Let me just say that St. Thomas is a standard stop on nearly all cruises from the US. We've been there before, so once you've done the Island Exploration tour, you have to start getting creative with what you're doing. This was our answer.
Today, like the next four, we had to be on the dock by 8 a.m. But this was going to be a really cool excursion, and we were very excited about it. Not to mention, the boat pulled right up next to our ship. Sweet. No sweaty bus.
Our excursion boat pulled up and the first thing we are told is that this is barefoot boat. You are not allowed to wear shoes on the boat at anytime, so there was a bucket for everyone to deposit their footwear in. This is actually a great idea in warmer waters; its much easier to feel the deck of the ship without shoes on and keep your balance better. When the captain got us going, we knew why. We were seriously hauling through the water.
This was the first chance I had to get a look at the Boss Underwater Scooters.
There are only 200 of these things in the world. They are basically just what the name implies. Underwater scooters. You sit on this thing, put your head in the bubble so you can breathe, and go. Technically.
We were divided into two groups, and Tom and I lucked out on being the second group. This gave us a chance to get into the water and get used to the temperature. Even in the Caribbean, the water is cold in the winter. About 70.* And it gave us the chance to watch the whole process of getting in and out of these things.
They are lowered into the water, and then floated out to anchor points. The mini buoys you see are meant to keep track of where you are once you drop your buoyancy to get under the water. They are sources of amusement, as I will explain in a moment.
As the first group is swimming out and loading up, the captain throws a cup of cat food into the water. Bwah? About a half a second later, over a hundred yellow snapper are in a feeding frenzy all around the scooters and the boat and several unsuspecting snorklers.
[photo to come**]
We both decide getting in the water while the others were out and about in the scooters was a good idea. We doned our masks and snorkels and jumped in. I’m extremely comfortable in the water, which was a good thing, because were in about 35 feet of water. Tom is not so comfortable in deep water. Still he jumped in. At least you knew you weren’t going to hit your head.
We could see the scooters in the distance under the water. It was just plain neat that there was no SCUBA equipment involved in driving around down there—it was very James Bond.
They started to bring the scooters back after about 10 minutes and we crawled back on deck to watch. Well, you could watch the progress of the scooters through those little buoys like the 007 above. One of them was going around in circles. Apparently, they had been going around in circles for the whole time. The captain laughed, and said, “Every time. There’s always one that just goes in circles.”
I kept that comment in mind as we got in to the water to do this.
So, I swam up to my little underwater scooter, and ducked in as they had instructed: grab the back edge of the helmet, take a deep breath and use that grip to pull yourself under the back lip and into the bubble. No problem. But that wasn’t where they usually had the problems.
I gave the OK signal to the guide and he let the air ballast out. Down I went. This was wicked cool. Breathing in the bubble is an art. You have to remember to do it. You swear that you’re not able to breathe because you’re completely surrounded by water. But you are because there’s an oxygen tank right there. Once you realize you can breathe, you realize you can’t hear. The pressure in the water goes up MUCH faster than the pressure does down in the air. So you have to swallow every 3 feet your descend to clear your ears. We were only about 15, 20 feet down at any time. Still, just a little up and down makes you have to clear your ears.
Here’s something else you need to know underwater. The OK handle signal means OK, the thumbs up signal means “get me to the damn surface now”. Don’t use the thumbs up signal.
[there are photos underwater, to come**]
We merrily putzed along under the water, and learned that there is a reason there’s always one that goes in circles—those machines are really hard to steer! Holy mackerel, are they are hard. No matter how hard you mash the power button, you’re underwater and it takes a few seconds for the scooter to answer. So you can hit that button, turn the yoke and still be head straight for the fire coral.
You don’t want to be heading straight for fire coral. Ever. It’s seriously ouchie, and the only way to stop the sting is to pee on the burn. I’m not kidding you. Pee neutralizes the sting. I really didn’t want to pee on my hand.
I mashed the control and turned the yoke the other direction and carefully brought it back to the direction I wanted go – not towards the fire coral. While I didn’t end up being the sucker that went in circles, I surely would have been stopped for a suspected DUI with all the bobbing and weaving I was doing.
So our 15 minutes were up and we had to move back to where we were anchored. And this is where my asthma situation sucks. I have about 15, 18 minutes underwater before, between the pressure and the oxygen mixture, the asthma starts to kick in. It’s not an attack per se, but more of a ‘holy crap I’m going to die’ feeling. I knew it was going to happen, and I was kind of prepared. But it took them an extra minute or two to get to me in the scooter. I was, at that point, into the ‘just breathe, don’t panic’ breathing pattern.
Finally, they got to me and brought me up. Now, here is where they have all the problems with people getting out of these things. You can’t just curl yourself up and scoot down, there’s not enough room. So you have to throw your feet out backwards and push yourself in the same direction. I didn’t really understand what the hell they were talking about until I was in the thing. It’s really the only logical way out; there just aren’t a lot of logical people out there.
We had a few minutes while they got the scooters back on board, which after my air thing, wasn’t good. I found out first that someone had yacked on my bag. Only a little bit, but it was yack and it was on my bag. Ew. I also remembered that I hated anchored boats in lightly tossing seas. You have to give me the big waves or no waves. I was absolutely miserable until still we started moving again. And once we were moving, I was fine.
We wandered around the little shopping area in St. Thomas, which was basically all part of the port. It was a tourist trap, of course. There were no real deals to be had, but we found a few T’s for Tom—who realized that he had only packed about 2 t-shirts. We were only there for about an hour. We did buy a soda each. They didn’t have my usual, so I got a diet 7-up. Never ever buy anything but a diet coke outside the US. I had to choke it down for a few sips because I was so thirsty. I then turned to Tom and apologized and threw it out.
It was the first of two formal nights on the ship, but I’m going to do an entire single entry on just the boat, so you’ll have to wait for that. But here, you can enjoy the sunset.
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*When you're used to going in down there at 85 degrees, that's cold.
** yeah, there were a LOT of pictures; these were on underwater cameras that I haven’t had a chance to develop. Yes, people still develop film.
