Yup, I went on a 'guys' diving trip. Our diving package, I got in eleven dives and some snorkeling. Two two-tank boat dives and a whole mess of shore diving. We are staying at Sunset House which basically lets divers use as much air as they want. Heh heh heh…. (evil laugh)

This is actually my second time in Grand Cayman. The first time was with my Bride on a cruise ship – a quick daytime stopover. This time I spent five nights here and got to see much more of the city. The city (George Town) goes through an amazing transformation as the cruise ships pull up. Card tables filled with t-shirts and other tourist swag sprout everywhere. Restaurants are packed as were all the sidewalks. Then the ships pull away… Everything was dead and boarded up by 7:30pm. Went to supper at one of those “cheeseburger in paradises” restaurants – one of the largest I’ve seen – and we were the only three people having supper. Not a destination I’d go for a non-diving holiday, as it was a brisk 20 minute walk to get to a beach.

I now understand the speedo. Getting a swimsuit on under a wetsuit is tricky, and well… since I was wearing a full body wetsuit… commando style seemed like the appropriate thing to do. Wrong answer. Seems a person would need to develop calluses on some tender bits do that sort of thing. Or to rephrase, one gets the painful part of starting calluses when they do that sort of thing.

Rented a dive computer for the week. Best $15 I ever spent. The thing recorded dive depths, start times, air temps – all the stuff that is a pain to remember when you are doing it by hand. It also would help with the safety stops, reminding us to hang for a few minutes ~15’ or so. It was also clever enough to track time between the dives, so it would adjust accordingly. Did a 106’ dive, followed by a 67’ dive, followed by a 50’ shore dive… all non-decompression dives… but the computer would lengthen the safety stops as the day wore on. Also noticed I slipped from 17’ back down to 25’ or so, which put me back at ‘dive’ status rather than a proper safety stop, so much to the amusement of my dive buddy, I had so hang for an extra minute or so. Were I to buy one, I would also want the type that monitored air tank pressure. That, of course, would require a regulator and all of the other stuff you have hanging on to your octopus. Not sure 1) the appropriations committee (bride) would approve of such a thing and 2) if I dive enough to not just rent one. Very handy… Hmmn.

Oxygen use was much better. I’m able to stay down for about 45 minutes with a dive depth of 60’. Compare that to the 30-minute dives at 30’ last fall and it was a huge improvement on air. Not really doing anything different – just more comfortable I guess. Also dropped to using only about 14 lbs of weight this trip. Might need to bump that up to 15 pounds as buoyancy became an issue once I hit the 300-400 PSI mark (not that I should be under water at that level) and was trying to finish up a safety stop. At depth, 14 was too much. Not sure how to resolve that – might just happen with more diving. Glad I had a full body wetsuit. One of the dives ended up taking us through a group of jellyfish about the size of my thumbnail. Still smarted when it hit skin, however. We were able to photograph some of the larger ones, however. Even more important was avoiding the sunburn.

Did my first night dives on this trip. Not sure I care for it. Perhaps if I got a 2000-watt light that had better penetration than the 17’ or so the one I had did. Different set of critters at night. The back of my mind was convinced the predators were part of that night set I could not see in the inky blackness. Disquieting. It was fun to see the lobsters out in the open as well as catching fish and turtles sleeping. We attached glow sticks to the back side of our tanks, which worked very nicely for spotting the backside of my dive buddies. Had major issues with some of the cheap backup lights. The batteries would leak, covering everything in nastiness. Not sure why, as they claimed the $10 light was good for a hundred feet or so, but 30-60’ of shore diving killed off several of them. Messy. One of the coolest things was when we turned off the lights. After a few minutes, if you agitated the water, the area around your hand would sparkle to life like a swarm of blue fireflies. It would not record and whatever the critters were, they were too small to make out.

The little eels were very cool. I linked a video recording of them. They were about the size of a pencil, just like a field of grass. As you approached, they would hide back in the sand. Reminded me of Half Life’s zen world. The camera equipment could not get a good shot of the big eyes.

Going through the photos, one of the guys noticed he had photographed the same anemone two years in a row. You can see a year’s worth of coral growth if you look to the right.

last year
This year

As for the food. Blah. I came down with some sort of food poisoning. Pretty sure it was the breakfast at the hotel. I don’t have motion sickness issues and the waters were calm for the boat trip. On the second tank of the boat dive, I started feeling off. Did I swallow too much salt water? Don’t know… Regardless, I made for the boat when I started to cough up bile under water. I was not anxious to test the theory that I should be able to blow chunks through my regulator. A few minutes walking out to George Town for lunch, I realized I was getting ready to do a bit more than just bile. I worshiped at the porcelain throne a bit while the guys got lunch. An hour or too later hit a shore dive and then headed out for supper. Not going well. This time a field implementation of my previous efforts. Ended up boxing supper and gingerly munching on it as the night progressed, opting to skip the night dive and the early evening dive. And sure enough, one of the guys I’m diving with ordered the same breakfast the day after…. with even stronger results. He ended up skipping the morning dives and does not look like he plans to eat anything till we get back to the States.

Almost home… One of the downsides to using airline miles to travel is the flights are not the nicest. Nothing quite like an o-dark-and-early taxi ride because I’ve got checked baggage. Loot for bride and child. Minimal sunburn. All limbs attached. Good trip.

Watch the little buggers go back into the ground as you get close. At around 80’ of water. The area was carpeted with them.

Testing some of the video capabilities of the under water camera. Chased some sort of ray around for a bit, making sure we did not pull a Steve Erwin. Good enough for the web, however.