Running from Conceptcion to San Sal was the only rough passage of the trip, about 40 miles, wind on the beam around 18 knts, sea 3-5 and surprisingly confused. Bumpy and wet, but no cause to slow down, even a little bit.
In San Salvador, we were finally back in the Bahama Out Islands I remembered. Poor development, very nice people, very limited stores, bad water, little ice available, hotter than blazes on land. I felt right at home. We refueled and went back out to dive the walls in the middle of the western shore.
Again disappointed, sick coral, few fish, and the wall started deeper than advertised, 60 instead of 40. Fun diving if you had never seen a wall, but I'd seen better. Then we ran up to the north end for a couple of days to explore, get out of the tourist areas and shoot some fish. Fish were slim, but we had little trouble loading several days worth of fish and conch to go with it. Scenery wasn't as spectacular, but coral was healthier and much more fish of all sorts. The wind was blowing pretty good for a couple of days, then started to die off. Time to try our luck on the south end of the island. Ran down there and dove an inside spot that was real nice, max depth less than 100, nice cliff, sheltered from the wind, which was still blowing. It really slowed down that night and the next morning we hauled around to French Bay, on the windward side. The wall diving was just plain beyond belief.
The current runs parallel to the wall, 1-1.5 knots, top of the wall in about 50, deep crevasses cut into the wall 20-30 feet deep, some just wide enough to swim into, some 40 ft wide. The bottom of these crevasses sloped down at about a 45 degree angle and they end on the wall at 100-120. Everything is covered with hard corals, soft corals, all around are big schools of horseeye jacks, sharks, grouper, turtles, and school after school of other kinds of reef fish. You could not decide what to look at next.
Visibility was about 80 ft on top, but much clearer below the top of the wall. As soon as you dropped below the lip – BOING – stuff that was far away in the hazy distance was suddenly so close you felt like you could touch it, way over 100 ft, hard to say how much.
Laying on the surface, waiting to dive,a crevasse would appear in the distance. Dive quick and you could arrive at the top of the crevasse just as the current swept you up to it. Drop into the crevasse and the current stopped, turn left and fly down the crevasse. The narrow ones were twisty so that you could not see very far in front of you until you came around a corner and there was the intense electric blue of the open ocean far out in front. Simon was in his element, coming out of a crevasse at 90+, turning right and flying further along the wall before he finally had to come up. I was stopping a 80 or so, shorter and shallower dives, but still fabulous.
Sometimes a big school of horseeyes would come blasting out of a deep crevasse and ball up around us as we started down. That was too good an opportunity, so we would stop in mid dive and play with them. Lots of sharks, off in the distance. Some turtles, big hawksbills and not shy. You could swim right up to them. They were used to scuba divers and could not quite figure us out. We moved way to fast.
At this point, Matt was getting good. He had not been all that much of a deep diver, but Simon taught him an equalization technique called “mouthfil” Works fabulous if you can do it (which I can't), and he was getting deeper and deeper, staying longer and longer. I watched all this with more than a little green around the ears. He learned the technique almost immediately and I've been trying for a long time.
Vis was best in the morning (usually was, not sure why). We did a morning session and an afternoon session on this wall. Afternoon vis got down to 50 or so on top and finally stopped us. We should have gone back the next day, but that was Sunday, no stores open and the boat had developed a leak in the power steering ram and I needed to buy some more fluid. That was the only mechanical failure of the trip, so I should not complain, but it made a mess. I went through a gallon and a half of fluid before we got home, was soaking it up with the few oilsorb cloths on board, wringing them out, storing the goo in old milk jugs and reusing the cloths.
Note on bad Volvo engineering. The belt for the hydraulic steering pump also turns the internal water pump, gotta have it to run the boat. Run out of fluid, seize the pump and the engine is down. there isn't any way to remove the pump and still tighten the belt, even if you had the right size. My old volvo did not have this weakness.
We had planned to get water in San Sal, but the dock water was undrinkable and buying bottled water was both difficult(getting to the store and back) and expensive. Supplies were tight for an extra week without resupply, so we took on some bad water and crossed our fingers we'd make Georgetown.
Anyway it was time to move on, Rum Cay was calling. I had done a very little diving there in 1988-89 and was eager to get back.
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