BVI SCUBA diving

Remember I said that Bazza had found treasure on the Chikuzen? And that his idea of treasure was NOT my idea of treasure? Here it is! He spent about 5 hours cleaning this up, apparently it is an oiler that drips oil on/in and engine??????????
What can I say??

Richard helpfully offered to peel potatoes for me at dinner (well, not really, he asked if I wanted help and I came up with the potatoes all on my own!) I know he wishes that he had not offered as apparently they do not have a lot of garbage disposals in the UK and he managed to plug up every inch of the line so we had potato peels and water going over every inch of our galley and into the freezer!

Our friend Janice went home to Virginia, it was great to see her and we used it as a great opportunity to do some diving. The last day we took the chance to go to the wreck of the RMS Rhone...I really did not get any good pictures, but I assume they are better then varnishing pictures!

One Angel Fish, and about 12 other boats and divers there! Shock to the system after seeing no one all summer!!

Also spotted an Eagle Ray but he would not even let me get close to him...


I have a silly Kerry story. I am sure I am getting OFD. When we were diving off the back of Round Rock the other day, when we came up and the boat was quite a way away, the girls were waving their fins and their sausages. I had my loud horn, which they did hear, but I know Bazza always tells me the best thing to do is to flash my strobes at them, they pick that up immediately. So I did, several times, and then since I had it on automatic, I could not get a focus for them to fire, so I was trying to point the strobes at the edges of clouds in the sky to get a focus lock so they would fire. Anyone who dives with a camera may rightly ask why I did not just take the half a second to flip the switch to manual fire so it did not need to focus, insteading of what I was doing.
I would ask too and simply call it OFD !!

Since we took some time off scuba diving, there is tons of work to get caught up on now (don't ask me why, but there is.....)

Today mostly you get turtle pictures! I have tons of turtle pictures that i took yesterday. It was being very cooperative!! We motored out to the Chikuzen and managed to do two dives on the wreck...
Here is both Janice and Richard trying to look like underwater models along with the turtle.



This turtle only has three fins! The picture turned out clear, although the water was not that clear!!!

Swam through the schools of fish....

My husband even got into the water, only because he wanted to go explore inside the wreck...One of those "don't try this at home moments"



Richard, of course, had to find small spots to fit himself into as well....

Yes, we are back to Turtles again!



Bazza had told us that he had made it into a crew mess room on the boat, then a galley and that there was wine bottles etc all over the place in there and some floating on the ceiling half full of air. He said it would be easy for us girls to get in there, but not into a couple store rooms he goes to. We followed him and I just about swallowed my reg when I saw the place he wanted me to swim through!! My shoulders did not even fit! I quickly gave up on that and Janice stayed safely outside to help me come out. Bazza hurled bottles at me, and since i already had a camera I passed them on to Janice, who promptly sunk to the bottom under the weight. She said she was very amused watching the whole performance. I have a couple "treasure" pictures that Bazza found in there (in his eyes!) that are not off the camera yet anyways....

There were some funky stingy jellyfish that we did our best to avoid on our safety stop...

And of course, a couple sunset shots. One was at Fallen Jerusaleum and one was at Muskmelon on Guana where we anchored last night...



Janice has kindly brought down CANDY and tshirts for everyone. Richard is posing in his WILDCATS tshirt...(Janice's husband coaches football)

We barbecued steaks last night and Lisa made wedgie potatoes that were pretty darn good!



Today we made it to the wreck of the Rhone to do a dive and now are safety tied back up at dock. Diving done for awhile now!

Round #2 for SCUBA diving today. We had been praying for flat seas but of course, they happened when we were painting. We decided that we would go outside the channel anyways...So we slopped out to our dive spot "the fishbowl" on the outside of Round Rock. It was gorgeous and clear when we entered the water...



There is a great little dive here just at the drop off that shallows out around 90 feet...Lots of ledges to look under as you can see here...



Richard found a barracuda here...

We were doing a live dive and Bazza was right on us. Did not have to worry about not finding the boat!

Really not sure what is happening here, Richie looks like he is doing some silly dance...

We had our share of sharks today, this Bull Shark came right up to Lisa on the safety stop and then did a double take and swam away. I was gesturing madly behind her so she only saw him going away!

Janice is watching the Ocean Triggerfish and Durgeons here, there were many!

We had a short surface interval and then the girls jumped in to do a live dive down the outside of Round Rock, hoping to make it around into the channel and the boat could pick us up there in the calm water...

We had clear water again, and saw maybe half a dozen Hogfish, which are about my favorite...

About 3 little turtles...

Some may remember a couple years ago there was a french cruising boat that hit Round Rock while on passage over from St Martin. They had a small child that was sweptaway. We had not realized that we were going to come across the boat there, a lot of wreckage strewn over a large area...









We saw several more sharks on this dive, this one is a Caribbean Reef Shark. I wish they would stand still so I could take better pictures of them though!!

The terrain here was quite windswept and barren...Not much plant life hanging on...

Our next shark was a Nurse Shark....

There was a ton of current trying to get into the channel on the point, so we settled for doing our safety stop drifting out into the blue sea! I was going to attempt it, but I look around and saw the other two girls standing still in protest! Just for that I will put up a picture of Lisa with her ass going up to the surface as she did not have enough weight once she put on her wetsuit on this dive!!

We are now moored up at Fallen Jerusaleum and we all changed into our pajama's and made caesar salad and cheese fondue for dinner, after two long hard dives today an early bed time is looking like a good idea!

I think I have some random diving pictures from yesterday here in no particular order. We were diving at Blonde Rock, this is Lisa going up to the boat.

A nice little Puffer FIsh

Angel Fish...

Big Crab but it was tough to get in to take a picture of him...

Look how clear the water is!

Lisa diving under some of the ledges...

I don't know whether it was mating season for lobsters or what, they were everywhere, out in the open and quite aggresive! They just looked dinner size to me...





We did find an Eagle Ray that did not stick around...

Lisa again..

This is from when I was diving at Salt Island, there were tons of urchins everywhere.

A little anemone barely hanging on...

A cowfish...

A sting Ray...

A Filefish...

I guess we did a few dives as this is at Vanishing Rocks on the back side of Cooper Island, this little spotted eel was just swimming around in the open...



And just assorted Caribbean Reef Fish!





It was time to go back into Marina then, as we were picking up a friend of Lisa's and mine, Janice, who was coming in for a few days... Busy evening at the airport, Branson et family was wandering around and every large resort seemed to be holding up signs to pick up people... Janice showed up on time...

And Lisa will be very glad to know that I managed to get an "eyes half closed" picture of someone else besides her! Spent the evening visiting and bed by 9 PM as today was going to be a big day of diving!

Hey! I am back...with something other then maintenance pictures! But first a funny story.
Bazza and I spent the day in town yesterday, banks, marine services, trade, boatphone, grocery stores, you know all the fun places! He picks up our renewal license from Marine Services for the boat. When I found him at the car, he says "They messed up on the license, it says we only need a boatmaster rating #2 and a deck rating (which is basically nothing) to run the boat and it is good for 5 years" That was a surprise to me, as that is someone with not a ton of experience to run a boat the size of Promenade, and certainly different then what it usually says on there. Off he goes to the store and I proceed to read out new Marine Services License.

By the time he comes out I am rolling on the floor laughing like crazy. There was more wrong then right on this certificate. Apparently someone could not copy well from the last license.
These items were wrong:

1) Boat name spelt wrong
2) Our gross tonnage was apparently 6 tons
3) Our length is apparently 52 feet
4) They inspected us at Nanny Cay (!)
5) We could only have ten people on board
6) And the manning levels were off...
7) No, we could not be only inspected once every 5 years...

All that, though bad enough was not the best part! I suggested to Bazza that he may want to go right back in to Marine Services as we were only certified as a class 4 vessel. Which basically meant that we could only go 3 miles from safe harbour, in GOOD weather and ONLY in daylight hours!!!!
I did not think it was going to be that handy for a charterboat that aspired to go somewhere further then the channel markers coming into Road Harbour (as long as there were no clouds in the sky!!) never mind staying out overnight!!
And, you wonder why we feel like we are hitting our head against a wall over and over some days?????
Of course when we returned "the girl who types them up" was out to lunch (does not matter what time of the day it was, believe me!) Bazza just asked for a highlighter and gave it back to them. He had mentioned something about tearing it up in there (in frustration) but managed to keep himself in check.
***********
We piled on a bunch of groceries (and managed to get mostly everything we wanted by going to 5 grocery stores....) and WE WERE FREE!!!!! Time to leave dock!!! We sailed (ha, we weren't on charter, not a chance we sailed....) and went over to Salt Island where the anchor was barely down and I was in the water. Only to be greeted by your friendly neighborhood barracuda. I snapped this as soon as I jumped in. He actually startled me.

We see him often here and he likes coming right up to my strobes. I have seen him so much though that I figure he is harmless...

Something I don't spy much when I dive during the day here is a Decorator Crab. He did not like me taking pictures of him with the sponge on his head and was trying to scurry away from me...

Other then that, all the usual suspects were there. A spotted Eel,

Several little lobsters...

A Hind...

The nice little turtle that lives up in a cave at ManHead point and he sat ever so patiently while I took his picture....

Found several Tulip Shells...

An upside down jellyfish and another crab...

My friend the barracuda not liking when I got close to "his" boat again...

A Flamingo Tongue...

An Arrow Crab...

I did not come up until I had to. Richard and Bazza looked like they had been caught doing something naughty, but I think they are sneaking in some more maintenance work when the girls were gone!

A nice little sunset looking down the channel...

This was so cute, Richard was singing "that's amore" to Lisa....aaaawwwww!!

We really pretended we were on charter and barbecued our steaks last night (off charter we tend to do them in the galley, as you know, we would have to clean the barbecue otherwise!) Riteway has some wonderful little Rib Eye steaks that I absolutely love in the meat section, just a bit of montreal steak seasoning on them, and they have enough fat to make them tasty as can be, just in case you are looking for steaks to barbecue while down here....

It is my sister's 40th birthday today! Happy Birthday Syd and welcome to the age that everything falls much more then it already has, and doubly so as everything becomes much heavier with all the weight that piles on the body now! Glad that I will not be the only female in the family now with that pleasure.... I was helpful though, for her Bday, I sent chocolate!! (only because I could not find somewhere that would deliver margarita's!)
Got to love Costco, I can still be happy shopping there even from the islands...

Disappointment reigns supreme on the boat...We are in West Gregory Channel waiting to be hauled, and like boat yards everywhere it has been put off until tomorrow morning, after having to switch all our surveyors and Marine Service Inspections until tomorrow, we have now switched them all back to Wednesday. I was packed and ready to go to a hotel for a couple nights! Oh well, not like we have a shortage of things to do...

It was a pretty day in East End yesterday. Lots of nice blue colors. Bazza and I went looking at a few boats. It happens to me every year at this time, I keep on saying that I want a "go faster" boat, not a "go fast" boat... Mostly for me. I want to be able to throw my dive gear in and get out to the Chikuzen in under an hour instead of 3 in Promenade! I want to be able to run down to St Thomas without it taking all day. What I want varies, depending on what is around and for sale... Every fall I go looking. It is no different this year.

We found a fixer upper under the next dock that is nice and cheap I believe!!!

Pulled off the dock and made our way down to St thomas, and it was a great day, as I was able to go for a dive just on sunset. I had been intending on looking for bottles, but I knew I would not have much luck when I was dropped down and found reef! Saw a couple small Hogfish though, almost my favorite fish and so curious!

I knew I was really out of bottle hunting territory when I came across a wreck way out by the red marker in Charlotte Amalie. About 40 feet of water!




Since I don't know really any of the dive sites down at this end of the US Virgins, I have no idea which one it is. I am sure the local divers do. It was large anyways!!



I believe these are pompano that were on the wreck watching me, and I found a turtle as well that took off as soon as he saw me.

Dead little crab...

Came up just on dark, but just flashed my strobes a couple times and Bazza picked me right up in the dinghy. It is always nice to get in the water, I am hoping and thinking that maybe I will get to jump in this afternoon!