You will probably be able to tell right away that I took my big camera in the water this afternoon...The quality just cannot be beat of the pictures! I made myself do a ton of work (including the newsletter I posted on the Flying Cloud before this) before I let myself go for a dive this afternoon. I almost said "to hell with it, I will play Scrabble or Wordscraper or something instead" but did go. One thing that Salt Island is always good for is ANEMONES, and they are some of my favorite to photograph. Not many colorful ones this afternoon, mostly in the yellows. I like the purple ones.



Mostly you get some fish portraits today, not much in the story line. This little Angel Fish did not like me around, so he was peeking out.

I could tell I had not been in the water for awhile with my big camera, I was up, I was down, I was filling my BC, dumping it out, and STILL kicking the hell out of the sand as you can probably tell on this little eel picture that I tried to take...

I like these Hinds, they just kind of sit and look at you.

A nice little Ray.

And one pain in the ass large Remora who would not leave me alone! They like to attach on you, which is not that interesting when you are trying to take pictures. So, I took pictures of him instead...



As you can see lots of pictures, as when he was around, I was not getting too much else!



I was happy as can be when he left. Although, I did find it odd that he took off so quickly as they normally don't, but I found out that Bazza had jumped in the water and it found him and kept on pulling the hairs on his legs instead! These shrimp are on this plant/animal whatever it is a lot. Maybe some one else knows what they are called.

Usually the Triggerfish do not sit too still for me, but I had several good pics of them today. They sure have some chompers on them!



And a nice little upside down jelly fish. One of my favorites as well.

Then I ran into the monster that took away my remora as I was about to leave the water...

He swears that there was an old wreck down there, as he has found quite a few things right where we are anchored over the years. He came back with a couple things to show me...

We have a couple flatirons that we have found over the years on land, but I believe this one is even older. It is a coal iron! They used to put hot coals in it to iron with. I am not sure why in the world they bothered with ironing back then, I can't even do it now!

This is a beautiful old piece of pottery with pictures on both sides.

And here is a close up of the Mallet we found yesterday!

All in all a very nice Sunday afternoon dive, and now for our viewing pleasure we get to take Survivor, which I downloaded last night to bed to watch! Yippee!

September 28th, 2008 Update

It has been awhile, but when you combine off season with being in the Caribbean, things move slow. We have had enough people searching the horizon expecting The Flying Cloud to be coming around Round Rock any second, that an update is in order.

When we first started working on obtaining the Windjammer Flying Cloud to sink in the British Virgin Islands, almost a year ago, it was tied up at a dock in Trinidad, with the Marine Museum, who did not want it. Windjammer, the corporation, thought that it was a great idea for her to come home to be sunk in her "home waters" and basically told us we could have it for a dollar. This is what she looked like at the time.

Of course, the Windjammer Corporation ceased operation and somehow, in the midst of all that, the Flying Cloud was sold to a scrap dealer. We re-examined our plans for obtaining her, and decided that even if we had to pay scrap price for her, that it was an important ship to obtain in the British Virgin Islands. At that point, we came to an agreement with the scrap dealer on price and hired a Trinidadian lawyer to take care of our interests. We also, sent Kevin Rowlette of Husky Salvage down to take pictures and to give us a status report, as the scrap dealer, alluded to there having been some vandalism on the ship and the front was a "bit underwater". Our agreement with the scrap dealer was for the price to be paid upon the Flying Cloud being pumped out and floating. You can see here that the Flying Cloud was, indeed, a "bit underwater"!

In some ways, this potentially saved us money, as the rigging was already taken off, you can see it below stored in the yard, and a portion of the ship would have been cleaned out. If you can call sitting in the mucky waters of Trinidad cleaned out! We knew once it was up and floating, we would be able to get it hauled at Burkes yard down there, and patch it enough for us to tow it back to the BVI. This was already agreed upon.

It was disheartening for us to see what damage had been done to the Flying Cloud in the few months since we started the project. However, it is in a murky, dangerous, commercial area of Trinidad where you have NO visibility in the water. We also knew that they would be eager to get it up and out of there as it is blocking a commercial dock and the yard owner, and indeed the Ports Authority have given a directive that it needs to be gone.

We had no plans to bring the Flying Cloud up to the BVI until after hurricane season ended this year, so we had lots of time. Toward the end of August, The scrap dealer had health problems etc and had given it a good attempt to get it off the bottom, tried for a month, backwards and forwards. Each time they would make a bit of progress and the water level would come down, something would implode (ie one of many doors on the main deck) and they would be back to square one. He has given up and says he cannot get any further.

So, what is our next step? We know that we can get it off the bottom, it is just a matter of how much money it will cost us. We are looking at our options.
There are some commercial divers in Chaguaramas, who have been working on a barge in Montserrat, and have agreed to give it a look when they get back and see what they think. As they work out of the Trinidad area, we think that their local knowledge will give us some options.

Other obstacles: We had originally thought we were getting it floating on a mooring for a dollar. Then we were paying the scrap value upon floating, no floating ship, no payment. With the price of steel going up, we may have to pay more for it as it is worth more, from the scrap dealers point of view. We now additionally have to pay to get if off the bottom.

This is where we are sitting now with our project. We are still very enthused and eager to move forward. Our original estimation was that it was going to cost us around a hundred thousand dollars for the project. Now, we are not sure. We have raised quite a bit of money for our project, from private donors as well as all members of the BVI SCUBA Organization. It is important for everyone to know that ALL private donations are sitting in our 501 (c) agents non profit account. They will be returned IF we cannot move ahead with the project.

If anyone has any expertise and/or ideas to help us meet our goal, please let us know! We have received a lot of positive encouragement and support from individuals, BVI Government and Media.

From the August Issue of All at Sea

From The August Issue of the Caribbean Compass

From the August Issue of the BVI Yacht Guide

The response from people sending in stories and pictures has been wonderful! The Flying Cloud, and indeed, the entire Windjammer Fleet has touched many peoples heart and soul! Keep them coming and we will continue to update you on what is happening with our "Sink The Flying Cloud Project"!

For more information, please see our Windjammer Flying Cloud site and our BVISO site
Written by me (Kerry) for the above!

So, after I left you with my "rant" this afternoon.. (generally I reread them and delete them the next day once i have it out of my system, we will see what this one does tomorrow.) Some soothing activities were definitely in order.
We pulled up our anchor in Inner Harbor, and remember how mucky I told you it is in there? Well, Bazza said the first hundred feet of chain looked like something he has seen growing in sewage containers!

I spend a good half hour therapeutically trying to get it all off the deck! It helped..

Then it was a trip up to Penns Landing in East End, as we think this is going to be our new dockage space for the coming season! We had to make sure that we fit....

This winter we are so heavily booked that for time and sanity we need to turn around on dock, and with having our own dedicated slip, we never have to worry about "trying to get on dock" in one of the (expensive) marinas in Roadtown. Plus, they gave Bazza part of a workshop and a storage area RIGHT at the end of the dock! It will be very convenient for when the guests bring those three tons of dive bags with them for storage.

More on this later, when I do an "official" entry!
After measuring ourselves up for where to put lines and where to put sand screws (to keep us off the dock as the prevailing winds can be nasty in winter) we were off again! This is just a pretty picture of the clouds today...The most sun we have seen for awhile!

We were going to go over to Salt Island, but we were both dripping so much sweat that we opted to just go around the corner and drop anchor off of Buck Island. I had my snorkel gear on and was in the water within thirty seconds! No swimming for the last ten days in Inner Harbor (you saw the anchor chain, I better you would not swim there either!)
What is the first thing I saw in the water? A Grey Reef Shark! yep, it is a horrible horrible picture, as I just had my snorkeling camera, but it proved that it was a shark I saw anyways!

I snorkeled almost up to the castle on the end of Buck Island, and around the rocks. The coral is really rubbly, and it was cloudy, but I still enjoyed swimming. Went right up behind the rocks to see the pelicans.

There were quite a few schools of Blue tang around, surprisingly the color in this turned out not too bad.

Bazza went for a dive to see why the A/C was not working, and yep, exactly what he thought, a plastic bag was stuck in the intake, so he cleaned all those out. A hour snorkel and swim went a long way to calming me down and then when I got back to the boat he wanted me to help him change the transducer for the depth sounder, which was not working.
Yep. he wanted this done in the water. And yep, once you take the old one out LOTS of water comes in the boat. He told me to be quick! Down I go with wire and transducer in hand, he had it all bundled together so I could as soon as he pulled out the old one I would put up the bundles of wires and then quick as a bunny plug the transducer in. AND I was quick like a bunny, so quick that his thumb was stuck in the hole while I was trying to shove the transducer in and we had a tug of was for awhile, with me wondering why it was not going in any further! but finally success.
Then since I was already in the water I went for a 45 minute dive. I did not have a camera of course, but of note were the two spade fish that I could have reached out and touched and the slipper lobster sitting right out in the open! By the time I returned to the boat I did not care about A/C and enjoyed my several hours in the water! Life is good!
Here is a picture of the moon over Buck Island tonight and now it is dinner time.

My friend Janice passed on these photos wanting to know if we thought they were real, and yep, I believe they are! I think it is a great picture. We saw quite a few in schools in the Galapagos, schools of hundreds, although where we saw them the water was so murky you could not really make them out too well.

"Gliding silently beneath the waves they turned vast areas of blue water to
gold off the northern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula . Sandra Critelli, an amateur
photographer, stumbled across the phenomenon while looking for whale sharks."

Well I have been sitting in Seattles Sea Tac airport for most of the afternoon. They have no Admirals Club with AA here, and although the flight is operated by Alaskan Airlines, Alaskan says they have asked American many times to exchange Club privileges but they have always turned them down flat. Alaskans Club Lounge is WWWAAAAYYYYY better then Americans Admirals Club! They have self serve soda machines, espressos, cheese and crackers, soups, cookies and up to 3 complimentary drinks per person. Admirals Club gives you coffee, water and pretzels. Anything else is way over priced and bad. What a surprise! Just like their airplanes.
Funny thing checking in our baggage we were a couple pounds over the 50 lb limit and they let it go as opposed to making us paying a lot of money or do gyrations trying to even out the bags somehow. We had a record today, only 2 checked bags, although I have to admit that we stopped at the USPS to mail down a couple parcels!
We saw the parental unit off, or I should say they saw us off...and they are on their way to see Willy Nelson at the Marymoor field tonight. I told them to make sure they bring their umbrellas! Bazza really whined when I made him leave his winter jacket with my parents today. We DON'T need it in the BVI!
We have spent the last two nights sleeping on the hardest beds possible! Where do some of these hotels find these beds? Even boards aren't that hard! Last night I think it was also the smallest double bed I have ever seen. I thought that Bazza should sleep on the floor at the end, to give this large girl room to actually sleep on the bed, but he was having none of that! At least a few months of charters will wear of some of this weight (Ha! Like it ever has yet. When I started doing charters I weighed about 55 lbs less then now. That is 10-11 years ago. An average gain of 5 lbs a year. At this rate, I won't fit on the boat in another ten years!)

No, not finished blogging yet today, trying to get caught up! A couple more entries and then I will be there and can start updating my blog on all the other charter boats!
Bazza and I took advantage yesterday of the powerboat and slopped our way out to what we call the "fishbowl"
This dive is 4 miles on the south side of Virgin Gorda, that we usually do on the way to St Maarten. It is actually much less daunting doing it from the big boat then a smaller boat. We were super cautious and knowing that we would have to find our way back to this tiny anchor line in the middle of the ocean, we tied extra lines everywhere down there so we did not lose us or the boat!
Here is Bazza with the lines.

This is a mound that goes down on one side a couple hundred feet and on the other who knows. This is right at the top and there can be a lot of current! (Which there was! especially when you get out of the "holes"
Look at this beautiful fishy reef though!

What we find amazing about this spot is the amount of large groupers that are congregated there, of all types. We must have seen at least a dozen, all larger then what we see otherwise in the channel.

Always schools of Permits, Ocean Triggerfish, Durgeons, Sharks, every time we are here!

This is a first for me though, I have seen small lobster in cup corals before, but this was a LARGE lobster in a LARGE cup coral! Absolutely beautiful with it all being orange!

And just another close up shot of the Angel fish that followed us around the entire dive.

Unfortunately I dropped the ladder on my toe getting back on the boat, so I am still whining about that 24 hours later!