Octopussy in the Water

Well, we are all set with Octopussy, and on Suday she had her maiden voyage. It was awsome. We went with a group of the medical students, there were six of them, so it was a great test as the boat was full.

We went diving at Tintmarre, doing a drift dive at Chico, and then another drift dive at the Tugboat. It was just so comfortable, you couldn't even feel the waves on the boat, and Eric (who normally gets seasick) wasn't feeding any fish at all. He felt fine. So that was another test passed. The radio was playing, putting everyone in a fun mood, and it was so easy to get equipped and into the water that we reduced our time getting ready by half.

So we are really excited at how great the new boat is working out.

Also, we had two amazing dives. I had never done a drift at Chico in the direction that I did on Sunday, and it was so beautiful I think I may do this every time. Just really healthy reefs, with beautiful formations, we saw turtles, barracuda and lots of fish.

The second dive was also really great. First of all, the tugboat is always really pretty and with millions of fish around it, but on this particular dive, once we were on the reef, Maggie spotted an Octopus. But this Octopus wasn't just hanging out in it's cave, it was moving all around, stretching his tentacles in all the holes of the reef, then he was free swimming, and changing colors over and over and over. We watched it for about 10 minutes (personally, I could have watched it all day).

So, I think that it was a really great omen. The coolest Octopus I have ever seen on the maiden voyage of Octopussy, with Octopus Diving! It doesn't get much better than that!

(Sally wrote this blog :) )

Octopussy... Almost there

Hello everyone. I know that I have been terrible about blogging lately, this is simply because so much has been going on.

I just wanted to update everyone on the new boat. She is almost there. What is holding us back at the moment, is that we decided to change the engines. We had bought second hand engines, but Chris decides that he couldn't resist those shiny, new 225 Mercury Optimax, so we folded and bought them. Chris is currently installing them as I am writing this, and the boat should be in the water today! Fingers crossed!

I am attaching some photos, so you can see it. Chris has worked so hard to get the boat ready, and taken so much care to make sure that it is comfortable to dive from, to snorkel from, and that it is safe! This means that there were times where we were all dressed up in our diving gear (on the boat in the dry dock) figuring out exactly where the tank rack should go, how we should set it all up, where people can put there fins on, etc. I should have taken photos of that!

My favorite part is the stereo. With the new stereo, you can just plug in your ipod and listen to whatever you want. So, if you are coming to dive with us, just bring your ipod on the boat and we will hook it up.

It's funny to think that this time last year we were all excited because we had just renovated the shop, and now we are so excited because of the new boat. She is going to fly!

But don't worry, even though she is larger, and we are certified to take 16 people on board, we are still only going to take 6 divers at one time, so more room for you!

I will take more photos for the website soon.

(sally wrote this blog :) )

New season

Hi Blog followers,

We are back from vacation - 2 weeks in New York and Chris had a week in Miami where he is now a Certified Mercury Technician.
Thanks to Wes and Gillian (Sally's parents) for entertaining us for 2 weeks - we had a great time.

We also had four amazing days in Saba - what an amazing Island that is - the diving was awesome. We are now running trips with Scouts Place / Saba Divers so if anyone wants to take a trip let us know, we can arrange it for you.

Now we are back and busier than ever.

Chris and Christian have just finished thier Snuba training, where Christian trained as a Snuba guide and Chris is now a Snuba guide trainer and one of 3 in the Caribbean.

Sally has been extremely busy keeping the dive operation up to its usual high standards - hence our 62 reviews on Tripadvisor:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g147351-d1092282-Reviews-Octopus_Diving-Grand_Case_St_Maarten_St_Martin.html
Go Sally !!

Snuba in Orient Bay is all set to go live - we are just waiting for Octopussy to get registered and we will be up and running.

Octopussy has had some teething problems that Chris has been working on and we are seeing some light at the end of the tunnel now. She looks great and has a custom built tank rack, custom dive ladder, IPOD hook up on the high power Sony stereo system, all the safety features you would expect, two powerful 250HP Mercury Racing engines, and plenty of room. She is so stable that she has been certified for 20 people!! But still we just take 6.

We have our first all day Charter this season on Saturday its a birthday party for a couple so Sally and Chris will be taking them out with French Champagne, cake, lots of diving and an awesome lunch on Pinel Island - should be a great day trip out.

Sally will update soon so goodbye for now

Team Octopus.

Just in case you didn't see it

Just in case you didn't go to the snuba blog to see the photo of chris, I thought I would post it here. He is the guy on the right hand side with the pretty blond... (that would be Heather, not me). They didn't want me modeling with Chris because they said I was too short! The audacity of it. I mean, you can't tell height underwater????

Anyway... here is the photo.

or visit http://snubagirl.wordpress.com/ for a larger view!

My husband is toooooo cute!

Check out http://www.octopussnuba.com/

Hey everybody,

This is Chris just to give you an update on what's been happening in the world of Octopus Diving.

Last week Sally, myself and Christian spent 4 days on Saba with www.sabadivers.com we had an awsome time and are now setting up trips to St.Martin and Saba.
Scouts place is beautiful and the diving is totally different than St.Martin - I wouldn't say better - just very different. We saw a Hammerhead Shark, loads of turtles, Nudibranchs and lots of fish, great dives especially Shark Shoal where we did our un-guided dive, discovered and entered a cave system at 52 metres or 170 feet - really cool but lots of Deco - very naughty......!

This week I am in Miami training to become a certified Mercury Technician which will save us down time on the boats next season and of course save alot of money... its very simple stuff, just basic mechanical skills and some PLC programming.

Sally is still in St.Martin and Christian has flown to France to see his Parents. Sally is working really hard, painting the shop, sealing the decking outside and preparing for Snuba.

Snuba is all set to go live on November 1st 2009 and everything is in place for it to start as scheduled - can't wait !
We are starting really easy and working out of a Bar on Orient Beach to start with and then hopefully we can progress to something more permanent next year, the management of the Hotel are very excited and we are flying in a Snuba trainer to train me as a Snuba Course Director where I can train Snuba guides and also become part of the Snuba university which you can find by following this link http://www.snubau.com/
Also we are now listed on the Snuba blog which is cool.... http://snubagirl.wordpress.com/ take a look at the guy in the banner at the top - its me in my younger slimmer days!!


Our new boat Octopussy is the name for the new Power Catamaran as you may know and she is taking shape, 250HP Pro XS racing engines are on, sit down tank rack is made and ready to be installed, so is the custom designed ladder which will be the same design and easier to climb than Arvor.
I spent the last 2 - 3 weeks completely re-wiring the whole boat and modifying its existing structure - as soon as she is ready we will post photo's of before and after.

After Miami Sally and I meet up in New York for two weeks where we will eventually have some down time - can't wait!! Visiting Jenn and Marc au Marc - could be interesting - lots of Saki and red hats !


That's about it, thanks for reading and look forward to seeing some of you again in the near future.

Chris Davies.

Can the weather be any better?

The weather is just so amazing at the moment, I wish it would never stop! That is the thing about coming here in September... the weather is either absolutely amazing, or... there is a tropical storm / hurricane.

This week, it is so calm out there, like a swimming pool. I just got back from snorkeling at Creole Rock with Janelle, John, Geri and Dennis, (while Christian was diving with Erik) and we were able to snorkel parts of the rock that I have never been able to before. It was superb. There was quite a bit of elkhorn coral, which suprised me. Elkhorn coral is an endangered species, and there isn't that much of it left around Saint Martin. But at Creole Rock, there still are a number of healthy Elkhorn communities. (that sounds funny).

This afternoon we are off to the Dutch side for some wreck diving! Barry requested it, so we are happy to comply.

I will let you know how it goes!!!

(Sally wrote this blog...:) )

Erika!!

Well, Erika is meant to be over us right now... but you wouldn't know it. We have taken the boat out of the water (we always do when there is a tropical storm or hurricane) and will go and get her later today to put back in the water. For those of you who are unaware, Erika is a Tropical Storm, and she is making diving a little difficult for us! It is always hard to know what exactly to believe in the weather forecast. Normally we rely on Windguru for our day to day weather reports, and then when there is something larger, a tropical depression, tropical storm or hurricane, we use the National Hurricane Center and also stormpulse.com. But even using these websites, they sometimes contradict eachother... it is confusing. Our strategy is simply to plan for the worst and hope for the best.

It is giving Chris and I time to collaborate on the design of the new boat, so that is good, however, we always hate to cancel diving. Not just because we lose diving, but we also understand that our divers have been looking forward to diving for a long time. Perhaps they are only here for a few days, so when we cancel, sometimes we take away the opportunity for them to dive for another year. Saying this, however, if we feel it is unsafe, we won't go out. C'est la vie.

Chris and I went to see Porto Cupecoy the other night. This is a new gated community on the border of the Dutch Side and the French Side (it is just on the Dutch Side). It is currently in development to open in November, 2009. We were invited for cocktails and a little tour (we never say no to free drinks, plus it was a good opportunity for networking. The website is http://www.portocupecoy.com/ The premise of the evening was that it was a "bloggers" night. So anyone that blogs was invited. So, I felt obliged to mention them in my blog (hence my writing this.) Also, however, it is nice sometimes to see the other side (the top side) of Saint Martin. The whole village looks like it will be really nice, hopefully full of potential Octopus divers!

They took this photos of us ...

For those of you that have met us, I love this photo because it makes me look so tall. Normally I come up to Chris's armpit, but I am on my tippy toes and Chris is bending his knees a little bit. So it gives me about a foot extra!

It was a nice night.

They are just saying on the radio (I listen to Island92) that there was loads of hoopla about the storm, but really it has come to nothing. So that is fantastic.

Alright, keep your fingers crosses that Erika passes us fast...

(sally wrote this blog :) )

Can you believe it is September already?

5 More divers

5 more divers to add to the list of accomplished Octopus Diving Students!

Firstly there is the fantastic four from AUC, Shaun, Shawn, Pace and Ben. I taught these four how to dive and it was so much fun. They really worked like a team, and I appreciated that. In the beginning, as normal, they were just finding their bouyancy, but by the end they really looked like pros! I would just say "meet me in the water" and they all worked in their buddy teams to get kitted up and in the water! I was so proud. Here are their obligatory mug shots.

Here they are taking the final exam! They all passed because they did their homework.

The 5th diver is Travis from Oregon, USA. He recentely took the Bar exam and gets his results September 24th, so fingers crossed. He and Kirk (his dive buddy) were staying in Anguilla and just took the ferry over everyday for the diving. We hope to take them out diving again at the end of the week! Here is Travis' happy diver photo. I don't have a picture of him taking the final exam because he was an E-Learner. That meant that he chose to do the knowledge portion of the PADI Open Water from the comfort of his own home... on line!

Christian was the instructor for Travis and he said that Travis did a great job... so Congratulations everyone.

Alright, more soon. We are excited as we are taking a trip to Saba to go diving in two weeks, yeah, it will be a first for us!

(Sally wrote this blog :) )

Diving with the Watson Brothers

I went diving the other day with Joey, and Joey's brother John. Joey is one of my past students and his brother was out here diving. Some of you may remember Joey because he was on the dive where he didn't show me a seahorse, and I blogged about it, because I was so upset. Anyway... he is forgiven now because I saw a seahorse the other day.

It was so super tiny, really tiny, but sooooo cute. I am in love, really. It must have been about 1.5 cm in length and looked just like a floating bit of seaweed but with this sweet little head bobbing up and down. So, Joey is forgiven.
The Watson brothers went diving for two days with us and we had a blast. Diving with Joey is always fun because he is so full of energy. Whenever I looked around he would be upside down, doing sommersaults, sometimes his fins would be off.... when he did his open water we had a long discussion about "stealth" underwater, and he is defintely incorporating some James Bond into his diving!

We also had Hans diving with us who was from Holland and our good friends Heather and Laura. Heather and Laura were both instructors with us when we worked at Stuart Cove's in the Bahamas, so we kind of had a little reunion. It was so nice to see them, and they really helped out a lot. Heather even taught an open water class for us, and Patrick and Fred were really glad for that!

We had four great dives, doing a drift dive behing Creole Rock, another dive at Turtle Reef and then two dives at Tintamarre, at Japanese Garden and the Tugboat. We saw turtles and eagle rays, and just had lots of fun.... Here are some pics for your enjoyment.

Some other news at the moment, boat construction still going on. We just installed the new engines (they look great!) and we are putting in the tank racks tomorrow. Then we will anti foul the boat, (it was never anti fouled becuase it was always taken out of the water every night.) We are going to make sure that the boat is comfortable for riders as well as divers. We are really excited, so any divers that come and dive with us in October will be on the new boat!!!

Alright, gotta do some boring accounts now.

It is the end of August, can you believe that? Where did the summer go?

(Sally wrote this blog :) )