It’s that time of year again folks! Summer is finally upon us, the wind drops and the AC bill goes up. For most tourist based professions this would be the time to close down for the end of season and twiddle our thumbs for 6 weeks waiting for the tourists to come back.
We at SCD are lucky enough to have our sister company, Sail Caribbean, to keep us busy during the summer months.
To those of you who don’t already know, Sail Caribbean, is a summer camp program for young adults ages 11-18. The focus on the program is teaching the students how to sail, dive, cook clean, live together and the counselors sneak in some lessons on being independent as well.
Back in the day (some 20 odd years ago) our mega conglomerate of a dive shop used to be one humble dive boat following the summer kids around and offering dive courses. Things have obviously changed in recent years but as always every summer our dive boats are graced with the pitter patter of adolescent feet as we teach courses from Discover Scuba all the way through to Divemaster. It’s a nice opportunity for us to get lots of certifications and the students are certainly entertaining.
Recently our program began and I had the joy of being on the very first Open Water course of the summer which included 22 bright eyed pickney (that’s Jamaican patois for youths) bouncing around on Endeavour learning about all things Scuba. On day one we invaded the mooring field at Cooper Island to practise skills. We spent all of the next day over at beautiful Norman Island finishing some skills in the shallow water in the morning and then went on to Rainbow Canyons and Angel Fish Reef for the first open water dives. Ironically I did my first open water dive at Angel Fish Reef a whopping 12 years ago (oooh I’m feeling old now). The following day we finished our shallow water skills at Great Harbour on Peter Island and then we completed our final open water dives near Cooper Island at Chromis Reef and Thumb Rock.
Throughout the course we were joined by underwater photographer extraordinaire, Armando Jenik, who was kind enough to provide the attached photos in this blog. Armando is the on-staff photographer for the summer program who allows the parents to have top quality pictures of their little ones under water (and the lucky dive instructors teaching them).
The last afternoon of their program the students and their proud-as-punch instructors visited the BVI’s newest Wreck. We visited the former navy fuel barge that survived Pearl Harbour, the Kodiak Queen, which was recently sunk (thanks to the generous funding of Sir. Richard Branson).
Well folks that’s the ins and outs of what’s been going on with us this past month at Sail Caribbean Divers. We have many more courses to teach and new fledgling divers to introduce into the underwater world.
Same time again next week then!
Underwaterly Yours,
Adam
Sail Caribbean Divers
