We’re really having an experience that is, as many others have said, like summer camp for divers.

The friendships we’re striking up are building from time at meals, of course, but that’s largely because almost all the folks on our boat (currently 8 of us, as 4 left yesterday morning) are coming together for meals. We have certainly met others over an occasional drink at the bar, or just getting into conversations with people at adjoining tables…it’s all about community here.

There are a handful of people who prefer to spend meal times alone, or just with the companion they traveled with, and no one puts pressure on anyone to join in or to be alone. Just very easy.

The dives continue to be wonderful...

Yesterday’s dives were again very nice. The first stop was Gold Chain Reef (#56), and the afternoon dive was another stop at Menagerie (#59). The repeat of Menagerie was just fine, as it’s a lovely and bountiful site. We did a drop-off on the afternoon dive, dropping at the Prince Albert wreck, looking around a bit and heading back in. On average, our dives are clocking in at 50-60 minutes; and we’re doing so with about 1/3 tank remaining.

Sunday, of course, was the first day of diving for the many folks who arrived on Saturday. So now the boat assignments are complete and we know who’ll be on “our” boat for the remainder of the week. We’d already met with 6 of these folks on Saturday, it turns out, so there were only 2 new folks...

Yesterday was our first day of experiencing how things run here–at least on a Saturday, which is the turnover day for the vast majority of guests. And it was great.

All guests who were boat diving yesterday were put on a single boat, all 8 of us. Some of those folks will be on the boat to which we’re assigned for the remainder of the week, some on other boats. Most of them are here for 10-14 days (“we just get started about 6 days in”). I don’t think we’re quite that hard core. And all are repeat guests, one nearly thirty times.

One Galveston, TX couple, probably about 70 or so, were particularly friendly, and we enjoyed lunch with them, and general fun conversation on the boat...

The semester now (just) past has brought so much; re-establishing at work in-person, a very new routine re work, commuting, my fundamental relationship with where I work and the people I work with. Home, which is lovely, is so very different than this time a year ago. In time, I’ll try to capture some of these things as I return to this journal after a three-month long hiatus.

At this moment, Pattie and I are in Roatan, Honduras. We arrived yesterday, picked up and brought to Cocoview. Very, very helpful folks here got us an orientation to the dive operation–a required step before being allowed to begin doing the regular boat diving...

From Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American, an ode to Labor Day

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-5-2021

On Friday, we again slept in a bit, then got in our truck and headed out to find a dive site highly recommended–“Something Special,” just south of us. We didn’t find it, and just continued south to explore further. It was a day when we did dive–eventually hitting “The Lake” dive site–but also just got out of the resort and started to get a sense of the broader island.

We drove south, past the salt mining center (will post pix of salt pond, salt piles, and the pier which loads ships with salt), the southern tip of the island (lighthouse), and up the eastern side. The waters are considerably more rough on the windward side, the east, and it’s easy to see why there really aren’t any dive sites indicated on the map’s eastern shore.

We passed an area just past the southern tip which wa...

Last Wednesday, very early morning, Pattie and I departed RDU for a thrice-postponed trip to Bonaire. So we’re on an island in the Netherlands Caribbean, just north of Venezuela, near sister islands of Aruba and Curacao. We have been to Aruba before, and at that time we were neither scuba diving, nor aware of the wonders of Bonaire’s rich reef ecology.

Bonaire is reknowned as a diver’s paradise, and that’s why we’ve come here. We’re staying at a “dive resort,” which means that they seriously cater to divers’ needs, supply unlimited tanks of commonly used gas mixtures (air and enhanced oxygen “nitrox”), and provide a truck and hearty breakfast.

There are lots of options for boat dives, but this island is really known for the many (about sixty) shore dives...

Jackson’s now two (plus a week), and his little brother’s just two months away from arrival. Some pictures of the little guy on the days around/on his birthday:

“Live Every Voice,” commonly known as the Black National Anthem.
James Weldon Johnson (words), J. Rosamund Johnson (music)

Lift every voice and sing   
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.   
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;   
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through ...