Hello from Jim and Jim,
We just returned from another
fabulous dive trip. This trip took us to the 3
Cayman Islands
, the
Grand Cayman
Island
,
Little Cayman
, and Cayman Brac.
We spent six days aboard the 110
foot Cayman Aggressor IV. The weather was fantastic and the
Caribbean Sea
was calm. The water temperature was 80 degrees. We each did 23 dives in the 6
days.
Some of the highlights of the
trip were visiting
StingRay
City
, where we fed the Southern Stingrays, and diving to the wreck of a Russian
Destroyer, the MV Tibbets. The service on board the Cayman
Aggressor yacht was outstanding. Three gourmet meals a day were served. A
morning and afternoon snack were waiting for us after our dives. The sea
life was plentiful and beautiful. We saw octopus, yellow rays, turtles, moray
eels and Freddie the Grouper. Amazingly, Freddie the Grouper allowed us to pet
him like a little puppy dog. Jim Moore was chased by a 10 foot long moray eel,
which the local dive masters have named 'Psycho'. (picture attached)
Aloha .... Jim Moore reporting in from
Kona
,
Hawaii
. As you might remember from an
earlier edition of the HotSheet, Jim Moser and I took a trip in April of 2009 on
the Belize Aggressor diving yacht. We
planned the next trip to the
Cayman Islands
for this December and luckily got a last minute call from the airlines telling
us of a little snafu with weather. We
scrambled and got a redeye into
Houston
then over to
Grand Cayman
.
As luck would have it, the Captain of the Cayman Aggressor
was the same as our
Belize
trip and we immediately felt at home. There
was a full boat with 18 divers on board. They
were made up of mostly doctors, attorneys and accountants from
New Jersey
and
Philadelphia
who have been friends for years. What
a bunch of characters they turned out to be.
We had another group who called themselves the "Wine Divers" as
they have a passion for the grape.
We did all our diving off the stern of the 110 foot yacht
and warm showers, towels and a helping hand were always waiting for us at the
conclusion of each dive. Jim and I
are a bit addicted to underwater photography so after we got out of our gear, we
headed to the laptops to download the snapshots and identify our critters.
I took in excess of 1,700 pictures and 36 video segments so hopefully
some of them made it into this article.
The highlights of the trip were swimming with stingrays and
having them gliding all over our heads as they tried to snatch the squid from
our hands, trying to avoid the teeth of "Psycho", who had bit 5 people
earlier this year, making friends with "Freddie" and drooling over the
HUGE lobster who were off-limits to touching and capturing for the dinner plate.
We got back into port after being out at sea for a week and
spent some layover time at the Sunset House dive and resort facility.
The well known underwater photographer Cathy Church has a shop there and
we got to meet her and her African Gray parrot.
Best to all of our working and retired friends with A.P.D.