Snuba

Captain’s Log – Sat 4/5/25

We didn’t end up going to Spanish Cay today after all. We’re in a beautiful, protected anchorage so it seemed like the perfect place to break out the snuba gear to try it out and clean the boat’s bottom as it was due. The marinas here seem to have a lot of sharks, I guess everyone cleans the fish and throws the parts in chumming the water. Figured best to clean the boat’s hull somewhere else!

Snuba is a dive system where you have a long hose attached to an air compressor instead of using dive tanks. For us, this is more practical for diving since we don’t really have room for scuba tanks and the sizable air compressor required to refill them. This is battery powered which we can recharge from our solar. We have a pair of these Blu3 Nomad dive systems, with spare batteries for both. We learned to scuba dive last year and wanted to have that option available to us on this trip, so this system was the perfect compromise. We are limited to 30’ with it but most reefs here are pretty shallow. The whole thing fits in a backpack so it doesn’t take up much space.

This was the first time I’ve used it, so there was a bit of a learning curve. It requires a bit of assembly and has a harness that needs adjusting. It took a bit to get the weight belt adjusted for neutral buoyancy, the point where you neither sink or rise. The water was a bit chilly so I wore a 2mm short wetsuit, which made me a bit extra buoyant. It’s definitely a little harder to breathe than with a tank, however it was fine once I got use to it. After about 10 minutes of practice with it, I felt comfortable enough to dive with it.

I grabbed my deck brush, a scraper and a screw driver then went about cleaning the algae slime and barnacles off the keel. I made sure the propeller was clean and unfolds properly. I also made sure the water intake for the engine was clear. Cleaning the hull is a bit of a workout but the dive was kind of fun.

After a well earned lunch, we had a few other things to take care of. I put the spare fuel into the main tank. We’ve used about 12 gallons since departing Bimini. Then I fired up the engine so we could make water and generate some power to charge the batteries.

Finally we needed to find a place to hunker down next week. There is a big cold front coming through that will have squalls with it for most of next week. Green Turtle had one dock available but only through Wednesday. Fingers crossed there is a cancellation and we don’t have to leave and find somewhere else to go in stormy weather. 😬🤞

We’ll have to go to Spanish Cay some other time. We need to move Southeast tomorrow towards Green Turtle.

✌️❤️⛵️