Curaçao Diving Paradise

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).

On October 19, 2009 I got an unexpected e-mail from Scotland from Dr Tom Clark and Mrs Elizabeth Clark. The message in that mail was as follows:

I picked up your e-mail address when I tried to find out more about the SS Dahlia - renamed SS Mediator - on the Internet. We have the axe which was used at the launch in May 8^th 1872 by Miss Hargrove. Our house was built in 1887 and I think the axe was in the house when we bought it 30 years ago. The handle of the axe is engraved with the details of the launch.

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.

Pictures of the Coral Spawning night dive with Rob and Lucie at Mari Pampun can be found in the Pictures Section; click here for a direct link.

Pictures of the dive of this Sunday at Lagun can be found at my Picasa website.