Day 4: Tortola, B.V.I

The highlight of the cruise, for me, was our dive in Tortola. We dove the RMS Rhone that wrecked off of Salt Island in 1867 during a hurricane. It was one of the first steam powered ships, which two boilers and a gigantic propeller. The story of the Rhone is quite sad, but it is now a wonderful home to lots of fish.

The dive instructor who briefed both our dives was an extremely dry Brit. He had all sorts of awkward hand signals for different highlights of the wreck. My favorite was the signal for the black and white tiles (part of the Rhone's cargo). He said something along the lines of, "And here you will see the black and white disco tiles. As I said the Rhone was ahead of her time. And the signal for those will be something like this." And proceeded to do the classic Saturday Night Fever dance. The best part was our divemaster actually did this underwater. Too bad Sam didn't get a picture (or video) of that, but he did get some other great pictures.

The bow

We did a swim-through of the bow section. We had never done a swim-through before and I was a little nervous on the boat thinking about overhead environments. But in the water, I was too excited to be nervous and all my gear was set perfectly (a rare occasion when using rental gear).

Inside the bow section

The plant life on the Rhone was really remarkable. There was more life here at 80 feet than at our St. Thomas dive, which I though odd. However, there is a pretty good current that passes by the Rhone, so there are lots of fish feeding and more plankton in the lee of the wreck.

Main mast and crow's nest

Bubbles from divers in the wreck

We ended our first dive of the bow section. While resting and waiting to start our next dive, I was really getting seasick for the first time. It was not fun. I got back in the water as soon as I could. We dove the stern section, which was a bit shallower. There were even more fish and a stronger current.

Jack's eating in the current

My favorite picture from the trip; an angel fish

Atlantis or part of the stern section

As our dive instructor said, "Are there any engineers here?" I raise my hand. "Right. So, what do you when you don't know what size to make something?" I say, "Make it bigger!" And so, you get the propeller of the Rhone. One of the first ships to have one of these.

The giant propeller with our divemaster, Phil, about to swim through.

This is our first couple dive picture. We are at our safety stop on the first dive of the bow section. You pretty much look like a total dork in underwater pictures.

We didn't even bother to look around Roadtown. There really isn't anything in Tortola except a cruise terminal, the Gorda Baths, and a 2000 ft mountain. The mountain would have been really cool to drive up to, but it was very overcast and you couldn't even see the top. Tortola is perfectly positioned on the Straight of Sir Francis Drake. You could see so many islands like St. John and the island Amway owns.

This was the heart of pirate territory back in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was pretty easy to picture Roadtown with unsavory bars, British sailors, pirates, wenches, and slaves. Of course, all those sailing ships mean one thing for a diver; wrecks and lots of them. A return trip to the Virigin Islands is in order.