We signed up for a trip with our USADiveClubUSADiveClub. It's an easy one. We pick up a flight right in Fort Lauderdale Airport, just 15 minutes from home. It's an hour and a half to San Juan, Puerto Rico, then just 30 minutes to Tortola, BVI. We get off the plane, our group is picked up on a bus that takes us to the boat. It's one of the Aggressor fleet of liveaboard dive boatsAggressor fleet of liveaboard dive boats, we've been on several before so we know the drill. Get your dive gear out of your bags and set it up on the bench provided. That's where it will be for the rest of the week. You take off your shoes and put them in a basket. You pick them up at the end of the week.
Then you take your empty dive gear bag and whatever clothes and personal items you brought and find your way to your cabin. We signed up late for this trip so we got the worst cabin. We lived in a small RV for 14 years, and now travel in an even smaller RV. Nothing compares to how small this room was. And no window, not even a porthole. Now we know ... if this is the only room available in the future, we will just say no. Oh well, your room is not the most important part.
The first night is a nice cocktail party where we meet the crew, some of whom are newbies, all are sweet and delightful - and throughout the week they worked very hard for this group of very experienced, but also very old, divers! 😅🤣 Some of us have been diving together for over 40 years!
We are in the British Virgin Islands, a gorgeous collection of over 60 mountainous islands in the turquoise Caribbean sea. We had beautiful, sunny weather all week. It was paradise.
The first day started with an easy, checkout dive to make sure you had the right amount of lead weights. A few of our group had recently lost a lot of weight which means they need less lead to keep them down. This is a good problem! Each day you could go on 4 dives each day. The first one was at 8am then 11, then 2 or 3 and the last one was late afternoon, or after dinner - a night dive. A total of 22 dives was possible. Jim did 16 and I did 9 because I caught a cold on the first day, just a simple head cold (happens a lot when I travel) but it makes it hard to dive. It's easy as can be to just float weightless in the sea when there is little current and lots to see but just getting your gear on, getting in the water, getting back out - takes a lot of of you.
Every dive boat operation has slightly different techniques. This one was about the worst. Some liveaboards are in areas where the big boat - the one were living on - can anchor right on the dive site. Then it's up to each diver to gear up and just jump in the water. Most liveaboard boats have to anchor a ways away, then have tenders/zodiacs carry the divers to the actual dive site. Here's where the rubber hits the road. In the Maldives they had a whole separate dive boat, called a dohnnie. All dive gear was in the dohnnie. Everyone who wanted to dive, transferred to the dohnnie and got geared up there. The dohnnie got us to the site and we jumped in. In indonesia they were little zodiacs that carried 4 of us at a time. We had our gear on, sat on the side of the zodiac and backrolled into the water. When we can up, a zodiac came to fetch us.
Here on BVI Aggressor, they had two tenders, to carry 10 divers each. The crew put our gear on the tenders - a difficult job! - and put them in a rack in the middle. We sat on the sides and rode to the site, where we had to be helped in to our gear before we could bankroll into the water. The tender was tethered to a mooring ball, so when we were diving we had to pay attention to directions so we could find out way back. Each group of 10 divers had one dive guide in the water with us, but we didn't always stay together. Some dives were easy, no problem. Some dives were total clusterf...
Jim took his Pixel phone underwater in a housing that has a gel surface so you can use the touch screen like normal. See our Fun with Photos video #22 about underwater photos. He got some great photos and we went to some iconic dive sites like the Wreck of the Rhone that I've heard about for years. Although not a dive site, I also remember heating from my mom about a favorite place of hers called The Baths at Virgin Gorda. I figured this was a good place to leave some of her ashes.
If there's one thing divers share is an ability to deal with complications. The crew was always cheerful, helpful. The food was out of this world.
We got off the boat early in the morning and had the whole day to kill before our plane left, so the organizers got us an island tour of Tortola. Just gorgeous.
We stopped at the only remaining Rum Distillery on the island - Callwood Rum Distillery. We got a tour and then tasted 5 Rums. We liked "Panties Off" the best!
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