Bermuda Snorkeling- Swimming with the Fishes

 

My previous post, “Five Things to Love about Bermuda,” gives a detailed account of our amazing 40th wedding anniversary trip to the island paradise. In this piece, I want to focus on our snorkeling activities. In preparation, we dug our masks and snorkels out of storage (tested them at our neighborhood pool), bought fins and a duffle bag to carry the gear and other things. We ended up only trying the fins once, finding them very awkward on the beach and not really beneficial since we didn't go out too far in the ocean. 

Tobacco Bay in St. George’s, shown in these two photos, was one of several beaches we visited during our July 12-19 vacation. 

Alesia points out fish she saw at Tobacco Bay. I followed her cue and shot the video shown next.

My GoPro Hero Black 8 took many high-quality video and still shots. The attachable yellow handle that floats works great while I swam and looked for fish. I kept the strap around my wrist to avoid the camera getting away from me. I’m not the strongest swimmer, so I felt safer wearing an inflatable vest, especially as we noticed how quickly the water could get very deep. 

Five Things to Love about Bermuda

 

On July 13 Alesia and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary in style on the beautiful island of Bermuda. We were there for a week, Saturday to Saturday, July 12-19. I came away impressed with at least five things about Bermuda: its beaches, history, landscape and architecture, restaurants and its people.

Earlier this year Bermudair airline began a weekly direct flight from Charleston to Bermuda’s capital Hamilton. The flight takes only two hours covering the nearly 900 mile distance over the Atlantic Ocean east of the Carolinas. 

Bermuda, a British Overseas Territory, is known for beautiful beaches, turquoise water, pink powdery sand and natural limestone cliffs. I took this photograph at Horseshoe Bay. Keep reading to see more pink sand we found at Warwick Long Bay. 

Snorkeling at the many beaches and bays is also popular. We were definitely down for snorkeling having done some during our several Caribbean Island vacations years ago. Our last Caribbean trip was the British Virgin Islands in 2015. See my photos from BVI! 

I had barely used my GoPro Black 8 underwater camera since then and needed to review how to use it. I did experience some malfunctions the first time or two in Bermuda but kept at it and have many nice captures, video and stills like the image above. 

Alesia is a great swimmer and was very comfortable out there. I felt better wearing an inflatable “floaty” for my safety. 

Back at the Beach for Labor Day!

 We got off easy from Hurricane Idalia which at its worst on Wednesday-Thursday, Aug. 30-31 wasn't bad in our neighborhood. It was a tropical storm by the time it ripped through Florida and Georgia on into South Carolina. Some beautiful weather ensued in the following days so back to the beach we went. 

I ventured into the Atlantic with my GoPro Hero 8 and made a nice video and also took several photos. 

GoPro Shoot at Botany Bay Beach- Hurricane Irma Damage

Last Sunday, Alesia and I visited the Botany Bay Wildlife Management Area south of Charleston to see firsthand the effects of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irma.  Irma struck, in force, the Charleston area on Sept. 11.

For this video, I used my GoPro camera. Glad I took it because it allowed me to keep shooting as a hard rain came down as we were starting to leave but still had a lot of walking to get off the beach and back to the car.

Botany Bay was already a "boneyard beach" due its abundance of fallen trees caused, over time, by erosion and previous storms.  After Irma, there are lots more bones in the boneyard, as you'll see in this video.

Music is courtesy of the excellent free and royalty-free music site, Incompetech.com. 

GoPro Video: Tennis Backboard Hit!

Here's something different for my blog!  I try to think of new ways to use my GoPro video camera. So here's my latest endeavor: hitting against the tennis backboard at my neighborhood courts. This was shot in April 2017.

This is a video I shot two years ago with my friend Bob Lang. We alternated wearing the GoPro on our heads.