Hurricane Gustov made the start of Tech Week in Grand Cayman a little interesting. We spent much of the week following the hurricane tracking maps and models on Weather Underground, www.wunderground.com, and talking to people down here.
Saturday morning found us going to the airport on faith that the Cayman government would open the island to non-residents by the time our flight left. I had spoken to Nat Robb early Saturday morning who indicated that this storm was more of a non-event for them (not true for the sister islands however). They had some wind and little rain.
Arie, the owner of Cobalt Coast, called me at 11:15 to tell me that the government on Grand Cayman had given the “all clear” and that visitors could now return to the island. Of course Continental had not received the message as quickly – the gate agent infomed me that “they were the airline” and it was up to them. However, the supervisors at Continental quickly cleared the flight for visitors with confirmed reservations (of course they wanted to see a printed confirmation…). After getting a number from Arie (just in case someone needed to confirm it with him) we were on our way.
Things were a little out of sorts and most of the windows on the island were boarded up as were some of the windows at Cobalt Coast and Dive Tech. The benches were pushed together and the dock was a little worse for wear. The most surprising thing was to see all of the Dive Tech cylinders in front of Cobalt Coast—lots of cylinders.
This morning the staff showed up and things were pulled out, moved swept and by lunch time you would never have known there was a storm except for the pier which by the end of the day was ¾ repaired – the only thing that stopped Jay and his crew was the fact that they ran out of wood and it was Sunday so getting more was not possible.
Nancy and the staff, pulled the boats out of the mangroves, cleaned them up, re-equipped them and toured possible dive sites by 12:00. By 1:00 we were diving on the North wall. The water heading out was a little green and the visibility at the dive site was not more than 60’ but we had a nice enjoyable dive, with Ray Turek completing his skills for his Normoxic Trimix course and Madison Lee learning more about free diving or breath-hold diving from Simon.
At last count 16 people canceled mostly because getting here at a different time or on a different day made it impossible. But, 33 participants still agreed to come and at least ½ of them were here by dinner time.
The seas should continue to lay down overnight and Nancy is predicting that shore diving off Cobalt will be available by tomorrow. Tomorrow’s dive plan calls for a 200 foot dive for Madison and Ray.
