Fondueset: For a brief period, I persuaded Claire to part with her fin (She was sweet about it and I'm bigger than her). The soft was much better for me. That is one nice fin. Overall, I could not bring myself to put in the time it would take to get used to a mono when we had only 8 days of such good diving. What I did do, I was really uncomfortable with the lack of ability to move feet independently. That will take a lot of getting used to.
Jon, good info on Utila, I'll check on it. On reef condition, Little Cayman is vastly better than the Keys, better than some parts of the Bahamas, can't say about Grand Cayman, but I think your buddy is probably right. In Little Cayman, the coral looks pretty good if you don't know what it looked like in the 1970s. Out on the main reef, if you look closely, you can see the remains of one whole heck of a lot of staghorn. It must have been spectacular in its heyday, but all of that is dead now. In some areas, the rest of the coral is clearly taking a beating from divers and the general environment just isn't as conducive to coral as it used to be. In very shallow water there used to be quite a bit of elkhorn, most of that is dead, but every now and then you come to a small stand that looks perfect. Overall, I suspect that LC is about as good as it is possible to find in the Caribbean today.
Connor
Connor - you should've tried Claire's soft fin - pretty sure it's exactly the same foot pocket size as Jon's.
