grand cayman — Page 2

Spanish Anchor, dive 30

December 4, 2008

Dive: 30
Cayman Dive: 6
Date: 12/4/08
Site: Spanish Anchor, Grand Cayman
Avg/Max Depth: 36/52
Temp: 79
TBT/CBT: 0:47/23:20
Buddies: Kristen, Curtis, Ted

After a surface interval filled with Matty’s jokes, we quickly geared up for our second dive. The site was aptly named because of an Spanish anchor almost completely overgrown with coral (I missed it, apparently Curtis got a photo). Matty said it carbon dated back to the 1500s. Kristen and I were the first ones in today and we immediately descended. None of this bobbing on the surface nonsense.

The fish were plentiful on the coral fingers. The stoplight parrotfish are my favorites here and there were lots of them. I also got what I think will be a quite stunning picture of a French Angelfish.

Curtis and Kristen headed back to the boat a littler early. Ted and I continued exploring. After about 10 minutes we decided to head back to the boat. We spotted the boat almost effortlessly and did our safety stop. Right about the time my stop was complete, I looked at Ted. He was shaking his head and pointing at the boat. I turned to look and saw the boat was now surrounded by divers. What was wrong? Why were all these strange divers at our boat? Oh, it wasn’t our boat. Woops. We headed in another direction. Our 40 minute time limit had passed, and I was afraid that they would think we were a couple of rogue divers like the one from Tuesday. Since I was only at 13 feet I decided to surface and have a look around to make sure we were going in the right direction. I spotted the boat up top and descended again, pointing the direction to Ted. That was the first time I longed for a compass. At least we were close, a couple hundred feet away at the most. It was then my ear started acting up again, so I hovered at about 8 feet, shallow enough not to hurt, but deep enough to not struggle against the current. We saw a barracuda, and as much as I wanted to swim closer for a picture, my ears weren’t having it. Probably a good thing anyhow.

We got to the boat quickly and we weren’t even the last ones on. On the drive back Matty came on the CB and asked if Frank was donating his camera to him. Crap, I realized it was my camera. I left it in the freshwater bucket. I tried telling the driver, Nicole, that it was my camera and I was with the Lahr party. Somehow she misinterpreted it to be “the misses of Frank”‘s camera. Matty came back on and said, “that’s not Frank’s misses, but I know who you mean.” He said he’d leave it at the dive shop for me to pick up tomorrow. I was only disappointed because I’m quite positive I had some rockin’ pictures on there and now I have to wait a day. Pooey.

Sand Chute, dive 29

December 4, 2008

Dive: 29
Cayman Dive: 5
Date: 12/4/08
Site: Sand Chute, Grand Cayman
Avg/Max Depth: 60/100
Temp: 79
TBT/CBT: 0:35/22:33
Buddies: Kristen, Curtis, Ted

Kristen and I were disappointed to learn Dreamy Jonny *swoon* would not be accompanying us today. Instead we had Matty. What he lacked in looks, he made up with personality. He was a very animated character, complete with a rolodex of [bad] jokes.

We drove down the street from our hotel to a public beach area where some boats were pulled on shore. Hmmm… boarding a boat sans dock, that was a new diving experience for me. There were the four of us, as well as two gentlemen (not together) we dove with before (Frank and an older gentleman) and an unfamiliar couple.

Our first dive site was Sand Chute, a short boat ride from the shore. Kristen and I were the first ones in the water, followed quickly by Curtis and Ted. Personally, I was sick of waiting up top for the other slowbies to get in.

This dive was lots of fun. We started through a short canyon that plunked us out near 100 feet deep. Matty pointed out a giant wall of coral to our left, he wanted us to see how insignificant we are. We also spotted a turtle in the distance and saw a massive starfish. Since the four of us had computers we got about 10 minutes at the end of the dive to ourselves. There was a jelly fish waiting to greet us at the ladder and I scurried out of the water as quick as I could, fully expecting a wave to push me into it. It got Curtis instead.

Grand Cayman – Wed 12/3

December 3, 2008

First one up again. Coffee, computing and breakfast. I decided to skip diving for the day. It was only partly cloudy, but the wind was whipping up a storm outside and I didn’t feel like being a captive to the elements all morning.

I computed and read my audio book for most of the morning. Then sunscreened up and hit the beach with Cindy around 10am. There were big puffy ominous clouds passing across the sky. It was chilly when they blocked the sun, but there was enough of a wind to make the sunny portions of the day comfortable. It stayed nice, but between 12-1 it suddenly got very windy. Almost painfully windy as the sand would blow up and pelt us. And even with the wind it was getting hot. Around 2 I hightailed it to the shade and wrapped up in my sarong to keep the chill of the wind off. Also, curling up on my side helped to lessen the surface area of my skin that could be attacked by the sand. Around 3:30 I had enough. I went inside to shower up, but the housekeeping lady was there, so I sat out on the balcony for what felt like an eternity until she left.

Nick had a headache, so we ditched him at the condo and went to Yoshi’s Sushi for dinner. At first glance it looked like we had to sit on the floor on pillows, but the floor is built up around the booths, so there was actually a hidden place for us to stick our legs. We ordered a sushi boat for five (how convenient) with some extra rolls and sashimi on the side.

When we got back Nick was feeling better. I accompanied him to Eat’s Cafe. I passed on second dinner, but I did indulge in a slice of cheesecake for dessert.

Grand Cayman, Tues 12/2

December 2, 2008

6:30am, the first one up again. I made coffee and wasted a half hour computing, with nothing specific in my memory that I looked at. The weather was gloomy and kind of chilly, relatively speaking. In other words, a good day to be under the water. We all gathered our dive gear and went out to the van at 7:15.

~~~

After diving the sun was starting to come out. Nick wanted to eat at Eats Cafe for lunch, so we all did just that. Kristen and I took a walk to a little strip mall afterward, but there was nothing exciting there. We stopped in a souvenir shop on the way back to the condo. Nothing good to buy there either, but there was a cute little baby puppy of some sort, complete with puppy sized vest.

Nick napped for the afternoon while I worked on my dive blogs and pictures. Everyone else moseyed out to the beach one by one. For dinner, everyone sans Nick went back to Deckers for an all-the-lobster-you-can-eat special. The table ate a total of 19 big lobster tails. The responsibility mostly fell on Curtis and Ted. We had dessert too. Ted and Kristen ordered the Key Lime Pie while I went with the Chocolate Lava Cake. That was the chocolatiest thing I’ve ever eaten. It was delicious.

Tomorrow we will be out front at 7:15 again for diving. Word is the weather won’t be improving, so we’ll probably head to the south side again.

As a side note, someone voted that they didn’t miss me. And according to the IP address I think it came from my house…

Crossroads, dive 28

December 2, 2008

Dive: 28
Cayman Dive: 4
Date: 12/2/08
Site: Crossroads, South Side, Grand Cayman
Avg/Max Depth: 23/42
Temp: 79
TBT/CBT: 0:37/21:58
Buddies: Nick, Kristen, Curtis, Ted

Our second dive site for the day was Crossroads. It was to be our shallow dive. Jon let the 11 of us dive without him. Our instructions were to swim around the reef with a max depth of 40-50 feet for no longer than 40 minutes. Seemed simple enough. We decided to follow Curtis since he has the mad directional skillz. No dumbheadedness from me on this dive, I got in the water right away to make up for the previous dive.

This dive was a bit more relaxing than the last one for me. I prefer swimming over the reef to swimming on a wall. I like to look below me while I swim about, it’s a more natural position for my neck, and on a wall there’s not much to look at below. My camera battery was going dead and it was shutting off on me the entire dive, but I was determined to be patient and get good fish photos. Photos of the same types of coral gets monotonous after awhile. I think I did good, better than normal anyway, but not as good as Curtis.

On the way back to the boat, the videographer pointed out a giant lobster. I descended a bit to take a peek. That’s when my ear started to ache. For the remainder of the dive I tried to stay at 12 feet so it wouldn’t bother me.

Kristen and I were the first to board the boat. She was parched, and my ear was telling me it was time to wrap it up.

Slowly everyone filtered in… except for one guy. His wife came aboard, he apparently wasn’t ready to quit yet. We waited, and waited. They knew he was alright because they could see his bubbles swimming around the boat. It went from being humorous to quite irritating. I’m sure it had been at least 30 minutes since everyone else had boarded. After trying various attempts at getting his attention, Jon reluctantly took off his warm jacket (swoon), grabbed his mask and fins and moped to the back of the boat, hesitating before diving in. It only took a few seconds, Jon was back on the boat, looking disappointed to be wet, and the rogue diver climbed up after him. Apparently he thought we were supposed to swim around until we reached 500 psi. WTF? At every dive briefing I’ve ever had the divemaster has said come up with no less than 500. That’s like the danger line. Industry standard minimum. How could he misinterpret that? We’re all certified divers, I assume he learned the same basic safety principles as everyone else. And where was the little voice in his head that should have been saying, “I’m down here all alone, this isn’t right”? I felt bad for his wife, I’m pretty sure she was embarrassed by the whole situation.

At least it gave an ample opportunity to completely dry off before the windy boat trip back. It was still overcast, but the air felt warmer, especially being dry.