Diving the “Coral Gardens”

Sorry I didn’t post last weekend as promised. We were too busy enjoying ourselves. I believe I promised you a description of our first real dive here. 

I don’t know who named this area “Coral Gardens.” I suspect it was a local dive shop. At any rate, it was definitely worth backtracking to dive here. We knew there were dive moorings for small boats, so we couldn’t take Lady over. Instead we loaded the hookah system and our gear into dingy and made the 1.5 mile run to the dive site. The site is across from one of the cuts between barrier islands out to the Atlantic side and there was some swell coming in. Fortunately, a wet dingy ride doesn’t matter when one is going diving. There was nobody else there when we arrived around 10:15am, so we had our pick of the dive moorings. We picked up the one in the center so we could swim easily in either direction depending on the swells, which there were, and any current. As soon as we picked up the mooring, a little sea turtle came over to greet us. It was then that I realized I’d left my underwater camera on Lady! Argh! Of course the little turtle swam around our dingy and hookah the entire time we were preparing for the dive and I couldn’t get any photos <sigh>. He skedaddled as soon as we got in the water.

I was amazed at how big the reef was, given that it’s on the inside of the barrier islands and not on the Atlantic side. It was probably a couple hundred yards long; we didn’t dive the whole length of it. At the deepest point it was about 20 feet tall. There was plenty of reef all the way up to the surface for snorkelers to enjoy as well. There were many fish, small ones, like a nursery reef. 

The current on top of the surge was tiring, so our first dive was only about half an hour. When we came up for a snack and some water, all the moorings were occupied! Another dingy was sharing our mooring and had some snorkelers off it’s stern in the shallow part of the reef. We chatted with the guy driving that dingy, had a bit of a rest and went back down for another, slightly longer dive. The current had abated and we stayed in the deeper part where the surge wasn’t as strong. When we came up again, our neighbor dingy was gone, and the boats on the other moorings were just preparing to leave. 

Once we got back to Lady, we put our toys away before having lunch. “Putting our toys away” is about a half hour process. We have to get the hookah and hoses back onto Lady from the dingy and rinse it all with fresh water. Then we have to rinse all our gear and ourselves and set everything out to dry. On diving days we always spend the rest of the afternoon relaxing, not that we need and excuse to relax.

We were preparing to return to Coral Gardens the next day in the afternoon when we saw dark clouds and rain not too far away. Good thing we hadn’t taken off in the dingy yet, because it would not have been fun to get stuck in that squall out in dingy! It only clipped us with some showers and winds on Lady but went right over the dive site. Our plans thwarted for that day, we hunkered down inside for the rest of the afternoon. The following day we did return to Coral Gardens and this time I remembered my camera. So I’ll stop blabbing and let the video speak for itself. Enjoy!

FYI, it takes too long to put together these videos and I’d rather spend my time down here doing other things. Further videos of our exploits in The Bahamas will have to wait until we get home in the fall, just like I did last fall after our dive trip to the Florida Keys. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, scroll back to my posts from September-December 2020. That was some great diving!)

Be safe, and take care of each other!