Thought I'd post a short report on our trip so far. I'll post a more thorough one when we get back with pictures.

We arrived in San Juan on the 4th at about 3:30am. Grabbed our bags and headed to the hotel. Grabbed a key (our friend from FL was already checked in), headed to the room, chatted a brief minute with our friend as he awoke when we came in and got some sleep.

4 Hours later, we got up, had breakfast and checked in. We left our friend (Dan) at that point as he was on Seaborne and we were on Cape Air. We had so much time to wait, we took the hike over the where Seaborne was as they were supposed to leave before us. Hung out with Dan and the other 6 from our group and then headed back for our flight.

The 4th was my birthday, so what better way to spend it than being in the co-pilot seat. Great flight over to Tortola and just adding to a great birthday, I had signed us up for BVI VIP - We had just enough stamps for gold. We were met, brought into a great air conditioned lounge area, had some water and about 10 minutes later were cleared through and on our way. Met our friends who just got through as well even though they arrived a good hour before us! Thank you VIP!

And if this wasn't enough for my birthday, we had a Moorings 5800 booked! Arrived at the Moorings and headed to the boat. Boat was pretty much as I remembered from the Annapolis show. Got a thorough briefing from Garret and then went out with a friendly skipper to check things out. Had a few issues that ended up being resolved and then we did a short sail. Took in Dale and then headed to Norman for the night.

It was late when we got there and we relaxed far too long, so when we headed to Pirates for dinner we quickly realized it was closed (it was after 9pm). Heading to the Willy T and also couldn't get food there - but we did have a drink before heading back to the boat for food. Hung out for a bit with everyone and had some rum punch before we finally got a much needed good nights sleep.

Woke up this morning around 7 (we stayed in one of the two cabins at the main level - very cool with lots of windows!). Hung out on the boat a bit relaxing, then made breakfast and headed to the Caves. Did some snorkeling and went all the way to the back of the big cave. Very cool if you haven't tried it! Saw a lot of the typical fish and a turtle too! Our newbies enjoyed it.

From there we headed to the Indians, but it was full so we grabbed a ball at Pelican and dove and snorkeled (6 in our group dive, the other 3 do not). This was a nice dive with a lot of the typical fish as well - a few big file fish and I also spotted a bunch of shrimp and we also saw grass eels. After this we were hoping to move to the indians, but it was still full. So we decided to head back to Norman to have lunch at Pirates. Lunch was great - we all had a bushwhacker and I had the Chicken Roti which I really like.

It was now around 3pm so we decided we'd give the Indian's another try and this time there were a few balls free. We dove and snorkeled and it was great. Aside from the typical stuff, we unfortunately saw 3 lionfish. 2 were quite large and one was not the typical colors - more brown/bronze. Got it on video, I'll share that later. We also saw two eels - got some nice closeups of them too! A few Angelfish too - one of our favorites!

After we stowed all our gear, we decided we'd just motor to Soper's hole - it was not getting later, we were tired and one downside to a big boat like this is it does take a bit more effort to get the sail down. Up is not so bad with the electric winch though.

So here we are at Soper's, group is getting cleaned up - we're going to eat on the boat and head to Pusser's to use the drinking man's guide and have a drink or two. Another great day in the books!

Tomorrow we fill up the dive tanks, grab some groceries and then head to Jost Van Dyke for the day. Planning on Marina Cay for the night as we have a rendezvous dive with Dive BVI Sunday Morning!

Hope everyone had as great a 4th as we did! <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/usflag.gif" alt="" />