BRENDAL'S
DIVE CENTER
Operated by a Bahamas dive legend
Brendal Stevens and wife Mary, Brendal's Dive
Center offers the epitome of personal service.
They don't typically take large numbers of
divers aboard, but they do give extreme personal
attention to their guests, and enjoy high repeat
visitation as a result.
Brendal did his dive apprenticeship during a
long stint divemastering at Small Hope Bay. That's
where he perfected his diving skills, but I suspect
his people skills were a natural gift. When he
moved to Green Turtle Cay to open his own dive
business, he knew he wanted to be the one out
on the boats showing his guests a good time.
While some dive personalities may be at home
behind a computer working spreadsheets and projecting
business trends, Brendal needs to be out to sea,
underwater with his guests, proudly pointing
out the many attractions of the nearby reefs
and wrecks. Fortunately, Mary has strong organizational
and promotional skills and keeps the shop tidy
and well stocked. Her responsibilities include
the reservations systems, and strategic business
planning. Together they make an excellent team
and wonderful hosts.
Brendal's Dive Center offers accommodations
at several small guesthouses and bed-and-breakfasts
in Green Turtle Cay. This is not the kind of
island that will support a high-rise chain
hotel, and therein lies much of its charm.
The properties are small, friendly, and in
many cases, quite nice. I stayed at the Bluff
House and thoroughly enjoyed the ambiance.
My room was more like a small suite, with
a balcony overlooking the sea, hardwood floors,
and tasteful rattan furnishings. There was
no phone or TV, nor did such amenities seem
to fit here. In an emergency there was a
phone in the main lodge, but most of the
evening activities centered around cocktails
by the swimming pool or the gourmet dinner.
For anyone seeking anonymity, this might
be a bad choice, because both guests and
hoteliers are friendly and seek to make you
feel at home. Curmudgeons need not apply.
Brendal's Dive Center has been in operation for 15 years and now have
ample infrastructure to handle their diving guests, including a pair
of boats (a 30 foot Island Hopper and a 29 foot Pontoon boat), 2 K-14
Bauer compressors, ample rental gear, and a dive shop located directly
next door to the Green Turtle Club Marina. In the morning your tanks
will be waiting for you aboard, and it is a simple matter to step from
the dock to explore the nearby underwater adventures.
More than likely Brendal will be your captain,
although the Steven's do have a very competent
staff sharing the captaining/divemastering
duties. On the day I visited, Brendal was
aboard, and offered a broad range of dive
options for this day. We could go visit:
• Tarpon Dive - A miniwall rich
with coral from just 2 feet under the surface
to 55 feet. A massive overhang between two
adjoining reefs provides shelter for a resident
school of perhaps 25 large tarpon.
• Coral Canyons - A series
of engaging tunnels and swim-throughs penetrated
by shafts of sunlight. Oftentimes these marine
cathedrals are chock full of glass minnows.
• The Ledge - One of the deeper dives, 75 to 100 feet deep, and a perfect
place to spot grouper, turtles, and other passing pelagic life.
• Hole In The Wall - Named for an impressive
coral head with a penetrable swim-though and nearby
sun-drenched caverns.
• Coral Condos - One of the
best macro dives off Green Turtle Cay, this
site offers plate corals and boulder corals
along a 60-foot seafloor.
• The Catacombs - This is another
example of the cavern dives that so define
the best of the Abacos. Broad ledges lead
to meandering swim-throughs decorated by
beams of sunlight percolating through from
above. When the glass minnows are in residence,
and the grouper and jacks who eat the glass
minnows reside as well, these are among the
best dives in the Bahamas.
Yet, I had but one day and so I had to make
a hard decision. My request was to visit
the wreck of the San Jacinto and Grouper
Alley.
We boarded the Island Hopper with Brendal
at the helm and just three other guests.
Along the way, through the scenic waterways
off Green Turtle and out to sea, Brendal
made us all feel welcome and provided a bit
of history about the shipwreck we would soon
visit. The San Jacinto was built in
1847 and is rumored to be the very first
U.S. steamship ever built, supposedly run
aground here in 1865 while evading the U.S.
blockade during the Civil War. She now lies
in just 40 feet of water, and while years
of wave action have flattened her superstructure,
she hosts massive schools of fish and a couple
of resident green morays.
Our dive to the San Jacinto totally
lived up to our high expectations. Large
schools of grunts were tolerant of my approach,
and the boilers and other bits of remaining
superstructure made for dramatic wide angle
backgrounds, Brendal found a green moray
and was able to coax him out of it's refuge
with a bit of conch meat and soon had him
cradled in his arms. The water clarity was
excellent, despite a squall that had passed
through moments before our arrival. For us,
the clouds parted, the sun shined, and the
underwater attractions were remarkable.
Back on the boat all the dives were eagerly
comparing tales of what they saw and the
wonderful pictures they surely must have
captured. Meanwhile, Brendal came back to
the boat with a half dozen conchs and proceeded
to clean them and prepare an outstanding
conch salad right there on the spot. A bit
of green pepper, some onion, celery, lemon
juice, lemon pepper, and of course a fresh
conch...ahh! Any diver who has yet to try
a fresh conch salad, made in the Bahamian
tradition, right on the boat after the dive,
has missed a right of passage. And Brendal's
conch salad, as featured in Gourmet Magazine,
is something special indeed.
Our next dive was to Grouper Alley where we encountered more than a dozen
tame Nassau and black grouper. All right, maybe "tame" isn't exactly
the right word. Maybe "greedy" is more like it, for these grouper are
here because they have been hand fed my Brendal over the years. As soon
as the boat moors on location they begin assembling below the boat, and
actually remain pretty docile and friendly until the first bit of bait
comes out. Then, in their competition to be first to grab to proffered
morsels of conch, they can be a bit aggressive. But fortunately only
Brendal is the subject of their rapt attention, and he delivers and excellent
fish feeding show for us. As soon as the bait is gone the grouper lose
interest and we move on to enjoy the other beautiful aspects of this
coral reef.
My day was done and I had other Bahamas
adventures to explore, but for those lucky
enough to spend more time on Green Turtle
Cay with Brendal's Dive Center, be sure to
spend a day on their Island-Hopping excursion
to hand feed the stingrays and see a bit
of these gorgeous offshore cays. Maybe you'll
even be lucky enough to swim with the resident
pod of Atlantic bottlenose dolphins so often
encountered off nearby Manjack Cay. Every
Sunday morning Brendal's boat goes in search
of these dolphins, and nearly 90% of the
time they find them. This is a snorkel encounter
rather than diving, appropriate for the entire
family.
Brendal's Dive Center offers a wide range of scuba instruction including
full certifications and advanced education all the way to assistant instructor.
They are a NAUI Dream resort, as well as being a PADI and SSI authorized
dive center.
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