Dolphins at Creole Rock 24th February 2009

Can you believe that all day yesterday the customers on the Undersea Explorer (glass bottom boat) were watching Dolphins play at Creole Rock and nobody told us ....... !! We weren't happy with thier dive guide Maki who explained what happened

Its been a while since we blogged but have been extremely busy, which is great !!

Spring break was fully booked but business has now slowed down until early April.

We want to Congratulate Jenn Yerkes (or should I say Madam J, founder member of “Les Fruits de Mer”) on the completion of her PADI Rescue Diver course. She worked extremely hard during the whole course including her Emergency Response Course (medic first aid).
The highlight of the course was the Minkie Whale swimming by us about 100 feet away from the boat, just outside our apartment.
The other hysterical moment was when JP pretended to have a Dive knife stuck in his leg and Jenn had to rescue him underwater. The knife penetration looked extremely realistic and I have never heard JP whine like a baby !!

We also certified 3 Open Water students:

Kelli
Joanne
Carol Ann

Congratulations to all of you for successfully completing your course.
Joanne’s Open Water dive 4 was particularly interesting as we saw 13 Turtles on Turtle Reef (a new record for the reef and me), 4 Stingrays, one was so big that it couldn't swim properly as its wings were too heavy !!

This week Tintamarre has been amazing, we actually managed to dive the Circus in near perfect conditions which produced 2 sharks, rays and the beautiful cave systems. Then onto Basse Espagnol, Sally was dry on the boat and snorkeled with a Black tip reef shark and the lobsters are still there, all 30 – 40 of them !!

The forecast is bad again for the weekend – 4 metre northerly swells. This is primarily down to global warming as the Locals have never seen the waves so frequent from the North.

We have a shiny new compressor being shipped from Miami as I write this blog.

Our old Bauer compressor is about 20 years old and a refurbishment would cost in the region of $5000. A new one cost $8000 – go figure…. So we bought a brand new compressor which is custom made to my specification.
No annoying electronics, so less to go wrong.

For all of you technical people out there, it’s a Coltri Sub (Bauer block) 10.9 CFM, 5000PSI, triple water separation, auto drain, open compressor. Closed compressors hate the humidity.

So we can now fill our banks to 4500PSI, I have to fit a pressure regulator inline and then we can fill 12 tanks to 3000PSI from the banks – at last !!

To those technically challenged readers – its, black, shiny and pumps tanks !!

The new boat is on hold until we know exactly what is going on in this crazy world, Sally and I have paid ourselves bonuses this year and the meal in Lolo’s was an unforgettable experience..!

We just had another two fantastic reviews on Trip Advisor keeping our ratings to 5 star and of course number one attraction on St.Martin which is great.
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g147351-d1092282-Reviews-Octopus_Diving-Grand_Case_St_Maarten_St_Martin.html

That's about it for this week so keep watching the blog.

Thanks,

Chris