Tales From The Bahamas

ricki · #1 05-17-2013, 10:30 PM

There have been so many adventures in the islands experienced by so many for such a long time. It would be good to not have them all slip away. Here are some from another forum I just tripped across from several years back. Thought I would post some of the stories here.

So, if you have a good one(s) post it here.

ricki · #2 05-17-2013, 10:32 PM

Met a Bahamian commercial spearfisherman over the weekend in New Providence. What a life! This guy dives on surface air supply for 12 hours at times he told me. He has had DCS hits twice and so starts at 100 ft. and works into shallower 40 ft. water to reduce his "pains" from cranking up. He does no deco tracking or proper decompression. He may dive like this for days straight. He takes Bayer Aspirin as blood thinner to manage DCS symptoms in lieu of recompression?! He showed me a nice cuda bite mark on his skull through his forehead and under his hairline. The Bahamas and particularly the Out Islands can be sharky as hell. If you're shooting, here's dinner and you might be on the menu. Guys normally nail one or two fish and have to move on. Imagine dealing with this for a living, for days and weeks. What a life. Takes the luster out of diving, can relate from my old bugging days in college. I had it vastly better though.

ricki · #3 05-17-2013, 10:34 PM

Visited the Lost Blue Hole south of Rose Island and east of New Providence last weekend. Got some interesting video and stills of tons of sea life, sharks and more free diving in and around this marine sinkhole. Just getting there is an intriguing story, involving AJ, "Action" a limbo dancer by trade and a series of coincidences. Still trying to decide what to put together. Who else has been there, what did you see and have you heard about it? Didn't notice any sea duppies or lusca's, then again, saw something out of the corner of my eye at 70 ft. in the blue hole, a bunch of sharks moving on. Next ...

ricki · #4 05-17-2013, 10:35 PM

Captain JP flew over to the islands for a great one day kiting trip we did to Great Harbour Cay. It was a fun and scenic flight particularly with Capt. JP at the column. More about the trip at the link below. I'll shift over some stills. Chris has been over there a lot I think, who else has? Used to be private, not any more!

http://fksa.org/showthread.php?t=5986

ricki · #5 05-17-2013, 10:36 PM

Diving tales ... watch out now!

Man, there are SO MANY great diving tales from the Bahamas. Hard to know where to start. So, how about I just toss this out to you and hold some of my stuff in reserve. I've been hearing great stories for decades, still more before I even came along. So, what happened ...
Like · · Unfollow Post · Share · February 14, 2009 at 5:48pm

From the wayback machine, took the family boat over to Bimini for some diving at 16 with my dad and a now marine biologist friend I hope to get on here.. Sunday came, time to go home but being a typical March, the Straits were blown out and pretty massive with waves. Had to fly home to get back to High School. Flew back the next weekend bringing a then marine geologist friend along. Left two steel 72 cft. tanks onboard but the valve leaked on one of them, dropping it down to about 1500 psi from 2500 psi. That left about 60% of the normal compressed volume. We decided to head south and hit the drop off off Gun Cay. It comes up pretty shallow there, about 105 ft. and there are all those neat sharks to checkout, sometimes. Told the marine geo guy as he had the only depth gage (sigh, was young and dumb) didn't want to go deeper than 150 ft. on the bounce dive. Viz was incredible, well over 100 ft. Finned down and over the rampart of the wall. Thought I saw a recess a bit further down, could have been a cave. Had never seen a cave in the Bimini wall before, so headed down for a quick look. We went down, noticed I was running real low on air, at least I had a pressure gage. Not everyone was using those yet at the time but J valves, ha! Ascended, pretty much breathing off Boyles Law for the later part of the ascent. Whoops. No gas for a deco stop either, real dumb. My friend told me after, you know we went to 250 ft., oh boy, screwed up. Ended up having a low grade Type I DCS hit in my right cheek, butt cheek. Didn't bother to recompress, way back in Florida anyway. Symptoms abated after a day, wasn't that painful and real lucky to have no lasting barotrauma or effects in the joints of my long bones. If you can't be smart, be lucky. No excuse for such lousy judgment today, particularly given the advancement in gear, procedures and mixes.