Eddy's Scuba Blog

After a day at Sunset House with a great photo lesson at Cathy Church's, I got ready to board the Nekton Rorqual. Unfortunately, Sunset House was not very tolerant about a late checkout, so I had to leave my room by 2:00pm. My dive with Eddy finished at 1:07pm, so I had less than 1 hr to clean up and pack all my scuba and camera gear. That was quite a rush. In retrospect, I wish I had finished the lesson earlier. In the end, I ended barely making it. I was out of the room in record time, by about 2:15pm. I left my luggage at the counter with instructions to load certain pieces to the Nekton. They were loading luggage already all afternoon.

Once my luggage and bill was settled, I had a little time to relax and have lunch. My lunch choice at Sunset House was "My Bar", their outdoor restaurant overlooking the water. Everything on the Caymans was pricey, for lunch, for a burger and soft drink you would look at least US$12.

That afternoon, I had time to go to Cathy Church's Shop for my photo critique and browse around the shop. Again buying that camera was very tempting. They certainly "prey" on that impulse buying feeling.

That night we boarded the Nekton Rorqual at a dock near downtown Georgetown. A shuttle van was picking up people from Sunset House starting at 6:00pm already. Before getting to the boat, there was the "mandatory" stop at a liquor store and grocery store. I did a quick stop at the grocery store for some wafers and mints.

That night, we got a welcome briefing at the "Saloon", the dining and A/V room located on the middle deck of the Rorqual. Having been on the Nekton Pilot before, I was already familiar with the routine. The crew would introduce themselves and talk about the facilites and procedures. One thing different though, to my pleasant surprise, was that the briefing was given with a Powerpoint presentation:

Here's Scooter, one of the crew, talking about the availability of the Sat phone, should have to call home. The briefing concluded with a simulated fire drill where you had to don on your life jacket and walk to a designated area. After that we retired to our rooms to get ready for first day of diving.


First Day of Diving with the Nekton Rorqual at Grand Cayman

The plan was to dive one day on the West coast of Grand Cayman on Sun and then sail that night to Little Cayman. The "crossing" as Capt. Nelson referred it would last all night. That Sunday we would dive at two locations on Grand Cayman: Jax Dax and White Stroke Canyon.

The reef conditions on Grand Cayman were not good. After being hit by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, Grand Cayman lost a lot of it's big specimens of tube corals and sponges. Ocassionally we would run into interesting creatures like this porcupinefish:

Or this trumpetfish, trying to hide among the soft coral. You could also see patches of barren rocks as well. The diving was overall average or below.

To add to the disappointment, Eddy, the instructor at Cathy Church's shop had made changes to my camera setup, trying to "tune" it. He ended up changing my settings to the point that my pictures were not coming right. I learned my lesson about this, if you are getting what you want out of your camera setup, don't let somebody else "tune it", no matter how experts they claim to be. He was well intentioned, but it took me a couple of dives to figure out the settings I had before.

However, it looked like our luck was changing for the good. We saw a glimpse of what Grand Cayman is known for: Stingrays. Here I ended up seeing the biggest stingrays I've ever seen in the Caribbean. This one, being photographed by my buddy Nadine, measured about 1.5 ft.

But this other guy, measured at least 3 ft., not including the tail.

That day we did one dive at Jax Dax and 3 dives at White Stroke Canyon. I was very unhappy with my camera, my strobe was not firing correctly. Our last dive was a night dive, when I finally got my camera work right and managed to take a picure of this lobster: