BVI SCUBA diving

There is something about us moving the boat to West End on Tortola. The wind starts howling and we keep on thinking we might just blow away! Yesterday being no exception when a wave starting coming through... Actually driving down the West Coast Road this is what it looked like. Certainly did not look very water friendly!


We had been planning on going out for dinner to Pusser's or Jolly Roger at West End, but figured a restaurant with 4 sides was a better call, so off we trudged into Pussers in Roadtown....


Had a few chuckles at dinner. See this WIDE 1 oz plastic container? This is what the milk for the coffee came in! (never mind we asked for black coffee...) we all looked funny at that. Dinner was ok. Not good. Bazza's well done burger was the rawest thing possible, but he hesitated to send it back as it might have taken forever and he was starving and Kevin thought his grilled reuben panini should have actually been grilled instead of cold, but not to be, and he was surprised to find coleslaw instead of sauerkraut on it....


Anyways, backing up a bit here...we did have some nice weather in St Thomas this weekend and got some good diving in. Our friend Chris from Commercial Dive Services came down to dive with us...


And here are some of the treasures. This is a 7 lb cannonball! Yep, a cannon ball. I thought that was neat and was going to leave it down there as I did not want to haul it back, but then thought that Bazza would like it.


He proceeded to outdo me anyways by coming back with an over 20 lb shot bar for cannons! Show off... Inflated his safety sausage to bring the thing back!


We had Torpedo bottles a plenty....


As well as others, some with lots of writing too...




This is a button that Chris found, it has three cannons on it. Fairly neat!


I love the old ladle, and cannot wait to see it when it is all cleaned up. I can just imagine it being all dented from going into great big pots dishing out stew on board ships! Also so exciting finding this stuff....


Bits of pottery, old oar locks, a plate, a cup and odds and ends. Yes, it was fun!

And me going SCUBA diving is a three way win!

1) I get exercise, as let's face it, not a chance in hell I will be getting out on land walking or running here is it?
2) I get pictures for my blog
3) Bazza does not have to listen to me whine about the maintenance for a couple hours every day...

I drove happily from East End down to West End to pick up some mail that someone had brought over for me from the USVI side yesterday, as that then meant I was away from the maintenance zone for another couple hours...Are you seeing a pattern here????

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By the way, before I get into the fish pictures, I have a "friends" week coming up on the boat in july, that i thought was just about filled up, but things happen and now I have lots of room! This is not a charter week per se, but a "hang out on the boat, share expenses, and ok, we will do some fun things and dive too" July 11th to 17th. The price is less then half what I normally charge for a cabin with two people in it, even without the diving thrown in and a couple other things, so you will never get a better deal to come on this yacht. Unless of course, you are my immediate family

I am sure someone wants to come hang out with us in the islands for the week...I will even guarantee you that you do NOT have to do any maintenance! We will have a lot of fun.
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Now, fish pictures. Better then maintenance I suppose!
I am getting to know this little reef out here pretty good. I understand that East End here used to be the main anchorage for Tortola way back when...Who knew?
I found Tulip shells....


And Sting Rays...


This grouper thought he was hiding and I could not see him...


Yeah, and more lobsters then I know what to do with....


But a nice Eagle Ray came swimming by!





Uh oh, I don't think this lobster made it!


More Fish pot art!


And this was Red Rock from various angles....







There were literally hundreds of heart urchins on the grass....


I brought these all up, they were dead, but I just took pictures and threw them back as they never would have cleaned up. Large cowries, unusual to see nowadays, but I am seeing a lot of them here....


This? Who knows, obviously a misfire, just thought it was kind of different...


We are supposed to be getting a lot of rain. We have been waiting and waiting. So far, just blue skies and light wind. We will take that....

I am having one of those "I love my life days, or maybe even a week or two" I had missed being on the water, and being able to explore and get in the water again, for me, was spectacular.

By the way, if this is your boat, I know where it is. It still turns over and everything. We just don't have the time to salvage it!


Although we did go look!


Bazza letting me know he is alright once he body surfed on in to the beach....


Look at the goats and the rather large frigate birds!!


And the Billy Goat!


And the baby birds on the rock, which I zoomed in so are a bit hard to see talked to Bazza the whole time he was there.


I love our power boat for going off on jaunts. I sit up there in the breeze like a puppy being taken for a ride with a big smile on my face!

I found some interesting rock formations to take pictures off... (funny we used to tell students that is what they would see when I was teaching them to dive in Cold Ontario lakes! I think this is a better meaning...)


Went for a snorkel and found Blue tangs....


And more rocks...


And then we went for a SCUBA dive yesterday afternoon and I found an old silver spoon with a marking of 444 on the back. It is old. I have to look it up!


And an old gin bottle...about 120 years old...


It says Herzogthum, Nassau on it! We actually have a few of these now...


This is the view out of our salon hatch two days ago....


And this is the view out of our salon hatch yesterday... Are you maybe seeing a theme here perhaps????? Not much outside work going on!



Occasionally I run across pictures from other people that I go "wow" "I wish I could see that myself to take pictures of" This person was diving in Bali, and I liked their pictures. You can see more here




That is it for today, off to explore and we now have new anchors and chain that are NOT rusty!! Soon to come pictures!

By the way, Beans is moving his show to Leverick Bay on Virgin Gorda next year. Starting January 1st. A good move I would say!

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!