Stag & Hen Night - True Blue Bay Resort, Grenada

Alex’s holiday to Grenada started at full speed today with a day’s diving with her Dad through Aquanaut’s Divers in True Blue Bay where she will be taking here PADI Advanced Open Water certificate as her 15th Birthday present from us whilst she is here. Alex is a very keen diver and was up very early for her preparing her kit. She performs 5 different skills as part of her course – Deep Dive, Navigation, Drift Dive, Photography and Wreck Dive in that order. Their first dive today was on Sherwood Forest a local reef where she had her deep dive, unfortunately cut a little short due to a leaky octopus regulator (spare mouthpiece) followed by her navigation drills on the second dive.


Dive 1: Alex on her first Caribbean dive


Dive 1: Alex performing drills on her Deep Dive (20 meters) to prove she did not have Nitrogen Narcosis


Dive 2: Another less friendly reef visitor


Dive 2: Alex doing navigation drills by compass


Dive 2: Alex looking under rocks for lobsters and Conger eels

Meanwhile I was ashore at True Blue Bay with my family, Kevin and I were checking into the hotel today for 3 nights as a bit of a treat for our wedding. We were therefore entitled to use the kayaks and the Hobie catamaran dingies owned by the hotel. Sean and Mark were first out on the kayaks, through with the heat it was a fairly short trip round the bay before they were putting their feet up on the beach. I enjoyed some time around the Infinity pool with my sister and parents catching up on all the news from back home. Dad went to the local mall to fetch roti’s (Caribbean version of the Cornish pasty, slightly curried vegetables with chicken or fish etc in a wrap) which went down very well.


Sean, Donna and I cool off in the pool at True Blue Bay

When Kevin and Alex returned from diving to move Invincible onto the dock whilst Alex and Sean are staying on board on their own then went to check into our hotel room. We had selected a Tower room which had wooden beams, a Jacuzzi bath, deep pile carpets, air conditioning and best of all a Tower over looking the bay. Sean and Alex then went off with Jonny on the Hobie cats round the bay which they both thoroughly enjoyed.

If today hadn’t been quite busy enough, tonight was our Stag and Hen night. Kevin had already nabbed Banana’s just up the road from True Blue, which has a snack food restaurant / pizzeria and nightclub. After such a busy day we had about 20 minutes to get ready to go out (I can’t imagine it can possibly be our wedding tomorrow, how has it got here so fast!). We head out to our separate locations, I am joined by Donna, Alex, Marie-Jeanne and Kate (unfortunately Mum is struck down by the heat today and sensibly decides to get an early night to prepare for the next day) for the Mexican Night at Dodgy Dock where we make full use of the Margarita’s on special offer and enjoy a very nice meal before moving over to the dance floor where a number of excellent local dancers are already performing some very impressive salsa dancing. All being fans of Strictly Come Dancing we are keen to give it a go and Kate lines me up to dance with one of the local dancers who is an excellent dancer and most gentlemanly waltzes me around the room. Kate and I are now very much in the swing of things and force the other up to dancer, especially Alex who as a teenager we reckon is obliged to be embarrassed this way by her elders. We have an excellent night – thank you so much to all the girls.

The boys later down to the Dodgy Dock, looking in a reasonable state – though I am not sure my dire warnings to Sean (Best Man) to protect Kevin or to Jonny and Mark the most likely culprits to sabotage had much to do with it. Jonny’s response to my assurance I had told Sean to look after Kevin, this being a risky stag night the night before the wedding (and Friday the 13th!) was just met with the response that they would have to get Sean drunk first then and indeed he did seem the slight worse for wear!