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.
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Brendal's
Dive Center
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| Phones | 800-780-9941 or 305-438-4222 |
| Phone in Bahamas | 242-365-4411 |
| brendal@oii.net | |
| Web site | http://www.brendal.com |
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.