Second Bahamas trip

[cdavisdb]

Second Bahama trip in my 25 ft Seafari. “Someday Came.” My initial impression is confirmed; this is as close to perfect a boat for me as I can imagine. Outstanding performance and 3 divers can dive, eat and sleep aboard for 10-12 days and not be ready to kill each other. Its one great boat.

Three in the crew, me, Simon, a British/Chilean spearfisherman who is serious good at it, and Josh, northern California diver and the one who knew how to find dolphins.

We left out of Ft Lauderdale on October 17, having waited a day to miss some nasty weather, and headed to Bimini for some diving with wild dolphins. We cleared customs and emigration (Simon left his passport in Florida. That got real interesting for a while. Helped that he was a Brit and the Bahamas are a former British Colony). The first day was still blowing and too rough to find the dolphins, so we did the obligatory dive on the Sapoma wreck and gathered a good supply of conch and lobster. Day 2 and 3 were dedicated to wild dolphins with short detours to shoot dinner.

If you are a diver and have not experienced dolphin diving, do whatever it takes to find some. It is truly amazing. Doing loop-de-loops, fast, with two dolphin practically glued to your shoulder and another on on your back, so close you could almost touch them with your nose, all the way to the bottom and back. An adrenalin rush without compare. Other times we could sit on the surface surrounded by 5 or 6 dolphin, nobody moving, just being companionable. Fill your heart, fill your soul.

Did you know that dolphins can turn their heads? We watched a couple go vertical in the water, head down while they scanned the bottom with sonar looking for their favorite meal (some kind of fish under the sand). They would swivel their heads as they scanned, turning heads sideways far more than you would suspect they could.

Turns out dolphin kids are just as disobedient as humans. We had a couple of babies who kept coming back to play, soon followed by mom who took them away again.

Dolphins like to play, active play, and they are a heck of a lot better in the water than we are. If(when) we got winded, pretty soon they would get bored and take off. We would jump back in the boat and follow until they wanted to play again. An astonishing experience that I plan to repeat, often.

Two days of dolphins and we faced a hard decision, do some more or head for Hole in the Wall (HITW), a remote spot at the southeastern tip of Abaco that I have been wanting to dive for years. We chose HITW and headed for Great Harbor Cay in the Berry Islands, 80 miles away and the jump off point for HITW. When we got there, oh joy, we were greeted with the news that the whole island was out of fuel. OH S—T!!! was more like it. I didn't have enough fuel for HITW and the diving around Great Harbor wasn't great. Well, they said they would have fuel tomorrow, but a little asking around revealed that “tomorrow” was like “manyana” in Latin America. Might be 3 or 4 days. At this point, mass panic was the dominate emotion, but a little more asking around and we found out that a cruise ship operation not far away had fuel and would sell a limited amount in emergencies, which this definitely was. It was getting close to closing time so we went off almost as fast as the boat would go, pushing 35 knots, made it just in time. Very nice people. The price was, understandably, a shade on the high side, but considering the crack that they rescued us from, we were very glad to get it, humbly grateful, and then some.

Next morning we took off for HITW, 37 miles away, perfect crossing weather. Arrived mid morning and immediately went looking for some walls. The chart showed what looked like vertical walls with tops near 50 ft, much shallower than most of the Bahamas, almost as nice as Little Cayman. No luck, Reality was tops in about 90, very big sharks, and vis about 90, less than hoped for. That is a whole different situation from what I expected and a lot harder diving. Oh well, it's an explore and deep diving is fun too, I just can't do very much of it. The weather would have allowed a visit to an adjacent, shallower area that I had heard was real good and I made a mistake by not trying that day. Later weather was not conducive and we never made that spot. Instead, we explored some areas inside of the wall and found not much structure but lots and lots of fish. Big grouper, not very smart either, schools of big hogfish, nice. We went around the corner on the “inside” and started exploring. Found an unexpected bonus. For several miles, it drops right off from shore. 13 ft at the shoreline and 50 ft only 50 yards out. Great ledges. In spots, very good coral, caves, and lots and lots of good size fish, at one spot, clouds of hogs. It just ain't like this any more. In spots it was as good as “back in the day” I haven't seen this in quite a while. Its a real pleasure to have a big (15 lb) dog snapper come right up in your face. Lots of hawksbill turtles, grouper of all species, hogfish, big sharks, most of the snappers, none of them very spooky, a very live place. This area is not visited much. We only saw one other boat on the reef the whole time we were there. For 4 days, we explored along the coast as the wind kept building. Lucky us, this particular spot is better sheltered from that wind direction than anywhere else we could have been. 15-18 knots of breeze and it was flat calm for us. This was Bahamian diving like it is supposed to be, but seldom is.

Oh well, all good things must come to an end, and soon it was time to head home. So, off we went with the wind getting stronger. We were running straight away from it, so no real problem, but it was a strange experience to be running at 20 knots+ with the wind so strong that it was blowing through the boat from the stern and at a good clip. It must have been close to 30 knots in gusts. Sea got up pretty good, over 6 foot and steep before we turned the corner into Great Harbor. Word of warning for any of you planning such a trip. If you tell your wife you will call at a certain time and forget to do it, she will have the BASRA, US Coast Guard, and everybody else out looking for you, not to mention, its just not conducive to good marital relations. You don't need to know any more of THAT story.

Great Harbor to Bimini,we went by an area called the Gingerbread Grounds, a huge area of shallow heads out in the middle of nowhere. Used to be incredible abundance of hogs and grouper. A place where 2 good shooters could put over 400 lbs of fish in the boat in a couple of hours. Been there, done that. But, you can't keep doing that sort of thing. Sad to say, that area has been hit hard for too long. A few hogs, and very small grouper were all we saw. Luckily, I like to eat Coney, a species of small grouper most divers don't pursue. There were lots of those. Simon put a nice one in the boat, having gotten the hang of a Hawaiian sling. I got one more and a couple of hogs to take home with us. Off to Bimini and home the next morning, the 26th, with the wind rising. Nice easy run, but the next day would have been interesting.

The boat handled great. Strick is right, this one takes more attention to the wheel than most boats, especially in a following sea. If you come down vertical, all is astonishingly peaceful, but if the boat is even a little off vertical, it will bang. Its easy enough to come down vertical because the boat is so sensitive to turning the wheel, just takes a little practice. Also, going slow in a short steep chop, the boat wants to stick its nose under the next wave. I suspect it could act like a submarine in the wrong circumstances. I had learned a lot about how to drive the boat and it was a much smoother trip even though the weather was often worse than last trip. Strick's comments on stability don't match my impressions, but that may well be a function of what boats we know. I've never been in a 23, just lots of time in a 20. For sure, the 25 is much less stable than my old 24 Seabird (24 degree deadrise), which was a very stable boat for its deadrise. I'm hoping much bigger tabs will calm the 25 down.

Again, I found the boat astonishingly dry. We had the windows open almost the whole time and only twice got more than fine mist on our faces. Fuel economy was way off, about 2 kmpg, but I haven't had time to explore why.

One discovery. Everything on the boat that I haven't replaced is 1972 original or at least old. I have been running it fairly hard and stuff is breaking. Hardly surprising, but unpleasant when the pedestal for the seat breaks off at the floor.

Connor

When the other guys get the links up for their video, I'll post the Utube address.