Bahamas Bound

South Florida diving can also include Bahamas diving....How? There are several Live-aboard boats which dock in South Florida, and then cross over. Since most of the Bahama's best diving takes place far from shore, this is a far more practical scenario then trying to get to alot of top dive sites from a central hotel. The best boat we have found is the Shearwater, a 65 foot luxury boat, perfectly set up for diving. They would ask us what we would like to see... they delivered us with perfect drops every time...
...they would dive us untill we cried uncle, and they have only one rule----there ARE NO RULES!

This means they cater to divers who do not want and do not need a divemaster to tell them anything but where the reef or wreck is. We planned our dives, our surface intervals, and how many dives we would do. We decide how deep we will go, and no jerk is there at the end of the dive to complain that you came up with 400 psi instead of 1000 psi----on this boat they would rather you use whatever extra air you want to do nice long hangs, so while we might rise to 15 feet with 800 psi, we might frequently hang until we are down to below 400. Its amazing how much less tired you feel if your hangs from no-deco dives average 10 minutes plus, rather than 3 minutes or less.

The following pages will bring you to see the sights of many different reefs found 20 to 40 miles from the nearest land. The average depth is between 40 feet and 65, with one site that was 85 to 95, and then the famous Mount Olympus dive where 10 out of 13 divers went down to about 130, and one went to 230, another to 165. The two deep divers were tech divers, with ponies.

Visibility most days of our trip was over 120 feet. Reef formations were dramatic. Whether you are a sightseer, a shell collector, a spearfisherman or photographer, you get so caught up in the beauty and spectacle that it takes some time to concentrate on any one activity.

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