The Thursday of the trip was to be the last diving day. Thursday offers two morning dives so that people can off-gas and fly out on Friday afternoon.
While the weather had been rough and waves were still rocking the boat, we had breakfast and maneuvered to calmer dive sites.
The first site was the Blue Hole. As it sounds, its indeed a hole in the seabed that drops down from 20 feet to a lot deeper, in this case to 220 feet. Not always a lot to see in there but ti would be a fun dive.
Here's Jeff looking down into the blue hole before heading over the edge to descend:
We dropped down and started exploring, maxing out at a dept of 91 feet. Jeff had an earlier flight on Friday, so we didn't want to load him up too much on nitrogen.
There was a neat cave in the wall at about 70 feet.
Some fish in it. At other times a shark is known to be in there but it wasn't there that time.
We then headed back up and swam around the hole for a while.
Around the hole, stingrays hid in the sand.
A turtle also cruised around, and turtles are always chill dudes:
It was a nice 30 minute dive.
After the Blue hole, we headed to Periwinkle Reef for a nice shallow dive at 25 feet for 40 minutes to see some fish and enjoy our last dive in the Bahamas.
We then sailed back into port at Nassau.
When then got our suitcases and larger items we had stored at the dock back, and started packing things up. We also all headed to the marina tio use the showers, which were much appreciated.
As night fell, we had dinner on the boat and then headed into town to the very appropriately named Pirate Republic Brew Pub and had a great time quaffing drinks and having fun on land.
A great time as a group playing games, drinking rum and beer, and having a fun time.
We then headed back to the boat and a bunch of us had an after-party party in the galley, and then everyone finally hit their bunks.
Friday morning we all awoke, had breakfast, finished packing up, tipped the crew of the Morningstar and then went on our separate ways.
It had been one heckuva great vacation and a fantastic first live-aboard diving experience.
3 comments:
I remember getting my diving certificate while stationed in Okinawa. The invasion beach approach was especially "interesting" as a dive sight. Lots of reminders that WWII wasn't a cakewalk even in the later years.
The biggest issue I had was balancing my diving, the recovery time and scheduled flying. Given that the Eagle could and did go to 50K, the latter was especially important. The jet was pressurized, but not like an airliner, that would have made it too heavy. We worked it all out and got certified, but, didn't get to use it too much as schedulers got to schedule.
Sounds like you had a good time and I enjoyed the articles and pictures. Thanks
juvat
"Blue Hole" sounded familiar so I me blog and found this: https://pergelator.blogspot.com/2010/06/base-jumping-at-deans-blue-hole.html
juvat: Thanks and yep, flying to high altitudes right after diving is definitely contra-indicated. 19-24 hours between diving and flying is a good interval.
Chuck Pergiel: Bahamas has quite a few blue holes, not as famous as the one in Belize. We didn't dive the Deans blue hole but a different one.
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