One of the things we planned to do this year was to learn to dive so that we could scrub the wild life off Petronella's keel. Should we do the course in the UK in the cold and wet, or in Martinique in warm water off coral reefs teaming with tropical life? A no-brainer!
So here we are, signed up for a bapteme (introductory) dive then the PADI open water course with the wonderful Fabrice and his great team of Gregory and Guillaume. All Frenchmen, all calm and relaxed with impossibly sexy French accents and limited English. Yesss! Even being taught about exploding lungs and ears somehow sounds better when it comes from a suntanned Frenchman!
Jack and Fizzy, and Finbar and Lockie are doing the advanced course at the same time and we went on a dive with them which made it more fun. Thanks Fizzy and Jack for taking the photos.
For the bapteme all went well. We were towed round the first dive looking at corals and fish and both managed to sort of clear our masks and see things. But John struggled to get a seal to his mask so a dramatic pruning of the moustache took place before the next dive. Sadly this didn't make things much better and in addition his ears completely blocked and hurt so he reluctantly stopped at four dives.
I'm getting hooked. Really love the freedom of the underwater world. On yesterday's dives we saw turtles, lion fish - an alien species sometimes called the real pirates of the Caribbean - corals of all shapes and sizes, more fish than you could possibly count, fantastic colourful rocky reefs, moray eels, sea serpents: the list goes on and on. It's pretty knackering but my six dives are done, the exercises we have to learn are completed and I've passed.
Tomorrow we move on to St Lucia for shopping and A couple of days on a mooring buoy belonging to a health club. Then hot foot it past St Vincent to Bequia. Time is going fast. We will be in the UK in less than two months and we have a lot of work to do on Petronella before we haul out in six weeks time.
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