We met up with James at the yacht club. Today's contingent was the same group as yesterday, plus the son and daughter of the couple from Minneapolis joined us. Over the past two years I have been lucky to meet them as well, so if anything the group got better. Now, with a full boat, the lines were singled up, and we headed out through the north sound to the dive sites.
Our first dive site was Chris' Wall, with planned parameters of 100 feet for 25 minutes. After donning the gear, I rolled over the side and immediately made my way to the bottom, around 60 feet. Once the entire troop was at the bottom, James led us through a groove in the coral to about 100 feet of water. From there we swam along the wall, with the azure of the Caribbean to our backs.
For those of you who are divers, and have dove a wall before, you know exactly what I am describing. It's a shear cliff of coral that starts at roughly 60 feet, and drops to 3,000 feet after roughly 20 feet or so of lateral distance out from the edge of the wall. And along this wall is growing an amazing assortment of corals and sponges. This is then contrasted with the unending blue of open water, which is this murky haze that appears to go out forever. A chilling' yet interesting dichotomy!
During the dive, we saw a crab, lion fish, various jacks, and grunts - larger fish that tend to feed in the deeper corals. Then, for the icing on the cake, we saw an eagle ray swim towards the shallows while a sea turtle swam right past us to deeper water. It's moments like that where I wish I had a camera!
So that concluded our first dive. Once aboard the boat, we drove for 10 minutes to the second dive site - The Fishermen's. Our surface interval was close to 50 minutes' so we could off-gas some of the nitrogen. For the second dive, we did 30 minutes at 60 feet of water. Upon descending to the bottom, roughly 50 feet, we swam along the the wall observing various corals and schools of fish. Highlights include a school of Amber Jacks swimming in open water, and a lime-tipped anemone.
With diving finished for the day, we headed back to port, and then to the condo. We had lunch at Sunset House, located just south of Georgetown. The group split an order of both marinated conch and conch fritters, and I had the Cajun dolphin (mahi mahi) burger. The burger was cooked perfectly, and the fries came with their special jerk mayo.
The rest of the afternoon was relatively low key. Uncle Bill and I went for a "vice" run, where we picked up Cuban cigars, gin and fillet for dinner. I then was able to get some more sun and work on my Clive Cussler book (Mediterranean Caper - the first Dirk Pitt novel). Then, before sunset, I lit up my first stogie of the trip.
Today's cigar was a Punch Churchill. It had pretty good construction, but wasn't very oily. Once I got it lit, it exhibited an excellent white ash, with a smooth draw. Flavors include notes of cedar, pepper, and coffee. It definitely mellowed out during the finish, exhibiting notes of butter and cocoa. Overall, a nice medium bodied smoke that I would rate an 87 out of 100.
We cooked dinner here at the condo, right after sunset. Mom made a shrimp cucumber vichyssoise, followed up with a fillet mignon grilled to a nice medium rare. The meal was outstanding, and that says something given I dislike cucumbers!
After dinner came the cards, and once again Bill and I schooled Mom and Nancy two games to nil. We won the first game 10 to 1, and the second game I shot the moon on a right-left-king-10 of clubs, with a king of hearts as my fifth card (Bill, thank the Lord, had the ace of hearts buried in his hand). Such a righteous victory deserved an equally satisfying desert, so we had rum cake a la mode. Mmmmmmmh rum + sponge cake = bliss!
More to come tomorrow. Ciao!
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