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Since this failed the first time, I'm resending it.
Not a lot of traffic lately, so I thought I'd give everyone a quick review of my
recent vacation.
My wife booked us on St Kitts for a 1 week Caribbean vacation. It is a small
island near Antigua.
My wife is a Caribbean diver, she had a miserable time on her o/w dives here in
Massachusetts. I went with the attitude that "any dives would be good." I did a
quick internet search, got some decent info, and decided that, since my wife is
not a monster diver, I'd wait to book the dives until we arrived on the island.
This turned out to be a good thing.
there are 4 dive operations on St Kitts. When I arrived, I drove around and
checked them out. I ended up diving with Kenneth's Dive Center: biggest boat on
the island, good crew, US $50 per 2 tank dive. The boat is basically a wooden
"pontoon style boat" with 2 225 horse engines. It was pretty quick, but with the
wide beam, extremely stable platform to dive from.
Overall, did 4 reef dives, 2 wreck dives.
However, 2 of the "reef" dives were in Sandy Point Bay, a marine preserve
located just below Brimstone Fort/Hill. Many battles were fought there, and
there are some gorgeous fluke anchors, some 200 years old, beautifully encrusted
by coral. Also a lot of cannonballs, old bottles, anchor chain, etc.
Coral is beautiful all over the island, not much diving done there.
MV Talata - wreck lies in the sand, Max. depth 60 ft. It is a smallfreighter
that sunk while at anchor in 1985. It is surrounded by a coral reef, so if you
don't like wrecks, visit the coral. A Hurrican 2 years ago beat this wreck up
pretty bad, but you can still penetrate into the bow into the machine shop. Lots
of chain, spare anchor and other small items to be found.
We did this as the 2nd dive of the day. Still some portholes left and other
pieces of brass.
River Taw Wreck - sunk about 10 years ago while at anchor, this freighter
(144ft. long, 70ft, wide) is an excellent dive! Once listed by Skindiver? as one
of the Caribbean's best 10 wrecks, Hurrican Hugo ripped it in half, spinning the
stern 90 degrees. Then, a hurricane 2 years ago spun the stern section around
180 degrees again, so it looks like this:
bow
^
______ | |
\stern| |
______/ | |
In reality, the bow and stern are now only 50-60 feet apart, with the middle of
the ship broken up pretty bad.
BUT the bow has a lot to penetrate. I visited the chain locker, storage
compartments, machine shop.
The stern is the best part of the dive though. The upper deck consists of the
bridge, radio room, work areas, the galley, and some crewsquarters, 2 heads,
etc. It is wide open, nothing much to see unless you count the numerous
portholes everywhere!, with a light layer of coral covering everything. Schools
of fish black eyes and yellowtails were abundant.
I then visited the lower deck, engine rooms, storage area, etc. Quite a bit of
brass still around, including some nice gauges, telegraph, handwheels, etc. Not
all were brass, but enough to make me wish I had a hammer and crowbar.
As I passed through a broken piece of the hull to the portside, I found 2 more
portholes on a hull section that was bent like a pretzel. 1 swingplate was
hanging only by the pin!! the second was complete: base, swingplate and cover,
all dogged down. It was the only porthole I found with the glass intact.
I really expected to be bored with the diving there, but I was wrong.
So, if you ever find yourself on St Kitts, don't despair! Visit Brimstone Fort
for all the war history (they supplied arms/gunpowder to us in the American
Revolution along with Antigua, Barbados, etc) and check out some of the local
shipwrecks, and all the anchors in Sandy Bay.
There were allegedly more than 400 ships wrecked here between 1493 and 1825, but
most are unidentified. As the tourism industry increases, hopefully the locals
will try to locate/identify more of them.
The crew of the Lady Peggy (Kenneth's dive center) Vijai and Donald, were
helpful and pleasant. I confused them a bit with my 7ft octopus, but they
figured it out quick enough. I would stay away from their second instructor,
Nikki though. She was obnoxious (wouldn't shut her mouth), and on our 2nd dive
at Sandy Point, she was totally lost, we went over one piece of coral 4X!!!! I
finally got fed up with her, and started heading back toward the boat.
If anyone would like more info, email me directly.
It is NOT the place to go for a dive vacation, but if you're looking for a nice,
relaxing island, good food, beautiful mountains, and decent divind, it's a good
spot, IMO.
Safe diving, John
John Lydon
jlydon@zi*.ne*
http://www.ziplink.net/~jlydon
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