divesergeant 3 years, 10 months ago.The second day (first full day) we spent the first morning diving with Neptune’s Divers at Trinity Caves, (I always want to say Trinity Sessions, but that’s a Cowboy Junkies album, not a dive site) and Governor’s Reef. No pictures from either, as we go sans camera the first day to get back in the swing of things. We noted a lot of turtles and herds of Ocean Triggers.
As always, Casey is a joy to dive with and she always finds great dive masters.
Post-diving, we ate lunch and dinner in (PBJ sandwiches for the former, homemade pizza for the later).
Bright and early the third day we again headed out. No Casey this time, instead we had her very capable dive masters Niall and Stuart. We felt fortunate that neither sank the boat while we were out and counted the day a bonus due to that!
This time we dived In Between and Doc Poulson. Avec camera, this time, resulting in these samples…..
Grouper, it’s what’s for dinner…
Turtles galore…
Finally, we always like these Pederson cleaner shrimp. If you’re patient, they’ll crawl onto your fingers and give you a pedicure…
I gotta thank Joe again for the forum’s picture upload feature. This sure as hell beats having to put the pics onto photobucket and copying links.
After the diving, again PBJ in the room. Followed by a shameless period of blatant laziness with bevvies and books. I have the newest Jack Reacher book and always enjoy them so I was blissful.
Dinner involved a stroll up the beach to Coconut Joe’s, whose burgers had been calling both of our names since we got here.
Cheers!
Day 3
North Wall! Always worth the extra boat ride.
We started at Black Forest and finished at Eagle Ray Pass. The forecast ESE winds favored us with a switch to full SE, so we had good seas; a few rollers that made the boat rock, but no rough stuff.
Here’s a selection of the days photos…
An unusually inquisitive Indigo Hamlet…
The Parrotfish were spawning and this one here was showing off for all to see, allowing me a good shot…
I find that Durgon often are standoffish. This feller here seemed to pose for me, turning this way and that. I got this pic that shows to good effect his multi-colored striping job…
I always like taking pics of Flamingo Tongues. They don’t move much at all, so you can work on them. This one doesn’t have much patterning on its mantel…
Christmas Tree worms are cool. I love the way the radioles form spirals, as shown here…
And lastly, I love finding these Anemones. There is always something milling about in the mass of their tentacles. In this case, there were several of these little yellow wrasse/gobe-like things…
We rounded out the day by getting our rental Jeep (from Robbie at Cayman Auto Rental, where else!), topping up the stock of food in the fridge and then I prepared dinner in the apartment.
Dinner was baked chicken breast for her and baked fresh snapper for me, both served on a bed of penne pasta with an olive oil pesto sauce. Dessert was (actually, still is as we speak) a glass of Blackbeard’s mudslide on which I am working diligently.
Cheers!
DS
Day 4
Dives on the north again. Leslie’s Curl and another the name of which is unknown.
We saw tons of green morays, some free swimming. Several turtles. Some of the group saw an eagle ray. I didn’t.
Pics from today include…
A Nassau grouper… gimme some butter and garlic, please!
A three spotted damselfish…
A green moray showing me a nice profile view… how photogenic of it…
A small turtle dude, looking as stoned as ever
One of several free swimming morays…
And finally, a feather duster…
We chose this last shot mainly because of the coloration. It was in about 55 feet of water where there isn’t as much natural light to give colors to things. You can see the shadow of my flash behind the duster and the rock to its right where the colors look bluer. The blueish color is what we normally see when diving.
Haven’t made dinner plans yet, so you’re on your own for that!
After the usual five-star breakfast of scrambled eggs, English muffins (in honor of Stuart, our UK divemaster, I might add), blackberry jam and turkey sausage, we loaded into Casey’s van for the harbor. North again, and we were happy. It was a bit choppier than yesterday but still good diving.
We started at Round-About, a fairly new dive site notable for the mooring being right on a large pinnacle around which one can swim. Hence the name, I guess. As are all northwall sites, it was spectacular. Turtles, eels, fishes… You get the idea.
The second dive was again unknown, simply because we forgot. Might have been lemon wall.
Those of us in first were treated to a fly-by of two medium-sized spotted eagle rays. The rays must have not wanted to leave anyone out, so they came back a few times and afforded us the chance for some cool pictures.
Here are some pictures;
I like shots of stuff with different textures. Here is a clump of social feather dusters…
And here is a landscape shot of a typical coral scene…
And a shot of a coral outcropping that caught my eye, this one is bristling with fuzzy antennae-looking things…
One of our fellow divers, Matt from San Diego, pointed out to me this hairy clinging crab…
Since it was so happy to pose, I eased in and got a close-up. You can see one of its eyes looking at the camera…
Finally, most of my eagle ray shots kind of sucked, but this one isn’t too bad…
After lunch, Niall (darn Scot, doesn’t even know how to pronounce his own name, he say Nee-ul, whereas it looks like Nie-al) picked me up and we met two others at Eden Rock. We did about a 50 minute dive through the canyons of Devil’s Grotto. Sorry, no pictures, the camera wouldn’t power up due to a battery issue.
We’re going to eat in the apartment tonight, so don’t wait up for the dinner review!
