Bonaire Dive 5 – Margate – Spreading Mom’s ashes on Mothers’ day.

82 ft/45 minutes –consumed 1,800 PSI

Easier entry but just a bit slippery with lots of algae to walk over.  Nice big plate and brain corals.  Saw another lionfish.  Refreshing thermocline at about 40’.

Spread Mom’s ashes (along with a bit of Brandy’s) on Mothers’ day after having a bit of a breakdown in the parking lot.  Boy did Mom make a mess, but her ashes settled out quickly.  We were in about 40-feet of water away from the reef about 15 feet which had us at least 30 feet over the next coral below us.  The wall is steep.  J

Me, in front of the dive site marker.  Photo taken by Mary Jackson.

And here is the video of me spreading some of Mom's ashes.  Dad added in a little bit of their dog Brandy's ashes "so Mom wouldn't be alone", he said.

Bonaire: Dive 4 - Alice in Wonderland

100 ft/41 minutes –consumed 2,300 PSI

Slightly challenging entry with uneven footing and waves but ok once you get past the coral and into the sand.  This area is part of the double reef system.  Garden eels at the bottom.

The rock in the photo below is the standard marker for all named dive sites on Bonaire.  A rock painted yellow with the name in black.  Enter at your own risk.

Bonaire: Dive 3 – House Reef @ Bonaire Oceanfront Apartments

121 ft/34 minutes –consumed 2,200 PSI

VERY fishy dive.  Best vis yet.  Easiest entry ever.  We’ll be back for a flouro/night dive tonight.  Sandy entrance with a bit of rubble.  Swim out a bit and pass the moorings for the sailboats.  They asked us to clean their bottom – we declined. 

First dive with GoPro.  I used the 20-50’ filter and the Macromate.  Lights worked well – high strength may have been a bit too high.  Shot some Christmas tree worms and anemones with macro.  Cool.  

Mary, at the easiest entry point ever.

One of those Macro Anenome shots.  

Bonaire: Dive 2 - Oil Slick Leap

83 ft/39 minutes –consumed 2,100PSI

Easy entry down a ladder after a harrowing walk across very rugged coral.  Fall here and you’ll be shredded.   The ladder drops down to a small coral platform with a cave forming under and behind the ladder.  The cave traveled well back and created a small blowhole maybe 3 inches in diameter.  

Very cool. 

We saw 3 small lionfish (in 80, 70, and 30 feet of water), one maybe the diameter of my hand with none of them larger than a dinner plate (with fins spread).  We also spotted a tarpon, a brown white spotted eel, a yellow and black small eel, a very big blue parrotfish, lots of arrow crab, hordes of trumpet and cornet fish, and oodles of other fishes – oh my.

I found an ammo can near the bottom of the Oil-slick marker guarded by a vicious damselfish.  Geocache!  Inside the can were little key chain cache items with instructions on how to register them at geocache.com and then a request to move them forward to a new cache.   I retrieved a little turtle and Mary a dolphin.

Dinner at BobeJans for delicious BBQ Ribs and Chicken Sate.  And the rum & diet coke wasn’t bad either.   Took a walk around town to burn off the drinks, found some free wifi to check in, then gelato, then home for a swim, and now playing with the day’s video.  Soon off to bed.  It’s all of 9pm.  We’re wild, I tell ya…

Bonaire: Dive 1 - Buddy Reef

129 ft/25 minutes – consumed 2300PSI

My first dive since 2005.   We stopped in at Buddy Dive to do our checkout dive at Buddy Reef.  The entry was down the stairs into a coral rubble area.  The reef starts in 35 feet and drops off steeply to ~130 to a sand bottom with a large area of garden eels.  We’ll be back later with cameras to get these little critters on photo/video.  We also saw what looked like a coral nursery area, with staghorn coral hanging from a PVC pipe frame.   This was my first dive in 9 years so I was breathing like a banshee trying to get my buoyancy control in line, gear situated, mask strap adjusted.  I’ve had to switch to a mask with readers.  Getting old sucks.  We also saw an octopus in about 20 feet of water hiding inside a tire.  Cool.


An entry where you walk down some stairs.  Sweet.  I didn't take this photo and have no idea who it belongs to.  If you recognize it as yours, drop me an email and I'll give photo credit or remove it - as you wish.  

Vacation!

I've had a very stressful past few years culminating with the death of my Mom and the demise of my relationship. I lost my mom to cancer and my relationship to a lack of integrity (his) and, truth be told, a case of mismatch. At the end of the day even without his lies we were not a match. He's conservative politically, I'm not. He's uber risk adverse - I'm not. He lives in Florida and does NOT own a pair of shorts or flipflops. I should have known from that alone. He freaked out that evening at sunset on the beach when I was exploring a tide pool, imploring me, "Come on, baby.. get out of the water - there are... Sharks!". Um, I'm in water to just above my ankles. And for pete's sake - I'm a marine biologist - I KNOW the risks. Sheesh. (stepping quickly off my soap box).

I've made it out the other end of all that stress and decided it was time to reward myself with a much-needed and very overdue vacation.

I broke out the passport, my dive gear, and upgraded my camera gear and am taking a dive trip with one of my oldest and dearest friends, the Luscious Ms. Mary.

10 stress free days in paradise. Just what I needed.

Scars are Sexy…

To me, scars tell the life’s story. I have a lot of scars. My emotional scars aren't that evident – I've tried to do the introspective work to deal with them so they fit into a small carry-on. These thoughts don’t run my life nor do they surface often – unless I deal with folks lacking in honesty or integrity.

I digress.

My physical scars have always been a non-issue for me, even when I was a card-carrying nudist. That was a few years back before I acknowledged how bad the sun was for me. My nudist days were also coincidentally before I received that scar resulting from cutting out a nasty little sun spot gone awry. A basal cell carcinoma is thankfully easily treatable, but brought the seriousness of the damages of tanning home.

I measured tonight and tallied up 69 inches worth of scars. My favorite number!

Besides being one of my favorite numbers, I wonder if it's impressive or scary to have scars of that magnitude?