On to St. Kitts

Our dive day! We wanted to go diving on one of the islands and we finally chose St. Kitts.

It was a day of firsts:

-- First time diving somewhere other than Puerto Rico (both loved it);

-- First time diving in a wetsuit (I hate it; Elaine didn't mind it);

-- First time diving on a wreck (both enjoyed it even though she's a bit claustrophobic);

-- Elaine's first boat dive (she loved it).

We had a terrific dive master/outfitter - Austin from Pro Divers, and a large group who also went on the dive excursion. Included in the group were some very experienced divers, with Elaine being the rookie of the group (it was her 13th and 14th dives). Wet suits were recommended and provided (water temperature was about 78 degrees) and appreciated for the extra warmth.

Travel to the dive sites was by boat over beautiful smooth ocean water - less than 20 minutes or so to the first site which was a shallower wreck dive (sunken boat, tractor and bulldozer). The wrecks were really interesting and fairly open so that even Elaine was willing to go in and through the sunken boat. As we were coming out of the boat wreck, Austin, who was leading stopped and motioned to me behind him, pointing to my camera. He pointed for me to go ahead of him and looking out I saw what he pointed to, a large barracuda swimming just outside and framed by the wreck - an awesome site and a great photo opportunity!

When we got back on the boat Austin said to Elaine that he had noticed her having trouble with her mask (it had been leaking and she had to clear it every 30 seconds or so). He then offered for her to try one of the masks his crew had brought. She settled on Austin's father's mask which she used on the second dive with no problems at all (and thereby using much less air on the second dive)! It's very rare for someone to let another person use their personal mask or snorkel, especially from a dive shop so that was really appreciated.

The second dive was actually two beautiful reefs running perpendicular to each other, each one teaming with fish and beautiful corals. We saw many fish we were familiar with and a few that were uncommon to us - in particular, a few species of wrasses. You can see more pictures from the dives on St. Kitts on our Flickr page.

 St. Kitts is another island I would definitely go back to to dive even though it's not a major dive destination (although that's partly because it's never really been promoted as one). There seems to be a lot of interesting diving, including several very accessible wrecks. It appears their dives are pretty much all boat dives but all relatively near to shore. Nearly all the sites are on the western (Caribbean) side of the island. St. Kitts nearby neighbor Nevis also has several named boat-dive sites.

So we now have St. Lucia, Bonaire, St. Kitts and Dominica. That's a lot of diving! Better get started.

I've got some more thoughts on diving. They will be in the next post, before we finish the cruise on St. Maarten.