swim-through. For some reason at that point, Glenn didn’t want to go down into that last swim through, so we just swam above, following the bubbles from the other divers. All and all it was a fine dive. One note is that my computer keeps showing the temperature as 81 degrees while Glenn’s computer and Richard’s computer are showing a wide variation down to the high 70's, 76, 77, that kind of thing.
The second dive was at Armchair Reef, which is a dive we have done before, it seems to be a Sunset House favorite - probably because it’s fairly close to the dock. Again, there was an abundance of yellowtail snapper, no real critters to speak of. It strikes me that on a previous dive I did see a green moray eel at one point; I couldn’t find the eel on this particular dive. Nevertheless, it was a fun dive. It is frustrating, however, that the 72 cubic foot tanks limit your dive time a little bit, it’s about 10% less air than the more standard 80 cubic foot tanks.
(See next Post for Part 2)
