Great fourth say in the BVI. It was another early rise thanks to the wild roosters living nearby. Glen picked us up at 8:30 as usual, but took us strait to the dock this time. There, a light breakfast consisting of muffins and yogurt waited for us. We all sat and ate quickly, eager to board our boats. After lathering up with sunscreen, I got onto Sea Dragon and set out for our morning dives. Today we had the longest trip out to our dive site, a 30 minute boat ride to Salt Island. This island is the site of the world famous Rhone. It was a 310 foot boat that sank on October 29, 1867. Once we got out there, we were quickly briefed for our first dive. We got in descended down to about 45 feet. After some brief swimming around, Casey led Guy, Joe, Christian, and I to the bow of the ship. We weaves our way through the second, third, and fourth deck of the ship. It was incredible to get to swim through what was one of the two ships ever labeled “unsinkable” (the other was of course the Titanic; both sank). On that first dive we saw a vast diversity of marine life: a green morray eel, a four foot long Permit, grunts, a sea turtle, tube worms, fire coral, and many more. After about 30 minutes we ascended back to the boat for an hour surface interval. Aboard the boat, we had a few snacks and Casey gave us an extensive history of the shipwreck. Aboard the Rhone were mainly British aristocrats, as the ship held over 200 first class cabins. Long story short, a hurricane ended up taking the ship over a big, sharp rock, and resulted in the boat snapping in half with various pieces scattered around the island. The storm overwhelmed Captain Wooly and his crew as only a handful survived. There were numerous little stories about what happened in the 20 minutes that took the ship to sink, such as the lucky porthole 26. When the ship made contact with the rock, the steam room exploded, and so did one of the first class cabins. Lucky for the Italian man staying in that room, he was one of the only able to escaped because he could actually swim, and the blast offered him a perfect opportunity to survive. We rubbed the brass from his window for good luck. On our dives, my dive team and I wore “shorties”, wet suits that cut off at the knees and elbows. They kept us much warmer in our deepest dive to date, 80 feet. Our second dive was at the stern of the boat, which was a lot of fun minus the rough current that kept on dragging us all over the place. We also visited the propeller of the boat (17 feet long) and a gear set full of big wrenches. We saw an intimidating barracuda as well as the horrid lionfish. The two dives were my favorite to date. After we all got out of the water, we headed to Cooper Island for some fish and chips. It was the best meal to date as the fries’ seasoning was delicious. After some coconut cracking, we had a tour of a cool Eco-facility of the resort in the island. Things like recycled cups and chairs, as well as 90 solar panels that account for 75% of the resorts energy help reduce the environmental footprint of the island. Then we had some snorkeling time. After that we headed back for some much needed showers. Dinner at Mad Dogs (lasagna) ended the night as usual, followed by a coral harvesting g lesson by Casey. Tomorrow we will be planting and replanting coral to help save the endangered elkhorn and staghorn coral. It was my favorite day and I can’t wait for tomorrow.
