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do not miss the bridgetown museum. you will find there a real honest to gawd NAZI TORPEDO that was in a string of vier torpedoes(VIER TORPEDOES LOS!) launched at a zig zagging freighter heading into bridgetown harbor during the "happy days" enjoyed by das U-BOTES early in the war.
story goes U-BOTE saw freighter zig zagging and gave chase with deck gun. harbormaster opened torpedo nets for freighter. freighter got in harbor and harbor master closed nets.
U-BOTE HERR KAPTAIN was pissed off as a mo-fo and let loose "VIER TORPEDOS LOS" and (2) hit nets and blew them to hell, the next (2) torpedoes went into harbor and (1) ran up on beach and the other (1) blew the freeking bow off the freighter and it sank in the harbor. we dove on that bow. the freighter was raised and a new bow installed and then sailed off into history and was sunk once and fer all off of either greenland or iceland by another torpedo while on the murmansk run.
mucho mucho U-BOTEs blown to hell in surrounding waters. non diveable but lots of history around there and a ton of wrecks. just up from st lawrence gap (yellowbird hotel/motel/notell) along the coast is a fairly long large reef that sank a french freighter that we dove on also. it is a drift dive and the dive boat dumps yer ass in the water and ya drift for about a mile along reef and then the dive boat picks ya up. on that day we had a squall move in and had about 3-4 ft waves at surface. so another REAL SMART IDEA is to have DIVE SNAUSAGES!(dive sausages about 4-6 ft inflated so if ya get lost the dive boat can see you in the swells.
as always when yer diving with a nikonos V and a strobe and a digital with a strobe it is a GIANT PITA! but anywhere on barbados the sea conditions and the currents were nothing really to worry about and depths were generally described as by us as diving in a "baby pool" no hairy stuff/no decom dives/no B.S. to deal with. just generally drift dive and BLAST AWAY with yer cameras.
the worst day of vizability was about 65-75 ft.
best time for pictures unta wata was from about 10am to 2pm along southwestern reefs. beach dives are simple, no bad surf unless on atlantic side.
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