Monday, August 4, 2008

One week ago today

OK, I am home. Time to get caught up here with all the pictures and stories.

I will try to keep it somewhat organized, but no promises.
Since I already posted some photos from the first day of diving, I will post the rest here.
Then I will add separate posts for other, various aspects of the trip and other dives.
So, here we go...
These photos are various shots of coral, sponges and plant life from the dives near Buck Island, St. Thomas. The fish from the earlier post are all from these dives.

The first dive was on Rye Reef. max depth was 58 feet, bottomtime was 38 minutes.


This is Bluebeard's Beach Club, the condos/hotel/resort
sort of place that was home base for the week.
This is the view from the boat as we headed to Buck Island.




These two shots above are a couple views of Buck Island.


A little eel was trying to hide among the coral,
but I was able to get a shot of the creepy little thing.
From here down are various coral/sponges, etc.










Next up, pictures of the shipwreck near Buck Island, the Senora Cartanza or Senior Cartanser. Different dive shops use different versions of the name, English or Spanish.

The ship has an interesting history. If you care to find out more, just click on the link above.

This dive was a max depth of 45 feet and bottomtime of 40 minutes.

The shallow depth makes it a good beginner dive. Most times shipwrecks are in deeper water.
This is actually one of the dives I did on Discover Scuba while on my cruise all those years ago.
But this time we got to get a little closer, swim into parts of it and there was an easy swim-through. During Discover, we just swam around the part of it that was in the shallowest water.

The ship is broken into three segments. This is the
middle segment that includes the engine room.

In the first segment there is a small swim-through in the top of the ship.
That is dive guide Steve waiting at the top to make sure we all got through.
From here down are various parts of the ship.










So, there you go.
That was how I spent the better part of Monday, July 28.

More pictures and more posts to come later.

Right now, I have some laundry to do.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Welcome back, Jill. We all had island envy after viewing your blog last week (and even today). The photos were great!! Thanks for sharing; can't wait to hear more.

Merrill said...

Way cool! What kind of camera/housing were you using?

Next: Go to Little Cayman!

merrill

Jill said...

The camera is an Olympus C750 with a water-tight housing.
So basically a regular digital with a good housing.
I borrowed it from my guy. It worked great.

Anonymous said...

Hi! My children's father was instrumental in "Saving the Cartanser" in 1979, and I am writing a book about that for my grandchildren. Might you be willing to let me use your photos of the Cartanser? If so, you can write me at marymarin@comcast.net. Thanks for your consideration!