Inaugural SCUBA Diving Trip June 2022

When Kyle and I began down this long road with Third Wave back in 2016, the boat was part of a bigger overarching plan for enjoying our final couple of decades on this planet.   Under this plan, I had already decided to move to the Bahamas to finish up my working career remotely and then retire to an active life of fun in the sun.  But to do this I needed a house in Freeport on the deep water ocean canal as well as a nice fishing yacht to use.

I have chartered yachts out of SE Florida for over 20 years as well as owning several boats in my lifetime, including:

• 1995 Polaris SLT 750 Jet SKi (still have it, still runs great)
• 1985 23' Carver Camper
• 1985 27' Sea Nautique
• 1966 38' Chris Craft Commander
• and now a 1973 42' Chris Craft Commander (Third Wave).

Chartering is expensive and so I found like minded people to share the costs.  One time we even bare boat chartered (meaning I was the captain) a 47' Robertson and Caine power cat that ran us $11 grand just for the use of the boat for a week (fuel and everything else was extra...).  

But then back in 2015 the chartering market got very thin and the prices were going up just as quickly as charter availability was disappearing.  That was when I decided I needed to stop chartering and start owning.  Kyle saw the vision and threw in with me all the way in our Third Wave partnership.  Neither of us have looked back.  And now, finally, we are actually in a position to use this nautical asset and associated infrastructure.

For the June 2022 inaugural diving trip the team consisted of (right to left in the picture below) Eric Sloan, Kyle Odiorne, myself, and a new BBOS (Bahama Boys Of Summer) member, David Pittenger on the left side of the photo.  

The trip was to be 9 days in total, living aboard Third Wave.  We planned to dive off the coast of Freeport and then fish/cruise over to a place where shallow water free diving is possible called Gingerbread Ground.  We would then spend a night at anchor at Gingerbread and then cruise around to Bimini for more diving and fishing.  The return trip back to Freeport would give us more time to fish the waters (known as Northwest Providence Channel) between Bimini and Freeport.

- Everyone arrived in Freeport on Saturday June 25th and we spent the day organizing all the gear and getting everyone settled in.  We ended the evening with a nice dinner in Freeport at a place called Upstairs On The Bay.

- On Sunday June 26th, the dive shop was not open and thus we could not get our tanks filled.  So we spent some time cleaning up the boat and getting it ready for the trip as well as sorting out our dive gear and getting our fishing gear ready.  We then went out and did some reef fishing where we got some good hook ups but didn't bring any real meat into the boat.  David fought something of pretty fair size for about 20 minutes before it bit the line off.  Note the use of the old school Penn Senator and 1960s rod that he inherited from his Dad.  That rig has been well cared for and it did everything it was intended to do during the fight.

On Monday June 27th we did finally get the local dive shop to fill our tanks but it was clear that they are short handed and that their priority is schlepping tourist divers out to the closest possible reef and back several times per day.  If you don't catch them just right, the Bahamian way is "just come back tomorrow morning".  Of course that works well for them but not so much for vacationers who have limited time.  Still, we got them to fill our tanks and we went out and did two fairly shallow 40-50 foot introductory dives.  While David P was ready to go based on just having taken a couple of refresher diving courses, the rest of us had not been diving for many years.   I had anticipated having problems with dive gear that has sat in a closet for 6+ years and so I bought all new stuff since I am out here full time.  But I didn't have time to get it set up and so I found out the hard way on this first dive attempted that my first stage was leaking and had to sit it out.  But the other guys got wet and it was all good.

The local dive shop is a pretty nice business which is in partnership with the local "swim with the dolphins" experience business.  Everything in this business was in pretty good repair, but not very busy.

Eric was his usual helpful self and we even came back to the boat from the dive shop to find him polishing the gel coat.  Now that's the kind of crew I like to have around!

Later that day, as if in reward for going the extra mile with the polishing, Eric landed his first blackfin tuna of the trip.  Here is a youtube link of it going into the cooler and below is a picture of Eric and his catch right before we cleaned it.

That evening we ate at Zorba's Greek restaurant in Port Lucaya with the plan of heading out to Gingerbread Ground the next day.

So in the first leg of this trip we ended up getting in three two-tank dives off the coast of Freeport.  All in all it was good diving and we were able to tie up to a couple of mooring balls and get around 60' of visibility.  The reefs were good with a large amount of sea life.  We saw a monster 400+ lb sea turtle, blacktip reef sharks, Caribbean spiny lobsters (it was not lobster season), crab, and some very nice schools of fish.  The diving pressure was low and the fish did not appear to be very skittish.  Unfortunately, nobody was set up for taking underwater photography this time.  So that will be something we have to get back into on future trips.

Interestingly, the lionfish population (pictured below from an Internet image) has collapsed.  This poison tipped, invasive species appeared to be taking over beginning about 15 years ago.  Each subsequent year back their their numbers were notably higher.  But then governments in Florida and in the Bahamas not only created open season on them but encouraged people to shoot them in the name of saving native species.  This time we only saw 3-4 specimens the entire time.

That said, the really good deeper dives like Theo's wreck and even the wreck of the Sea Star that used to be popular and whose dive mooring balls were well maintained were neither well marked nor actively being dove by the local dive shop.  It seems like business is really focused around new divers who fly or cruise in for a short time to "get wet" at the easy to get to dive spots frequented by the local dive shops.  The dive shop told us that the more difficult sites had not been used in some time.  I suspect this is a function of low tourism numbers which have not yet recovered from Dorian and covid (even though the island itself has).

On Wed 6-29 we refueled and then headed out into the Northwest Providence Channel for another crack at the Ahi bite.  The seas for this part of the trip were muted, only about 2'.

We marked a good deal of fish but they were all deep, at 200' or better, and we did not have any downriggers set up.  We caught a couple of barracudas during this run to Gingerbread but nothing to brag about.

All in all it was a relaxing trip over to Gingerbread where we arrived well after dark and had to pick our way to an anchorage where we got a good night's sleep hanging on the hook.  We stayed at Gingerbread well into the afternoon of the following day which was 6-30.  To be honest, the place was more picked over than expected.  I found a good number of cleaned conch shells on the bottom.  Also, we ended up doing a bit of driving around looking for the shallows.  One of these days I am going to go out there for a several day trip pulling a jet ski and really map the place out so we know exactly where to go on future trips.  I'm not sure why we didn't get any pictures of our catch at Gingerbread but we shot plenty of seafood and ate well from the bounty of the sea.

We left Gingerbread on the afternoon of 6-30 and did some more trolling but as the afternoon wore on I decided that if we pulled in the lines and cut behind Great Isaac Cay that we would have enough fuel to get to North Bimini at full cruise speed (which is around 17-18mph) with about 0.50 mpg of fuel economy.  The reason for doing this is that otherwise we would get into the marina around 2am by trolling our way around the bank completely, and there can be strong winds and currents to deal with in Bimini Big Game marina which I did not want to have to contend with at night (along with trying to get a slip from the night watchman, etc.). 

While it sounded good on paper, we got around the bottom of North Bimini, only 4 miles from the north shore of North Bimini (which is about 8 miles from the entry to Alice Town which was our destination), and then hit some rocky water.  And even though we were supposed to have more than 40 gallons of fuel onboard according to my trip computer, the heavy rocking caused air to be sucked into the fuel lines, thus shutting down both motors at almost exactly the same time and setting off a chain of events that took us more than 2 hours to solve.  Of course the first notion was that the fuel filters were either plugged or full of water and so we replaced them.  They did have some nice chunks of crud in them and a tablespoon of water, but that is not abnormal.

We finally got both engines running again after purging the air out of the fuel system using the Schrader valves up near the throttle bodies.  So this was clearly a fuel related issue and at this point I suspect that whoever made our new fuel tanks (which were installed just before we purchased the boat) did not do proper baffling.  There are several solutions for this now that we know it is an issue.  But we know it is not the pickup tubes because I pulled them out not long ago and inspected them.  

It was just another example of how boating is 99% pure fun and 1% pure terror.  It can be scary drifting away from shore after dark at more than 2 kts and nobody on island responding to VHF calls.  And of course, out of cell phone range and too deep to anchor.

Whereas we were supposed to be able to arrive at the marina around 8:00pm by speeding up and taking the short cut, the 2+ hours of drifting pushed us 4+ miles further out and since I wanted to be on maximum fuel conservation mode I kept the speed down to about 7mph.  The result was that we didn't get near the mouth of the North Bimini inlet until around midnight or even a bit later and so instead of going in, we dropped anchor and got some sleep.  In the morning the water had laid down flat and both engines started right up and we made it to the fuel dock without further incident.  That was the only real issue we had during the entire trip.  That said, we know that if not careful at startup the port engine will flood and also that the stbd engine sometimes wants to stall just after starting (but it starts right back up).  So I think it is time to pull the throttle bodies and rebuild them with new injectors.  Also, the port starter is probably in need of replacement as it has been dragging (turning a bit slower than expected) for some time now.

Upon refueling at Bimini Bluewater Marina we figured out our slip assignment over at Bimini Big Game Marina and then went diving.   Like Freeport, the diving seems to be at a lull right now. While there is an active dive shop in Bimini, there were very few visible dive balls.  My sense is that boats come ripping through there and cut the dive balls off.  This can either let the mooring rope fall to the bottom or it can float just under the surface if the rope is poly.  We in fact ran over a completely submerged poly rope and had to stop and cut it out of the stbd shaft.  We did see the dive shop boat out there with divers and they appear to have taken to hovering the boat around their divers instead of tying off to a ball.  I guess it gets tiresome and expensive repairing mooring balls all the time so I can't blame them.

While in Bimini we checked out Alice Town, had dinner at the local restaurants, checked out the local watering holes and spent some time at the casino.  Bimini is off the hook busy these days and pretty soon the native language will be Cuban.  

The last time I was there was probably 2015ish and there were a few golf cars and perhaps 2 small pickup trucks on island. Now?  Forget it.  The street is full of cars, trucks, golf cars, and scooters.  It's a mixed blessing for the locals because while their island is no longer a quiet little tropical paradise, it also had no action and no money back then.  Homes were nothing fancy but still sub $200k back then.  On this recent trip we have learned that home prices have skyrocketed and that these tiny little places off the beach are $750k and that beachfront shacks now go for $1.25 million.  Also, business is very strong and the local merchants are charging high prices.  Example: the marina we stayed at cost $3.25 per foot per night and then if you wanted to use electricity it was another $1 per foot and then if you wanted to use fresh water it was yet another $1 per foot.  So we paid $5.25 per foot + 10% VAT to equal $5.75 x 42' ($241) per night in order to sleep on our own boat!  Admittedly, prices were jacked up for the 4th of July weekend, but still, I can't cry for the locals on Bimini because they are raking it in right now.

While staying at Bimini we had an issue with the forward AC unit and it was never really right.  The saloon AC unit also used to blow colder IIRC even though it appears to be working properly.  The side cabin unit was the only unit that worked really well, and only after we replaced the control panel at the start of the trip.  So we have some issues to look into there.

On Sunday July 3rd we began trolling back toward Freeport from Bimini and just at about the same location as we have caught tuna in the past, we saw a big flock of birds hitting the water and could see some commotion on the top of the water thus indicating feeding activity by larger species.  So we trolled right past it and immediately hooked up another blackfin, but Mr. Shark did not allow us to get it to the boat without paying Shark Tax.

Here is a close up of that action and it is pretty clear that this 15lb tuna was cut perfectly in half in one snap of some huge jaws.  The shark came in directly from the rear, opened its mouth to put the entire back half of this fish down its throat and then chopped it off like it was a paper cutter.

Even after the shark did that, we got 4 chunks of meat off of it for our own happy consumption. IIRC the picture below shows only about half of the meat that we harvested.

We arrived back at my dock in Fortune Bay in Freeport with time to clean up our gear as well as the boat.  The following day I used my "new" Silverado 1500 (2014 MY but only 36k miles) truck to take everyone and their gear to the airport and see them off.

Whatever the shortcomings of the trip might have been, it is always a privilege to see, fish and dive the beautiful nearly iridescent blue water of the Caribbean and it is made more fun by doing it with good friends.