Last Tuesday morning I received a call from Capt Mike Beach, a long time friend, who owns RJ's Dive Charter in Miami Beach. (
http://www.rjdiving.com/ ) Mike had been contacted by the captain of a 144 foot long motor yacht, the M/Y Blue Star, who was motoring the vessel to the Key Largo area and needed the assistance of a local scuba diver and underwater photographer. My job would be to find suitable dive sites and to assist the yacht owner's son, an avid UW photographer, with his UW photography. Mike gave me the phone number and name of the Blue Star's captain and I made contact with him and we made the arrangements to dive Wednesday.
The Blue Star is too big to get into our canal so we scheduled a pick-up (me and my scuba and camera) to be made by a Blue Star crewmember in one of her three launches.
Molassass Reef day in day out is our best dive site for UW photography and I suggested we conduct our diving operations there. It also affords plenty of deep water, from 45 fsw to over 100fsw just off the reef proper where the Blue Star could hover if necessary as she needs ten feet of water under her to float. However we were able to moor on one of the deep mooring balls at Molassass at the reef's seaward edge. We staged our dives from the Blue Star but conducted them by shuttling from her onto Molassass Reef proper in a tender.
Arriving on the boat I found the owner to be absent. According to the crew I talked to throughout the day, he is a very active and passionate scuba diver and is most times on the boat. As such he, eight years ago, bought Blue Star for scuba diving and completely refurbished and re-fitted her for scuba diving. The boat can make Nitrox using the membrane method and can mix Trimix. Being very beamy, it had a very spacious cockpit, and when I stood on its full width swim platform it felt like I was on solid ground. These Blue Star 'guys' do some serious diving. Here is an example: I was on the boat with Watershot's new UW housing which they completely fell in love with. Until they asked me how deep it could go and I told them 200 feet. They said that was not deep enough for them! They needed something that could go to 300fws! The Blue Star, flagged in the Cayman Islands, had spent the last couple years in the other hemisphere diving in the Solomons, Australia, the Marshall Islands, and Micronesia. Their plan is to keep it in our region, the Bahamas, and Caribbean for a year or two. Then I suppose off to other exotic and remote dive destinations.
What a beautifull boat the Blue Star is. A Captain and crew of nine serves her and her owners and guests. An Engineer, a head steward, a 'diver' David, two or three petite asian/indo/pacific looking stewardesses, the third was the assistant to the chef, a chef, named Chris, who cooked a kick ass lunch of fish fingers, pasta with pesto, tossed salad and home-made french fries (that appeared to be individualy cut from a potato), which he simply called: 'Fish and Chips'. The crews loves Chris!! LOL. On crewmember, Brendan who picked me up in the launch and another and I don't remember his name but he was well, just there. I think he was a, like, well, a 'spare' crew, so if anyone ever needed or wanted anything, they had plenty of crew to make things happen! I also learned that most of the crew were Australian and most had been on the Blue Star for several years or longer.
I was treated and served like royalty and at one point, for example, I believe I had three crew ask me if I wanted anything to drink. Bottled water, a soda, anything? I was a bit embarassed and found myself continualy thanking, as best I could, them for anything they did for me. Which was everything, including helping me care for my camera and rinsing my scuba.
They waited and dolted over me as if I was the owner's best friend. Which was totally unexpected, and, I felt like some sort of prima dona. Once I told them that I had worked yachts and boats, they kinda 'got it' and, I hope they knew I was embarassed by being waited on hand and foot, because, I like them was there 'working'. But it was and is their habit to provide such a level of service, so I suspect they could not help themselves, even though I told them I can more or less take care of myself and to use their energy to tend to Iliya, which of course they still easily managed to do. Other than that, I did not mind all that much being spoiled rotten!!
I did not take as many pics, particularly of the Blue Star herself, as I would have liked to. In part because I thought it bad form to go on to someone's boat, when they live on the boat and start photographing their 'home'. Additionally, my job was to take Iliya diving and give him any photo tips he may ask for. I wished I could have taken a lot of photos of Blue Star. Especially once on board. Its engine room, bridge, heck, even the crew's quarters, which had its own galley and it was full-on. The main Galley, you know me and food, was huge and all the fixtures, stoves, ranges etc etc, were stainless steel. I don't recall ever seeing so much SS in one place.
I am presenting the few I could manage in this blogpost.
So, my day at the office was spent on the Blue Star, diving with Ilya and his wife and 'diver' Dave, doing UW photography during optimal diving conditions. Near flat calm seas, no current, no surge, 100 feet of visibility and swim-trunk's only 87 degree water. Totally catered to and taken care of by the Blue Star's outstanding crew. If any of them read this blogpost, thank you all again!
Because I hade not dove with The Blue Star crew or on the boat, nor did I know anything about them I took the time beforehand to do a bit of research on the yacht, the "Blue Star" and came up with this interesting story:
http://www.noonsite.com/Members/sue/R2008-07-03-2All in all a great day.
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