Since the wall behind the boat is so large and expansive, we wanted to explore it some more. Yesterday was another gray day, with frequent showers that brought very heavy rain, which disappointed Eric. He likes to dive when it is sunny and everything in the water is all lit up. But we dove anyway. We did two more dives along the wall, the first dive exploring more to the south, the second dive exploring more to the north. On the first dive we stayed at 60 feet, and on the second dive we went to 70 feet to check out the life a little lower on the wall. On the second dive we experienced just a little bit of current, but none on the first dive. We could seriously dive this spot a thousand times because there is so much to see!
On the first dive we pretty much saw all the same things we mentioned yesterday. In addition, we saw a giant sand dollar, a small little fluorescent purple shrimp, a snake eel, and a couple of those cute tiny little spinyhead blenny that live in tiny little holes. We also saw a couple sea cucumber, which made us realize we haven’t really seen any sea cucumbers in the other dive spots we went to in the Caribbean. Our new little French angelfish friends again followed us closely. They were obviously worried that we didn’t see them, because they got right up in our faces several times. We were disappointed to see a large kitchen sink leaning up against the wall close to town. It is kind of a random place to decide to do dishes.
On the second dive, we again saw most of the same things we mentioned yesterday. We also saw something called a black and white crinoid, which looks like a plant but isn’t. We don’t know what it is, but our chart groups it with sea urchins, sea cucumbers and starfish. Oh, and speaking of sea urchins, the typical black long spine urchins are just about everywhere in the world, here included. But there is also another type of urchin here that is different than anything we have seen before. We also saw hermit crabs, more anemones, and a baby spotted drum. The angelfish again followed us, vying for our attention. We decided to name them Lenny and Squiggy. At one point, we saw some French angelfish chasing each other in circles, clearly playing. Sqiuggy abandoned us and went to play with them for a while. It was fun to watch. But once we stopped watching and moved on, Squiggy was back by our side.
Usually on a dive, we focus on the big picture and often miss minute details. But being as this was the third dive in the same general spot, we really homed in on the details. We realized there is a lot of old trash incorporated in the reef. The vast majority of it looks like lingering remnants from the days before the waters around the island were declared a marine park. Most of the trash has a lot of growth on it, such as coral, sponges, and general algae. The fish happily dart in and out of the assorted pieces of trash, or hide in/under them. It is neat to see that Mother Nature has been able to make use of man’s waste, though granted, had they not put a stop to the dumping when they did, the coral would have died completely when buried under more trash. And also granted, it probably took close to 30 years to fully incorporate the trash into the reef. We are guessing that since we are swimming basically in the heart of town, we’ll see more trash here than anywhere else around the island.
In between dives, we worked on a project that was well over a year overdue: defrosting the freezer. We had never done it before because we envisioned it would take hours and we didn’t know what to do with 5 cubic feet of frozen food. Obviously, during the Atlantic passage, we ate up a big percentage of the contents in the freezer. Since then, we’ve continued to actively eat out of the freezer, and haven’t purchased much freezer foods, so there was finally a small enough quantity of food in the freezer to make the task less daunting.
We turned on the hallway fridge (the one we don’t normally keep on) to the highest setting, then moved all the food from the freezer to the fridge. We knew there was a lot of ice on the bottom, but we hadn’t realized how much food was hidden underneath the ice. We found all kinds of wonderful treasures down there, including a couple packages of our beloved Tim Tams. That is almost as good as finding gold! We had originally thought it would need to defrost for hours and hours, but it turned out that the ice came away easily with a little scraping. Within an hour, we had filled a bucket with about 2 gallons of ice and there was none left in the freezer. We transferred all the food back. Of course, we felt it was necessary to eat some of the ice cream as we worked, just to be sure it didn’t melt. 😉
After the second dive, Christi scraped the metal under the boat some before coming in. The metal was heinous, already completely re-grown from the last time she worked on it less than a month ago. She has realized that the only way to keep the bottom under control these days is to work on it daily. With the warm water, everything grows so darn fast it is unreal!
After Christi finished the metal, we cleaned up and went to shore for dinner. We started talking to the couple at the table next to us, who happen to be from Southern California, too. They told us that the hotel they are staying in specializes in diving for the handicapped. Many disabled people are capable of swimming, and thus in theory should be able to SCUBA dive. However, most dive sites are inaccessible for them because they are difficult to enter. Shore dives are out of the question and most boats can’t accommodate the disabled. This hotel has a nice dock set up that people can jump right off, and they give paraplegic people specially adapted hand fins. There isn’t much current, so someone doesn’t have to be super athletic to do it. Apparently a lot of disabled people go to this hotel to go diving, many year after year. It sounds like an awesome program and we were absolutely fascinated by it.
This morning started out as the gloomiest day yet, with heavy rain most of the morning. It was so bleak that Eric didn’t want to dive. Instead, we spent the morning puttering around the boat taking care of little loose ends. You know, those things that you mean to do but just never get around to doing?
One of the projects was putting straps in the dangerous refrigerator. While we don’t normally keep that fridge on, we do use it for room temperature beverage storage. Eric installed four hooks, then put bungee cords in an X formation across the fridge so that the containers can’t fall out. We forgot to mention that a long time ago we started to keep everything in containers, since it is much easier to stop a few containers from falling than dozens of individual items.
Eric also changed the watermaker oil, a project he has been avoiding since Gibraltar. He thought he was going to have to suck the oil out of the top of the unit, which he dreaded. The good news is that there is a built in hose connected to the bottom of the pump housing, so the oil could be gravity drained. Unfortunately, the way the unit was mounted made getting all the oil out a little tricky because he had to hold the hose at awkward angles, but he eventually got it all out. Getting the oil back in turned out to be the problem. It needed to be fed through the same hose. We don’t have a funnel on board that would fit the hose, so Eric had to improvise. He found a piece of hose that fit both our funnel and the inside of the cap on top of the watermaker unit (where he initially thought he would have to suck the oil out of). He cut the hose to be the right length and was able to fill the oil that way. Once again, due to the awkward location of the installation, getting the oil into the unit was a tight fit. There wasn’t a lot of room for error. The watermaker lives in a small space in a corner of the lazarette, and Eric was hot and cramped as he worked. The oil project left him feeling grumpy and irritable. He was done with chores for the rest of the day.
While Eric worked on the watermaker, Christi made the yams we had purchased in Guadeloupe. She was expecting them to be similar to potatoes, but orange and sweet with a slightly thicker peel. Not at all. They were white and very sticky, with a peel more akin to tree bark than a potato peel. As she peeled, the bark bits would get all over the yams and she had a hard time washing it off. She was using a hand masher, and trying to mash these yams was like mixing concrete. It took more than quadruple the amount of milk and butter that she normally uses in mashed potatoes to get them to soften up enough to be a decent texture. She added a can of sweetened condensed milk, too, which is what she suspected was the magic ingredient in some of the yummiest Guadeloupe root dishes. They came out awesome, but man, were they a lot of work compared to regular mashed potatoes. We have even more respect for the Guadeloupe chefs now.
We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening visiting with the neighboring boats. [31, 32]