Roger Booker in the House

Yesterday, Roger Booker and his family came to Grand Turk on the Carnival Destiny. Roger works in the Facilities Management Division at the Ohio Historical Society. I was able to set up a one tank dive with Blue Water Divers so that Roger could see what is best about Grand Turk without being with 30 other cruise passengers. I picked up Roger and his family at 8:00. We were at the dive shop by 9:00 and in the water by 10:00.

We had a great dive at the Aquarium dive site. This was also Lucas' first dive back on Grand Turk. We coasted along we wall at about 80 feet. The site is very nice with lots of marine life and visibility was great on this dive.

About half way through the dive, we went through a small swim through and came into a small, deep-blue crevice in the coral wall. I felt my breathing become very constricted. I swam up to Lucas, who was above me, to look at his depth gauge as I did not have one. He was at 110 feet. I was ten feet below Lucas. I looked down and Roger was ten feet below where I had been. The dive master we were with started pounding on his tank, telling us to come up. I estimate Roger was at about 130 feet. That is very deep for a recreational dive here, which is suppose to remain above 80 feet. Though it was very cool!

After our dive, we came back to the house and met up with the rest of Roger's family. Deneen had taken them snorkeling out on our beach. We went for a wonderful lunch of cracked conch at the SandBar, but alas, time slipped away and they had to get back on board by 1:30. When you see a port call of 7:00am to 2:00pm it seems like you have all day. But time goes fast here when you are off a ship.

As the Destiny was loading passengers to leave, a second ship came into port. As it turned out our day had just started. Davis went over to talk to Lucy and Nate, our old neighbors from when we lived at White Sands resort last Thanksgiving. They gave Davis a deal on the Flowrider and we wound up riding waves for an hour and a half. I finally completed a 360 on the body board. I have been working on this for months. The thing about the Flowrider is it looks easy, but it is all about how much time you are able to spend riding it. Passengers off the ship get on and fall off. I am actually not so bad now. Later, when I was swimming this couple says "Hey we saw you on the Flowrider, old guys rule."

and you know that makes me feel...

But then when I think about Roger's dive, I guess old guys rule.