Day 8 on Statia - Lost Anchors, Anchor Point and Chien Tong Night Dive

A day late, but hey Tuesday was a busy day with three dives including a night dive.

So I started the day on Tuesday with some trepidation about the night dive, I'd only done one before and that was a shallow shore dive into a bay where lights from the shore made navigation easy. Tonight I was going to dive a wreck way out to sea at about 22m max!

I had originally planned to do a single dive on Tuesday morning, but my first dive was cut short after 28 minutes as my buddy had run out of air after chasing his camera that he had lost when jumping in!

Lost Anchors is a relatively new dive site, so there's no line to descend, making this a bit more tricky as you need to descend to 25m 'in the blue'. Originally named 'Lost Anchor' there are now around four anchors on this site, hence the re-naming.

It's a beautiful site, lots of crevices for big lobsters, and even a nurse shark I managed to snap while it was sleeping.

Nurse shark having a morning nap

Also spotted a huge barracuda, and unfortunately a lion fish, a beautiful yet destructive invader to the Caribbean. Unfortunately, my skills with the GoPro were not yet good enough for me to get good shots of any moving life, I just wasn't getting close enough and the GoPro is a very wide angle lens.

Still practising my slow breathing technique, I was surprised when we were told to re-surface just after I had reached half a tank, at that stage I had no idea about the drama on the surface with the camera and the wasted air of both my buddy and divemaster (who had to swim out to rescue him from the current that was taking him further from the reef at the surface). So I sat on the boat for half an hour waiting for the rest of the divers, who all surfaced excited about the 'closest encounter with three reef shark so far'. I wasn't happy so decided to do a second morning dive.

Boat selfie with the Quill (on the right)

The next dive at Anchor point (my second visit there) more that made up for it! Two close encounters with reef sharks (possibly the same one both times) and catching sight of a red-lipped blenny as well as finally getting some footage of those elusive yellowhead jawfish. I was getting closer with my photography too, and getting better results. Luckily I've fallen in love with sponges - pretty good inspiration for ceramic shapes, colours and textures and they don't move very fast!

A beautiful sea sponge

Back home for a quick lunch and then off to the dive shop again to take my nitrox exam. Passed! Result! Then a quick re-cap of night dive procedures before the briefing for the dive - the wreck of the Chien Tong - a Taiwanese fishing boat. Also known as 'Turtle Hotel' because hawksbill and green turtles go there to sleep at night.

At this point I should re-iterate how amazing the service was from Scubaqua. They manage to get the balance of a professional service with a real warmth and friendliness that really makes a difference to your dive experience. So when I mentioned I was a little anxious about the night dive, Vincent was happy to go through the night dive procedure with me, and paired me up with a buddy was was able to watch out for me.

I have to say that five minutes into the dive, all my anxiousness has dissolved. Night diving the Chien Tong is unlike anything I have ever experienced before. As well as enormous grouper, barracuda and all the opened corals, the wreck has many turtles either arriving to find a place to sleep for the night, roaming the ship to find a suitable spot or already sleeping. And they seem to be not bothered by human presence, they swim so close (one clipped my mask with its flipper as it swam over my back) which meant for some good footage. A couple of stills are shown below as well as a movie of the over-friendly turtle.

Green(?) turtle looking for a spot to sleep

Hawksbill turtle heading towards the Chien Tong

Another amazing experience here on Statia! Exhausted and happy I crashed when I finally got home around 9pm. I need all my energy for tomorrow as I have to be up at 6am to go hike up to 'Boven'.

Day 7 on Statia - Charlie Brown and Gibraltar

I woke up this morning with the exciting prospect of diving one of the biggest wrecks in the Caribbean, I was also excited at the prospect of borrowing Hannah's GoPro to get some underwater footage of the wreck and practice my underwater photography.

I set off for the dive school - a short walk downhill from where I am staying, about a mile or so. One thing that is really hard for an Englishman in Statia to get used to is that absolutely everybody you see in the street says hello or 'Good morning', even car drivers wave or gesture while driving in acknowledgement. I now also wave and say 'Good morning', 'Good afternoon' to everyone I pass. I'm sure it's part politeness and part curiousness about who I am (there are only 3000 or so people on the island so I probably stand out as a visitor) but I have to say it feels good.

My walk passes through the old part of Oranjestad, and there are plenty of photo opportunities of colonial style architecture, some extremely well maintained and others not.

Kerkweg, Oranjestad, St Eustatius

Passing through the town, the steep descent down to the shore takes me along the Old Slave Road, a very steep cobbled (and very hot) path from the Upper Town to the Lower Town, one of the many reminders that Statia was one of the largest slave trading ports in the Caribbean.

The Old Slave Road, looking down on to Oranjestad Bay

After a blunderous start to the morning (regulator dropped into the dock and instructor had to rescue it, forgot boots, instructor had to drive back to get them) we made our way out to the Charles L Brown (or Charlie Brown). It's a huge wreck, purposely sunk just over ten years ago, sitting about 30m at the bottom. I was excited - this was going to be my deepest dive to date.

The Charles L Brown seen from above

This is an amazing dive site the scale of the wreck is phenomenal. Words can't describe it, so I hope you get a taste of it from these photos and video.

Me with a big smile on my face!

This was my deepest dive to date at 29.9m, managing 36 minutes in total.

Cruising above the deck of Charlie Brown

For the afternoon dive, I was joined by Hannah, we had to revert to 'Plan B' due to algal blooms at the original dive site 'The Aquarium'. Instead we headed for 'Gibraltar', a bumpy ride to the north of the island, passing steep cliff faces where Red-billed Tropicbirds were nesting, and a Brown Booby passed by in the distance.

This dive site was very different to those at the other end of the island, being a much older volcano, in stead of lava flows, the sea bed was covered with giant boulders from the volcano's landslide, including the huge boulder shaped in a way that gives the site its name. The current was also strong here in places, and the water colder as it was almost on the Atlantic side rather than the warm Caribbean side.

We were immediately greeted by an enormous hawksbill turtle, several lionfish (unfortunately), a barracuda lurking in a rock crevice and the usual plethora of fish species.

Hawksbill turtle (photo: Hannah Madden)

As we headed for our final ascent, we encountered a school of barracuda in the near distance, a perfect end to a perfect day diving! It seems that focussing on my breathing paid off, this time I was down for 56 minutes instead of 48 the previous day, and had a deeper dive.

A happy day indeed...