By 1985 my condition made the effort of hauling gear, moving tanks and just running around trying to make day trips from different shops in the Keys a real problem. I started looking into live-aboard dive charters. The biggest problem I encountered was dietary - everyone I talked to had a structured meal plan which would not work for my dietary peculiarities. Bill Miller suggested Blackbeard's Cruises, a charter to the Bahamas out of Miami he had read about recently.
I made the call, and talked to Jeannie in their office. Over the next few years she, along with owners Peggy and Bruce Purdy, became long distance friends we could visit once a year. Heidi, Ruth, John Carney and I made our first trip on the Sea Explorer the first week of September with Captain Bill Sang and his crew. There was excitement.
That year we enjoyed the fringes of Hurricane Elana while she was hammering Cuba and points southwest. We spent a day and a half in port, and actually had a good time just relaxing, playing cards and bar hopping. We were out in seas from 17 to 20 feet, with Bill Sang bringing us into Bimini harbor after the last dive in visibility of less that the width of the boat at times!
When it came time to leave the dock and return to Miami Captain Billy came to me in the main salon and said that it was possible to stop and get in one more dive before making the crossing, but the seas were 17' - 20' and it would be really rough. I told him no problem, I'd give it a shot. He then told me he'd waited to ask me last because he expected that answer. If I really wanted to dive they'd stop, but nobody else wanted to. Bill is a pretty wise old salt.
Figuring it unlikely that everybody would be too seasick to lynch me after the dive, we soon cast off and headed for Miami. The first part of the crossing was indeed impressive, that 65' boat would climb the face of a swell, heave into the air and then thunder down into the trough before starting to climb again. There were a few unsettled stomachs. I did get some nice videotape perched in the bowsprit with my legs curled through the railings to keep me in place. Carney was kneeling just inboard holding the recorder and lifting off the deck about three feet and dropping in the swells.
The contrast of calm seas and gentle breezes as night fell and we neared Miami was ethereal. I can still recall the salt sea smell riding that warm breeze, and the sursurrus of Jimmy Buffett on the stereo just over the hissing of the wake and the gentle slapping of the rigging on the mast... and the fat, full moon floating above the sails. I suppose it is no wonder that we returned every year for the next 14 - some years more than once! We gathered many more wonderful memories to add to that image; and dozens of cherished friends along the way.
The 'Hickey Group' made a total of 17 trips with Blackbeard's. Bruce and Peggy Purdy are consummate hosts. While the accommodations are pretty much like camping on the ocean, their hospitality was unending. If there is anything they can do to make your trip enjoyable, it seems they make their best effort to make it so. As a matter of fact, that is exactly why we first traveled with them. They were most gracious in accomodating my dietary limitations. They were the only boat operators I found willing to do so at the time.
And we always had a wonderful adventure with them. Never the same two years in a row. I often find myself remembering even now, good times and good friends. You can read accounts of some of those trips in the Newsletters linked in the Archives if you are interested.
Carribean diving in warm salt water is definitely nice. But most northern divers tell me that's not diving. You aren't a real diver until you've been in a stone quarry. Well, I've made a few handsfull of quarry dives, and eventually even managed to get Heidi to give it a try. I really like the Bahamas, but any excuse to get wet and blow bubbles is a good one.
Our children, Heather and John, both started swimming as toddlers; they took lessons and joined the city pools swim team for local competitions. They started skin diving when they were about three or four years old and first joined us on Blackbeard's in 1991. As they reached twelve years of age each completed scuba certification and enjoyed the ocean's underwater splendor as divers. A Blackbeard's trip is definitely an adult environment. Children should only be included if the child can manage in such an environment and the other passengers are comfortable with the accommodations needed.
When I fell and broke my toes in June of 1999 my first thought, even before my vision cleared, was that I would miss the August trip. Hoping I was wrong, as the blackness receded I rolled to my side and looked. I'd been expecting a fall to take a hip or femur, so I was really thankful that it only took broken toes to convince me my days of walking were at an end. And so ended my days of diving with Blackbeard's. Heidi and the kids made the trip without me.
We thought that would be the end of my diving. We replaced the manual wheelchair I had been using occassionally for sixteen years with a 250 pound powered monster. It seems good fortune will not be denied. Look at our Aquacat adventures for the next chapter in our diving career.