On to Ginger Island

Another busy day on the Cuan Law.

Jodi tweaked her back last night, so she opted not to do one of our favorite dive sites that we had done the last time we were here, Disappearing Rock.  We went down wreck alley, which is a quadruple wreck site consisting of the Marie L, a cargo boat intentionally sunk in the early 1990s; the Pat, a tugboat sunk a few years later that now lies up against the Marie L (Wayne knew the site as the Marie/Pat);  the Beata (sunk in 2001) and the Island Seal/Joey D (sunk upside down in 2009 due to a poor sinking effort). There was also a large colony of garden eels slightly around the wrecks, and we had no shortage of rays (sting and spotted eagle varieties).

Dive two took us to Carval Rock, which is between Cooper and Ginger islands.  We descended to see a grey reef shark checking us out almost immediately - and s/he kept coming back to the dive site while we were submerged.  

We also saw a juvenile yellowtail damselfish, which was quite stunning.  As they get older, the yellow tail develops and they lose quite a bit of their sports.  Apparently I was lucky to get this picture, as the juveniles tend to hang out in fire coral, which can be less than pleasant.

One thing Wayne and I are noticing is that there appear to be fewer flamingo tongues than were here the last time we visited.  I was lucky enough today to find a fan coral on which there were five of them, but that has not been the norm.  I wonder if it is a direct effect of the coral bleaching.  The coral can go from vibrant to nonexistent across a site.  Lots of fish still live in the burned out coral, but the visual effect is quite grim, creating a stark landscape.

Four of us entered the water for an afternoon dive at Ginger’s Backside (aka Alice’s backside, Alice in Wonderland is a dive on the opposite shore of Ginger Island. A huge coral reef runs the length of the island starting at about 15 ft under the boat and falling away to the sandy bottom at about 60 ft. We went out at 60 feet of depth, and then came back at about 25 feet looking for a mooring buoy.  We overshot the mooring buoy and the boat, but were pleasantly surprised by a grey reef shark near the end of the dive.  The further east we went on the dive, the bleaching of the coral was really bad.  We had a good amount of current at 25 feet on our way back, but it wasn’t unmanageable.  When I hit 1000 psi, I signaled Wayne, he ascended and got a heading on the Cuan Law, and we returned.

Our fourth dive of the day was back at Ginger’s Backside.  We saw a big slipper lobster, a giant jack, ghost crabs galore, a small conger eel (nowhere near the size of Percy the killer moray of the Deep fame!), and a baby octopus.  All in all, a nice day of dives.  

Making our way back to the boat was easy - the bright lights of the trimaran created an underwater glow.  That was good because you cannot see the strobe under the boat until you are right on it!

Sweet dreams!!

Setting sail for the Rhone

We had our first early morning dive today, splashing into Squid Reef at 6:46 am.  Not quite sunrise, but close.  Unlike the name implies, there were no squid to be found on Squid Reef, not even for ready money!  The most beautiful fish that I saw on this dive was the Indigo Hamlet.  I could watch it for hours. There was a lot of life, but we were at the mercy of our decompression algorithms on the dive.  We are definitely planning on using Nitrox on the first dive on the Rhone today.  There were a lot of jellyfish on the way up, many babies, and one large one just hanging out by the skiff.

I had a rather ungainly fall when the skiff banged into the Cuan Law - I had been propping my tank up on the side of the skiff, and was more than a little off balance.

The first dive this afternoon (well, the only dive this afternoon) was on the RMS Rhone Wreck.  It is most famously known as the wreck on which The Deep was largely filmed.   We wound up doing a live entry direct descent to the bow, and had a leisurely tour of the ship.  The great barracuda was hanging out in the bowsprit as promised, and we swam by the ship signaling cannon, and through the open hatch from “The Deep.” The boiler was in pieces, and schools of snapper were plentiful.  After we went by the water reclamation area, used to create fresh water to cool the pipes, we went up to the stern where we saw the water pump, the disco flooring, the lucky porthole, and Captain Wooley’s silver teaspoon, which we touched for good luck.  

The RMS Rhone was a British packet ship owned by the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (RMSP). She was wrecked off the coast of Salt Island in the British Virgin Islands on 29 October 1867 in a hurricane, taking the lives of 123 people. 

On the day of the sinking, the Rhone's Master, Robert F. Wooley, was slightly worried by the dropping barometer and darkening clouds, but because it was October and hurricane season was thought to be over, Rhone and Conway stayed in Great Harbour. The storm which subsequently hit was later known as the San Narciso Hurricane and retrospectively categorised as a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale. The first half of the storm passed without much event or damage, but the ferocity of the storm worried the captains of the Conway and Rhone, as their anchors had dragged and they worried that when the storm came back after the eye of the storm had passed over, they would be driven onto the shore of Peter Island.

They decided to transfer the passengers from the Conway to the "unsinkable" Rhone; the Conway was then to head for Road Harbour and the Rhone would make for open sea. As was normal practice at the time, the passengers in the Rhone were tied into their beds to prevent them being injured in the stormy seas.  Just as Rhone was passing Black Rock Point, less than 250 yards (230 m) from safety, the second half of the hurricane came around from the south. The winds shifted to the opposite direction and Rhone was thrown directly into Black Rock Point. It is said that the initial lurch of the crash sent Captain Wooley overboard, never to be seen again. Local legend says that his teaspoon can still be seen lodged into the wreck itself. Whether or not it is his, a teaspoon is clearly visible entrenched in the wreck's coral. The ship broke in two, and cold seawater made contact with her hot boilers which had been running at full steam, causing them to explode.

The ship sank swiftly, the bow section in 80 feet (24 m) of water, the stern in 30 feet (9 m). Of the 146 people originally aboard, plus an unknown number of passengers transferred from the Conway, only 23 (all crew) survived the wreck. The bodies of many of the sailors were buried in a nearby cemetery on Salt Island. Due to her mast sticking out of the water, and her shallow depth, she was deemed a hazard by the Royal Navy in the 1950s and her stern section was blown up (thank you Wikipedia!).

We entertained ourselves between dives by watching The Deep.  Back in the 1970s, it was a scary movie, but by today’s standards quite tame.  We laughed quite a bit watching dives taking place while wearing long pants and a collared long sleeve shirt.  

Our night dive was on the stern of the Rhone.  We did another live entry direct descent, where we were exposed to a wicked, wicked current.  The dive time was limited to 45 minutes, which was a whole lot of work.  We were greeted by squid, 3 turtles and an octopus, and parrotfish dotted the sea floor.  We ascended the mooring line at the 45 minute mark, did our safety stop, and then ascended, pulling ourselves along the side of the boat on the surface.  We were pretty jammed in, 10 people, which made for an interesting exit and reentry. 

After this, I was VERY tired, but I did manage to log my dives today, and start doing some cursory editing of photographs.  So far our 3G SIM cards are working quite well for the iPad, not a bad investment.  We shall keep the cards, and see where else we can use them in the future.  We now have a set for Costa Rica, Okinawa and BVI.  We did have London SIM cards, but I think it is better to buy the unlimited cards from the airport when you arrive.

Good night all!

Just another lovely Monday

Today was our first full day of diving, three scheduled and kept dives.  I had hoped for an early morning dive, but that was not to be, sadly.  Oh well, there are more days in the dive trip ahead of us, so I can expect that have at least one or two sunrise dives.

I woke up to the smell of bacon in the air - always a good thing first thing in the morning!  Our breakfast buffet presented us with some scrambled eggs, done with a goat cheese and some tomatoes.  And good Irish cut steel oatmeal.  I have to see if there is any peanut butter on board!

Our first dive was at just before 10 am, we were guided by Philippa at Angelfish Rock.  Theoretically, we should have seen a number of angelfish there, and we did see some French angelfish and rock beauties.  Not nearly as many or as varied as I would have expected.  We also saw a spotted moray and a chain moray, adult and juvenile blue tang, a small number of flamingo tongues, and BIG bugs everywhere.  Taking just one would feed about half the guests onboard ship.  There was a lot of current, and we swam right into it, so we definitely worked off breakfast, and were on our way to working off lunch.

Dive 2 was at Wayne’s self professed favorite dive site from his first visit here: Indians.  We set out on a self guided tour of the rocks, giving wide berth to the larger group diving in front of us.  We were happy to be given that much leeway in setting up our dive, and we were treated to more flamingo tongues, syphyraena barracuda (what we would call a Heller’s barracuda in Hawaii), horned helmets, conch (although I later learned that conch and horned helmets are synonymous down here), scrawled cowfish, rock beauty angelfish, lizardfish, and glassy sweepers.  I even found a cleaner shrimp to give me a manicure!  

Our third dive of the day was sort of self guided; we followed significantly behind the larger group once again.  We saw many beautiful french angelfish, another chain moray, a ghost crab, several jellyfish, and lots of bugs.    And one unidentified nudibranch that actually was a sea slug (a lettuce sea slug to be precise).

Wayne wanted to do some kayaking between the first and second dive, but I begged off because of the amount of direct sunlight.  

As of the writing of this blog, I haven’t logged any of the first four dives yet since we arrived!  I will do so shortly.  We spent the night (with the super moon) outside Pirate’s Bight on Norman Island.  I have some great memories from our trip here in January 2010, and shared a photo of the site on Facebook with Fern, Maria and Tracy.  Happy days.

Even at only 3 dives today, the day seems so full.  We are really enjoying this trip with Matt and Jodi, and Cuan Law.  Her crew is really customer service oriented, at least thus far.

Good night all!

Off to the Cuan Law

Matt and Jodi took off this morning on a hike in search of donkeys - and wound up going back to Caneel Bay, where there were donkeys galore, and in flagrante delecto - providing an expert lesson in the birds and the bees to anyone in the neighboring area.  To hear the conversation from Matt and Jodi’s perspective was very, very amusing.  :)

We ferried past said donkeys on our way to Tortola from St. John.  One was just having the greatest time of all, rolling around on the grass.  So our trip to St. John was totally successful and complete by the decree of Jodi!

Once we made it to Tortola, we were taxied to the port of debarkation for our journey.  We were not the first on board, nor the last, and we were very pleased by our accommodations.  The rooms on the trimaran were far more spacious than expected, and we had the great pleasure of setting under sail in order to do our checkout dive at Randy’s Reef.  We were set free to do a self guided tour (alas, the nitrox compressor exploded a few weeks prior, so there was a limited supply of nitrox) to make sure that our gear was working properly, and that there were no immediate difficulties noticed.  I was glad that we had arrived in St. John a few days prior in order to be fully accommodated to the heat and humidity of the BVI.  

The name Cuan Law reflects owners and designers, Duncan and Annie Muirhead's Scottish heritage. "Cuan" is the Scottish-Gaelic word for ocean and "Law" means mountain. Cuan Law with her towering white sails appears to be a snowy mountaintop rising from the ocean. The Cuan Law was built in Canada and she and her sister ship Lammer Law in the Galapagos Islands are the world's largest sailing trimarans.  Unfortunately, the Lammer Law is no longer fitted for diving in the Galapagos, and Annie and Duncan “sold out” that boat to their partners.  Annie will let you know that there was no money forthcoming on that deal!!

We got to watch the crew unfurl the sails as we set out in the Caribbean.  The feeling of the wind on our faces and the sheer power of the vessel was magnificent.  Our checkout dive wasn’t necessarily overwhelming, but we managed to get through it without too much difficulty.  The soft coral was as plentiful as i remembered it being, and there were a ton of painted and bluebell tunicates.  

We had a little challenge getting back to the Cuan Law, as the map on the board was not quite accurate to our position, but nothing that a little surface swim couldn’t take care of.  Although we are disappointed that there is no night dive tonight, we are still off to a good start, judging by the fringed filefish and bluebell tunicates below.

Dinner was a beautiful sit down meal outdoors and the stern deck.  All of our meals will be outdoors!  If the self serve buffet and dinner service are any indication of how we will be fed on this trip, I would say we are going to be in very good hands for the next 6 days.

So, a chicken walks into a barbecue joint...

No, seriously, a chicken really walks into a barbecue joint!

I woke up this morning before 4 am, suffering from rotten dreams that were more than a little disturbing.  Wayne, on the other hand, managed to sleep well for the first time in quite a while.  I was expecting to see Jodi downstairs this morning to watch the sunrise; however, I managed to be a little surprised :)  She and Matt slept in much the same way Wayne and I did yesterday.  SO, my early morning text with useful information went unseen for over an hour!!!  

We did meet up finally at breakfast, and decided on the morning’s events.  The plan was to go to Cinnamon Bay, rent kayaks, and do some kayaking and snorkeling.  And we did just that, taking one of the open air taxis over the hills to go begin our adventure.

The kayaking trip wasn’t very long (I have to say that the maps here are a bit out of proportion to the actual size of St. John), but we were into the wind and current the entire time over.  It took us about 23 minutes to get to the landing beach, after which we started snorkeling.  We saw lots of goat fish, purple fan corals, snapper, and a small nurse shark!

From there, we went to the closer in beach, in search of turtles in the sea grass.  No luck with the sea turtles, but there were sting rays, lots of what appeared to be sardine like fish, diving pelicans, small angel and butterflyfish, and a very large fish of about 4 1/2 to 5 feet length, stalking around the little bait fish.  Oh, and two sting rays!  I still haven’t figured out the big fish, but I will.

The ride back to Cinnamon Beach was probably less than 15 minutes, as we had the wind behind our backs.  Not a bad deal, and we got in over 2 miles of kayaking.  Woo hoo!  We also did get in our 10,000 steps for the day, by the way, something that pleased me a lot.  We won’t get in very much walking on a live aboard!  Jodi’s main regret this morning is that she wasn’t able to find any donkeys at Cinnamon Beach, simply donkey poo.  But she has seen all her other critters, to include here quasi elusive bananaquit.

We got an open air taxi back to Cruz Bay, and we went to the barbecue restaurant (well, joint) above, which apparently is nameless.  The BBQ not only go thumbs up from Wayne and me, but also from our Texans.  Success!  But now how do I figure out a joke about the chicken walking into the BBQ joint???  That will haunt me for a while. ;)

From there, it was time to clean up and rest a little before responding to the Zajac happy hour challenge.  We were to meet on the lanai at the hotel at 3 pm (they were late), and to go out.  Once all assembled, we started at Lime Inn, having our typical Limin’ Coconut.  Jodi and I went in window shopping to a wonderful shop right off the bar, and returned to close out our tab (2 drinks a piece, half off).

From there it was to the Terrace.  We went up and had pupus (oysters on the half shell for us, baked clams with bacon and gruyere for them), and “catch and keep,” a variation of a rum drink.  The view was pleasant, the breeze cool, and the bartender friendly.  We told her we were planning on going over to the Beach Bar to see the sun set, but we were a little concerned by the revelry.  It turned out that today was the annual “Bar Wars,” where bar workers competed against each other for a trophy made of Heineken bottles and one Jose Cuervo bottle.  The proceeds from the event were going to a local charity, the Family Resource Center.  The Banana Bar team won, but they seemed to be blitzed!

From there we were advised to go to Joe’s, which had $3 happy hour drinks.  We made the wise choice here to have some more food while we waited for the sun to set.  At about 5:40, we paid our tab, went out to the beach, and waited for the sun to set.  It was a beauty.  Tomorrow night brings the full moon, can’t wait to see it from on the Cuan Law.

Dinner was at Da Livio Ristorante. We all had oven fired pizza for dinner, swapping slices.  It was all fantastic, although I think we had just too much food.  Now that I am (well, Wayne and I are) in a food coma, we have adjourned to our room to read, write, and finish up preparations for our departure tomorrow.  I think tomorrow morning needs to bring at least a 3 mile walk before breakfast.  We shall see how hubby takes that news.  No worries if I need to do it solo, but it’s always nice to have company.

Night, all!