SCUBA at St Thomas 2011

My dive buddy Hank from Lake George, NY made his trip to St Thomas to coincide with ours again this year. I really appreciate diving with Hank because he is a Rescue Diver at the Lake George Fire Department. He watches over me while we dive so I feel very safe diving with him. We normally do all of our dives with the Coki Beach Dive Club but their boat was being repaired. We can do beach dives at Coki Beach and we did 3 there, but we wanted to go to some other sites that were more interesting.

We scheduled some dives with Blue Island Divers and got to dive on two different wrecks. The first day we dove on a reef off Bluebeard's Beach Club plus a second dive on sunken Navy barges. We saw a small (2 1/2 ft) nurse shark but I missed any pictures of it as my camera battery did not last long enough.

I got disgusted with my camera so I bought a new one and on following dives I got some decent pictures. The second wreck we dove on was a 300 foot long barge that sat upright in 100 feet of water. The main deck was at only 50 feet and when our boat anchored it's anchor was on the deck attached to a fitting.

Here, I am following the Dive Master along the edge of the deck at 50 feet. We then dropped down to the keel level and 100 feet.

Here you can see the other divers following behind me at the 100 foot depth and you can see the side of the barge. We went to the stern of the barge and then entered it and swam up to the main deck going through compartments that were actually open due to the explosions to sink the barge. I chickened out and did not go up through all of the compartments but went up on the outside and met them up near the main deck (50 ft).

Here I am in what is left of one of the compartments at about 60 feet. We all then swam around the main deck inspecting the various parts of the ship and going in other compartments that were somewhat open. While we were there a turtle came out of one of the compartments and I got several good pictures of it with Hank in the background.

The turtle finally headed for deeper waters but Hank and I did not follow him.

On Thursday of the second week Hank and I did one last dive from the beach at Coki Beach. It was just Hank and I (no dive master with us) and it gave us an opportunity to do a little practice in safety procedures like, removing your mask and putting it back on and clearing the water from it and sharing air from the others tank. We also got to see some of the novices out for their first Discovery Dive. An instructor takes a few first time divers out to introduce them to diving after giving them sufficient instruction, of course.