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Dear Fellow Diver,
The fall of 2017 was a brutal hurricane season.
Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria devastated many
Caribbean and Atlantic islands, so in October I was
both anxious and eager to see how things fared in the
Bahamas. Amazingly, the reefs looked great on this
Bahamas Aggressor itinerary, and the weather deities
offered a fine week with only a few hours of rain.
Under the able leadership of Captain David
Patterson, the crew of six took great care of the 13
divers on board, keeping things clean, making sure we
got the food and drinks we preferred, teaching courses
(two divers took Nitrox training and two took other
courses), and of course, keeping to the dive schedule.
We began with the captain's briefing on safety; the
nearest hyperbaric chamber was in Nassau, which made
it either nearby or many hours away, depending on the
itinerary.
The boat (formerly the Carib Dancer) is 100 feet
long, has a salon that doubles as the dining area, a
spacious sun
and shade deck,
but some of the
tiniest cabins
I've seen on
a liveaboard
(under 7x7
feet/2x2m.)
Five identical
two-person
cabins have a
double bed and
a single-sized
bunk above, and
there's one
quad cabin in
the bow, all with ensuite baths. Because cabins
were minuscule, I had little inducement
to hole up, so I socialized or
relaxed on the sundeck or in the
salon between dives. Because I was in
the quad, I showered on the dive deck
instead of the cabin shower, one of
those shower/toilet combinations that
leaves you wet but not feeling clean.
Our first dive set the tone for
the trip. The high-profile topography
of Jewfish Wall near Allen's Cay
in the northern Exumas was typical
of the many dramatic walls we dived.
Staff briefings included dive site
drawings with compass headings and
noted significant landmarks and what we might see. The compass headings were worth
noting, since, between complex underwater topography, currents, and some low visibility,
a few divers had difficulty finding their way back to the boat. One experienced
group had to be picked up in the inflatable half-a-mile from a site with
brisk current; they returned rather shame-faced. So, a safety sausage or SMB is
essential. Most divers dove with their buddies, though one crew member was always
in the water. We made all the dives from the mothership by giant stride off the
transom....
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