Diving in Culebra, Puerto Rico

Quick catch-up: Idril arrived in the Caribbean in mid-October, 2023, with the Salty Dawg rally from Newport, RI.

 We spend most of a week on a dock in Falmouth Harbor, Antigua, getting the boat cleaned after her passage south and prepared to be left alone for a month.

Idril surrounded by super yachts in Falmouth, Antigua

 

We then flew to Boston to help Katy's father, Bob, during his recovery from knee surgery. We spent a lovely Thanksgiving in Vermont at Alison's parents home, then got to join Dan and Sue in Acton for their annual veggie Thanksgiving party. 

After that, we stayed at Bob's apartment in Canton. Aside from an outing to the Revels dress rehearsal, we didn't get to see very many friends while there; we were pretty consumed with Bob. But we did get to spend Christmas at the Cape with much of the Petersen clan.

Christmas eve

Christmas dawn

We flew back to Antigua after Christmas and were relieved to find that the Idril was fine after her longer-than-expected abandonment. She had grown a serious beard of barnacles and green slime; we had divers clean her up before we got underway again.

To get back in the groove, we sailed clockwise about halfway around Antigua, with a stop at St. Johns for reprovisioning, then hopped north to Barbuda. 

 

There we got in a bit of snorkeling, a visit to the frigate bird nesting ground, and a hot, dusty walk to the amazing Darby sinkhole. 

 

We also stripped and lubricated our main winches, a long-overdue piece of maintenance.

Katy cleaning winch parts

Next stop: St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands. We passed a pleasant week snorkeling in the familiar reefs around the island. From there we headed south to Frederiksted, on the west coast of St. Croix, for a week of diving with Nep2une Divers. Then: on to Culebra, in the so-called "Spanish Virgin Islands" (actually part of Puerto Rico).

Now that we're caught up, I'll get to the heart of this posting.

We did three dives with Culebra Divers, a small, family-run dive shop on Culebra.The first dive was nice, but due to the high winds we've been having, suffered from limited visibility. But the next two dives were fantastic! The reef on the west side of Culebra is one of the healthiest, prettiest reefs I've ever seen. And the dive leaders, Trevor and Meg, took some wonderful pictures. We don't have an underwater camera, so I've never been able to share just why we are so enthusiastic about diving and snorkeling.

Here we go.

Queen Triggerfish

Southern stingray

Green sea turtle

Trumpetfish

 

a very large French angelfish

Giant anemone with two squat anemone shrimp

Spotted Moray eel

Sennett (I think...)

There are some more pictures in this album.

Besides doing some great diving, we both did the online and practical training to become certified to use "Nitrox", an air mixture that enables divers to stay longer at depths that would otherwise risk decompression illness ("the bends"). We don't know when we'll use that, but it's now in our quiver if we need it.

-- Jerry