Shark Ray Alley ---- BE CAREFUL!

[mikeyd]

Just a reminder to anyone who is planning to go to Shark Ray Alley. The coral is very nice, but it is also very sharp and tall. In our boat of about 20, 4 people had really bad cuts from the coral. I too had some stinging scrapes, but did not need the on-board medic since I am a real man - ha ha. The problem is that the coral in some spots is very high and when we went the seas were a bit rough. The entire coral reef is shallow and a couple miles off shore so, naturally it makes a disturbance/wake in the water. When I would swim over the reefs, sometimes the water would naturally drop and all of the sudden you are hitting the coral.

I do not want to scare anyone, and I would do this dive again in a minute, but be careful.

Also - you will not feel any of these scrapes until you are out of the water, and it does burn a bit. All boats have a good first aid kit on them and one crew member spent about 45 minutes helping people out. He had some sort of solution (alcohol?) he put on.

Also - I included this in another post, but from the time you leave the ship in the morning until you hit land in San Pedro, it is nearly 4-5 hours and you will need to pee. The lines at the shack on the dock got long really fast. U may want to limit your intake of coffee and water for the day.

Sailing on Paradise in..... [img]http://escati.linkopp.net/cgi-bin/countdown.cgi?trgb=000000&srgb=00ff00&prgb=ffd700&cdt=2004;5;16;11;00;00&timezone=GMT-0500[/img]