Dive, dive, dive!

Ron and I awoke to a glorious blue sky and a bit more wind today...but had spent a lovely night on anchor in the lee of French Cay. We were up early, able to enjoy our coffee with the sunrise, then moved to secure a mooring on the reef and were in the water before 8:00 a.m! Ron took down his new underwater camera today, so he played with that, getting a feel for the various features of the camera in its underwater housing. I poked along, just enjoying the scenery and letting Ron photograph as we went, finding different subjects to shoot. On every dive, right after we entered the water, this one very young nurse shark would come swimming up to us quite cheerfully, practically wagging its tail as it did so. The way it acted reminded me of a puppy! It would follow us around the entire dive, just checking out the different coral heads nearby and seemingly happy to hang out with us. It made me smile!

A Nassau Grouper posing for the camera

The visibility wasn't the best to be doing great photography, but Ron had fun following a good-sized grouper around and taking different shots, from still to video. The resident reef shark made its customary passes past us out of curiosity, and we also found a southern ray buried in the sand, glowering at us from his little hiding point. Always something to see! After the dive, Ron wasn't very happy with his photography results; he's a perfectionist in that way, and said he needs to practice a bit more with the camera to get the crisp photos he wants. He's using iMovie to download his videos, and since he hasn't used that software before, there's a learning curve there too.

The southern ray, tucked into the sand

We made three dives during the day, then returned to SouthSide Marina in the late afternoon riding on the high tide. We would have loved to have stayed out an extra day, but we remembered that we needed to get our permanent cruising permit from Customs; we'd only received the initial temporary 7-day permit upon entry, and that was about to expire. Not wanting to have any issue with Customs, we returned to make sure we received the 3-month permit while the temporary was still valid. (I admit, it was really difficult to leave the diving when the weather is so nice, but, better safe than sorry!!) So...one of tomorrow's task will include waiting on Customs to come to the boat to provide us with the permit.