September 3 - First Dive

We loaded up all of our new gear into the truck and headed down to Wannadive for our buoyancy check-out dive. Trudy forgot our voucher for the pre-paid air package we had, so she was explaining to the guy behind the counter about this. He then indicated that they were not honouring the Golden Reef Inn vouchers. At this point I got into the discussion, and asked him if he could check with his boss as this problem was resolved the day before. The “boss” was on the boat with the morning dive group was the excuse I was given. I said, doesn’t he have a cell phone on the boat; eventually he called the boat, but the “boss” was on the dive. He suggested that we do our check-out dive first and we would straighten out the payment after. At this point he asked if we had an appointment, which we were told we didn’t need, and he said we would need to wait 30 minutes until he was taking another class down. We then proceeded to get our weights for the dive and begin our 30 minute wait. Eventually in the heat and waiting I decided that we would simply go over to Yellow Submarine and do our diving for the week with them. We took our equipment and loaded it back into the truck, at which point Trudy remembered that we had forgot to return the weights. I took the weights back to the dive shop, and as I was leaving I noticed that the dive boat was just coming back. I went over to talk to the “boss”, Bob. I explained the situation to him and that I would be posting my experience on my web site. He again said that Golden Reef Inn was behind in payments. I said that my problem had been resolved the day before, and that I was not happy to again have to go through the grief of arguing with his staff, and that he and Golden Reef Inn should get their act together. After some discussion, he said that we should do our check-out dive, and that yes I was correct, we didn’t need to wait for the instructor, we could go immediately.

One thing I have left out of this experience is that yesterday we were at the shop getting the briefing on tank pick-up and drop-off, and I noticed that they didn’t have any of the smaller 63lb tanks, which are easier to handle. Yesterday was a no-dive day, so I was concerned that they didn’t have many of this size tank. Bob assured me that there would be plenty of the smaller tanks for the rest of the week.

Once we started to get geared up for our first dive, the staff we very helpful, getting the analyser, getting the tanks, and helping with the suit-up process. Bob eventually reported back that yes, in fact I was correct, the Golden Reef Inn had paid for the air, and all was good.

I believe that both parties in this dispute are partially at fault, and me the customer is getting caught in the middle. I hope the rest of the week is trouble free for us.

We walked to the far end of the beach for our entry (translation: we were hot, and the sweat was pouring off us by the time we got in). We both headed out and tested our buoyancy, which was successful. We both then started to descend in the shallows, 10ft of water, and both had problems staying down. I got out and walked back to the dive shop to get us some more weights. We then added weights and we were both able to get the correct buoyancy when at depth.

The visibility was terrible; Felix had kicked up a lot of silt. Things only improved as we got out over the reef, but this reef was in bad shape. I got a few photos which I have posted below.

The photo below is of a boat that got pushed up on to the beach by Hurricane Felix; Wannadive was talking about making it another wreck off their shore, but I don’t think the authorities will let them.

After the dive we headed into town for some lunch, followed by a nap for a couple hours in the afternoon.

In the evening we hooked up with another couple at the resort, Mike and Jeannette, who were from Ottawa. Mike noticed that Trudy was drinking coffee from a Tim Horton’s travel mug and asked if she was from Canada. They live in Orleans and have both been diving for the about the same period of time as Trudy and I. In fact Mike also was a certified diver 30 years ago, and he stopped diving, similar to me. They are a little more serious about their diving and have over 200 dives, whereas Trudy and I have about 50. We enjoyed a meal at a French restaurant called Bistro de Paris.