The Virgin Islands

We arrived early at St. Thomas, 7:15 a.m. instead of 8:00 and were cleared early to debark. We tied up to the pier this time instead of offshore and didn’t have to use the tenders.

Rob had a dive at 8:30. I had shopping to do. I had made a plan and was going to stick to it.

Rob’s dive started out with a little bit of a delay. The trip number happened to be 930A which looked like they were starting at 9:30 in the morning instead of 8:30. Oops. Fifteen of the twenty divers figured that out but five didn’t. Once that was straightened out, they boarded a vessel run by Underwater Safaris. They took them out to Buck Island National Wildlife Refuge. They dove Wye Reef and Cartanza Senora.

Unfortunately both of these site are in less than ideal shape. The Cartanza dive was a Colombian agricultural transport that the U. S. Coast Guard caught trying to transport “creamer” mixed in with the coffee. Rather than get caught, the crew scuttled the ship. A hurricane washed it up into shallower waters and broke it into three parts. The aft end sitting more or less upright in the water with the top completely ripped away. You could see two old diesel engines rusted beyond any possible usefulness inside the hulk. There was a fair amount of coral and many different varieties of fish around. damsel fish liked to lay their eggs on this part of the hull and they were aggressively protecting their clutches from each other and from the divers. A few people who got too closed had their suits nipped.

The mid section supposedly contained a large moray eel, but Rob never saw it. It had the infamous name of Elvis because one individual would see it and then when others looked it would have hidden deep in the wreck. This section was also upright and had a convenient hole to practice diving through. There were more blue tangs than damsel fish here.

The bow of the ship was sitting nose-up in the water as if the rest of the ship were buried beneath it rather than being spread out behind it. It had some anemones or gorgons on it. By that time the 2800 pounds Rob had was pretty much gone. He signaled and surfaced with several others right behind him. The gentleman leading this dive had 16,000 dives on his record, but he had only been leading tours for a short time. He was not yet dive master rated. On the second dive, he was a lot more careful about the other diver’s air supply.

Wye Reef is actually in the refuge. You could tell the difference. The reef was named after an old wooden ship that had sunk there 80 some years ago. It had no significant presence left except for the reef in the shape of a ship’s hull. This dive went down to 59 feet. It was actually deeper than the Senora dive of only 44 feet. It was an interesting dive and Rob hasn’t suffered any ill effects from this reverse profile.

He saw many varieties of fish and the further they got into the actual refuge, the more coral and fish they saw. There was lots of soft coral and some fire coral. Rob took photos of this to recognize it in the future. Getting too close to fire coral can result in severe pain that lasts several days. Hence the name. He also saw an octopus (video footage, yay!) and a small foot-long sea turtle swimming alone. Unfortunately, the camera started to fog up and the image quality is not the best.

At 1,600 pounds (of air) Todd turned them around and they headed back to the ship. It was definitely the better of the two dives. Rob wished they could have gone further into the refuge.

Meanwhile, Connie had been shopping her little heart out and came away with lots of booty. Also, Belgian chocolates that are to die for. They won’t make it home. This is guaranteed.

Signing off for now. We have to go to dinner.

PS: Rob went looking for a bookstore. Found only one of such poor quality, it had less than 100 books in it. None of which would interest any but the most desperate of readers. Apparently, they don't read much in St. Thomas.