HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!!

Chris and I just had our turkey dinner at Pineapple Pete's (we weren't in the mood for cooking) and I wanted to spend a couple of minutes mentioning what we are thankful for... so here it goes!

We are thankful for

1. All of our loyal customers who we have had the pleasure of diving and snorkeling with. Without all of you, we wouldn't be able to do what we love.
2. The joining of Swen and Aurelion to the Octopus Family. They are both great guys who work super hard, and are motivated to doing a great job.
3. All the wonderful people in the Grand Case community that help us every day. Like Reverend Hodge and his two sons Jhonny and Mickey. (They are the owners of Les Alizes and are always ready with a kind word and a smile). Or like Albert, who never passes the dive shop without saying hello. Or like Kevin, our little helper, who sometimes causes more trouble than help. Or like Emile, the owner of Sky's the Limit, who feeds us when we are hungry and too lazy to cook with a good bbq. Or our nieghbor Rick, from NY, who let us store our kayak next door!
4. The addition of our new boat Octopussy, which makes diving in Saint Martin a dream.
5. The health and well being of our family and loved ones.
6. The really cool octopi that seem to be around lately.
7. The addition of the members of Les Fruits de Mer, who are here for one whole year... yeah! I will blog more about them at a later date.... so stay tuned.
8. The fact that we get to meet so many wonderful people everyday, while living and diving in such a beautiful place.
9. Our lovely cat Max, who is so big he may as well be a small tiger!
10. All our family and friends that come to visit us, especially my family who are all coming for my 30th birthday in February... I know.... 30 years old.... ahhhhh!
11. A hurricane free season!
12. And of course, we are thankful to all of our blog readers (that means you!)

So, have a wonderful day everyone, wherever you are! I do believe that now it is time for bed, all that turkey makes me sleepy!

(this blog was written by Sally :))

Aurelions Photos

I haven't been able to take my camera diving lately... but Aure has been taking some photos. He likes the little stuff, so here are some of his photos.

Aure says "if you like my photos, please check out my website, where there are more."

http://divingprojects.evoserv.net/divingprojects/photos.html

He likes the little stuff, so there are shrimps, nudibranchs, but also some bigger stuff as well, like an octopus, an eagle ray and a turtle. Enjoy!

Time is moving....

Wow... I can't believe that it is almost Thanksgiving! Time has gone by so fast, it feels like we have just came back from our 2 weeks in NY, but that was almost 6 weeks ago now. To think of it, I haven't had a day off since then. Hmmmm. Maybe I need to rethink my career choice.

...

Thought about - still happy! Even 45 days without a day off rules, when you live in the Caribbean, get to go diving everyday, get to meet great people like yourselves, and work with your husband every day. Sure, I sleep well everynight, but it is worth it. Besides, I am taking tomorrow off, so I am breaking the working run. Guess what we are doing on our day off... guess... go on... guess... that is correct, we are going diving! People often think that we would do anything else on our day off, but we love diving! We are going to try and find some dive sites around Anguilla so that we can start to offer diving over there. In the new boat, it only takes about 8 minutes, so it isn't far at all, and there is supposed to be some great diving over there. But don't worry mom and dad, I am going to take a proper day off soon to relax, get some rest, most likely when you are here in December!

I am always impressed at the secret followers of this blog. Talking to customers, they seem to know things about us that aren't common, and then I say "do you read our blog?" And they reply "yup." You see, I only know of 17 people who are actually following the blog on blogger.com, so when I write this blog it gets sent to them in an email, and that is who I feel I am writing to when I blog. I must admit, that out of the 17, about 10 are family (one is actually me...!) so perhaps I am slightly more relaxed when writing the blog than I should be.

Anyhow, that is what blogging is all about, isn't it?

I should talk about something you are interested in, like diving, our boats, our staff, etc. Well, the diving has been really great lately, and there seem to be lot's of octopodes about at the moment. They stay in the same little cave for about 2 weeks, so if I can find one, or two, or three, then I can usually keep finding those same octopodes for awhile. A good thing to look out for are lots of empty shells near a rock, these are the remains of dinner, and also provide cover for the octopus inside the hole. We also had a dolphin encounter the other day, which was awesome. Awesome for Chris, Aure and the divers. I was in the office... ho hum!

We have also been seeing lots of small things lately that we haven't before. Perhaps we are just looking more closely, or perhaps there are just more. We've seen an increase in nudibranchs lately, and also of different types of shrimp. I noticed a Sun Anemone Shrimp the other day, as well as a Golden Coral Shrimp, and I had never seen these before. I can thank Allan for this, as he was a bit nervous we went really really slow, and this allowed me to find all the cool little stuff.

Here are some photos. The first is of the golden coral shrimp, which I got from the internet, it isn't my photo. http://chemistry.csudh.edu/faculty/jim/Cozapr07/golden.jpg

The second is the sun anemone shrimp and I got the photo from this website. http://www.jonathanbird.com/jpegs4/sun_anemone_shrimp.jpg

I have also been noticing a lot of really beautiful anemones lately. Like the elegant anemone and the bearded anemone. (Does anyone actually pronounce that word correctly? In my head I can't stop saying anenome, switching the "n" and the "m".) They are so pretty, like underwater flowers, and if you look well, you can see a whole new ecosystem in one anemone. There are always little Hairy Crabs behind the Giant Anemones.

Alright, I better stop the silence and fill some tanks. I will try and blog on Thanksgiving, like I did last year, listing what we are thankful for, but I will wait until Thursday. It is this Thursday, isn't it? One year I almost celebrated on the wrong week, (I was in England at the time where they don't really care about Thanksgiving), but luckily my mom set me straight before I defrosted the turkey.... thanks mom.

Until then, think of Chris and me tomorrow on our day off! (Sally wrote this blog :) )

Fantastic Afternoon!

This afternoon I went to Tintamarre with Marisa (my open water student), her husband Louis, and Michael. Michael was diving with us in May, and we are super happy to have him back.

When I was talking to Michael he was telling me that he is always reading the blog, so I thought that it was only fitting that I blog about him. I always get excited when Mike sends us an email because he works for the military, so the words "unclassified" are always contained in the top of the email. I like to imagine all the other "classified" emails that go out... but Mike assures me that he isn't really privy to classified information, but he would say that, wouldn't he?

Anyway... the diving was really great this afternoon, especially diving from Octopussy. We went to Japanese Garden and saw the biggest Green Turtle hiding under a rock. I learned the other day, from Aurelion, (our new instructor), that the turtles go to the surface, take a gulp of air, and then they wedge themselves under a rock. With the huge gulp of air they are buoyant, so if they want a nap, they need the rock to stop them from floating to the surface. This Green Turtle had two huge Remoras on her back, she let us approach slowly, but then when we were too close, she swam gracefully away. We carried on, checking out all the schools of fish and spiny lobsters. It was a really nice dive. Marisa did fantastic, considering it was her third dive ever!

Then we went diving on the tugboat, where we had close encounters with sting rays and also watched Louis do some break dancing on his head (underwater of course). Aurelion had his camera, so I will post some photos when he sends them to me. The Tug was full of fish, like normal, and it was a beautiful dive.

Other news.... we have had some more great reviews on tripadvisor (thanks everyone) so check those out... http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g147351-d1092282-Reviews-Octopus_Diving-Grand_Case_St_Maarten_St_Martin.html

We are currently the #1 attraction in Saint Martin / Sint Maarten and #5 in the whole of the Caribbean. We want to be #1 in the Caribbean, so if you are so inclined... write good review for us!

I will soon take photos of our new instructors Swen and Aurelion for the blog and the website, so stay tuned for more information about these two characters. They are real characters... Swen speaks 8 languages.... and Aurelion lives on a boat. They both love diving, and they are great guys, so check out the blog soon!

Congratulations to Marisa on her open water certification!

Friday the 13th tomorrow, I wonder if this will affect the marine life...

Good night everyone!

(Sally wrote this blog :) )

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 :) )