Category Archives: SCUBA & Snorkeling

Adventures under the water.

SCUBA Diving Cabrits Point, Dominica

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Yesterday it rained for most of the day. It was a good reason to stay home and do much needed chores. Dominica has a ton of activities to offer, but almost all of them are outdoors, and most involving hiking. In the morning and early afternoon we worked on the bottom and water line. When Christi hopped in, she was horrified. It was the worst she has ever seen it. The grass was thick and long, and there were barnacles galore. She worked on the bottom for 45 minutes, until her tank was empty (the tank wasn’t full when she started). When she came up, Eric decided to give it a go. He hooked up a tank and jumped in. He was in the water a total of an hour. Like Christi, he worked on the bottom until he ran out of air (he also was not on a full tank), then worked on the waterline. The bottom looks a heck of a lot better, but we still have a long way to go. Sigh. The good news is that the water in the bay is amazingly clear. And we are amused to report that we have some fish living under our boat. Check out the beautiful rainbow.

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There are three restaurants that have dinghy docks for the cruisers to use, so we went to one of them for dinner. We both got a conch plate, which was served with an absolutely delicious sauce. The conch was perfectly tender, and not at all rubbery. It was served with mixed veggies, including christophene. It also came with a cooked banana or plantain (delicious), a piece of plain yam and a couple pieces of plain taro (both quite tasteless), lightly seasoned rice, and beans that had a little zest (quite good). It was nice to see such a full plate of food with so many little side dishes. It is almost a Guadeloupe style meal, except in Guadalupe all the sides would have been more elaborate.

 

Check out the pretty sunset from the resturant:

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While on shore, we booked a dive trip for this morning. We grilled the poor owner, asking her dozens and dozens of questions before we committed to diving. She must think we are freaks, but after being so unhappy with our last two dive companies, we figured we were being prudent. The fee was Continue reading →

SCUBA diving around English Harbor

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Today we went diving. We booked with the dive company located in Nelson’s Dockyard. The cost was $89 USD per person since we had our own gear, and without gear it is $110. He swore to us that he is the cheapest dive company on the entire island.

There were four people total, the two of us, a French Canadian, and the dive master. We did our own gear on shore, then all loaded into an 18 foot, open fiberglass boat with an outboard motor. It is the kind of boat locals use for fishing, and hadn’t been customized for diving. There were no tank holders or anything like that; you just kind of threw all your gear in a pile on the floor. This is the first time ever we have been on a dive boat where there weren’t two dive operators, one to stay with the boat and one to go under.

The first dive spot was Continue reading →

Snorkeling and a Concert in English Harbor

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Christi started the morning by scrubbing the waterline. The starboard side had little growth, but the port side had a lot of growth. The growth was fairly thin at the bow and got progressively thicker the farther back on the boat. The port aft quarter of the waterline looks like a carpet. And it didn’t want to come off. She got all the growth off the starboard side and the front half of the port side and had tackled most of the aft half before she decided to take a break. She was tired and the current was picking up. She planned to finish the water line and tackle the metal at 1600, during slack tide.

After Christi had rested for an hour, we decided to go snorkeling. There are some rocks in the southeast corner of the harbor that are supposedly a good snorkeling spot. And since we are anchored so close, it is a short swim from Kosmos.

The ground underneath the anchorage area is mostly that Posidonia grass intermixed in with another thinner, greener type of grass. Near the rocks, the grass vanishes. The rocks have no substantial growth, just small patches of coral and sponges all around. It almost looks like a vibrant reef was completely washed away in a storm and is trying to grow back, except that there is no telltale dead coral around to support our theory. What is interesting is that while the growth patches are tiny, there are lots of different kinds of species. The first photo is of yellow tube sponge. In Deshaies, they were 4 feet tall and came in both yellow and purple. The second photo is also of sponges. We are not sure what this kind is called, nor whether the two different colors are different species.

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In addition to those, we also saw Continue reading →

Diving Aure Thomas and Pointe Ferry, Deshaies, Guadeloupe

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Today we went on the dive trip we mentioned booking a couple of days back. We were really looking forward to the dives, especially because our cruising guide had made the diving sound so great here. It turned out that the diving was nice, but not anywhere near as good as we had expected. Unfortunately, we had a nightmarish experience with the dive company. We’ll start by telling you about the good stuff, the dive sites, first, then go into the saga about the dive company.

Visibility was fairly good, and we were told today is a bad day and it is usually clearer. It was gloomy and raining hard, so there wasn’t a lot of sunlight getting down into water, and there may have been runoff from the shore. The dive sites were Continue reading →