Happy Birthdays Celebrated and Mothers Day

This past week was a bit of a tough one what with my Birthday and Mothers Day to celebrate. The birthday went quickly with a great lunch in Ann Arbor with Hilary (Mahon) and a special evening with Steve. (Mike was at his last day at VPD) I enjoyed the day itself and did not think about the past or the future. Thank you for all the cards and good wishes. I still absolutely feel the positive thoughts and prayers coming my way.

Saturday my parents arrived and we were able to sit outside and catch up on all the events in their lives as well as sharing our adventures in Tortola. We had a celebratory meal on Saturday night for birthday girls and Mothers Day. Steve and Mike did as excellent job on grilling and cleanup. We showed Mom and Dad the new Bass Pro store where Mike will be working and in general just had a good time with loved ones. We missed our Jessica, and Jesi and AJ, but plans are being formulated for a family gathering this summer.

Todays thought:
"The gift of happiness belongs to those who unwrap it."

A new adventure

"What is important is to keep learning, to enjoy challenge, and to tolerate ambiguity. In the end there are no certain answers." Martina Horner

To learn something new at any point in our lives is refreshing to the soul. Today at the urging of a new neighbor and with her, I attended my first pottery class. We will be making pottery items every Thursday morning for the next 6 weeks. I was very apprehensive. I know I can learn the techniques but it is the inspiration for objects to mold that may stymie me in this endeavor. Fortunately the instructor is very good about giving us ideas and we are allowed to just repeat what she has made. She tells us that by the third week we will be using the pottery wheels and then our creations can get even more intricate. Watch for pictures of my creations. It was fun and it certainly made me feel child like to be modeling clay.

Just realizing Sunday is Mothers Day...Ouch!

"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit." ~Albert Schweitzer


Steve has informed me that I can not live in Tortola forever (unless I win the lottery) so I am making the adjustment back to life in Perrysburg. Some is good and some is not so good. I spent yesterday with AJ and we had a blast at the park. He is just plain fun to be with. Of course the down side is that I wish John could be here to see how much fun AJ is at this age. I wish he was here to feel the pride of being a parent.

Thinking about Sunday being Mothers Day was also a great big dose of reality. Fortunately Sunday is also my mom's birthday. So I think that is what we will celebrate. Mom and Dad just got back to Michigan from Florida but they have graciously agreed to be here with us for the weekend. And Mike is always excited to celebrate Mothers Day so I will put a smile on my face and enjoy the fact that I am indeed a Mother. It just has a little different feel this year.

Tortola Diving April 2008

Beata Tug Boat


Lobster



Highhat



Burr Fish



Elkhorn Coral




Barracuda



Nurse Shark




These are some of the things we saw on this dive trip. We do not use an underwater camera so these are courtesy of another Tortola diver. The logs of the dives talks about many of the other sights we saw. Again my descriptions are for logging purpose only and as such may not be quite as informative about the dive.

Tortola Dive sites visited April 2008

Water temperature was between 78 and 80 degrees
Steve used 16 pounds of integrated weight
Linda used 13 pounds of integrated weight


Day One:
Wreck Alley

Depth: 84 feet
Length of dive: 40 minutes
This triple wreck site consists of the Marie L, a cargo boat intentionally sunk in the early 1990s, the Pat, a tugboat sunk a few years later that now lies up against the Marie L, and the Beata, sunk in 2001. While the wrecks themselves provide an interesting feature to explore, there are lots of sting rays in this area as well as large turtles. We also saw lobster and eels. There are two old toilets between the tugs which make for a few laughs underwater. Time on the wrecks is limited due to the depth. We have been to this site on other trips and it interesting to see how time is affecting this dive site. The boats are deteriorating but the fish life is increasing.

Painted Walls

Depth: 46 feet
Length of dive: 62 minutes

After a surface interval of about an hour we arrived at this site near Dead Chest Island. It was a fabulous dive that we had never done on previous trips. There are parallel passages and vertical walls running perpendicular to the island. Three prominent fingers extend out to create color splashed canyons. The unusual underwater landscape and abundance of fish make Painted Walls one of the most popular dives in the BVI. The rocky ridges are coated with orange, purple, red, green and yellow encrusting coral accented by many hard and soft corals bouquets. In the second passage there are unusual rocks which are thought to have been ballast from a ship that went down.
The northernmost valley between ridges has an arch leading into a shallow pool where Silversides often gather and a pair of silvery Tarpon wait at the swim-through. We saw a nurse shark and turtle. On the smaller side there were numerous banded shrimp and other invertebrates under the ledges along the bottom of the pool.
The pillar coral has grown from several large colonies to a dozen or so healthy patches, with one particularly large colony on the most southern ridge.



Day Two:
Shark Point

Depth: 63 FEET
Length of dive: 47 minutes
The rocky southern tip of Peter Island continues underwater as a ridge rising above a fairly nondescript bottom but the site is so named because there really are sharks there! The mooring places the boat over a shallow, fire coral-blanketed saddle on the ridge. There is a small cave just to your left as you come over the saddle. As you turn right and follow the ridge away from shore, a condo-sized rock abuts a matching-sized dog leg dent in the ridge. We saw black durgon, horse-eye jacks and two marauding barracuda. Continuing out along the base of the ridge there is a small tunnel that cuts through it and into a canyon formed by a second parallel ridge. Queen angelfish, whitespotted filefish, groupers and all the different species of butterflyfishes frequent this area.
Deeper, there is a series of mini-ridges. We spotted a large jewfish and a sizable nurse shark resting on top in a low archway here. This is an exciting place to scan the blue water horizon as you never know what may pass by; turtles, large jacks and even the odd shark have been sighted here. Working our way back to the boat along the tip of the island we saw the largest nurse shark we have ever seen resting under a large rock ledge. It gets bigger with each telling and is now up to 15 feet long.  This site is in open ocean so the visibility was exceptional. Soft corals cover the reef and ridges.


Angelfish Reef

Depth: 59 feet
Length of dive:55 minutes
On the lee side of Norman Island is a spectacular rocky maze of canyons and ridges that finger off into the sandy bottom. There are lobsters here that are so big; you'll be reluctant to get too close! On the smaller side, tiny crabs, baby eels and stealth shrimp can be found living in the many anemones. The delicate orange ball anemone can be found under protected ridges near the sandy bottom.
Many tiny critters lurk on the sandy bottom and in the grassy area. The stingrays are easy to spot, but looking closely we saw many beautiful species of shrimps, anemones, and other crustaceans. There are usually 2 sea horses in this area but we were not able to find them.
 


Day Three:
Dry Rock East

Depth: 63
Length of dive: 57 minutes
A barely breaking ridge just east of Cooper Island, Dry Rocks East juts out into the channel between Cooper and Ginger Islands, and acts as a natural focal point for piscine activity. It is an open water site with good visibility and the promise of large pelagic fish. The trade off is rougher conditions and occasionally strong currents. At the bottom of the mooring line there is a car-sized boulder and under it a large collection of highhats. Looking up the craggy rock face to the breaking surf on the surface we spotted barracuda, schools of jacks, whitespotted filefish, pufferfishes and black durgons. In the scattered rock debris on the bottom, there are various small groupers such as hinds and coneys, and parrotfishes and trunkfishes. There are a few huge boulders scattered around as if they rolled down off the ridge. Under the first one, in addition to beautiful encrusting sponges and fans, a mixed school of goatfishes and grunts resides. This is a favorite site with local dive leaders because a dive here almost always provides some of the more unusual marine life. However, the currents that bring in life can also make for a challenging dive although the currents were very manageable.





DEPTH: 57FEET
Length of dive:52 minutes


Located between Dead Chest and Salt Islands, Blonde Rock offers good visibility, lots of big fishes, fascinating topography, a taste of adventure, and photo opportunities galore. Blonde Rock is a set of two pinnacles, out in the middle of nowhere, that rise from 60 feet to within 15 feet of the surface. Occasionally current-swept and the only topographic feature of any significance in the Salt Island Passage, Blonde Rock is a natural magnet attracting all kinds of marine life including turtles, schools of jacks, cobia, barracuda and even the occasional shark although we did not see any on this dive. The twin fire coral-encrusted peaks (hence the "blonde" designation) rise from a gorgonian-covered plateau at 35 to 40 feet. All the way around this sheer-walled plateau is an amazing system of undercuts, ledges, canyons, tunnels and companion rocks. With a flashlight, the brilliant colors of the sponges, coralline algae and cup coral leap out at you. The craggy upper lip of the wall is adorned with sea fans, deep-water gorgonians and a strange green-stalked colonial hydroid. Very interesting and colorful dive.


Day Four:
Alice’s Wonderland
Depth:68 feet
Length of dive: 53 minutes
Just off the dramatic rocky ledges of Ginger Island is a lush garden of Star Corals and Brain Corals. Huge mushroom-shaped coral heads adorn the long fingers of reef that protrude out from the shoreline hence the name. The coral here is healthy and happy and offers shelter to many unusual inhabitants. Extremely large pufferfish were spotted here as well as a barracuda, colorful parrotfish, squirrilfish, angel fish, rock beauties and schools of snappers.
Known for its clear, blue water, visibility here often exceeds 100 feet and was probably in that range for this dive. The reef is beautiful at all depths...you'll want to wind your way up the canyons so you don't miss a thing. Check under the ridges for huge lobster and sleeping nurse sharks. The sea fans and corals were amazing here although since it is an exposed area the surface conditions made for a more difficult entry and exit from the water.


Alice’s Backside
Depth: 64 feet
Length of dive: 61minutes
Around to the North side of Ginger Island, this site is almost always flat calm, providing a restful location for surface interval and second dive after Alice's Wonderland. Again, a huge healthy coral reef runs the length of the island starting at about 15 ft under the boat and falling away to the sandy bottom at about 60 ft. This was an easy out and back dive and although it was raining on the surface for much of this dive the light underwater was good. This is an outstanding area for large healthy corals especially brain corral and mushroom corrals.

Getting back to routine

"I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see."
John Burroughs


Getting back into the routine of home has not been easy. It was so nice to be away because life was so simple. Home has so many distractions, as well as so many more things that need to be attended to. The grass got mowed yesterday but because of the late spring there is still much yard work to be done, as well as getting patio furniture out and annuals planted. The suitcases and laundry are done, and there is food in the house for Steve and I again.

I also spent time on the phone with Mike's job developer yesterday. Prior to our vacation Mike had applied for a stocking position at the new Bass Pro store in Perrysburg. They held open applications for three days and over 3000 people applied for around 200 jobs. Mike had a second interview while we were in Tortola and was offered a full time job starting May 12. He is really excited about this as the production job he is working now does not seem to be panning out as well as we had hoped. The new store is scheduled to open around the end of June so Mike will be in on the ground floor putting all of the merchandise out. He has always liked the retail environment because of the opportunity for people contact. More on this topic later this month.

I am going to be posting all of the information on our scuba diving adventures on Tortola because I want to establish a record of the dives again. When we first started diving I logged all of the dives we made, but it got to be a chore and the log books were a nuisance to bring on trips. Voila the blog (web log)! I am hopeful this blog will be an easier way for me to recall the dives when we return to the same places to dive. Being underwater is something I really enjoy. It is a very quiet peaceful beautiful world to me but I do recognize that is my opinion and not shared by all.

Home Again

"Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation”

We are home in Perrysburg again after a long day of travel but what a vacation it was. I will be blogging about it for several days since I was not able to upload pictures while I was gone. Being away was a Godsend to both Steve and I mentally. The previous two months have been more of a strain than you realize until you are away from it. The stack of mail at home still contains sympathy cards from people that have just learned of John's death and more memorial donations. Being away we were able to relax and have fun and we shared lots of happy stories about John while brother John and Terry were with us. The villa was better than great, the diving was good, the weather was consistantly beautiful and the travel went well. All of the flights were on time other than one mechanical problem on the return flight from San Juan, which delayed the last leg of the homebound journey by 2 hours.

And now since the grass at home is 6 inches high and the suitcases need unpacking I will just post some pictures of the villa views and you will be able to see why we had such a relaxing vacation and love Tortola so much.



The view looking out from the pool toward Jost Van Dyke Island




This was taken from the Master Bedroom house looking eastward over the pool.



This is the separate master bedroom building.



The outdoor living space where we spent most of the time when we were not in the pool.