Posted by AADIVER on March 05, 2001 at 22:36:23:
Just back from my third liveaboard trip on the SEA FEVER out Miami to the warm clear waters of the Bimini/Bahamas chain. A shameless plug: SEA FEVER's the best for the bucks to the Bahamas, especially for wreck diving.
After a short hop from Miami to Bimini on the legendary Chalk's seaplane, we boarded for a week of four dives a day and gourmet chow to reefs, wrecks, 8 knot drift dives, and a shark feeding frenzy show. The sea and weather were near perfect: 80 in the air, 77 in the glassy sea; a sea brimming with tropicals, 'cudas, huge turtles, bugs (the Redman's fresh lobster salad was delicious), and wrecks, new and old. The oldest is called Frank's Wreck. I stumbled on it last year, almost totally sanded in at one of the reef sites. Lots of scattered iron but also brass hull spikes.
There were fourteen of us ranging from first open check outs to my 3,000 plus; from hand in hand buddy teams to a couple of "lone ranger" soloists, plus a DIR dm. Tanks are all aluminum 80's, immediate refills with either 21% of 32% Nitrox. The owner/skipper is Mike Hillier, also co-owner of the Lynnhaven Dive Center of Virginia Beach, Virginia. Both Mike and his wife Debby are super people and super divers.
Only two mishaps befell me: a leaky BC dump valve and a tweaked first stage reg due to my tank crashing to the deck 'cause I neglected to bungee it in. My two computers worked flawlessly but with widely different readings: the NiTek3 very conservative, the Marathon/Skinny Dipper dangerously liberal(yesterday's algorithm). If the NiTek3 had "gone south" on me I would have reverted to tables and used the Marathon to monitor ascent rate only. Next trip my backup's gonna be my Suunto Solution and the Marathon goes on Ebay!
And that next trip's gonna be in July when the FEVER goes treasure hunting/diving to Cay Sal Bank, just 30 miles north of Cuba. I'll be armed with an Excaliber discriminating metal detector tuned to Spanish doubloons or pieces of eight. Don't ask, she's already booked up.
So catch the FEVER if you get a chance. She runs year 'round and her website is www.seafever.com Tell 'em Frank, the wreck raiding AADIVER, sent you.