Saturday 1 July 2023

We welcomed onboard our new guests for the week, and got them settled into their cabins and set up their equipment ready for a week of diving. After this they had their Welcome Safety briefing with Capt Jim, and after this is was time for their first dinner, with Chef Fabian preparing a beautiful dish for their first night. From here the guests got to know each other, before heading to bed to be ready for a busy week.

Sunday 2 July 2023

As the sun was rising over Turtle Cove Marina, we started the engines of the TCAII and made way out of the cut, and headed to North West Point for a morning of diving. While underway, our guests had a Dive Safety briefing as well as an orientation of the diving deck. We arrived at Shark Hotel for our morning of diving, and we found Caribbean reef sharks, green turtles, stingrays, green moray eels, lobsters and a huge crab! A great start to the week, and it continued with our dives at The Dome. Here we found garden eels, barracudas, sharks and a big yellow fin grouper. We then celebrated Jessica’ birthday that evening, with a special birthday cake and a singalong for everyone! On our night dive here we had squid and octopus, as well as a channel clinging crab, and free swimming moray eels.

Monday 3 July 2023

Staying around West Caicos, we started our day on Boat Cove, getting its name from the small inlet that was dug out on the island, for transporting salt and other goods off the island. But for us underwater, we found reef sharks, flounders, lobsters, garden eels, and a couple of pufferfish. Over lunch, we moved to Magic Mushroom, and here we had more reef sharks, hawksbill turtles, green morays eels, stingrays in the sand, as well as a tiny little neck crab hanging out on a sponge. For our night dive, we had some active octopus, sharks hunting around under the boat, as well as more stingrays and moray eels.

Tuesday 4 July 2023

Starting the celebrations of July 4^th, we moved to Brandy Wine and enjoyed our morning dives, a slightly less steep wall drop off, gives us more places to find creatures hiding away under the many overhangs of this site, we found plenty of lobsters, neck crabs, juvenile spotted drums, moray eels, Pederson shrimp, barracudas, and some sexy shrimp! While on the surface we had an encounter of 6 dolphins off the stern of the vessel, but not coming in too close for us to join. We then headed to the south of West Caicos for Spanish Anchor, but before we even jumped into the water for a dive, our little pod of dolphins returned, and with backup, we had 11 that stayed right off the stern, and stayed long enough for us to go for a swim with them! After that excitement, we explored Spanish Anchor a lovely site that has a big, encrusted anchor lodged into the reef itself at the end of a small canyon. Other than the anchor, we had octopus, pufferfish, flounders, lobsters, moray eels, boxfish, and a very well camouflaged scorpionfish.

Wednesday 5 July 2023

A small journey to Gullies for our morning of diving, provided our guests with hawksbill turtles, flounders, sharks and stingrays, as well as juvenile spotted drums. For our afternoon of diving, we moved to Driveway, here we had green turtles, cowfish, big yellow fin groupers and Nassau too, scorpionfish and plenty of ocean triggerfish around. On the night dive we had a lot of curious sharks swimming by using our flashlights to help find their next meal for the night, we also had slipper lobster and Caribbean spiny lobsters, and more free swimming moray eels.

Thursday 6 July 2023

We started on Elephant Ear Canyon, a beautiful site, which has a bit of everything for all types of divers, up on the sandy top we had our sharks and rays swimming around, garden eels and flounders, also a hawksbill turtle, and in the seagrass we found a flying gurnard, giving us a full show off his dorsal fins being fully extended. Then on the reef we had our huge sponges and healthy reef dropping down way past were we can dive, spotted moray eels, a huge number of queen angelfish, pufferfish and porcupines. For our afternoon and final night dive, we explored Amphitheatre, we searched around the huge structure on the wall were the site gets its name, as well as barracudas, octopus, jawfish all over the sandy top, cowfish, and more sharks coming in for a closer look.

Friday 7 July 2023

For our last morning, we dove at Coral Stairway, some great dives to end the week, we found a little baby nurse shark sleeping away under a rocky overhang, as well as reef sharks, coral banded shrimp, lobsters, spotted drums, and a big green moray eel. We also celebrated our last dive of the week for being Eric’ 100^th dive, so we celebrated in good fashion by making him a cake! A great way to end the week of diving, we then made our way back to Turtle Cove Marina for our cheese and wine party, and raised a glass to our Iron Divers and to a fantastic week of diving and making new dive buddies.