Virgin Islands: Scuba

Sure, it's June. But here at the ol' Patio Boat blog we're still clearing out photos from this winter. Today's throwback to February? I learned to scuba dive during our trip to the Virgin Islands. Monique and I both took a crack at it during "Free Monday" at Bluebeard's Beach Club. It turned out that it wasn't Monique's cup of tea, though I took to it like a fish to ... um, well, you know.

Monique's scuba trial:

John gives it a try. Looking at me standing there in the flippers it's obvious that I'm considerably more duck-like than Monique, which may be why it appealed to me:

Since I enjoyed the trial, I decided to go for PADI Scuba Diver certification during the week. It turned out there's a lot of studying on the way to scuba certification. As study nooks go, this ain't bad:

In addition to having to work through a full textbook and written test, there was pool training.

Worse yet, there were interlopers in the deep end of the pool!

Hey, Mom, go over there to the bar and order one of those rum-chocolate drinks. We've got diving to do here.

... and that's about all the scuba diving you get to see from me. It was pretty rainy and windy the day I did my open-water dives, so I didn't bring the camera and my iPhone was tucked safely away. But the open-water dives were successful, so I am now a certified PADI Scuba Diver. Hopefully the next time I'm down there I can advance to a full open-water certification. We shall see.

Since I didn't have any photos of my open-water scuba, let's finish off this post with a few other pictures.

The Aqua Marine shack at Bluebeard's Beach Club. Everybody there was very helpful and friendly. I'd recommend them if you're thinking about giving it a try.

Here I am taking my written test. Beats the hell out of the gym I took my SATs in, that's for sure.