havecarryonwilltravel

We are diving this week off Virgin Gorda with Dive BVI. They are a valet dive service, which means they do everything for us divers, excluding putting on our fins and BCD. They assist us into the water and help us get out again. B, our primary dive master, is attentive to all the divers and excellent at finding critters in the water and chatty while on the boat.

The boats are comfortable, and easy to move around on. One is faster than the other, but both are well run.

The visibility hasn’t been really great this week. The winds were howling earlier in the week and this has caused the waters to cloud up. The winds have died down today, so hopefully the visibility will improve.

We have noticed a lack of other dive groups out there. We have not seen one other dive group on any of the six days we have dove. We came across some snorkelers one day, but they were not too much of a concern for us. We have had the reefs to ourselves.

The quantity of fish is surprisingly small here. There are not the large schools of fish like we saw in the Maldives. We are working harder to spy critters to photo. We have taken to looking for small stuff – arrow crabs, cleaning shrimp, blennies and gobis.

Diving in the waters off Virgin Gorda with Dive BVI has been a good choice and we are enjoying our time on and under the water.

We have sorted out our equipment challenges and it is peace and tranquility under the waves. The “Snail Team” made up of S, K, V, P, Murray and me plus B, dive master extraordinaire, inch along peering under ledges, inside tube corals, into the deep blue, taking photos.

Trunkfish

We hover beside our favorites taking yet another picture.

Giant Anemone

We wait patiently for miniscule spotted decorator shrimp to peak out of anemones.

Brittle Star inside a Sponge

We peer down tube sponges to discover brittle stars attached to the inside.

Spotted Moray

We float above a spotted moray with its mouth open to breath.

Flamingo Tongues

We marvel at porcelain like flamingo tongues holding tightly to fan corals and a shark as it cruises by causing great excitement in the Snail Team. .

Caribbean Reef Shark

We have three more dive days to peak into holes, drift past coral heads and commiserate with the fish.

Friday
The folks from New York show up today. Travel mode. The plane is over loaded and some of the bags had to remain in San Juan, K and S have their passports in a bag that stayed and they have to sit on the out of the country side of the airport for about an hour waiting for their bags to catch up to them. We visit and chat with the folks on the close side of immigration. After what seems like forever, we are on our way to Coconut Grove.

Supper tonight is at the Fat Virgin’s. We ferry from the Gunn Creek dock to the Biras Resort dock. The Fat Virgin’s has about 12 picnic tables outside on the pier and a shack for a kitchen. Wahoo, grilled, salad and fries is the choice entrée. The nine o’clock ferry is loaded with our group and various workers from the pier area. Murray has fun kibitzing with the locals as usual.
Saturday
Today’s diving is all about the surge. Surge is not current nor tide, it’s surge. As we lay in the water not moving, the surge pushes us first forward and then backward. It is quite soothing if you just go with it. I watch the soft corals bend and sway with the surge and kick only when I the surge is going in the direction I want to move.

Our second dive finds us swimming into a cave! The entrance is quite wide and there is an opening to the sky for light. Becca, our dive master, K, Murray and I swim in using the surge to propel us forward. The cave has a school of Glassy Sweepers milling about. The cave isn’t scary but I know the way out is just behind me and is wide enough to see the other divers waiting for us.

We dawdle under the boat not wanting to leave the surge and the undersea world. We extend our dive time to 66 minutes.

No matter how long someone has been scuba diving for, day one of a dive trip is always an experiment. Haven’t gone diving for months, wetsuit is super dried out, wetsuit is new, gear is supposed to work as it should.

We stride into the water at the back of the dive boat. Try to go down, and I do not go down. Murray doesn’t go down. We try everything we know and end up getting more and more weight from our dive master, S.

My mask keeps fogging up. I have to rinse it every few minutes.

Three quarters of the way through the dive, Murray cannot stay down. WHAT!!?! He ends up surfacing, san safety stop, near the boat and I stay with the group.

Four-eye Butterflyfish

Once up on the boat, we discuss what has happened and why. First obvious point – we didn’t soak our wetsuits when we got to Virgin Gorda. Every drop of possible moisture is sucked out in our dry climate and it takes some time underwater to saturate fully.

Second point – I underestimated the buoyancy of a brand new wetsuit. I am still surprised at the extra weight I had to dive with.

Third point – During our second dive Murray realized that his BCD is self-inflating. The valve may be stuck and is allowing air to continuously flow into the BCD. If we cannot fix the valve, Murray just has to disconnect the hose from the inflator hose and no more air will leak into the BCD. (This is a new BCD and has been used on 1 dive trip only.)

Flamingo Tongue

While experimenting with equipment, we saw a sting ray, a spotted eagle ray, coral banded shrimp, sea pearl alga, a golden tail moray eel and our usual fish friends – spotted drum fish, barracuda, porcupinefish, trumpetfish.

Hopefully tomorrow the experiment will go smoothly.

My legs are failing, my lungs ready to explode, my side is ripping apart. I am running like an impala being hunted by a cheetah down a moving sidewalk in Miami’s International Airport. My heavy pack is bouncing around on my back and my rollie suitcase is faithfully staying upright and keeping up. I am yelling “EXCUSE ME – COMING BY ON YOUR LEFT” as I catch up and pass other slower moving travelers.

A snow storm in Toronto, late departure and de-icing has caused us to be over 2 hours late arriving in Miami. By the time our Toronto flight’s doors are opening, our San Juan flight is boarding. We have to traverse almost the entire airport going from Concourse J to D. If we run at hurricane speed we may make our connection.

After that extreme exertion, we find the doors at the gate closed. We are not the only people left standing on the wrong side of leaving. As sweat continues to drip down our faces and backs, we scurry over to the American Airlines desk to see if there is another flight today.

The fellow at the desk is extremely pleasant and puts us on standby for the 5:45 flight. Standby with a priority rating no less. He also covers off the possibility we do not get on that flight by booking us on the 8:30 flight. It sounds like we will make San Juan tonight as planned. We feel like we have won the lottery when our names are called to board the flight.

Jump ahead….here I sit in our spacious abode in the Gordian Terrace on Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. AAAHHHH!

The island is extreme in hills, friendly in people, gorgeous in scenery and crystalline in water. We have arrived in Virgin Gorda!