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| July 11, 1998
11:45am The fishing
boats left at 6:30 this morning after working
until 10:00 last night - one hell of a long day.
I plotted three
possible dive sites in the "Archipelago de
los Jardines de la Reina" - The Queens'
Garden.
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Photo
Courtesy of C. Pritchard |
The first site, just south
of Cayo Breton was exceptional. Once on the reef at sixty
feet I secured a lift bag to the anchor to use later
rather than pulling the anchor and one hundred feet of
chain up by hand.
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I
followed some sand fingers and found a very
vibrant reef. Lots of schooling small fish and
plenty of grouper, amberjacks and barracuda - all
very large. One particularly
large grouper was startled by my presence and
rushed me before hiding in a hole.
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I continued along
the sand finger and came to the wall at ninety
feet. It sloped steeply down with coral for the
first thirty feet or so.
On the way back to
the anchor, I encountered a turtle and a southern
stingray attempting to feed among the coral. This
dive site has been christened "Grouper
Hole".
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July 11, 1998
3:30pm
We
motored on to Cayo Alcatracito to my next dive selection.
Anchored near the beach was "Le Nicholas IV" of
Montreal. We met the couple who are traveling this sail
catamaran in the marina at Cienfuegos. They left three
days before us, bound for Santiago.
They
came around the reef in a small skiff and we agreed to
moor near them for the night.
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My
dive was outstanding! Chris dropped the anchor
right on the wall which is far more dramatic than
the one west of here. The corals and sponges are
huge and continue down the wall as far as I could
see. While setting the lift bag to the anchor, a
small black tip shark swam the wall below me.
Hence the name, "Shark Bight"! |
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© 1998
John Petrak
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