Because of the diving focus of this trip, the main concern was to base ourselves near a dive shop which could reliably fill our tanks. In recent past years we got tanks filled at UNEXSO in Freeport but it was never convenient, easy or reliable. They really aren't in business to cater to people diving off their own boats. UNEXSO has its own boats and does its own dive excursions. If you can get your tanks exactly where their staff wants them at exactly the right time, you can get a good fill of air for only $7. In the Bahamas, I call that a huge bargain. But it is also hit and miss.
What I can say about UNEXSO is that they have a nice little restaurant by a very nice, crystal clear freshwater pool which is open for use by customers of the restaurant. The deep end is 17' since they also use it for SCUBA training. I really enjoyed my time in the pool while we waited for our breakfast or lunch to be prepared. If you are a boater, they have a courtesy dock you can use without charge. Very nice. They have a livestream camera on the pool if you care to see it.
Now, back to diving. If you want to get your tanks filled every single day without question, consider Sunn Odyssey divers which is more like a US style dive outfit. The owner/operator, Nick, keeps his compressor in tip top ship shape, something that is not all that common in the Bahamas. He clearly takes extra pride in providing service to his customers. You will pay $15 per fill but if you leave the tanks with him in the evening they will be filled by 8am the following day, no excuses. It was because of reliable, high quality service at Sunn Odyssey that we were able to do 14 dives in our 7 days on the water.
In the case of this recent trip, prep included changing one of the starter motors (Kyle O) and also swapping out the fuel injectors on the port engine (David P) because they had frozen up from bad fuel. Too many tasks were done to name them all and everyone participated. They included everything from schlepping ice from our ice machine to the boat to using a shop vac to remove excess water from the bilge that is below the level of the pumps. Of course there are a ton of tasks handled by the crew during the body of the trip as well but the initial Saturday is unique in that it's work before play as opposed to play and then doing the work required to play more. All of it is MUCH appreciated.
During the body of the trip, the agenda was fairly routine: go diving in the late morning after breakfast or after doing some maintenance task on the boat, and then stay out and get a 2nd tank dive in. There are a good number of dive balls in place off of Freeport right now but certainly not as many as shown in the map above.
This is a good time to provide a quick update on the Fortune Bay inlet dredging operation. The crew has recently begun their operation and they have been hard at it during weekdays. I will be glad when there is 10' at MLW (Mean Low Water) which is what they were contracted to provide.
We were met in the inlet by a small squadron of jet skis which are rented to tourists and then guided around. It seems a tour of the Fortune Bay canals is on their agenda because we saw the same jet skis with different riders on multiple days. The water is ridiculously clear here.
Once out of the inlet, this is the kind of weather and wave height we enjoyed most of the time, and some days it was even flatter than this. Yes we did have some rain but it always blew through very quickly. Note that this is hurricane season in the Bahamas so we were fortunate to get such great weather.
During the trip we did 14 dives which ranged from 110' deep (or deeper if you weren't careful) up to around 45-50'. In general the dives were "just OK" IMO. The water only had 50' visibility instead of the usual 100-125' and most of the reefs had a coating of green slime on them. It wasn't as heavy as in this Guardian article but it was definitely present.
There was still a good number and variety of fish and sealife on the reefs including reef and nurse sharks, rays, moray eels, crabs, and all the usual reef fish but we didn't see any lobsters which is kind of alarming. I can't say the diving was "bad" because a bad day in the Bahamian waters is FAR better than a good day in pretty much any coastal waters in the US except the keys. But the diving was clearly diminished in several aspect relative to years past.
One of the things I wanted to do this year was to locate the famed Sea Star and Theo's wrecks which were sunk as artificial reefs in decades past. Sea Star was sunk in 2002 and Theo's was sunk in 1982. They used to have dive balls on them many years ago and they were considered premium dive sites. For whatever reason, the dive balls went missing and nobody bothered to replace them so these ships have not seen any divers in a long time.
If you have never tried to locate a wreck in 80-100 feet of water, you don't know how difficult it can be. If the water only has 50' visibility and you are 100' away then you might not be able to find it. Fortunately in our case, part of the refit of Third Wave was to include side scan sonar by Garmin, the leader in this technology. But even with this state of the art gear, we had to make numerous passes over the top of the targets as you can see below before we could detect any sign of them.
Part of this was just learning how to use the new sonar properly but in time we figured it out and were able to catch some beautiful images of Sea Star and Theo's per below. This first one is the Sea Star. The boat has broken in half. The bow is above the stern in the image below. The stern rotated about 90 degrees to the left after the ship broke apart. This was all happening at 90' during Dorian and other recent hurricanes.
This is Theo's. While still in one piece, it used to be upright but now it lays on its port side. The shadow is sonar shadow, same as light would create a shadow, but instead using sound. It is amazing to get this kind of detail from high end consumer sonar gear IMO.
Once we found these two ships, we attached ropes and floats so that others could benefit from our work. I plan to go back there with photography gear in the not distant future. This is Kyle and David preparing the new mooring line for these once lost wrecks.
Here is Eric doing all the heavy lifting of diving down with rope, chain and shackles for the new mooring line. Even though he's been part of BBOS from very early on, Eric's the resident young guy of the group. He was always doing something good for the group. If something needs to happen in the bilge, Eric jumps on it. If we need a man to go in the water and clear the props, Eric will be the first guy in.
Below is Kyle, visionary co-partner of not only Third Wave, but also in creating the infrastructure needed to properly support a substantial fishing/diving yacht. He's proudly holding a small blackfin tuna that we caught that evening. In the background of course is Third Wave whose refit cost us both more than 5 years of our vacations and well over $235k (total) in cash. In addition, Kyle also split the cost (and labor where needed, like installing rubber fenders, etc.) for some of the pilings as well as a variety of other infrastructure items including the essential commercial ice maker that again kept us in ice for the trip. Kyle even helped buy and install the power pedestal in the background (which required us to trench and run power to it...). None of this stuff is free, even if you install it yourself, which of course, we did. So Kyle has put a very substantial investment in time, money, sweat equity and trust that this asset called Third Wave would one day begin paying us back with great life experiences. The payback is just beginning.
Speaking of tuna, while this was primarily a dive trip we did have time on a couple days to throw some lures overboard when there were birds hitting the water with fish hitting the surface from below (a dead giveaway that tuna are eating bait fish). We ended up catching 5 of these fish in the 4-6 lb range over the course of 2 days and boy were they good eating!
Here's a side shot so you can see the size better.
We also tried our hand at a small amount of bottom fishing but to be honest, that sun was just too hot for most of us to want to stand out in it. Gary loves bottom fishing so he was the notable exception. Again, look how flat the water was.
In the evenings after a full day of diving adventure we would come home, clean up the gear and then rush out to try to get dinner some place. Zorba's in Lucaya was usually open later than other places. The prices are reasonable and the food is good. The waiter took this shot which looks like I am in the middle of a bite but left to right is me, Kyle, David P, Gary B and Eric S.
I want to again thank everyone who has put their time and money into making these trips happen. They are a huge highlight of my life here in Freeport and I hope to host at least 2 of these trips each year as long as the good Lord allows me to do it.
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