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Author: Richard Goodman
Hello fellow divers, I spent last week diving in St Croix, and thought I might post a little description of the trip...
I went together with my brother, we are about the same level -- certified for a few years, but with only about 10-20 dives under the belt (in a variety of tropical locales ... Aruba, Hawaii, Thailand, Bonaire, for example). We are a well-matched buddy team, as we consume air at very similar rates (pretty good rates, too, IMHO), and also we both seem to be pretty good at spotting creatures/items of interest under the water.
In any event, shortly before the trip I "dove in" and purchased a bunch of diving equipment for the long haul -- the Uwatec Aladin computer (non-nitrox) and the brand new Viper TEC reg (and octo) being the key pieces of interest. (For what it's worth, I dove with a new pair of Cressi Frog fins, which seemed to work well for me. I'm a thin guy, and I found these fins seemed a good match for comfort and power, in a reasonable size. My brother dives with Force Fins, which he seems to like a lot). In any event, I'd say the Viper TEC regulator performed well on my trip. We dove anywhere from 2-4 dives each day over a 6 day period, and whether I was at 10 feet or 122 feet (the max I dove), I found the regulator to breathe comfortably ... and the slim design is very nice ergonomically. I will note that there was some sort of odd problem with my unit (and I have since found out has occurred with another rec.scuba reader's unit as well) ... sometimes on the surface (never while in my mouth or under water) a violent free- flow happened ... shooting out air at such a furious rate that the whole 2nd stage and hose would flail around like an out of control fire hose. Each time it could be brought under control without much difficulty (once caught!) ... but I'm actually exchanging the piece with Dacor, who have been helpful so far, so that they can examine the issue. In case anyone else has found this problem, and wants info on who to contact at Dacor, send me an email and I'll oblige.
As for St Croix, the diving was good! We based ourselves in Christiansted, staying with the Pink Fancy hotel. This was a good choice, and certainly recommendable. The folks there are very very nice (both guests and owners!), the location just fine, and the rate was pleasing ($395 for 7 nights, for two people). After arrival, we spent the first afternoon snorkeling by the very small island just off of C- sted (where the Hotel on the Cay is). The water is shallow there, but we saw a good variety of creatures, making for an awesome start to our trip -- in addition to lobster, large balloonfish, and the usual fish tropical suspects, we had an encounter with a good sized spotted eagle ray (wing span about 4 feet or so).
We started the diving portion of our trip by doing the PADI advanced certification with the shop Dive Experience. I realize that the PADI advanced certification is something of a joke really, but it seemed a convenient and reasonable way to begin the first two days. The folks at Dive Experience (such as Eric, Sam, Dee, Michelle and Sue) are friendly and helpful. In addition to the 5 AOW dives, we wound up doing about 4 other boat dives with them, covering a variety of areas such as Cane Bay, the two sides of Salt River (E and W walls), The Pavillions (I really recommend that one), etc.
We also spent two days renting a car and doing our own diving thing. We spent one day doing 4 shore dives off of Cane Bay (the wall, the cavern at Northstar, the coral gardens, etc) ... Cane Bay Dive Shop outfitted us with refills and some guidance/direction, and they were a helpful bunch ... Leon and Karen in particular. I think if we were to go again, we would strongly consider staying in that area (Waves at Cane Bay) and working from there, as a change of scenery. We also spent a day shore diving at the Pier in Fredricksted -- highly recommended! We did 2 day dives and one night dive there (in fact, our first "solo" night dive ... no one else dove then whatsoever. Actually, to be honest I think there was only one or two dives during our whole trip when there was ever another set of divers present in the water with us).
What did we see in STX? Well, the reef appeared to be in good shape -- a great set of corals and plant life. To be honest, by the end of our trip the dives started seeming fairly repetitive, but we did see *most* of the things we hoped/wanted to see. After looking VERY closely all over the F-sted Pier area on the two day dives unsuccessfully, we did manage to find 2 seahorses on our night dive there -- a yellow and a pink one. Boy are they great! They weren't actively doing anything, just hanging onto their camouflaged sponges in 13-15feet of water, but it was a great pleasure to see them anyway ... quite a shame they aren't more common. We also had an encounter with the largest barracude we'd ever seen -- at least 5 feet long, hanging right above us in about 5-7 feet of water, under one of the concrete mooring areas off of the F-sted Pier (which is also where the seahorses were found). The big boy even had the nerve to directly follow me to another spot on the mooring, trying to psyche me out (it worked)... I tell you, that made the beginning of our night dive there even more unnerving at first... Oh, and may I recommend the Pier high-dive entry? We gave it a try ... doing the giant stride off the end of the pier, about 9 feet above water level, it was an interesting experience!
The Pier also had more lobsters and crabs than you could count (both day and night, though a greater variety of crab types were seen at night), as well as 2 octopi (night) and several morays, and many fish varieties (balloon, porcupine, etc etc). Elsewhere on the island we encountered several turtles, a good-sized southern sting ray, another octopus, large sea cucumbers and lobsters, flamingo tongues, morays and snake eels, fish galore. One particularly memorable occassion was while shore diving the cavern at northstar: early into the dive, a very large remora or sharksucker (more than 3 feet long) decided to tag along with us. Not only did it stay constantly "in our face" (swimming directly at us, barely turning before crashing into our masks! then circling around and around us), but it stayed with us the entire remainder of the dive, about 30 minutes, even as we were leaving the water. Judging by his size, he probably was attached to something *big* before us, but we never did catch a glimpse of any such creature :(
On our list of things we really wanted to see, but didn't: frogfish, and sharks. Would really like to see some frogfish, but I guess that will have to wait for another trip someday...
In any event, I can certainly recommend diving St Croix, including for intermediate or beginner divers. Good sea life, a mix of possible shore and boat entries, little current. I think there are other places I'd certainly like to see now, ahead of a return trip to STX, but I think STX hit our goals this trip pretty well.
rick g
P.S. Oh, one specific complaint... Novice divers who obviously have little bouyancy control should NOT occupy themselves with u/w cameras. Fortunately this sort of frustration only happened once on our trip, but it was highly annoying anyway... On our last boat dive, there was a woman diving along who had absolutely terrible bouyancy control, constantly running into things and not watching where she was going ... who at the same time was very busy carrying her camera around trying to snap pics of things. While boat diving the Northstar area, I was hanging out at about 60 feet, horizontally examining something, when she actually descended feet first on top of me! ... and repeatedly kicked me in the face and mask. And elsewhere on the dive we watched in horror as she kicked and knocked into reef areas while trying to snap pictures of who-knows-what. Fortunately we were diving off of our computers, and could stay far clear of this moron most of the time, but it was frustrating to deal with. Just had to get that off my chest...
