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Here's a scuba diving tale about our very first live aboard dive experience. John and I had been scuba diving for about four or five years, always on land based vacations staying in hotels or condos, before deciding to try a live aboard dive boat. It seemed like a really good idea to float around all day and night diving four to six times per day without ever having to trudge back ashore and clean up and walk in the heat looking for food or lubrication. In other words: Lazy and easy is what we wanted.
When I saw the advertisement for a really cheap seven day live aboard trip around the Bahamas
One day we were telling our good friends, Kim and John, about the upcoming dive trip. Kim got very excited about it and wanted to join us but we told them both that they must be certified scuba divers, which they were not. The next thing I knew Kim and John had both signed up for scuba lessons at our local dive shop, Dolphin Dive and Swim School
As the weeks passed Kim and John were nearing completion of their scuba lessons and definitely wanted to join us on our Blackbeard’s cruise so I signed them up. When they graduated, Kim advised that the entire class had been talked into taking Advanced Scuba Diver classes starting immediately. She wanted us to join her and John. My John and I were rather surprised at this and tried to dissuade them from going straight into advanced scuba diving without getting any open water dives other than their two graduation dives under their belts but she was determined so John and I also signed up for Advanced Scuba Diver lessons.
I won’t bore you with the details of scuba classes but for Advanced Scuba Diver you are required to do a deep water dive and a search and recovery dive which we had to do in Lake Tahoe in March, followed by a navigation dive as well as a night dive, which we did in Monterrey , California
The deep water dive was a real debacle. John and I were the only experienced divers in the entire group. I’ve never seen so many people panic all at once in my life. While we waited at 90 feet holding a balloon which we were supposed to inflate we saw people falling like rocks, kicking the white sand on the steep slope as they descended. At one moment we saw Kim fly by and John reached out and grabbed her fin before she could drop too deep. Lake Tahoe is ice cold and very high in altitude at around 5,000 plus feet. This has a strange effect on divers. Also I just hate wearing a wetsuit!
Our final dives in Monterrey
But this is supposed to be about the Pirate’s Lady, not about scuba lessons. I’ll leave it at this: we all passed the course, even though I still can’t navigate under water, and got our Advanced Scuba Diver certifications. I am also grateful to Kim and John for talking us into taking the class because it began our quest to become Master Scuba Divers which we finally completed in 2005.
Blackbeard's Cruises offer unlimited daily scuba diving as well as all you can eat, soft drinks plus unlimited rum punch. Anyone who's ever been on a dive trip knows that divers tend to really party. Providing unlimited rum punch to a bunch of divers is the same as handing over the car keys to a sixteen year old. As soon as we set sail from Miami the party started. Everyone was very happy and boisterous and drinking like mad. The four of us were enjoying ourselves as well but our friend, John, didn't look too well. I think he was feeling a bit sea sick. The music was loud and the partiers louder. I sat on the deck watching the sunset when I noticed the sound abating. Finally it was just me and the music. I looked around and everyone including my friends and my husband were laid out on the deck sound asleep! I should have taken a picture because it was very odd, rather spooky! Not too many of us showed up for dinner that night because they had terrible hangovers. Oh well, more food for us!
The Pirate’s Lady is one of a small fleet of sail boats operated by Blackbeard’s Cruises. It wasn’t as large as I had expected which made it very crowded but it was an adventure. The cabin choices include several double bunk beds with curtains in the all purpose dining and meeting room one deck below, two tiny cabins forward with two double bunk beds and perhaps three really tiny cabins all the way forward in the bow which you can only access by crawling inside. The bow cabins made me claustrophobic just to look at and the bunks in the all purpose room looked too public so we opted for the quad cabin with the two very tiny double bunk beds. When I say tiny, I mean bunk beds just barely larger than a single bed. John and I had the upper bunk which was about three feet from the ceiling. I really don’t know how we did it. John is a very tall guy and his feet were up on the wall in order to straighten his legs.
There was actually a fourth option which we didn’t know about before boarding the ship and that was sleeping on the top deck on an air mattress. A very large group of divers, who were all on a dive trip through their local shop, brought their own air mattresses and slept on top. After our experience I know why they choose to sleep there instead of in a cabin. If I ever take another Blackbeard's Cruise I will definitely choose the bunks inside the all purpose room because even though they are quite public it is the only area on the ship that does not turn off the air conditioning.
Every morning I would awake instantly sea-sick and hit my head on the ceiling when I sat up. Being in the wall side upper bunk meant that I was the last person to be able to leave the cabin every morning which was miserable. While I suffered with reeling nausea and sweats,(oh yeah, did I tell you they turned off the air-conditioning every morning at ?) Kim, John and John got to visit the head, which was right next door, one at a time and brush their teeth, and do any other ablutions necessary before I could leave. Depending upon the nature of the ablutions this could take quite some time. There were actually eight of us sharing the same head and sometimes I had to wait for the others as well. By the time I got to the head I was barely able to keep my dinner down and I won’t even go into the smell! I could barely pump the thing long enough to make it flush before feeling like death.
Needless to say, as soon as I could I would race up top and get some fresh air. John knew I was sick so he would serve up my breakfast from below and hand it up to me where we would all dine al fresco before our days diving. As soon as I ate, I was fine. The food was wonderful. We had a very young chef named Mark who had studied culinary arts in Chicago
Mark fed us well and often. After our first morning dive, he would be waiting for us with fresh fruit and other tasty snacks. After our second morning dive he would serve a delicious lunch. After our first afternoon dive we would get more tasty snacks, little sandwiches, ceviche, and other finger foods. Than after our second afternoon dive it was party time!
After that first evening one would expect everyone to be a bit more reserved in their drinking but that was not the case. But before the party could begin it we had to get cleaned off otherwise your skin becomes encrusted with salt. There was only one shower on the ship and each of us was limited to one minute of hot water. The line was very long as well and since the shower was down below off the all purpose room it felt like it was rocking and the feeling of sea sickness could easily return. However, Blackbeard’s has a fine tradition as an alternative to taking a shower. It’s called a “Joy bath” which consists of hosing yourself off with water from the compressor hose then pouring Joy dish detergent all over your head and rubbing it all over your body. Then you jump off of the back of the boat to rinse off, then climb back aboard and rinse off the salt water with more compression water. There was always a rope dangling off the aft to grab onto in case the ship was moving so no one got left behind. At first we thought that was pretty weird but we came to look forward to our Joy baths. We were like a bunch of kids jumping around slathered in dish detergent saying “Joy bath, Joy bath”. All we needed was a rubber ducky.
Every night the four of us would play pinochle in the all purpose room while the large group was partying up top and everywhere. We would drink some beer or rum punch but never got out of hand like the others did. Night diving was offered every night but we usually were too tired to go and knew it would postpone our happy hour. No drinking and diving!
The diving was fun and the water crystal clear. The Bahamas
One evening we were all in the all purpose room playing pinochle when we felt a huge thud. The four of us looked up from our cards briefly and exchanged quizzical looks and then resumed playing. About an hour later there was much commotion up top and lots of shouting so we went up to see what was happening. Then we discovered that our ship had run aground on a shallow reef and there was a hole ripped into the hull. We were sinking! The crew gathered up all the passengers and asked us to stand on the bow to help balance the ship while they attempted to pull us off of the coral reef. It didn’t work. The ship was stuck on the reef and sinking by the aft. So the Bahamian coast guard had to come to our rescue. It was bizarre standing there on the bow with twenty one other people watching the helicopter above and the coast guard ship in the distance while snapping photos left and right. John took his share of pictures too. No one seemed one bit afraid and we were having a jolly old time of it. Perhaps it was because we are all divers or perhaps it was the rum punch but we rode it out like heroes while we were towed ashore to the island of Andros
I had noticed before how tense our friend John was throughout the diving. He was always signaling to one of us wanting to know exactly where the ship was. Of course it wasn’t always visible from depth and often had gone ahead to pick us up after a drift dive so we would assure him that the boat was up in a particular direction. Having a hole ripped into the hull made him even more nervous. While the crew began work that night at Andros Island
That night most of us returned to the ship because the “no see ems” (tiny mosquitoes) were eating us alive. Ever since we had been docked the bugs had been after us so we were all slathered up with bug juice. A popular favorite amongst divers is an Avon lotion which for some reason repels mosquitoes. There was so much of the stuff going around that it got on the decks and several of us slipped and fell as a result. I recall that Kim’s John slipped and slid right into the hatch leading down to the kitchen banging his head. It was time to go to bed.
The next day Blackbeard’s hired a local dive operator to take us out for our diving while they continued to patch the hole. It was a fun day and very classy of Blackbeard’s to do this for us so we didn’t miss out on any dives. When we returned, the hole was repaired and we were ready to continue our dive trip except for one thing; we drank all of the rum punch and they had to re-supply before we could leave. The crew advised that this was the first time any divers on their ships had ever finished off the rum punch in the middle of a dive trip. Leave it to us to make our mark in that fashion!
The rest of the trip returned to business as usual except for our friend constantly checking the bottom of the boat on every dive to see if it was leaking. At the end we had a special treat: A stop at a small caye where Ernest Hemmingway used to party down with the locals. We all went to Hemmingway’s bar to celebrate and drink and play on land. Land felt very unstable by this point so mass quantities of beer were required to counterbalance the effect. Everyone in the bar seemed to be playing an odd game by slinging a metal ring suspended on a string and attempting to catch it on a coat hook. It looked pretty simple but the darned thing just wouldn’t go the right direction. There were lots of oohs and ahs whenever anyone got close to the prize but there were no winners. After a few beers John can get pretty cocky and crazy and so he marched up to the locals who were playing and announced he could make it on one try. In fact he said he could do it backwards without even looking. And so he did. He held the ring up above eye level with his back turned to the wall and let it fly. Sure enough, the ring landed on the hook and everyone was amazed and impressed. It’s very easy to impress a bunch of drunks but John still enjoyed all the attention for his great feat.
The next day, alas, our dive trip was over. Having logged in some forty two dives, we were both feeling quite comfortable and confident as divers. Sadly Kim and John never went diving again. I guess they were more afraid than they had let on. That was too bad and I wished they had given it more time before giving up.
Our Blackbeard’s dive trip was our first but not last one yet it still remains strong in my memory and is one of my favorite vacations of all time. For anyone else out there who dives and likes to rough it a bit and likes adventure, I recommend Blackbeard’s. They are still in business and their rates haven’t gone up all that much, though I caution anyone considering it to book directly through them or a travel agent because the group I mentioned paid $1195.00 each for the same trip booked through their dive shop. This extra money pays for their dive instructor to come along plus commissions for the shop.
I enjoyed every single minute of the trip except perhaps waking up in our tiny cabin but the memories of our adventure will last forever.
Ahoy Me Matey!
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