SCUBA diving around English Harbor

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

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

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

Diving and Exploring Tunis & the Coast

Today we started the day by going diving. The dive center is near the marina office. We met at 0800 and piled into a large speedboat. The boat took us out about 15 minutes away from the marina to a site called Rochio Venus. It is a nice dive site, with excellent visibility and warm water.

Like in Greece, there isn’t a whole lot of color in the water here. There is a plant we believe is called Posidonia that dominates the area. Posidonia looks like thick, long grass. It is green near the roots, but turns white higher up on the grass blades. We saw it in Crete, as well, but there is not very much of it there. Eric said he felt like we were flying above grain fields.

In and amongst the Posidonia is a round, green, delicate plant about the size of the top of a soda can that looks like a green flower. There is also a Continue reading