Hurricanes Irma and Maria update - Caribbean operations

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EVFleet

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Near Casper, Wyoming USA
Now that the weather has calmed down in our Caribbean destinations, we have a chance to finally come up for air (no pun intended - really) and get back to our regularly-scheduled programming!

Caribbean Explorer II weathered the passage of Maria with no problem, and is back in St. Kitts, awaiting guests boarding this Saturday. We're happy to report that St. Kitts only experienced minor damage from either Irma or Maria. The airport is open, the streets are cleaned, the leaves are still on the trees and the hotels and other businesses are open. We don't have any information as yet on how our favorite dive sites in St. Kitts fared, but we don't anticipate a significant amount of damage. The Saba Conservation Foundation should be in the water this week in Saba, and we'll post more when we hear back.

Turks & Caicos Explorer II arrived back in Provo yesterday, after cutting our previous charter short and sheltering in a protected bay in Haiti during Maria's passage. Though the island experienced damage from Irma, Maria only had limited effect on Provo, unlike points east such as Grand Turk. The airport in Provo is open, businesses are open, and hotels will be opening again over the next couple of weeks. Capt. JF Chabot reported after Irma that there is obvious sedimentation to the reefs at French Cay as well as the expected damage to sea fans and barrel sponges, with sites at West Caicos and NW Point a bit better. Interestingly, old reef structure in the sand channels is termporarily visible, and we've seen some species uncommon in the area - large schools of ocean trigger fish and horse eye jacks, huge trunk fish, and goliath grouper. Based on past experience, we anticipate the sedimentation to decrease fairly quickly, with the reefs back to normal in 1-2 months. We'll be back on charter on October 7, after a previously-scheduled maintenance week.

As always, our thoughts are with all of our friends and many others in the Caribbean, US and Mexico that continue to deal with the natural disasters of the past few weeks. We hope that life returns to normal as quickly as it possibly can.
 
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