Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles? Diving the Virgin islands was a blast. Like being trapped in a tropical fish tank, with sharks (a single shark to be sure but a shark nonetheless) and Crawfish, (known as Lobsters here - in the UK, Lobsters have claws and Crawfish have long feelers) Barracuda, Moray eels, Turtles (twice) and an Octopus.
There is an App published by the Smithsonian Museum called Fishes of the greater Caribbean. It lists over 1600 fish of which 960 are relevant to divers. I have seen 20 or 30 varieties I am sure. All colourful and numerous. Visibility varied from 50 feet plus to hundreds of feet, I am unable to estimate it but it was stupendous.
We leave the "Mainland" of Puerto Rico and head to one of the two Spanish Virgin Islands; Culebra - the other one is called Vieques (pronounced View-Aye-case)
We depart the Marina Del Mar (the first leftmost red arrow and motor into the wind to reach the second Red arrow - A small island a mile from Culebra, (marked 'A' below after diving there we enter a lagoon on Culebra ('B') to anchor for the night. We nip out for a dive on a small uninhabited Island to the North ('C') before returning to Culebra for a second night. The town on Culebra is called Dewey but even the locals call it Culebra.
Lots of little islands, coral reefs and some nice beaches
The lagoon in Culebra has a canal cutting one of the arms of the bay into an island
The bridge is now permanently down so entry to the lagoon is around the long way - through a narrow but well marked gap in the coral reef. A bullet proof anchorage. At least for smallish hurricanes!
The town is a pleasant wee place, loads of tourists arrive on the ferry from Puerto Rico and there are cafes and restaurants galore. Mainly cheap and cheerful
Loads of these golf buggies hired out to tourists, a bit like "The Prisoner" (although that TV program used mini-mokes )
What's not to like
But it has real churches - not too pretentious but functional. The best type! And I find a shop that sells bread!
My diver training was through the BSAC - the British Sub Aqua Club. This promoted amateur clubs (that were actually rather professional) and you worked your way through the ranks, trainee - when you "took" the training and then instructor when you "gave" the training. This engendered a benevolent team spirit, A hierarchy of respect and an excellent way to become competent. Queens University club was where Shirley and I met and it had people go all the way to the top of the UK training ladder. Unfortunately now the American system of PADI has taken over the world. Disparagingly called "Pay And Dive Immediately" it promotes a far more commercial way of learning - take course after course - paying at each stage. Its higher ranks are geared up to teaching you how to run dive schools and make money. The BSAC upper levels are about true excellence in skill and instruction. I much prefer it. <rant mode off>
The lagoon has a small two boat dock - free I think but first come, first served. We anchor in excellent holding in 20 feet.
We go to to a restaurant called the Dinghy Dock - which has a (yes you guessed it) neat to climb out of your dinghy right into your table. Here are Ian and Frances - my crew for 5 weeks.
The dinghy dock has loads of Tarpon fish - about 3 to 5 feet long! the restaurant feed them bread. Unfortunately (fortunately for them I suppose) they are very poor eating! I last saw these fish in South Cuba.
The scenery is pleasant, the diving excellent;
Here is Ian (Stevenson) and Frances
And here is a fish (I will check later, I think it is box fish, rather cute!)
Turtles are wary of humans unless they are eating, when they ignore humans and concentrate on their meal.
We leave Culebra and head to St Thomas (4th red arrow from left) - one of the US Virgin Islands. we dive at a small rock en route and arrive in the main town in St Thomas after wending our way through narrow channels. It has cruise ships, super yachts and poor old houses. Strange place
We have a night ashore but it is a quiet Sunday and we elect to move on to the St John - the next USVI. (The third island to the South is St Croix which we miss as it is a bit out of the way) St John is mainly a marine national park, but as Mr T has stopped their wages there are no National Park Rangers about.
That is the National Park Service building and a museum and shop. All well developed.
We anchor off and enter the park the next day - anchoring is not allowed but there are both overnight yacht mooring buoys and daytime diving buoys available. We are unable to pay for these and have two dives and head on to the BVIs which is a mere 7 miles away. We call at Sopers hole at the West end of Tortola and find it is still in a very bad way after hurricane damage over a year ago. There is one small yacht charter office open who can sell me some petrol for our dive compressor. They give me this out of a jerry can as the hoses are not working. There is one bar that looks open but is in fact closed when we arrived. They are cleaning and restocking. "We are shut" they say "But if you buy a bottle of beer from us, we will open it for you and you can sit outside at our tables and drink it" That works.
Sick docks
Dodgy docks, also there is the smell of "drains" everywhere. Not good.
And of course boarded up buildings
Wrecked boats - we saw ten ashore with missing or half missing masts and holes.
Having got petrol - and a beer we move onto the main town of Roadtown, Tortola, I had been here a year ago and I find some progress has been made
This beautiful yacht is still half submerged but more of the docks are open and there is fuel.
The town has had a lot of building reconstruction done but there are still ruined buildings - I suspect that over 50% of the small buildings in the town suffered damage two years ago. Last year I was told that building materials went up fivefold in price and tradesmen were hard to get, at any price.
At least there are machines working
And some work going on
These two houses got a new roof! not sure how their neighbours are faring.
We fuel up and move on to snorkel dive on Virgin Gorda - an area known as " The Baths" with lovely big boulders. We get back on board Shadowmere and head off into the night - passing within a mile of Richard Branston's Necker Island.
You are not allowed to bring your dinghy ashore - you are expected to swim in.
An overnight passage has us arriving at Saba. A steep sided lump of an island that has a few mooring bouys that prove to be a bit rolly, the seas have considerable swell and it proves too dangerous to lower the outboard onto the dinghy near the only jetty. We are unable to land and after two days leave Saba to head for the nearby island of Eustatius (or Statia as it is usually called) Both Saba and Statia are Dutch. We have a lovely time in Statia
Sorry for the lack of photographs, my camera is getting repaired.
Saba