Just returned from St. Croix last night and thought I would post a quick trip report with more to come. I booked my diving with SCUBA and all I can say is they are AWESOME! Very friendly, flexible and went out of thier way to accomodate me. I am planning to go back either the last week of November or the first week of December and I'll definitly dive with them again.
Sunday- Non dive day. Sunday was spent trying to get a rental car, groceries for the room and my t-shirts. The rental car was an issue because I forgot of all things my drivers license! (had the passport). Olympic Rental car let my hubby fax them a copy of my license and I was able to get a car that afternoon. Took a taxi that morning to the dive shop and introduced them to SB. All paperwork done, t-shirts bought and great conversations all around. They really seemed to enjoy my Mom-in-law (84) as well. The shop wasn't able to blend Nitrox while I was there but went out of the way to obtain it from another shop for me and a few other divers.
Monday- Dive Day 1 Sites: Pavillions of Cane Bay and Twin Anchors. First thing that happended was that after several hours of setting up the new (to me) Olympus C-5050 and my new (to me) VX1000 video camera/ housing, I forgot to bring the video. Don't ask me how in the world I could forget something as huge as that video housing but I DID!!. At least I had the camera. Pavillions was an awesome dive. Seas were calm and vis was about 80'. Pavillions is a sloping wall with lots of coral and marine life. The dive boat is great. The hull is painted red and it has a nice shaded area for those of us who are paranoid of the lobster effect. (very fair skin). I think we had 10 divers that day. The boat wasn't crowded at all. Twin Anchors was a great site with lots of coral and marine life. One of the anchors the site is named for is in about 30ft and a great place for a pic or two.
Tuesday- Dive Day 2 Sites: The West Wall of Salt River and Sleeping Shark Hole. Night Dive was at Eagle Ray. I had both the c-5050 and the video camera with me on Tuesday. Yep I'm the one who took up the whole camera bin.
I had not previously dove with the video due to a cold just after I got it so I decided to wait till the 2nd dive to play it safe. Gee I wish I had felt comfortable to take it on the wall dive. The West Wall is just incredible. It's like diving the grand canyon. I was about 4 lbs overweighted and didn't go through one of the swim throughs. I dropped those 4 lbs over the course of the week though. Gonna have to do this dive again!! Sleeping Shark Hole was another great site. The shark wasn't there but there were lobster and a variety of other marine life. I couldn't get my external moitor to work on the video camera for this dive and everytime I looked through the view finder I would start to rise so most of the video was "point and hope". An ok first attemp but definitly needed to take the wide angle kit and get the monitor working. I really liked Dawn (I think her name was) the DM for the trip and decided to swallow my fear and do the night dive at the last minute. Of course this meant double work for the folks at SCUBA because they had already packed up my gear for the night. Did I mention you can leave your gear with them every day and they rinse and hang it up for you. It's even already setup on the boat the next dive. I loved this. Anyway for the unexpected night dive they had to haul my gear back to the boat and set it up again. I was pretty scared and decending in the dark didn't help matters any but once the lights were turned on......OH MY GOD!!!! This was waaaayyy cool! Things did get pretty confusing early in the dive though. One guy's tank was leaking pretty bad and he noticed at about 500 psi so we had to hurry and turn around. No easy feat since we were a group of about 12. Some were with another instructor and a second DM was with our group. We get back to the anchor line and the DM indicates we can stay there while she takes the guy and his buddy up. Ok I'm cool with that but next thing I know I only see the guy next to me. Everyone else seems to be at the surface so we decide to surface too after the safety stop. Ok I'm at the surface with fins off and a bunch of people are going back down. I'm totally confused and decided to be safe and call the dive. Still had a 30+ min first ocean night dive. Worked for me, I don't like to be confused especially in the dark. Still I'm hooked now.
Wednesday- Dive Day 3 Sites: North Star of Cane Bay and Gentle Winds. First thing I did was get on the list for another night dive!! North Star was a great site. As before vis was about 80' and I got much better video with the monitor working. Still got a long way to go with the video though. Best footage was a flounder on a piece of coral that really disguised it. I started getting close to the bottom so the colors were comming out better to. Gentle Winds was probably the best dive site I visited during my 4 dive days in regards to marine life. Here I saw a southern ray on the bottom and had picture perfect footage of it taking off. Well it would have been if I had remembered to push the RECORD BUTTON!!!!!!:06: Saw my first spotted morray and did get some footage of it. Got soooo excited trying to get over to my first turtle that I sucked water up my nose then in my reg and gave up the turtle in favor of caughing my fool head off and getting my act back together.
Thursday Final Dive Day. Sites: East Wall of Salt River and Love Shack. Night Dive site WAPA. I'm all excited about East Wall and looking to get great video. About 86ft I start wondering what's going on with the monitor. If I tilt the camera something in the bottom moves. Hmmmmm......OH SHOOT THERE'S WATER IN THE MONTIOR!!!!. OK I'll just turn it off and shoot the "Point and Hope" method. Ever try to tell the DM there is water in the housing when they are excitedly pointing out somthing for you to shoot? Got much better footage this time until the camera starts acting wierd. Not Good! OK turn off the camera and give it up. Get on boat, open monitor housing and you guessed it, it's dry as a bone. REALLY NOT GOOD!!! Opened up the vid housing and there was some water in there. Not a huge amount but about half a cup. Yep I had a leak somewhere. Tryed cleaning everything and putting it back together. Not easy with a 20lb housing on a moving boat!! Put it in the camera tank and it leaked worse than before. Should have expected that but one can always hope. The camera it'self was fine. Did the most relaxing ocean dive I have ever done because I had no camera of any kind. Gee didn't know what I was missing!!!! Of course now I see all kinds of cool stuff. So that's Macro Diving!! The night dive was just the best dive I have done yet!!! I had my own personal dive master this time because the other 3 divers were with the instructor for a class. I saw a lobster walking, an urchin, several more lobster, a big spotted morray swimming and even an octopus in the open trying to get away from the lights!!!! Saw many other things I don't even know what they are yet. I never said OH Shoot so much underwater in my life!!! That's my first reaction when I get started underwater and the morray and octopus both did a good job of that. Had a 50 min dive and still had 800psi so my air comsumption is getting much better even when I'm nervous.
All and all and awesome week of diving with a great shop and I can't wait to go back. The vis isn't that of Cozumel but it was defnitly good and the diving it'self with the variety of sites, abundance of coral and marinelife I think tops Cozumel. Currently the coral is experiencing bleacing due to a bacteria in the water from the heat but it should recover soon.
Non diving related vacation challenges included no hot water the first night at the hotel (Cheney Bay). They had it fixed the next day. They offered to move us but I refused because I needed the wheelchair access for mom. The no-see-um bugs are horrible there especially if like me you react to them. I look like I have some sort of disease!! The water at the hotel was salty due to the well so we kept 5 gallons of bottled water in the fridge. This worked great for refilling the smaller travel bottles. Worst thing that happend was mom a I were at Point Udal, a very isolated spot when the battery in the car decided to die. After about 15 seconds of OH MY GOD WHAT AM I GONNA DO!!! I pulled the foot off the wheel chair to try beating the battery cables desperatly hoping the car would start. It went from click click to at least turning over but no go. No shade, only the 2 small bottles of water and miles from anywhere to push mom in the wheel chair. Really starting to feel desperate here. Yes I thought about the cell phone first thing but of course in the middle of no where it doesn't get any signal. About half an hour later some very nice tourist came by and took us back to the hotel. What a relief that was!!
Well guess I better get to bed for work in the morning. I'll post pics and some video when I get it put together. Oh I forgot to mention that all that great footage I had even with the leak in the housing doesn't exist......Yep I forgot to push RECORD AGAIN!!!!
Sunday- Non dive day. Sunday was spent trying to get a rental car, groceries for the room and my t-shirts. The rental car was an issue because I forgot of all things my drivers license! (had the passport). Olympic Rental car let my hubby fax them a copy of my license and I was able to get a car that afternoon. Took a taxi that morning to the dive shop and introduced them to SB. All paperwork done, t-shirts bought and great conversations all around. They really seemed to enjoy my Mom-in-law (84) as well. The shop wasn't able to blend Nitrox while I was there but went out of the way to obtain it from another shop for me and a few other divers.
Monday- Dive Day 1 Sites: Pavillions of Cane Bay and Twin Anchors. First thing that happended was that after several hours of setting up the new (to me) Olympus C-5050 and my new (to me) VX1000 video camera/ housing, I forgot to bring the video. Don't ask me how in the world I could forget something as huge as that video housing but I DID!!. At least I had the camera. Pavillions was an awesome dive. Seas were calm and vis was about 80'. Pavillions is a sloping wall with lots of coral and marine life. The dive boat is great. The hull is painted red and it has a nice shaded area for those of us who are paranoid of the lobster effect. (very fair skin). I think we had 10 divers that day. The boat wasn't crowded at all. Twin Anchors was a great site with lots of coral and marine life. One of the anchors the site is named for is in about 30ft and a great place for a pic or two.
Tuesday- Dive Day 2 Sites: The West Wall of Salt River and Sleeping Shark Hole. Night Dive was at Eagle Ray. I had both the c-5050 and the video camera with me on Tuesday. Yep I'm the one who took up the whole camera bin.
I had not previously dove with the video due to a cold just after I got it so I decided to wait till the 2nd dive to play it safe. Gee I wish I had felt comfortable to take it on the wall dive. The West Wall is just incredible. It's like diving the grand canyon. I was about 4 lbs overweighted and didn't go through one of the swim throughs. I dropped those 4 lbs over the course of the week though. Gonna have to do this dive again!! Sleeping Shark Hole was another great site. The shark wasn't there but there were lobster and a variety of other marine life. I couldn't get my external moitor to work on the video camera for this dive and everytime I looked through the view finder I would start to rise so most of the video was "point and hope". An ok first attemp but definitly needed to take the wide angle kit and get the monitor working. I really liked Dawn (I think her name was) the DM for the trip and decided to swallow my fear and do the night dive at the last minute. Of course this meant double work for the folks at SCUBA because they had already packed up my gear for the night. Did I mention you can leave your gear with them every day and they rinse and hang it up for you. It's even already setup on the boat the next dive. I loved this. Anyway for the unexpected night dive they had to haul my gear back to the boat and set it up again. I was pretty scared and decending in the dark didn't help matters any but once the lights were turned on......OH MY GOD!!!! This was waaaayyy cool! Things did get pretty confusing early in the dive though. One guy's tank was leaking pretty bad and he noticed at about 500 psi so we had to hurry and turn around. No easy feat since we were a group of about 12. Some were with another instructor and a second DM was with our group. We get back to the anchor line and the DM indicates we can stay there while she takes the guy and his buddy up. Ok I'm cool with that but next thing I know I only see the guy next to me. Everyone else seems to be at the surface so we decide to surface too after the safety stop. Ok I'm at the surface with fins off and a bunch of people are going back down. I'm totally confused and decided to be safe and call the dive. Still had a 30+ min first ocean night dive. Worked for me, I don't like to be confused especially in the dark. Still I'm hooked now.Wednesday- Dive Day 3 Sites: North Star of Cane Bay and Gentle Winds. First thing I did was get on the list for another night dive!! North Star was a great site. As before vis was about 80' and I got much better video with the monitor working. Still got a long way to go with the video though. Best footage was a flounder on a piece of coral that really disguised it. I started getting close to the bottom so the colors were comming out better to. Gentle Winds was probably the best dive site I visited during my 4 dive days in regards to marine life. Here I saw a southern ray on the bottom and had picture perfect footage of it taking off. Well it would have been if I had remembered to push the RECORD BUTTON!!!!!!:06: Saw my first spotted morray and did get some footage of it. Got soooo excited trying to get over to my first turtle that I sucked water up my nose then in my reg and gave up the turtle in favor of caughing my fool head off and getting my act back together.
Thursday Final Dive Day. Sites: East Wall of Salt River and Love Shack. Night Dive site WAPA. I'm all excited about East Wall and looking to get great video. About 86ft I start wondering what's going on with the monitor. If I tilt the camera something in the bottom moves. Hmmmmm......OH SHOOT THERE'S WATER IN THE MONTIOR!!!!. OK I'll just turn it off and shoot the "Point and Hope" method. Ever try to tell the DM there is water in the housing when they are excitedly pointing out somthing for you to shoot? Got much better footage this time until the camera starts acting wierd. Not Good! OK turn off the camera and give it up. Get on boat, open monitor housing and you guessed it, it's dry as a bone. REALLY NOT GOOD!!! Opened up the vid housing and there was some water in there. Not a huge amount but about half a cup. Yep I had a leak somewhere. Tryed cleaning everything and putting it back together. Not easy with a 20lb housing on a moving boat!! Put it in the camera tank and it leaked worse than before. Should have expected that but one can always hope. The camera it'self was fine. Did the most relaxing ocean dive I have ever done because I had no camera of any kind. Gee didn't know what I was missing!!!! Of course now I see all kinds of cool stuff. So that's Macro Diving!! The night dive was just the best dive I have done yet!!! I had my own personal dive master this time because the other 3 divers were with the instructor for a class. I saw a lobster walking, an urchin, several more lobster, a big spotted morray swimming and even an octopus in the open trying to get away from the lights!!!! Saw many other things I don't even know what they are yet. I never said OH Shoot so much underwater in my life!!! That's my first reaction when I get started underwater and the morray and octopus both did a good job of that. Had a 50 min dive and still had 800psi so my air comsumption is getting much better even when I'm nervous.
All and all and awesome week of diving with a great shop and I can't wait to go back. The vis isn't that of Cozumel but it was defnitly good and the diving it'self with the variety of sites, abundance of coral and marinelife I think tops Cozumel. Currently the coral is experiencing bleacing due to a bacteria in the water from the heat but it should recover soon.
Non diving related vacation challenges included no hot water the first night at the hotel (Cheney Bay). They had it fixed the next day. They offered to move us but I refused because I needed the wheelchair access for mom. The no-see-um bugs are horrible there especially if like me you react to them. I look like I have some sort of disease!! The water at the hotel was salty due to the well so we kept 5 gallons of bottled water in the fridge. This worked great for refilling the smaller travel bottles. Worst thing that happend was mom a I were at Point Udal, a very isolated spot when the battery in the car decided to die. After about 15 seconds of OH MY GOD WHAT AM I GONNA DO!!! I pulled the foot off the wheel chair to try beating the battery cables desperatly hoping the car would start. It went from click click to at least turning over but no go. No shade, only the 2 small bottles of water and miles from anywhere to push mom in the wheel chair. Really starting to feel desperate here. Yes I thought about the cell phone first thing but of course in the middle of no where it doesn't get any signal. About half an hour later some very nice tourist came by and took us back to the hotel. What a relief that was!!
Well guess I better get to bed for work in the morning. I'll post pics and some video when I get it put together. Oh I forgot to mention that all that great footage I had even with the leak in the housing doesn't exist......Yep I forgot to push RECORD AGAIN!!!!
