Welcome home everyone who made the trip. We hope that many of you reading this will join us next year when we do this trip again. We all flew into Freeport, Grand Bahama on Saturday, Feb 21 using various airlines including Delta, US Airways, United and American. Everyone made it in with few problems and we used Queenie's taxi to get to Blackbeard's location. On arrival we were met by our crew for the week, Capt. Grayson Miller, Scott the Engineer, Tom the Ass't Engineer, Charlie the cook, Calvin the new deck hand and Patrick the Divemaster. We were on the Morningstar which has been captained by Grayson for the last 5 years. Between them, there were 3 certified 50 ton masters on board, and 3 scuba instructors. We had a group of 9 out of Baltimore, and there were an additional 11 passengers on-board, mostly from Canada and the northern US. I was the only one who had done Blackbeard's before; everyone else was a newbie on the boats. After getting all checked in, paper work completed and our gear stored, we cast off about 3:30pm and were on our 1st dive site at 4:30 pm off Grand Bahama island. We knew this was going to be a good trip when we had 5 sharks in the water on our first dive of the trip. This got everyone very excited at the start of the trip. I'm not going to describe every dive, but give you a general overview. After finishing our 1st dive, the crew set course south for the Bimini island chain and we spent the remainder of the week south of Bimini island making a total of 19 dives with 3 snorkel/skin diving sites thrown in during surface intervals. The walls included some of my favorites including the walls/chutes at Krispy Kreme, shark dives at Shark Junction, Triple 7's and Bull Run, wreck dives on the Miami-Rita, Panther, Bimini Barge and the "U-boat" wreck. The other dives on patch reefs and other sites rounded out the week. The water temperature ranged from 71 to 76 degrees for the week. People generally wore something from 3mm shorty to layered shorties and full suits ranging up to 7mm. Many wore hoods and most wore light gloves. The water actually felt pretty good, but getting out and being up on deck was a little cool with air temps in the 70's and a constant 15-20 knot wind all week long. We had 2-3 foot waves pretty constant while on many of the dive sites, but they always anchored in a protected cove at night, making the boat very comfortable at night. The weather was mostly sunny all week and if the wind had just quit it would have been perfect. If you go this time of year take a long sleeve shirt along with a jacket and long pants to block the wind. Don't forget the sunglasses
and a hat. Several people succeeded in getting sunburned during the days. I'm adding some pictures taken by one of our group to show the weather and sites. While the water wasn't hot it was much better than the quarries back home. The only low point of the week was the trip Thursday night from Bimini back to Freeport. The wind was blowing 20 mph out of the north and the waves on the Northwest Providence Channel had increased to 5-6 feet with some 7-8 footers thrown in. Took us 11 hours to make the crossing from Bimini to Freeport and it could not end soon enough for me. Only time all week I felt seasick. The regional commuter flight from Bimini to Freeport looked better and better every hour. Oh well they call it an "Adventure" don't they. This was my 4th trip on Blackbeard's and the roughest crossing Iv'e had. Grayson said that due to the expected cold front coming down from the states on Sunday, they might not even leave Grand Bahama the following week, which means no shark feed for that week. :depressed:
and a hat. Several people succeeded in getting sunburned during the days. I'm adding some pictures taken by one of our group to show the weather and sites. While the water wasn't hot it was much better than the quarries back home. The only low point of the week was the trip Thursday night from Bimini back to Freeport. The wind was blowing 20 mph out of the north and the waves on the Northwest Providence Channel had increased to 5-6 feet with some 7-8 footers thrown in. Took us 11 hours to make the crossing from Bimini to Freeport and it could not end soon enough for me. Only time all week I felt seasick. The regional commuter flight from Bimini to Freeport looked better and better every hour. Oh well they call it an "Adventure" don't they. This was my 4th trip on Blackbeard's and the roughest crossing Iv'e had. Grayson said that due to the expected cold front coming down from the states on Sunday, they might not even leave Grand Bahama the following week, which means no shark feed for that week. :depressed:
