BAHAMAS DIVE TRIP OCTOBER 1997

My trip to the "out islands" of the Bahamas and to Turks & Caicos was not the best trip I've taken.

The out islands are sparsely populated, mostly black people, with a few cayes that are almost all white. The whites came from the colonies that became the United States because they were loyal to the Crown. The out islands are served by a very good air service with the hub being Nassau, and a few direct flights from Miami. September through late December is the low tourist season. During that time some hotels and restaurants are closed and many of the dive operations do not have enough customers for them to take the boats out. If divers are going to the islands during low season, they should go in groups to ensure the dive boats operate.

I spent the first week on Abaco Island, the most northern of the Bahamas. This island gets weather fronts in the winter time that hinder dive operations. Marsh Harbor is a lot like "wasting away in margaritaville". I boat dived only a few times because there was not enough people to take the boat out. I also shore dived some with Fred, a local high school teacher. There is a very large sailing industry there. Besides the marinas with American owned boats, a company called "Moorings", operates a boat charter service in which people rent boats by the week and sail about the islands for a vacation. Every night in Abaco was wonderful with groups 6 to 10 sail boat people at dinner.

I hung out with some very interesting people. Rupert was a Brit who lived on a boat in the marina and repaired boats for a living. He also delivered a sail boat about every seven weeks running from the U.S. to the Bahamas or Virgin Islands. Living with him on the boat was Pia, a Finish/Swedish girl who crewed on the boats being delivered, but she did not have a work visa so she could not work between deliveries and just hung out in the marina restaurant. Rupert and Pia had very interesting tales about running through the black nights with one on watch while the others slept, and about beating the ice off the sails and wenches while trying to sail into a cold norther en route to the north east U.S. Pia was 27 years old and had been sailing for eight years mostly in the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and Atlantic. Both she and Rupert were tired of sailing but hadn't decided what else to do. Pia said she could not go back to Finland because of the harsh winters caused her health problems.

Fred was an American who had moved to Abaco to cave dive, was addicted to cave diving and talked of nothing else. He loved to show his videos of the caves. He taught high school and lived on a sailboat that was moored out without electricity. Fred, Rupert, Pia, and I did one night dive during which Fred was going to teach Rupert to cave dive but Rupert chicken-out and wouldn't go in the cave. Pia and I had not planned to cave dive. On another day, Fred took Pia and I to the far side of the island for a shore dive at the mouth of a cave that Fred had previously explored and had left permanent lines in. We collected lobster in the mouth of the cave. After the dive we drove to small beach village of native people to buy beer. Since it was Sunday the one store was closed, but an elderly lady sold us beer from her house. Fred's rusted out pick-up was in such bad shape that it had to be pushed to start it and the radiator leaked so bad we had to stop and get water.

To get myself out of the Abaco routine, I left Abaco Island and went to the island of Eluthera and again found myself hanging out with sail boaters. These people were spending the year sailing from island to island. The diving was not good there so I went to Nassau where I stayed at a divers hotel, Orange Hill Hotel, for only one night and then flew to the island of Provo in the Turks & Caicos. Provo is one of those placed built just for the tourists with no local culture, much like Cancun, but much smaller. It was very expensive and I didn't like it except for the diving. The diving was superb and the dive operation was in a class of its own, the best I have ever seen.

I had planned to go to Grand Turk because I had read a book written by a man, Steven Harrigan, from Corpus Christi about his three month of diving in Grand Truk. However, the weather had been getting progressively worse, and instead of going to Grand Turk I flew to Washington, D.C. where Gina and her neighbors picked me up at the airport.

The next two weeks I spent hanging out at Gina's. Working out every morning and going to a party or dinner every night. Gina had a wonderful going away/retirement party. There was music and dancing and people came from Pennsylvania to see here off. Most of the people she worked with for many, many years had transferred to Maryland when the based was closed in Pennsylvania. They were mostly engineers and scientists working for the government or on a government contract. Some of them were very strange, but I guess you have to be strange to stay in school long enough to get a PhD.

Gina put her house and furniture up for sale and had people fighting over it. It was a new townhouse that she had decorated very nicely. So, we drove her car to Texas and have settled into a new chapter of life.