Today is my day off. One interesting thing about my career change is that when I was a lawyer, on my day off I never wanted to sit around and do more law stuff. But now that I’m a scuba diver, on my days off I am always excited to go diving.
Usually on my days off I’ll either go out for a dive with Andrea’s shop, or else dive the shore dives at my shop, Eden Rock. But today I had a great opportunity to dive on the east side of the island. The primary dive company on that side of the island is Ocean Frontiers. My co-worker Natasha also had the day off, and so we went to East End to go diving with them!
Although it was my day off, I still woke up at 6:00am in order to make the trip across island in time. I was down in Georgetown (20 minutes from my house) at 7:00, where I picked up Natasha, and we arrived at Ocean Frontiers at 7:50, just in time to catch their 8:00am boat.
Working on the island and in the dive industry, you hear things about the different dive shops on island. Regarding Ocean Frontiers, all of the word-of-mouth I’d heard was very good: Nice boats, good customer service, very friendly and professional. I was curious as to whether they would live up to the hype. After diving with them, I would say that the word of mouth is 100% true. They are a first-rate dive center. There is no other way to say it. The boat I was on was nice and well equipped — a nice area for cameras, separate camera and mask rinse buckets, and lemonade and orange wedges in addition to cold water (which is all that most boats have). The staff was super-friendly, and very customer service oriented, to the point that they set up your gear for you and change it over from tank to tank between dives (I set up my own gear, and when I run a dive boat at my shop I make the divers set it up themselves since they learn to do it during certification and are the ones that will be breathing from it, but there’s no denying that to the average diver this is top-notch customer service). They gave great briefings, drew great maps of the dive sites, and were just generally pleasant to be around.
And, of course, the diving was good, too. There are often shark sitings on the East End, and unfortunately we didn’t get to see any shark today, but I don’t think that is Ocean Frontier’s fault. Despite the lack of shark the dives were still quite good, and I saw a turtle, a stingray, and tons of reef fish. And since I was out diving for fun instead of teaching or leading the dive, I was able to bring my camera and take some pictures. Here are some shots of a turtle that went right past us:
And here are some pictures of a porcupine fish (a “puffer” fish):
I like to call these fish the Duffy of the Sea, because they have the big eyes and flat face just like Duffy has. Can you see the resemblance?
And finally, some cool shots of the tons of reef fish that were out on our dive sites:
Overall, it was a great way to spend my off day. Ocean Frontiers is a class act, and I would strongly encourage divers to check them out while on island. But, of course, be sure to stop by Eden Rock first!