Thursday - April 29, 2010

Our last full day on the boat! After breakfast we decided to sit out the first morning dive and make a couple of movies for the contest that night. We had a good laugh making them and were looking forward to everyone seeing them. We did the second dive, which was at Crab Mountain. We swam out to the wall and around the coral bit didn't see too much life. After lunch we decided to relax and skip dive #3.

Randy went on a shore excursion with Matt, Marc, Eric, Tim and Jeremy. They walked along the beach for an hour or so, watching a nurse shark patrol around in the water. Back on board, Rick decided to do the fourth (and last dive) for the day while Randy finished up the movie entry for the evening video contest.

  • Off to the beach
  • The Cincinnati Group
  • The Crew
  • Marc gets an award

Had the "Captain's Dinner", table service by the crew, tasty salmon dinner. Afterwards we watched the crew's slide show. Then it was time for the photo and video competition. Randy and Matt swept the photo portion, then Randy and Rick's videos dominated the video portion and got lots of laughs. The crew's video was then shown. It had lots of footage from the week and got a great response from the passengers. It was a really fun last night!

  • The water park at Atlantis
    • Contest Movie 1
    • Contest Movie 2

    Friday - April 30, 2010

    Woke up to a rather gray day, decided that we'd skip the two morning dives as they were on pretty shallow sites and our ears were a bit tired. Dragged our gear up to the Al Fresco deck to dry and relaxed as the boat made it's way back to port. Once we arrived at the fuel dock we transferred our gear to the dock and said goodbye to the crew. Then we hopped in a very cramped shuttle bus for the quick ride over to The Cove hotel at the Atlantis Resort.

    Checked in to very nice rooms looking out over the ocean and the water park. We all met downstairs and headed over to the center of the water park where we spent the rest of the afternoon riding the slides and tubing rivers. It's a massive park!

    We all had dinner at Mesa, then most of us headed over to the casino to check things out. We found a $15 blackjack table where we played for a while; Marc and Matt even won some money! Then we headed back up to Tim, Eric and Jeremy's room where we had some cocktails and hung out until about 1am. Then it was off to bed.

    Saturday - May 1, 2010

    We woke up and had an 8am breakfast with Fred at Mosaic where we were treated to an absolutely huge buffet with lots of tasty treats. Then we went back to the room for a bit of quiet time. Around 11am we took a walk around the resort and saw all of the different aquariums with huge fish, sharks, rays, groupers and many others. We had lunch overlooking the main lagoon, then walked back to the room for a quick shower before our spa appointments.

    At 4pm we met at the Mandara Spa for mani-pedi sessions, facials and massages. It was Randy's first time and he really enjoyed it. For dinner we went to Nobu and had the Chef's Tasting Menu which was awesome. Then we were all tired so we headed back to the room for a couple of episodes of The Office before bed.

            Sunday, May 2, 2010

            Woke up at 7am to pack, then met the group at Mosaic for breakfast at 8. Grabbed two cabs to the airport. Our flight to Miami was half an hour late, then the airline had a bit of an issue getting us boarded and back off the plane in any sort of orderly fashion. We arrived at the gate for our SFO flight just as they started boarding. The flight to San Francisco was almost 6 hours. We had lunch and then watched Avatar; what an awesome movie, even in 2D!