George Town Bahamas 3

On Tue 16 April we went SCUBA diving with Lars & Susanne.  They arrived on board BV with all of their diving gear at 0930 and by 1000hrs we had raised the anchor and set off for a short passage to the dive site.  It was just 5 miles, east past Fowl Cay and then north through Welk Harbour to an anchorage by Puppy Cay and Dog Cays.

Lars and Suzanne

From there, a very short dinghy ride took us to a reef just to the south of Puppy Cay where we all leapt over the side and set about exploring the reef.

Left:  Juvenile bluehead wrasse (we think!) beside a massive leaf coral head (Our marker for where the dinghies were anchored).  Right:  Nicky and me diving.  Not a picture we get very often

The dive, like many in the Bahamas, was not particularly deep.  The chart showed a max depth of 9 metres but we never went deeper than 8 metres.  The bonus of that being that our air tanks lasted for ages…..

Fairy basslets

….which gave us lots of time to look at all of the sea life.

Stoplight parrotfish

Left:  Superb close up photos of Christmas tree worms by Lars.  Top right:  Sea rod and sea fan soft corals

Lars has a more conventional underwater camera than me and it takes much better macro close-up photos than my wide angle GoPro style camera.  [Ed: Camera envy?!?]  The Christmas tree worms photos he took (above) are particularly good…

A shoal of blue chromis brightened up the scene

Spotfin butterflyfish

… and then he did it again with a great photo of a spotfin butterfly fish and some of the coral.  [Ed: Competition underwater photography?!?]

Top right:  Possibly Ivory tree coral.  Bottom left:  Brain coral. Bottom right:  Spotfin butterflyfish

Both of us glued to our dive computers
 – it must be about time to surface

Our dive took us part of the way around a circuit of an oval reef.  When we finally decided that it was time to return to the dinghies, they were on the other side of the oval.  Nicky and Lars led the way and were spot on with the navigation taking us directly to our distinctive massive leaf coral head which was close to the dinghy anchors.

We had surfaced on the first dive because we were starting to feel cold after 70 minutes under water, so it was time for a lunchbreak back aboard BV to warm up.  It’s not often that you see us wandering around in thick fleeces, drinking hot cups of cocoa in the Bahamas, but we did need to do both to help get properly warm again.

After a good break we set off for a second dive.  This was slightly shallower still on another reef close by.  Because we had only dived to 8 metres in the morning, we still had a lot of air left in our tanks. So, we used the same tanks again and dived for another 36 minutes.  One hour and 45 minutes diving on one SCUBA tank is a pretty good result.  It was a reasonable second dive but nothing like as photogenic as the morning one.  Surprisingly, despite being shallower, the coral was less colourful and the few photos I took tuned out a bit drab.  But it had been great fun diving with friends and the first time that we had done that off BV.  Hopefully we’ll be able to do more in the future.

After a fab day’s diving we made our way back into the main harbour and dropped our anchor in almost exactly the spot we had left at around1800hrs.  Having washed all the SCUBA kit, we met up again on Sea Wind for dinner. Lars and Suzanne are excellent hosts and dinner on board Sea Wind was the perfect way to end our short reunion. Sadly, some imminently arriving weather fronts were going to make our trip north awkward if we dallied too long in George Town.  We had a deadline to make to meet friends flying over to the USA so it looked like we would need to head off in the morning, a day earlier than expected.  Our dive tanks still needed to be refilled so we completed that task first thing in the morning and then, after hugs and farewells, it was time for us to raise the anchor again.  Lars and Suzanne were intending to go north too but later than us, so perhaps we’ll meet up again in the USA.

George Town, Bahamas