Yachting, 365 days and a lifetime: Day 201 & 202: Danger Reef!

SAMPSON CAY EXUMAS, BAHAMAS

Saturday...geez Saturday. Another day. It was normal chores around the boat, cleaning some beds and heads, doing the shower sumps and checking air filters. Ragged Reef was set to play during happy hour and again after dinner up at the yacht club. Even though I've seen Jake the divemaster around and have talked to him quite a bit we didn't really become friends until we spent the day together diving. He is a really cool guy and I regret not getting to know him more until now. I helped him put up a rack for wetsuits in the dive shop, and while I didn't do much he needed some of my tools. I love doing projects like that with other people. I managed to find some time to play guitar in the afternoon before the band started. Once they started playing I went up to watch them while keeping an eye on the owner and our dinner guests, Bushman and his girlfriend. The band was fun as always and dinner on the boat was great, grilled red snapper. The rest of the night was spent drifting from the bar, back to the boat, and back to the bar. I finally met the crew on the boat next to us, Mobility. Lis (sp?) and John were a captain/chef couple and despite being next to us for a week I hadn't talked to them. Our friends from Sagamar were also in town after seeing them in Emerald Bay and Georgetown. I don't remember everyones name but it was good to see them as well. I do have to say that remembering names is something I have become so much better at. I surprise myself that I can remember names now, I never used to be able to do that.

Sunday we were set to go diving at danger reef. Nuno and Val were back in town with charter guests and he was interested in diving with us. Well he backed out that morning as he had a conference call with the owner. Jake can't take us in to the park unless we have a certain amount of divers because of fuel costs. It wasn't looking like I was going to see Danger Reef anytime soon. Finally Kris (sp?) and I decided to split the cost of a third diver and do the dive anyways. We got in the boat and headed north in to the park. It was about an hour ride to Danger Reef, which is just north of Warderwick Wells. It was a bit rough but nothing that we couldn't handle. As soon as we were secure on the mooring ball reef sharks presented themselves behind the boat. To my surprise I wasn't too nervous about the 8-10 reef sharks circling the boat. I jumped right in. I immediately felt like I was swimming inside the aquarium at Shedd in Chicago. Huge horse-eyed Jacks huddled in a school under the shadow of the dive boat. Yellow tails were everywhere. Everywhere I looked there was a Caribbean Reef shark, all of which were at least 4 feet long and up to 6-7 feet. Huge black and Nassau grouper were not shy at all and almost ran in to you. We went to the bottom and sat in the sand for a little bit to play with the grouper. We stuck our hands out and wiggled our fingers. They slowly came up to our fingers, put their head up in the air, and if we were slow and patient enough they let us scratch their belly! All of the grouper were at least 3-4 feet long and by far the largest grouper I have seen. I could have sat directly under the boat for the entire dive. While swimming around I noticed a reef shark swimming at me in the distance. As I watched he kept swimming at me. I dropped down in between some coral heads and noticed he also started swimming deeper. He wasn't swimming too fast so I wasn't super nervous, yet. He kept coming and it wasn't until he was about 10 feet away (which is nothing underwater) that I could tell that he was going to swim above me. The shark swam about two feet over me head and I had to resist the temptation to reach up and scratch his belly like the grouper. We saw a lot of spotted eels and a few lobster. The sharks left us for awhile but suddenly one was right there again. Kris took a picture of it and suddenly it turned for the surface and swam fast! It hit the other mooring ball that was not occupied. It was a bit scary as I now knew that we were swimming with hungry sharks. Towards the end of the dive Crash came out of no where! Crash is a huge turtle, I am not sure what kind of turtle, I need to figure that out. his head was bigger than a basketball and he made a very close approach to me. It was hands down one of the best dives I have ever been on. While the diving at Saba last year was unbelievable the fact that we saw so much in one dive here definitely rivals Saba. Our second dive was just a little further to the north called Parrotfish reef. It was also a very cool dive, but with only two shark sightings and two grouper mating it definitely did not live up to Danger Reef. I got dropped off at Sampson Cay and relaxed the rest of the night.

What a day!