Crystal clear waters – reef and plane wreck

To our surprise there is no dive operators in this area…, but we found tanks and someone to bring us out yesterday. One reef dive and one wreck dive – a plane that took off from the airstrip back in the 80-ies ended up on a shallow sand bank, now overgrown with corals and home for plenty of fish, nurse sharks, rays and the odd barracuda. The sharks left the wreck as we approached, we got a glimpse of a ray and we could explore the wreck from all angles. Shallow waters with the sun reaching down, a good photo subject.

We must down to Georgetown to find a proper dive operator as most of the divesites up here are reachable from liveaboards mostly, but we will get back in the water soon.

Staniel Cay - Exumas, on James Bond territory

So, we’re in Paradise – greenblue ocean, white sand, blue sky and slowly rolling side-to-side on a sailboat caught by the wind. Short puddle-jump from Nassau with definately not Richard Bransons private jet (or maybe it was 40 years or so ago…) to Staniel Cay airstrip in the Exumas, and we suddenly find ourself on our home for the next 2 weeks – S/V Sea Smoke and with our goood friends Ty and Kelly. In January they set out from Florida to sail the Bahamas for the next months, and bravely invited two vikingdivers with no experience of dealing with sails and stuff to join them – how fortunate are we! Stein has not wasted time and yesterday under Ty’s strict supervision brought us to Bitter Iguana Beach under sails – and back!

Staniel Cay is a tiny settlement in the Exumas, which has seen and still sees great profiles. In 1965 it was the location of James Bond movies Thunderball, and films like Jaws and Pirates of the Caribbean has also been shot in the ares. With good reason, - its cays and waters surrounding are just pictureperfect, and draws sailors from around the world. Celebreties have homes in the area, private islands for others to gaze at from the seas. Still a very relaxed athmosphere, the Exuma chain of islands and cays have pure tranquility to offer, although a few sailsboats in the area on Bitter Iguana we had the whole beach to ourselves just to share with the local residents – a group of endangered iguanas. Precious got her first testrun under water, playing with the sunlight and sand. Just snorkeling though, as we have to find tanks to get us properly under water. A visit to Staniel Cay Yacht club yesterday and we got to see one of the main attractions – dosens of nurse sharks resting under the pier waiting to be fed… not sailors though, peaceful creatures you can actually go into the water with them.

Scubadooby on the move - drifting towards the Bahamas!

The Scubadooby creature has been off course once before, and this year there are signs of proof that this might happen again... Not so much off course though, still along the golf stream the creature has drifted to the Bahamas!
The creature seem to be more and more dependent on water, moving down from the hills to the beach in Bonaire last year, the creature now actually will rest ON the water when surfacing from the deep. It has become rather sociable and will be spending time on a sailboat with very goood friends and UW-creatures whenever up to dry up. Since this implies less WIFI connectivity, time will show if the Scubadooby are able to transmit signals to the rest of the world. The creature is still closely attached to new friend Precious, and hopefylly this symbiosis will result in images of the UW-scenery for landlocked creatures to enjoy - stay tuned :)

The Bahamas is an archipelagic state consisting of more than 700 islands, cays and islets in the Atlantic and is located southeast of Florida, north of Cuba and Haiti and northwest of the Turks and Caicos.

Meet the dreamteam 2017

So – that’s all for now, another fantastic dive holiday has come to an end. Unfortunately. 

As always, the dreamteam providing photos for the blogg consisted of Kelly and Ty (spotter and Lionfish-hunter), Elin and Stein – photographer and spotter/videographer. New divefriends Jort and Rosa contributed to memorable and fun days in Bonaire. 

Also new this year, Precious, the Nauticam camerahousing provided by Lars at Fotografit in Denmark and baptised by a pastor on our way to No Way Home, made sure memorable moments could be captured from the Nikon D7200. From now Elin and Precious will be an inseparable team on all dive-journeys, the beginning of a long relationship learning about the tricks and secrets of uw-photography. Step by step – a little more knowledgable now than when arriving Bonaire 2 weeks ago.

And last but certainly not the least - Esther and  Menno, the fabulous all perfect gooodivers and owners of diveshop Gooodive (for us the one and only diveshop on Bonaire) made sure that we all had perfect air and support for our dives,  as always. This year we got to do even more fun-dives together, and - at the same time Esther made sure we became a little better divers too through our adventure dives as part of our Advanced  open water certificate. 

Highly recommened too: The ”airmix” Esther and Menno fill the tanks with must be a ”special happy-mix”, as this was an incredibly successfull dive trip with plenty of joyful and memorable moments. Logging 27 dives in two weeks can make you a little ”high” – if not deep… 

In our dive-villa Villa Ganshi with our very own house reef, Something Special, we made sure every day to follow the instructions on the sign on beach – Be Happy J 

Since getting the most out of our divetime was most important, the blogging suffered again... – so included a few pics from our last dives. The Scubadooby will no go into hibernation for a while, untill next time - hopefully not too long - this creature wakes up for more nutrition.