Holiday in the BVI: Day 7 & Dolphin Discovery

After the dive (see previous post) we had breakfast at Dead Man's Bay. You are not allowed to anchor at the dive site of the Rhone (you only pick up a dive buoy while you're there) as it a national marine park.

After breakfast we sailed on to Road Town, Village Cay Marina on Tortola. We got a taxi to Prospect Reef for our DOLPHIN DISCOVERY!!

It was an amazing experience and along with so many other firsts on this trip, not something I ever thought I would get to experience. The dolphins are beautiful and their skin is so smooth. It was a little bit scary at first and I was quite nervous, but excited, getting into the water. I didn't know what to expect of these dolphins... How well do they really listen to their trainers??

But they were brilliant! The instructors tell you what to do and we each took turns swimming out to the centre of the pool. They then send the dolphins to us and depending on the position of your arms and legs, the dolphins will either give you a foot push, lifting you right out of the water, or let you hold onto their fins and swim with you.

While making my way to the centre of the pool on my own I noticed one of the dolphins swimming underneath me. That was a little scary as I wasn't sure when it might just pop up underneath me unexpectedly! They didn't teach us to speak dolphin-language fluently and how do you tell a dolphin "Don't do that"? 

It was very well behaved and din't do anything though.

One of the dolphins had a baby in the pool next to ours and every once in a while she would ignore the trainers and leave one of us stranded in the middle of the pool to go check on her baby. She was allowed to do it and the trainers gave her time to make sure her baby was still ok before calling her back.

This is definitely something to do while on holiday on Madiba in the BVI!

After our swim with the dolphins we had a look around Road Town and then motored around to Trellis Bay where we spent our last night on the boat. It was from Trellis Bay that we walked back up to the airport again the next morning to get our flights back home. Funny walking to the aiport with your feet still sandy from the beach! It was hard to leave my dad and Colleen and Madiba and the beautiful BVI. We had such an amazing time with them and it's a holiday we will never forget.

If you haven't been to the Caribbean yet, I hope I've given you enough reason to start planning your trip there right now! And do contact Peter & Colleen as you won't find better hosts anywhere else in the Caribbean. If Madiba is not the boat for you they can also help you find a yacht to suit all your needs. See Madiba's facebook page for direct contact details.

Holiday in the BVI: Day 7 & The Rhone shipwreck

On day 7 the divers dived the wreck of the RMS Rhone off Salt Island. The water was so clear that we were able to see the shallower parts of the wreck from the boat. Colleen and I snorkeled above it and still had a great view of the wreck beneath us. It was amazing seeing what's left of this big steam boat now lying under water. (Again, click to enlarge the pictures and get a better view of the wreck.)

The RMS Rhone was a huge royal mail steam ship, 95 m long and the fastest ship of its time, holding the record as the first steel-hulled, propeller driven ship to cross the Atlantic. It took mail and passengers from Southampton, England to the British Virgin Islands.

In October 1876 the Rhone pulled alongside the RMS Conway in Great Harbour, Peter Island to refuel. The storm worried the captains even though they believed the hurricane season was over. They decided to transfer the passengers of the Conway to the "unsinkable" Rhone.

The Conway then headed for Great Harbour and the Rhone for the open sea. As was normal practice at the time, the passengers in the Rhone were all tied down in their beds to prevent them being injured in the stormy seas. 

But the Rhone struggled to get free as its anchor was caught. In the end it was ordered to be cut loose and still lies in Great Harbour to this day, a century and a half later - the reason why the Rhone's main anchor will not be found at the site of the wreck.

Just as the Rhone was passing Black Rock Point, less than 230 m from safety, the second half of the hurricane struck them. The winds shifted to the opposite direction and the Rhone was thrown directly into Black Rock Point. 

It is said that the initial lurch of the crash sent Captain Wooley overboard, never to be seen again. Local legend says that his teaspoon can still be seen lodged into the wreck itself. Whether or not it is his, a teaspoon is clearly visible firmly stuck in the wreck's coral.

The ship split in two, the boilers exploded and the ship sank swiftly. 

Of the original 146 aboard, plus an unknown number of passengers transferred from the Conway, only 23 people, all crew, survived the wreck.

One of the ship's portholes

One of the smaller anchors, not the main one.

The Rhone has received a number of awards over the years as one of the top recreational wreck dives in the Caribbean, both for its historic interest and teeming marine life, and also because of the open and relatively safe nature of the wreckage.

Fang, the local barracuda

The sea urchins who attacked Simone's toe.
I think they just wanted to go to California.
A piece is still stuck in her toe... ouch!

Angelfish

*History of the Rhone as told by my dad, but due to my poor memory of details, with some help from Wikipedia.

Another of the smaller anchors.

An amazing experience being able to dive/ snorkel at a shipwreck. Not something I ever thought I'd do!

More photos from other sections of the Rhone will be on Madiba's facebook page soon.
The rest of Day 7 will continue in the next post as I have too many pictures to show you!

Funny signs on the beach

These signs we saw at Great Harbour on Jost van Dyke.

"Not Please DO NOT, DONT i RePeat DONT PICK these coconut i mean it i'll take it very PersoNal! I am warNiNg you DoNt pick them, oNly iF u will like to cause Probleam. have a Nice Day without PickiNg these youNg Fruits"

And here is the protected coconut tree
with it's young fruits.

"iF u waNt 2 c real sexy girl or Evin Real sexy maN, oh Boy WeNDell is the maN with the PlaN No Jester it's all oN Easter Easter moNday i say!! BeekiNi CoNtest, wet t-shirt, swimiNg Races & DiveiNg coNtest aND mutch Moor FuN games. there will B Prizes, Lots oF Food & DriNk all oN little Jost vaN Dyke. Watertaxi avalible $10 RouNd triP from great harbour 4 moor into call WeNDell @ 5432738 come c BikiNi!"

(Note the picture of Wendell to the left in his purple Borat style swimsuit.)

"

"Please NO smokeiNg uNder the roof we all kNow it's Elegal aNd oNly WeNdll will get the Pressure! i kNow it's a hard habbit to quit but resPect those that doNt smoKe the world is big, let the NON smoker live to help you. We sell cigaritte But we doNt smoke them!!"

(Smoking is banned in all public places in the BVI.)

This must be Wendell's bar

I wonder if these signs might all be Wendell's work with all of them having capital N's in the middle of words! Or else they all must have had the same teacher...

Sleeping Beauty

This is post number 300 on my blog!! 300 posts in 2 years and 4 months. And so I am taking a quick break from my BVI holiday diary (yes there are still more photos to edit) for this fun post. I have my sister's permission for this ;-)



Simóne doesn't have motion sickness but rather she has motion sleepy-ness. She will be asleep before a plane takes off. She can sleep anywhere and she does, especially if it's in or on something moving and there's not much entertainment going on to keep her interested enough to stay awake.

Have a look at this past holiday on Madiba for example:

And I didn't even really try to get a picture of each time she was asleep somewhere. I could have had so many more. These were just when I happened to have a camera in my hand.



All this sleeping anywhere and everywhere started when she was very young...

And continued through her early years...

This little dog we had, her name was Suzie, was obviously not the most exciting playmate for Simóne on this particular day...

Or was it Suzie who got bored and walked away when Simóne fell asleep in her kennel?



Oh and the sleeping on yachts she also started practicing from an early age:

As she got older this habit just continued. She slept through Christmases and trips to Germany and the UK.

Back to this past holiday we had with my dad and Colleen in the BVI she actually did make an effort to stay awake at one point by reading up about the wreck they dived at.

But oops! That didn't work out so well either. I suppose the half empty cocktail on the table didn't help either.


I have never met anyone who can sleep as easily anywhere and any time as Simóne does!

Holiday in the BVI: Day 6 - Do fish eat their vegetables?

This will be more of a picture blog post this time as I have so many beautiful pictures and it's hard to pick only a few. You can click on the pictures to enlarge them and have a better look at the fish :)

Tuesday started with a dive at Pelican Island at the dive site called Rainbow Canyon.

Hooking the buoy at the dive site. 

Down they go

Hi!!

Angelfish

"I'm ok!"
I think Andre was more than ok under the water! He loved it.

A spotted eagle ray

'Flying' away

Simone added colour to the underwater fashion shoot

Parrotfish - one of my favourites

Back at Norman Island we went snorkeling to explore some caves.

Have you ever wondered whether fish eat their vegetables? Look what happened when we fed them peas...

Want some peas barracuda?

Oh right, you have better things to do

The fish went crazy for the peas! And some got very clever and started following who ever was swimming with the bag of peas, waiting for more peas to be released! (Click on these pictures, you've got to see them larger!)

Swimming back to the boat we saw a turtle! Yay!!!

Later in the day we sailed to Great Harbour, Peter Island. More snorkeling was done including spotting an octopus who tried to ink Jonny for photographing him! I guess he had had enough of the paparazzi.

We took the dingy around to Dead Man's Bay to fill the diving cylinders and then took a walk around Peter Island Resort.

Romantic dinner on the beach... not ours!

Around here somewhere under the water is a truck reef. In the 1950's as Tortola prepared for the visit of Queen Elizabeth there was a "Clean for the Queen" campaign to rid the island of unsightly derelict cars. So they loaded up a barge and dumped a load of cars and trucks in the sea outside the mouth of Great Harbour.

That's one way to hide your mess.

An angelfish