Diving Update
Sunday, March 27th, 2005 at 11:25 pm
Sorry I haven't been posting much, but I've been scuba diving 
Friday, I went on a relatively shallow dive to Flamingo Bay with a buddy that needed to refresh (hadn't been diving in 10 years.) Lots of nice coral, some of the most abundant reef fish life that I've seen here yet, as well as no less than 5 moray eels, and 20 lobsters.
Saturday I went on a night dive to the Shakem, which is a 150ft long cargo vessel carrying concrete that sank in 100ft of water. Unlike most wrecks, this has some nice coral beds surrounding it. Definitely eerie diving such a large wreck at night, but cool at the same time Circled the bottom checking the reef then proceeded to explore the wreck, including diving through the wheelhouse, various passageways, etc. Lots of small things, but nothing big and exciting seen.
Today my first dive was to the HEMA-I, a cargo ship returning empty to Kingstown. She just sank within the past two weeks, as a result of a rather sizable hole in the hull. (Origin unknown.) She is currently resting in about 100ft of water, in a large patch of sand. It was kind of eerie descending onto the wreck, as there were multiple cable lines, fire/bilge pump hoses, and two large "H" oxygen cylinders randomly floating in the surge. Since she went down so recently, she is not yet rested on the bottom, so she is still rolling with the surge, and this created an interesting creaking noise. It also tended to kick up a lot of the sandy bottom. At one point there was "white-out conditions," so that my buddy and I had to maintain physical contact with one arm (so we didn't loose each other), and swim forward with the other arm outstretched (so we didn't run into anything.) That was an experience
Back on the boat, the ocean had turned nasty with 5 ft swells. Unexpectedly, I got a bit seasick. However, I didn't join the 3 other divers that needed to vomit over the rail. Luckily, we spent our surface interval in a protected bay, and I started to feel a bit better. Then for some unknown reason, the dive shop owner (who happened to be overmastering today), decided we should go back out to the rough side, rather than doing a site that is more calm. And for what you ask? The San Juan… a 4o foot fishing trawler in 90 feet of water. There are usually a number of nurse sharks on the wreck, but after seeing the 16 divers concentrated over a 40 foot area (there is nothing else to see here, no reef, just sand), all but one of the sharks took off, and the remaining one was hidden so well you could barely see him/her. Oh and the "gale force" current that kept my forward pace at about an inch a minute with maximal effort. I finally gave up, and just hung on the line, waiting for everyone to come up. Then I got seasick again on the way back. Grr. But still no vomitus.
Tomorrow two more dives (on the calmer side of the island) - Car Pile (literally a pile of cars - where they get dumped in the ocean), and some sort of new cove… or maybe it was cave… that would be cool.
Email to Friend
Print
Permalink
Filed under: 
[…] The first dive was to the HEMA I, which is a shipwreck that I first dove in March, only two weeks after it sunk. At that time, the ship was still fully intact, rocking on the ocean floor, and kicking up sand. The passage of Hurricane Emily caused the ship to break apart, hence it is a “new” dive site. It now has a bunch of swim throughs and interesting holes to peer in. Not much in the way of interesting fish life, with the exception of a few barracuda, and a reef shark that reportedly swam behind my buddy and I unbeknown to us. (We were looking in the cargo hold.) I was definitely cool to see the before and after, and as an added bonus we did manage to salvage a bottle of Absolut Limon. […]