Saturday, December 26, 2009
Today was our first dive day. We motored from Prickly Pear to Leverick Bay and proceeded to rent gear for a two-tank set of dives from Dive BVI. The dive shop recommended that we do Coral Gardens off the south side of Great Dog island to avoid the heavy swell and that was a very good suggestion. We took the last mooring ball (sort of, as the ball had been torn off and replaced with a bottle of Clorox) and after lengthy preparations (Carmen and Bernd had to sort out both their wet suits as well the unfamiliar rental gear) we made it into the water and set out towards the east in the hopes that we would find the aeroplane fuselage, we overheard another group of divers who didn’t find it and a there was a big dinghy full of hopeful divers circling around looking a bit lost as well. The dive was simple and we did find the wreck with no problems. It was great to be able to use most of my air, as I tend to have too much left over when going with the commercial dive groups.
I made the unfortunate mistake of deciding to dive the Chimney on the west side of Great Dog for the second dive; but that area had a lot of swell and low visibility due to the surge and swell. I looked into the chimney from the top side and was pushed backwards by the current so waved off and went around the headland. Carmen found the other end of the chimney and it looked quite a bit more acceptable from that angle so we swam through. Unlike my first dive there with a friend where we missed the mooring cables and had a very long swim back, this one was a piece of cake and we surfaced right at Zanshin I.
We motorsailed back to Leverick and were lucky enough that Nick allowed us to get a TTOL rate slip – on the radio he stated “Take any open slip because when you get in we’ll already be gone” so I took a wonderfully big and open slip which turned out to be the only one that is permanently reserved (for a 100+ foot powerboat called Chanticleer) but with 3 people aboard it was easy to tie up at another slip. We had steaks for dinner upstairs at Leverick and they were as tasty as their reputation, but not inexpensive.
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