The cruise over was smooth, we upgraded to a cabin (65bucks) and snoozed the way over, did the usual first stop UNEXSO, then car rental, then condo, then back to UNEXSO for more gear prep.

Next day was an early wakeup for cliffy, on da road for McLeans town 1.5 hrs drive to catch the ferry to Abaco, I took 6 tanks over to help support our Dec trip. While there I did a dive in Dan's cave, what a cool cave, white chalk limestone, beautiful white calcite 'wedding cake' stalgmite formations. Brian Kakuk took me into a room he had just discovered. A seemingly insignificant hole in the ceiling lead to yet another stellar room, which I had the privilege to be the second human to see.

The following day was a lazy wakeup, worked on my new sidemount rig a bit and headed back to Crown Haven to catch the ferry back to McLeans Town and drove back to Freeport and UNEXSO.

The remainder of the week I did a dive in Mermaids and Owl and was invited on Terri's graduation (from basic cave) dive.

As always Cristina Zenato and UNEXSO were great, if anyone is planning a trip to Grand Bahama they are without question the best operation on the island!

I can explain to someone the rigors of cave training but until they go through them any explanation seems to be insufficient. Similar to other scuba specialties such as spearing, people who participate in the specialty are attracted and bonded. This is especially true with cave divers. The training pushes our mental and physical limits in a way unlike any other. As the challenges of training are met pieces of the puzzle seem to fall into place. What Terri's instructor called "global awareness", being able to solve a problem while being aware of buoyancy, trim, location, buddy, so one problem doesn't lead to two or three, which it sometimes still does.

Watching someone meet these challenges was my privilege this past week.

Welcome Terri to the cave diving community.

Go diving with your friends

Cliffy