Dive the French Side - St Martin

After another day of relaxing and seenig the sites back in St Maarten, we found out late Monday afternoon that OE was scrubbing their trips on Wednesday because of weather - the wind had shifted to the east and surf had picked up making the south end a mess. Very bummed to think our diving was done, but Maureen suggested calling around the French side and a quick call to Octopus connected me with Sally and voila, our 4th dive day was saved by the crew at Octopus.  Enthusiastic, we headed to Grande Case first thing Tuesday morning, squared things with Sally and then met Sean, who would be our DM for the morning, and we were quickly off.

As we neared our first dive site, Creole Rock, Sean briefed us on the setup. We would drop in together, meet at the bow, and descend into a drift dive from the east end of the formation, make our way past the seaward side and then around the back into a more protected, shallow "cove" where we would meet the boat. Drifting between 20' and 30' while maneuvering around and over the boulders and scree, this was an easy dive with plenty of fish life, though visibility hovered around 30' and provided Sean some extra work as he stopped periodicaly to collect us (well, mostly me as I often dropped back for some picture opportunities). Notable fish included white spotted and orange spotted filefish, queen and french angels, porcupine puffer, hogfish, boxfish, trumpet, and queen angel along with the wrasses, parrots, damsels, banded shrimp, a flounder and juvenile cubbyu (closely resembling juvenile spotted drum but with a different stripe pattern). An hour dive with a max depth of 34', this was a very enjoyable dive and I can only imagine how nice this would be with better viz.

After a 38 minute SI, we were geared up and ready for our 2nd dive, this one at the French side's Turtle Reef. After a visit to a few artificial sites with stacked concrete blocks filled with squirrelfish, a moray, juvenile cubbyu and several large lionfish, we headed across the sand and grass beds towards the reef. Reaching the reef, we had a brief dance with hawksbill turtle. We then cruised along the reef with grunts, yellowtail snapper, wrasse, boxfish, parrots, and more. We finished the dive back on the artifical mini-reefs before heading up to the waiting boat. This was another very nice site which would have been even nicer with a bit better viz. After an hour and a max depth of 29', the time had come to begin heading back to Grande Case and begin packing up from our last dive of this trip.

All in all I was very happy with the dives and with Octopus. If I had one critique it would be to tell Sean to relax a bit. While I certainly don't mind an occasional "air check" request, these were a little more than necessary, particularly for this depth and experienced divers.

7 great days, 4 great days of diving, awesome food, beautiful scenery, friendly people.  Would have loved to stay a few more days - about the highest compliment I can give to anywhere.  We'll definitely visit again.