On Saturday, August 14, 2010, Rob and I went diving at Playa Piskadó (Westpunt). Playa Piskadó means Fishermen's beach. Currently the facilities for the fishermen are renovated.
This is also the dive site where a statue of King Neptune can be found under water. Nice and also very helpful for the navigation back to the beach at the end of the dive. And because this dive site is next to Alice in Wonderland (Playa Kalki) also here nice high coral formations of Star coral can be found.

For a long time diving at Vaersenbay was not possible without bringing an extra person to guard the cars while being under water. But recently the construction of the "new beach" started and that means that during the day there are people at work; that decreases the chances of somebody trying to break in in the parked cars.

And there was another good reason to dive here. A group of three divers of the Dutch Army who were stationed in Curaçao for a period of 4 months was leaving the island on Monday evening, August 2, 2010. The deep dive at Vaersenbay was one of the special dives that they didn't do yet during their stay. To facilitate them a guided dive was organized on Saturday July 31 by Trunkdivers, a dive operator specialized in adventurous (but responsible!) shore diving. Also a German tourist joined in this guided dive.

On Wednesday May 5, Rob and I went for a dive at Marie Pampoen. Diving through the week is a new option for me since I retired at May 1. And it is a good option! Rob wanted to improve on his photo technique when shooting without a strobe at depth. And I wanted to check if I could reduce backscatter further by moving the strobe farther away from the camera. So we both had a goal during this dive. We went to the East (left); first rather shallow till we reached the wrecks. There we went deeper each our own way. I already made some test shots shallow to get the best settings for my flash and these looked promising. I shot some pictures of the small boat and then I went a bit deeper to take some shots of other pieces of wreckage. At my deepest point I saw a large Tarpon but couldn't go any nearer because of the remaining bottom time.

The development of Vaersenbaai has started again. The old weekend houses and the old dive shop are removed. In the future a renewed beautiful beach will arise at this place. A first impression how it will look like can be found at the web site of Trunkdivers; Trunkdivers will run the new dive shop at this location. Also information can be expected at the web site of Kokomo Beach.

Vaersenbaai Has always been a dive location with a variaty of diving options. Apart from the nice coral reef there are the car wrecks and the pontoon with which the cars are transported. Less well known is the fact that also the tugboat that is used to tow the pontoon is sunken here. That wreck lies beneath the acceptable depth for non-professional divers at a depth of 50 meters (150 feet).

Of course the dive site is not new; the site was there for a long time, but I didn't know about it. So when we heared someone (Peter and Gijs) talking about it we went checking; Peter went with us to show us the way. I got the advice not to go with my (new) car. It would certainly get scratched. So we went with two other 4-wheel drive SUVs. We went off-road just before reaching the salinas of Jan Kok. At that point the road looked reasonably well but that changed soon.