October 24 - 31, 1998

Gene Muller and I signed up for a "live aboard" dive trip aboard the Nekton Pilot out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Flying to Florida on separate flights, we met at the port to embark in the ship. In all, there were 31 divers and a crew of 13 boarding for the trip. Unfortunately winds gusting to 40 miles per hours would make for a rough crossing to Freeport, Bahamas for customs and immigration clearing. The crossing was at night so we slept through most of it.

The Nekton Pilot was specially designed to be a diving ship. It’s a silly looking thing, setting on two submerged pontoons much like a catamaran. Its dimensions (78 ft X 48 ft) and three decks give plenty of living space. Each room has two bunks and its own bathroom. The crew was a fantastic group of men and women who really made you feel at home. They were all very experienced divers and two were marine biologists. There isn't a thing I would have changed.

After entering Freeport and clearing customs, we were offered a couple of hours in the town. During the night the ship moved to the first dive site. Except for the dive sites, each days itinerary was about the same: breakfast, dive site briefing, dive gate open (go and come when ready, complete freedom with no dive masters in the water), lunch while moving to a new dive site, dive site briefing, dive gate open, dinner, a slide show/lecture on marine life, dive gate open for night dive. Each night the ship moved to a new dive site. The ship followed two rules: deep dive sites in the morning/shallow in the afternoon and all night dives were made on the same site that we had dived that afternoon.

Among the dive sites were several wrecks. One especially memorable dive was on a large ship that was mostly on its side. The cargo holes were large with the covers removed for anyone who wanted to penetrate the wreck. A tame green moray, named Pickles, lived in the ship. Gene and I were the first to dive. While putting my head into an opening I met Pickles only inches from my face. In my astonished exit from the opening I could see Gene laughing so hard his facemask almost came off. Anyway, Pickles came out to play with the divers.

During the one morning dive, we donned only mask, snorkel, and fins to swim with wild dolphins. I say "wild" because there are resorts that have captive dolphins that one can swim with. Sure enough, the dolphins showed up for several passes at the divers. As I dived down, three passed within ten feet. They did not get really friendly as they have been known to do, but I thoroughly enjoyed swimming with dolphins in the wild.

During one afternoon dive, we were promised numerous reef sharks since we were at a site where one of the Freeport dive resorts feeds the sharks daily. As I passed into the area of the sharks, I quit counting them after twenty. Now, these were fat, happy sharks that came to look us over. The resort feeds the sharks from a frozen mass of fish in the center of a ring of seated divers. So, divers meant food (fish, not divers) to the sharks.

The most memorial dive of my life occurred on the last night dive. On the night of 29 October, Gene was the hero of the Nekton Pilot. We were moored in open-ocean at a wreck called the Hesperus. The Hesperus was a barge that was carrying bags of cement when it went down and part of the hull is broken up. Anyway, it was a black night and we were promised huge loggerhead turtles. There were schools of large barracudas in the grass around the wreck, the sand was littered with two-foot stingrays, and, sure enough, Gene found a five-foot by three-foot turtle sleeping under a part of the broken hull. The turtle came out and went to the surface. He had three, three-foot long remoras on his back. (Remoras look like green eels. It was gross to see.) It was a great dive, but my first concern was when I saw partly eaten fish still alive on the wreck. And, soon three marauding reef sharks flashed through the beams of our lights. These were not the fat sharks we had seen at the feeding site. Some divers had to duck to keep from getting hit by the blinded sharks. I decided it was time to back out of the whole affair. But, not Gene, while standing on the deck, he held his light on the sharks keeping them blinded while the rest of the divers "got the hell out of there". As the rest of the divers were getting back on the dive boat, Gene finally left the wreck and joined us.

Gene was the hero of the ship. Everyone was very proud of him for guarding our retreat. I had three thoughts about this:

1. Gene was incredibly brave and his actions were heroic,
2. Gene was playing with the sharks and he was incredibly stupid,
3. Gene was too scared of the sharks to move and only seemed brave.

Anyway, he got credit for being very brave.

After several days of incredible diving, eating wonderful meals and snacks, and enjoying the camaraderie of the divers and crew, we returned to Fort Lauderdale for the flight home.