Great videos Ted. My thanks for the effort; adds a whole new dimension to the trip. Loved the pic of Claire taking a pic of the turtle. The dolphin kick in reverse was a scream. Flying through the crack in fast and slow motion was great. Hey, where are the giant, live, dinosaur pics?? Those are Way to good to miss. You got another vid coming?
As always, Little Cayman was good, very, very good. Without question, one of the worlds great freediving destinations. Weather was not quite as good as last year, as you can see, but it did not slow up the diving at all. When the water is 81F, 80-100 ft vis and its almost flat calm, occasional rain is no impediment. For a detailed description of what the diving is like, look back to the first few pages of this thread, last years trip. We stayed a McCoys again and they treated us just as good as last year. The food was even better. This year we did some things different, had a car to go where and when we wanted. Did the whole island, bird sanctuary, beaches, iguanas etc. Even ate out one night. This was the pleasant result of having a wife who understands that there is something else in life besides diving. On the reef there seemed to be more turtles, at least they were more friendly, coming right up to us at times. We saw what were almost certainly some of the same fish from last year, the 60 lb grouper, big green turtle, etc. One interesting observation, the sharks were much less curious about us, none of the close passes, fast cruise, look excited kind of thing that we saw last year. I’m pretty sure now that they had never seen freedivers before we got there.
I discovered a new trick, dolphin kicking. I’d been practicing, getting ready to use Jons mono and discovered it’s harder than it looks. However, after getting the hang of it(sort of), coming up from depth was much easier, no leg burn, less urge to breathe, lots of power, maybe faster, very nice. This, I’m going to work on. I never did get the hang of the mono, but bifins and dolphin works great.
Discovered something less pleasant. If you are line diving in Cayman with a drop line considerably deeper than the available vis, get far out of sight of the wall. Current carried us in too close and we snagged Jon’s line. Current did not look like much, but it pulled my buggie board float under before the line attachment broke off the float. I grabbed the end when it was only about 10 ft down and could not swim it to the surface. Sorry Jon, we'll get you another one.
My thanks to all who could come and to DB for making it possible to contact everyone. All I did was post a notice asking who wanted to go and, voila, lots of divers. DB's acardet is my old grad school room mate who I had lost track of. This was our first trip together in a lot of years. His girl Pat shows up in several parts of the videos. For someone who just started, she is getting down there. Fondueset’s Claire and Kathleen were great company. Claire is quite a diver. Ask her how the night dives at 2 am were, I never realized how maneuverable a mono could be until I watched her(not at 2 am, I was way to weary for that stuff). My son Preston is 14, was along and turning into a good diver. And having my wife Karen along to share the fun was wonderful.
Now, next year. Anybody up for Cayman again? How about somewhere exotic, like the volcano/marine park in Dominica? Anybody been there already? So many places to dive, so little time.
Connor
