How did you like the liveaboard experience?
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Steve,
Some things I liked a lot..other things less so.
Its going to be hard to find a way to avoid the 'tour' provided by land based diving in the carib. I might have to get back to Bonaire for shore diving with a photo oriented dive partner.
I cannot imagine anyone being more friendly, helpful and interesting than Jeff Mullins and his wife. Whenever a bump in the road arrived, they seemed to find a way to make it go away. Taking a first live-aboard in a foreign land was so much easier with their help.
Diving 4 times a day in remote locations was great. No long boat rides to/from diving. And sites with no one else present but our little group.
There was more to see in 50 yds there than in a week of diving in most of the Carib. I rather got engrossed a bit in just capturing photo's to record the new and interesting creature rather than focusing on creative lighting. A bit of sensory overload, which you mentioned in your Bali trip report, if memory serves accurately. Except for viewing fish. The fish there are hunted and know it. Local villagers don swim goggles and spear fish so the fish were everywhere...except within decent photo range most of the time. Anemonefish being the main exception so I was able to capture several pics of them.
I really loved my old 105 micro. Its the original 1990-1993 slow focusing, racking out 1/2 mile lens from Nikon. I found the slow focusing frustrating only once in a while when trying to capture a fish swimming by. Little chance for any of that. But for slow moving or stationary critters, it seemed not so difficult and I have used it for so long on land its like an old friend. I sure love TTL with macro. I use a bright focus light so that helps a lot. Its the Big Blue and I had the brightest beam on board with everyone telling me they knew where I was underwater due to the light on night dives.
My aging eyes are not so sharp but using a bright focus light and searching over sea pens, feather stars bubble coral, etc was fantastic. I came to love just inching along and manicuring the sea life looking for shrimp and crabs. I suppose I could grow tired of it eventually but did not that week.
The team work on the boat really added to my experience. I had the benefit of a couple to follow often. He was a great spotter and she was the photographer. Often, I would follow along and photo what she finished. With all being new to me, I was not aware of the places to search at first though I got better. They were a really nice couple to dive with...as was my dive partner - who was quite patient with me.
The hard part was health related. I had some issues, perhaps food related. First things got a bit loose then processing stopped. When I mean stopped, nothing came out the rear end for 5 days and only then when I was home and got filled with antibiotic at the Dr. office. I had taken Cipro on the trip but it did not effect whatever was after me. So the last several days of the trip I slowly ran out of gas and energy. Finishing with 5 plane flights over 40+ hours to get home did not help that either. Alor is a nice place to dive but you cannot get there from anywhere...you have to go somewhere else first.
It would be nice to go with someone I know in the future. I went solo. All divers on the boat were Western Aussie's. They were all quite friendly but humor and conversation is culturally based so I was a bit left out at times.
For the first time using a macro lens you did a wonderful job. How did you like the liveaboard experience?
