OMG!!!!!! We had three AWESOME dives yesterday!!!! Soooo glad that we went and it totally was what I had expected and more. So here is the long and the short of it.
Got picked up at our dock at 8:30am and promptly headed to Christ of the Abyss. We descended down to about 35 feet to gather everyone together, then headed over the reef to the AWESOME swim through between two coral reefs. It was about a bit more than shoulder length wide at the entry and 85-87 feet depth. The ceiling was not totally enclosed, so light shone through except for one short section that was completely covered over and pretty dim. The swim through took about 2 or three minutes, and we exited a large opening in the reef and headed up to about 40 feet to wait for others to join us. One lady in our group had some buoyancy issues and had her tank stuck in the top of the ceiling for a few seconds, but others were able to help her get back down and exit. She said later when we got to the boat that she was a bit shaken by it. We never made it to the Christ statue because of air consumption issues, but it was an awesome dive. Saw some grouper, a sea turtle, and lots of nurse sharks.
Second dive was to Tres Cocos. It was also a great dive at about 60 foot depth at its deepest. We saw lots of great marine life (nurse sharks, grouper, other colorful fish, but no turtles or rays sadly). Pretty uneventful but very fun and enjoyable dive. This one lasted about 43 minutes. When we surfaced, it was very rough seas. We were still easily able to get back on the boat, but it was rockin and rollin, causing one of the ladies to lose her lunch. She was very cool about it all and was not at all embarrassed. The group we were with were only doing those two dives and were done. So we headed back to the dive shop at the beach where we took on new tanks for the third dive before dropping the other group back off at the resort.
Last dive of the day was Esmeralda to Tackle Box Canyon. It was just my dad, brother and I on this one so it was super chill and laid back. We all have about the same SAC so it was perfect diving in terms of depth and time. Seas were even rougher when we got outside the reef. Water was totally coming over the bow when we descended the other sides of big waves. The boat captain and guide were really enjoying it. The dive was awesome of course. Again, lots of reef life, huge nurse sharks, and the highlight of the dive.......REEF SHARKS!!!! We saw THREE of them swim on into the canyon below us and back out another canyon as we were passing by. What a great show! Our dive guide was super excited to see them too, which makes it all the more enjoyable. After a10 minute safety stop (guide extended our surface stops by two minutes each dive we did which I thought was very cool), we surfaced to SUPER rough waters and no boat in sight!!! It took about 5 minutes for the boat to locate us but once again we were able to get back on board without issue, and we were all returned to our resort safely.
I am so very excited and happy that we were able to get these dives in, especially because the winds are very high today and I doubt many if any boats are going outside the reef for those dives today.
