Cayman aggressor – Day 1 – July 18, 2010

Veronica and I are just back from a week on the Cayman Aggressor IV. Our original plan was to spend a week in the Bahamas on the Nekton Rorqual. Unfortunately for us, Nekton Diving Cruises went out of business and took our money (along with 7 of our friends) with them. We have been on a Nekton boat so many times that seven out of nine of us did not get trip insurance. The Aggressor organization came to our rescue offering to give us credit equal to what we paid Nekton Diving Cruises towards a trip on one of their ships. Seven us were able to book for the same week as we planned on going to the Bahamas. Two of our friends will take their trip in November.

There were plenty of hassles making the change. We had to pay extra to change our plane tickets from Fort Lauderdale to Grand Cayman and the cost of the boat and the airfare was higher on the new trip. But we were going and we were happy not to lose the money that we paid out to Nekton Diving Cruises.

We arrived in Grand Cayman on Saturday, July 17th, and were greeted with rain and flooded roads. We made our way to the Cayman Aggressor IV and dropped off our gear as it was too early to check in. We walked across the road to town and started exploring. Before long, we ran into our friends, Robin and Warren Reed from Delray Beach, Florida. The Reeds are originally from New Jersey and were regulars on our boat before moving south. We spent some time together and before we knew it, it was time to board the boat.

We were introduced to Captain Allan Roberts, Lowell, Lauren (video pro), Trent (photo pro), Kimberly (chef) and the two interns – Allan’s daughter Emily and Phillip. We would find out as the week went by that this was the best crew that we have ever experienced. Captain Allan is the hardest working Captain that I have ever seen. He did everything. You might find him filling tanks, folding laundry or waiting on tables. He (and the rest of the crew) were bundles of energy.

The Cayman Aggressor IV is different than the previous live-aboard that we have been on, especially since we have only had experience with the very stable Nekton Swath Design boats. The Cayman Aggressor IV is 115 feet long and 24 feet wide. The cabins are below the main deck. The stairways are steep and it was recommended to descend them backwards while holding onto the side rails. The cabins were comfortable and each except two had their own bathroom and all had individual air conditioning and a TV/VCR combo although we did not use it while aboard. Some of the other passengers did. The boat has an extensive collection of movies on DVD so if you are into that, you should find something that you like. There is also a large flat screen TV in the main saloon.

The original plan was to leave the dock around 6:00pm but that changed when our two women guests from Texas, Marty and Barbara, experienced airline connection problems and didn’t arrive until after 8:00pm. Captain Allan wanted to stay at the dock for the night and leave in the early AM but a medical emergency on another boat necessitated us moving off the dock that night. We all headed for bed and the Cayman Aggressor IV moved to a mooring for our first dive the next morning.

Sunday morning found us moored at the Oro Verde which is off of Seven Mile Beach. The maximum depth that I had on this dive was 52’. The visibility was pretty good. I started taking photos of the bow section. I had been on the Oro Verde more than twenty years ago and some of it still looked familiar.

There was plenty of sponge growing on the bow section and it was kind of neat looking. I am a New Jersey shipwreck diver so seeing a shipwreck in good visibility is wonderful. As I swam around the wreck, I found a large school of Atlantic silversides moving back and forth on a piece of wreckage. I also saw mutton snappers and bar jacks swimming into the school looking for an easy meal.

I spent a fair amount of time photographing them. I love to watch the view change as the school undulates and separates when a larger fish moves through it. Our videographer, Lauren, from New Zealand, found a bicycle on the bottom and tried to fix it so that it could be ridden underwater.

She was partly successful and a few of the divers kind of rode (swam) it along. It was pretty neat. With a maximum depth of 52’, I spent 57 minutes and the dive and was really pleased with my first dive of the trip.

As soon as everyone was back aboard, we headed north to make our second dive at Stingray City.

I was there more than twenty years ago and the only change that I noticed was that there were a lot of southern stingrays there. The plan was for the divers to take food to feed the stingrays and get in a circle on the bottom and savor the experience. The circle theory didn’t last long. The stingrays changed to plan. The were everywhere. I was taking photos so I declined to take any food. I knew that there would be a lot of particulate in the water column because of all the divers and the actions of the stingrays. I decided to use a Magic Filter on my Tokina 10-17 fisheye lens and no strobes. I felt that it would be easier to capture images in the shallow water without the backscatter that would be difficult to eliminate with strobes. In order to use a Magic Filter correctly in the water, I needed to do a custom white balance of the bottom (or of a neutral or while color). I could not get my D300 to do this so I chose a previous custom white balance and felt that I could correct for this in Photoshop. I will explain how this works in another blog article.

The southern stingrays were very aggressive. My friend, Warren Reed, ended up with a hickey on his hand from one of the rays. Once the action started to wind down, I headed back to the boat but wanted to photograph some individual stingrays in less stirred up water and wanted to do some shots to include the boat in the background. I managed both and was very happy with the results. On this dive, I had a maximum depth of 13’ and a bottom time of over an hour.

Our last dive was a wall dive at a site named Babylon on the northeastern side of the island. We would make this dive and then start our nine hour crossing to Little Cayman and Bloody Bay Wall. This part of the trip is weather dependent and everyone was hoping that it would happen. Bloody Bay Wall is supposed to be very beautiful. I had not been there before.

I dove with Robin and Warren Reed on every dive. This one started off wrong and we didn’t find the wall until late in the dive. Once we found it, we saw how beautiful it was. Unfortunately, I was not able to shoot as much as I could have if we found the wall earlier. That was okay. Those kind of things happen when you dive. I did see some very large barrel sponges and some neat swim throughs. During our first day, we experience the

incredible cooking of Chef Kimberly. She made great food the entire trip and anyone that went hungry could only blame themselves. She was very accommodating to everyone’s needs. If there was something on the menu that you didn’t like, she would do her best to make something that you would. On top of her great skills, she is a very interesting person. She told us that she had spent time as a chef on a Russian icebreaker and as a chef on a personal rail car.

With three dives under our belts, we turned in for the night while the Cayman Aggressor IV plowed through a bumpy sea towards our destination of Little Cayman. My next blog will have our experiences on day 2. If you would like to see more photos of the Oro Verde, please click here. For Stingray City pictures, click here and for southern stingray pictures from Stingray City, click here.

Over the next few weeks, I will be posting a separate blog for each day of diving. I will introduce you to the crew and passengers that we had the pleasure of spending a week with. The passenger included Warren & Robin from Florida, Jaye & Gerry from North Carolina, Monica and Juan from Spain, Allyson and Lawrence from the UK, John & Mary from Ohio, Ida from Canada, Sally & Phil from Pennsylvania, PJ from New Jersey, and Marty & Barbara from Texas.

I will say this about our experience on the Cayman Aggressor IV, there were so many great people on board and I am sorry that it took so long into the week to get to know everyone. Our group of seven have traveled together before but we are all better for knowing the other great folks that we met.

© 2010, Herb Segars. All rights reserved.