As Scott, the devoted patriot as always, will undoubtedly be flooding
the newsgroup with hundreds of offtopic threads in the next couple
days, I'll try to balance things out by posting yet another trip
report, and the second trip report on Cobalt Coast in as many weeks.

While at CC BTW, I coincidentally received an e-mail from one of the
many almost-ex-rec.scubans who rarely post nowadays due to the
hundreds of off-topic posts and general breakdown of order, who was
also very familiar with CC.  It's a popular place and for good reason.

To back up a bit, we flew Continental out of LAX, via IAH.  I was
intending on shooting a few pics with my new camera and housing, but
due to some confusion between my photo guy and Ikelight, first the
wrong synch cords arrived at his place when I went to pick up the
housing, and then the right synch cords arrived at his place when they
were supposed to be delivered directly to me.  We figured out that he
had the cords the day I was trying to leave for the airport.

Fortunately we were spending the night out at LAX on a park-and-fly
arrangement at a local hotel, so we really didn't have to get to the
hotel at any specific time before the flight as long as sleep wasn't
of the essence.  Apparently I miscommunicated that part about sleep to
Janna, so we left as our usual much-later-than-when-Greg-wanted-to-
leave time, the hitch this time being that we had to make a long
detour by my photo guy's place, which added another couple hours to
our drive.  The short of it is that I got my synch cords, but I didn't
get much sleep, as we checked in to the hotel at 10 pm, ate a late
dinner, and slept for a couple hours before waking up for the shuttle
to our 6 am flight.

The only nice thing about traveling that early is that LAX is nice at
quiet at 4:30 am.  That's about it.  Flight was uneventful, Houston
was a quick stop, and finally we were on the way to GC.  Arrived in
the late afternoon, were met by a blast of hot sticky air to welcome
us down the steps and across the tarmac, got a couple free carts for
all the luggage, breezed through customs/immigration, and were met by
Mr. Bush, the driver that Cobalt Coast uses.

Being met by a driver is always a nice change of pace.  My last two
times to Grand Cayman, we trudged our carts out of the terminal,
across the parking lot, and across the street to Andy's car rental, to
end up sitting on the wrong side, driving on the wrong side, and
frustrated.  This time, we were driven, in a nice air-conditioned
minibus, all the way to the little 18-room resort in Boatswain Bay,
north of Spanish Bay, in West Bay.  Basically it's the NW corner of
the horseshoe shaped island, far from Georgetown and the maddening
cruisecrowds, far from 7-Mile-Beach and the huge hotel complexes.

Our plan was to not drive, not even leave the hotel except to dive,
and the plan worked great.  Along with our classes and boat dives with
the onsite Divetech shop, we had booked a meal plan, which adds
lunches and dinners onto the already-included breakfasts.  We did have
a notion when we first arrived to make a stop at a convenience store
for drinkables, but even that seemed like too much complication and we
forgot about the idea.

No elevator in the place, so check-in lady hailed a waiter, and
between all of us, we were able to negotiate all the luggage up the
stairs to our room in one sweaty trip.  The doors electronically
unlocked with a nifty little plug-type key that they warned us "didn't
swim well" as if the exposed contacts weren't a clear-enough indicator
of that.

The room was actually a one-bedroom suite, an upgrade that cost us an
entire $6/night.  The central a/c was a bit sluggish, but by the time
it kicked in, we were acclimated a bit to the heat and humidity, and
it ending up serving its purpose well without getting us sick from
cold air.  Large tiled bathroom had a nice powerful shower/tub and a
large cabinet for toiletries.  The rest of the suite was carpeted, a
very welcome change from those sadistically slippery floors that many
dive resorts inflict on their guests.  Janna had wrenched her leg
pretty bad at Buddy Dive, something that Scott will find amusing, so
she really loved the carpet.

And I really loved the bed.  A very firm king-sized mattress with no
appreciable sag.  We had a big closet, lots of drawer space, and a
safe that Janna somehow locked up without setting a new code.  That's
how we first met Arie, the owner, a very pleasant Dutchman who was not
put out a bit having to trudge up to our room to open the safe with
the master key and rescue our valuables.  He really makes the place,
since he's not only an attentive manager, but also makes a point of
greeting each guest at least daily, a quick hello in the morning, a
stop for a chat by the dinner table at night, the personal attention
that you can only get in a smaller place.

Finally, we had a big living room with a picture perfect view of the
ocean (the bedrooms look out over the parking lot), and a little
kitchenette with microwave, full-size coffee maker, and a Britta-
filtered water pitcher.  They supplied the coffee and little half-and-
half containers.  After discovering they took care of both my needs,
clean water and strong coffee, I knew I didn't need to leave the
place.  Janna ended up getting her soda and iced tea fix with her
included drinks at the mealtimes, and the Divetech shop also vends
drinks and snack items.  The only reason I could think of to leave the
place would be to stock up on beer, but the bar served Caybrew on tap,
which obviated any need for bottled brew.

We were too exhausted that day to get in the water, so we headed down
to dinner instead, then went right to bed.  Dinners were very good for
the most part.  The meal plan allowed for an appetizer, entree, and
dessert.  Only the NY steak required a surcharge of $5.  They had
nightly specials, but the one night they offered lobster ($6
surcharge) they sold out after the first few tables were seated, and
didn't have any left by the time Janna came down to dinner.  Yes, I'm
still holding a grudge over missing my lobster.

Janna liked the jerk mahimahi, and my favorite was the seared tuna in
mustard sauce.  They had a good spicy shrimp appetizer that washed
down well with the Caybrew and a great mozzarella & tomato salad
drizzled with pesto.  Desserts included an excellent chocolate mousse,
and decent key lime and coconut pies.  For those who remember
Stingray, by the way, Caybrew is the new beer in town.  Apparently
it's brewed in the same brewery, but while I never cared for Stingray,
I really liked Caybrew.  They had a wine list of 15 or so bottles, all
but a couple also available by the glass.  Cocktails were good, though
somewhat weak.

Breakfast turned out to be buffet-style, even though the website
promised made-to-order.  I prefer buffets on dive days anyway since
it's much faster than ordering.  Scrambled eggs, pork products,
potatoes, juices, fruit, bread.  Lunches were good, but could be slow
if you ordered late as we found out the first day while our
instructors were awaiting our return to class.  The jerk chicken
caesar salad was our favorite, though I switched to their messy but
very tasty cheeseburgers for the last couple of days.

We started class at 8 am the first morning.  Janna had signed up for
PADI Rescue, a 2 day program, and I was taking the 5-day TDI Advanced
Nitrox & Decompression Procedures combination program.  She'll have to
speak for hers, but I was very satisfied with the tech instruction
there.  I know, it's the instructor and all, but Divetech (as you
might be able to tell from the name) does a lot of tech instruction
and they take it seriously.

The only issue with class was that I had figured that we'd be doing
the dives off the boat.  Instead, we were treated with the local deep
wall, a surface swim about halfway to Cuba, after walking down a very
long dock in full gear.  I'm pushing 40, and admittedly not in the
greatest of shape, and I soon realized that getting to and from the
dives were as much of a test as any of the skills I was made to
perform underwater, i.e. if I had a heart-attack, I'd fail.  After
coming all that way, spending all that money, I was determined not to
have a heart-attack.  Thus my avoidance of cheeseburgers in favor of
jerk chicken salad and seared tuna, as mentioned above.  One the class
was over, I attacked those cheeseburgers like a drought-stricken
Ethiopian.

We covered dive planning on both tables and vplanner.  Javan Roberts,
a lanky Brit, was my instructor.  The academics, thanks to years of
rec.scuba, was a breeze.  I scored 100% on both exams, even revealing
an error in his answer sheet when I stuck to my guns on one question.
The diving on the other hand was a bit of a challenge.  We did
progressively deeper dives off the deep wall, with Javan playing all
sorts of evil tricks while I was narced and trying to keep to the
planned run times.  I ended up passing and surviving the classes, but
it was worlds apart from any of the recreational-level classes I've
done and I can't exactly call it all fun.  Fortunately, on the last
dive of the class, the weather had completely cleared and we had a
beautiful few minutes cruising at 150' on the "bottomless" wall with
great visibility, until the cheeky bastard spit out his reg and
starting heading for my bottle of "stroke" mix.  Fun, fun.

The only quirky thing about the hotel/dive op setup is that they
rarely boat dive directly from the hotel dock.  When I original booked
with them, I simply assumed all the boat diving was off the hotel
dock, like all the other dedicated dive resorts of the world.  Then I
found out that they would drive boat divers to a dock closer to the
dive sites, with the suggestion made that the water was too shallow at
the dock for their boats.  When we arrived, I questioned this, but was
assured that the water really wasn't too shallow, that their boats had
a draft of only 3 feet.  I figured that to be bunk, as the divers kept
piling into their vans each morning on the way to the boats, until the
last day when they actually pulled a boat into the dock and loaded up
some open water students and some nitrox students doing their cert
dive.  Apparently they only pick up at the hotel when they're going
someplace with a shallow hard bottom.

During the trip I had one day of boat diving without the stress of
class.  On that day, I decided to stress myself with my new camera
instead.  I had already taken it out on a shore dive in front of the
hotel and played around shooting a bit of macro.  On the boat dives, I
switched to the wide angle setup and was very impressed with the
quality of the shots.  Besides the pretty vertical wall cut with
canyons and outcroppings, we had a flyby by a jewfishy goliath
grouper, and there were several monster lobsters hiding about that fit
great in wide-angle proportions. Unfortunately, on the way home, my
practically brand-new Dell laptop decided to fry itself and is now
giving me a blue screen error upon booting and won't load Windows.
And that wasn't the only problem with our return, as our 10:55 pm
departure out of Houston didn't leave until 2:35 am.  So much for nice
endings.

I really enjoyed the hotel and dive op.  However, I'm not sure I'd
take another tech class there due to the annoyance of the long swim
out to the deep wall, not to mention the safety issue that even MHK
raised in his review of the place a few years back - it's a really
long swim for any potential rescuer.  On our next trip that way, we'll
probably do the Aggressor, as we've always wanted to visit the sister
islands but I'm leery of little planes with their little weight
limits.  Still, we were very satisfied with our visit and I definitely
recommend the place to anyone interested in diving that part of the
world.