Snorkelling in Carlisle Bay Barbados

On Sunday 14^th we moved locations in Carlisle Bay. Anchored close to the entrance to Bridgetown’s old careenage harbour had been very convenient for getting ashore to the old part of the city but we felt that being tucked in closer to the shore at the other side of the bay would make for a slightly less rolly experience. So, we upped anchor and dropped it again close to the local moorings just off the Barbados Yacht Club, near the Hilton and Radisson hotels. That also had the advantage of moving us much closer to the Carlisle Bay Marine Park dive sites. Here there are several wrecks including the Berwyn, the Ellion and the Bajan Queen.

The highest point of these wrecks is only about a metre below the surface and so this looked to offer potentially great snorkelling. We were not disappointed!

I really can’t tell which wreck is which from my photos but for interest, the Berwyn was a 60ft French tugboat scuttled in shallow (8-20ft deep) water 60 years ago.

The Ellion, a 110ft long freighter, lies in 35-55 feet deep water. She was confiscated and sunk in 1996 for drug trafficking. The fun bit about these deeper wrecks was that at the surface there were lots of tourist snorkellers with floats but we could dive down. In the deeper water the wrecks were being explored by scuba divers. We can both freedive quite well and so it was good fun swimming at the same depth as the scuba divers sometimes giving them a bit of a shock when we waved at them. Also, by diving down we made sure that we didn’t miss out on any of the sights because we could definitely see the colours better when close up.

The guides for the tourist snorkelling groups were very helpful and, even though we weren't part of their groups, they pointed out to us where each of the wrecks were. At the deepest wreck one of them, seeing that we were diving quite deep, challenged me to bring up some sand from the bottom. As a result, I made my deepest freedive ever bringing up a handful of sand from a depth of about 42 feet (13 metres); I was quite chuffed with that! He of course then did the same but at twice the speed that I had. Some of the guides also fed the fish with a little bread and so throughout our snorkelling experience there were hundreds of fish around us which added to the fun.

Being able to swim so close to wrecks and to see all of the marine life and soft corals growing on the wrecks was an amazing experience. Incredibly, one of the guides was apologising because the water wasn’t very clear – he should try snorkelling in the Solent!

In 20-40ft depths there is an old concrete fishing boat deliberately sunk 10 years ago to enhance the number of wrecks in the marine park.

And there was also the Bajan Queen which sits in 6-35 ft deep water.

I’ve got the names of the wrecks from our pilot book and so when we were in the water we really didn’t know which we were looking at. Nor do the photos correlate with my descriptions but then that really doesn’t matter because they were the first wrecks that we have snorkelled over and we thought that they were all fantastic to swim down to.

Bridgetown, Barbados