The 2DIVE4 St. Croix Dive Map
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This is an easy beach entry. You have a long surface swim ahead of you so you may want to alternate between finning chest up and chest down. When lying on your back, checking your heading of 315 degrees. You will be looking at a hillside as you swim out. Line up two easily identifiable landmarks while you are on course. If you keep these two in line, you will stay on course and avoid constant compass rechecking. Look for the buoys* that mark the wreck of the Suffolk Maid and the Coakley Bay. Visit the Rosa Maria and the Coakley Bay as air and bottom time permit. Head in a southerly direction to where the bottom is 60 ft. deep. Continue at this 60 ft. depth until you encounter the 110 ft. Suffolk Maid, and after it, the barge. Continuing South-Southeast into 45 ft. of water, you will encounter the Northwind ocean tug. If you now follow a 100 degree heading back toward shore, you can enjoy the shallow reef that parallels the shore as you return to the beach.
*You should call Scuba Shack in Fredricksted (772-3483) to find out the current status of the buoys before attempting to find the wrecks in this manner. If the buoys are missing, either plan on doing a lot of looking or sing up for a boat dive with Scuba Shack.
As of this printing (3/03) there are 2 bouys marking the wrecks. The Northern mast buoy is located on the anchor chain of the Coakley Bay in 52 ft. of water.
The Southern bouy is attached directly to the Suffolk Maid at the amidships cargo bay, starboard side in 48 ft. of water (deck).
Scuba Shack installed and maintains these buoys. They are happy to answer any inquiries concerning them.
Cane Bay - Dive Shop
Swim out on 340 degrees (a soft right out of the boat ramp). I usually spend 5 – 10 minutes at the surface and drop down in about 15 – 20 ft of water. You’ll hit a sand flat after the shallow coral gardens and it will start to turn deeper as you swim past nice patch coral heads. As you reach 40 – 50 ft., you should see large pinnacles looming up in front of you with sand chutes continuing to descend between them. Watch your depth here! I usually plane off at 60 – 70 ft. next to the pinnacles and let the sand chute drop down under me as you turn left, (West) and weave in and out of the pinnacles, the wall rises up and the pinnacles turn into buttress formations (like rolling hills) as you continue West, the top of the wall rises to 40 ft of depth and usually when I get down to 1300 – 1500lbs of air, I’ll come back to the boat ramp on 120 degrees and pass the mooring ball on my way home.
After this dive, you can now do a deeper dive to the right and target the dramatic pinnacle area (littered with old anchors) or a nice shallow dive (40 ft) to left by the mooring.
By the way, for the next half mile heading West from Cane Bay there are nice buttress formations that turn down at 40 – 50 ft, so you can do a nice dive from any shoreline access point.
P.S. About a half a dozen times a year we will get a groundswell wave pattern that breaks perfectly parallel to shore (as opposed to our normal easterly wave break from the right). This swell pattern can set up a modest rip current right in front of the boat ramp. Just move left or right if you find yourself struggling to get on to shore.
Just park along Strand Street and do a nice easy shore entry. Submerge near the dinghy dock (10’) and follow rock jetty around to front of loading docl (20’). Go to Cleat #2 (only about 30 feet in a westerly direction) follow trail of debris to Cleat #3 (best stuff on the whole dive here). Take a heading of approximately 320 degrees and swim five minutes across harbor bottom (30ft max) to intersect new pier. Turn right (East) and swim towards shore. (Look carefully for seahorses on this leg, they’ll be near bottom holding onto something small and cylindrical in shape.) Make a right at rock jetty and swim around corner to exit.
1. – Remember you are in a harbor, stay away from the surface (run heavy!)
2. – At night watch out for occasional seawasps (Stinging jellfish like shallow water and lights.)
This is a nice shallow night dive, or even good for exploring on snorkel during the day. Enter the water at your normal entrance to the East of 2dive4. Swim North out past the breakers on the surface. Continuing on the surface, head West until you have just passed the long white house with the blue pyramid shaped roofs (it is the second house to the West of 2dive4). Descend here and determine your depth. If you are deeper than 20 feet, go South. If shallower go North. Once you are at 20 feet, the ledges run along a line from East to West. They are spread over approximately 200 feet (the distance of the 2 houses after the white with blue roofed house) and are all in 20 feet of water +/- 5 feet. Be sure to take your flashlight even during the day. You will want to get a good look at that nurse shark, turtle or other critter that lives under these ledges.
As you stand at the entry, you’ll see the mooring ball close in and off to your left. There is about a 60 ft walk through shoaling water over bottom rocks before you get to chest deep water. Now do a surface swim towards the ball. Take a heading on the ball and drop down and swim to the lip of the wall, but stay on top (35 ft).
Turn left (westerly) follow edge of drop for 8 – 10 minutes (top of wall drops down at 45 ft). Now descend to 60 ft and turn back easterly. In a few minutes you will enter a vertical walled canyon that breaks away to your right. Follow it around into a little cavern. There is an anchor embedded into the wall above the cavern entrance (look carefully) and one laying in the open in front of the cavern.
The wall here is pretty close to shore so you can run down to 1200lbs before heading home. The mooring ball is right above the cavern and its 140 degrees back to the entry site. If you choose to continue East, 15 minutes at an average pace will give you a due South (180 degrees) return heading, anything less than that, come on 160 degrees.
On rougher days, the entry at the beach bar is often acceptable for this dive. Go out on a soft right 340 degrees till you hit 55 ft and break right or easterly, the patch coral heads start developing nicely and you should make it to or past the mooring ball, then at 1500 lbs, come up into shallower water at the top of the wall and navigate by depth (35ft or so) back to where the coral heads start breaking up into sand flats. Come back to shore at 150 degrees to the beach bar.
This dive, traditionally called “The Pavillion” by locals is one of the healthiest and biologically diverse dive sites on St. Croix.
When entering from the hotel, please exercise extreme caution in the “break zone”. You should move expeditiously to get past the wave break area, then stop and put on your fins. A full BC, slightly bent knees and nice high steps will help you negotiate the tricky footing here. If it looks too rough, consider the alternate entry(off the wall).
A compass heading of 340 degrees should put you over the wall a little to the right of the buoy (5 – 8 minutes at the surface will put you in 15 – 20 ft of water and 5 – 8 minutes underwater will have you at the drop off). At this point turn left and navigate by your chosen depth. Eventually as you continue in the general direction of Cane Bay Beach, (West) the bottom contour will start to flatten out, the coral formations will draw you in to 30 – 40 ft and the coral heads will start to break up. When this happens, you are now directly in front of the beach bar next door, a 10 minute swim at 150 degrees will bring you there, a 15 minute swim at 120 degrees will bring you back to The Waves.
Watch for a possible current on this dive, my dive plans take this into account pretty much, but you have no exits East of the hotel, that is the main thing to bear in mind.
As you look out from the shore, you’ll see the mooring buoy well off to your left. On this dive, that is your turn around point (unless you get below 1500 lbs before you reach it) if you don’t see it, you will see the pipeline no matter what depth you are at.
The initial thirty foot walk to chest deep water is pretty treacherous (large coral heads and rocks, irregular bottom, lots of urchins) so I wouldn’t want to have to deal with large waves at the same time. Skip this dive on a rough day.
The bottom here is fairly nondescript in the shallows but at 30 ft it blossoms wonderfully into a splendid biology dive with just enough bottom topography to make it interesting. There is a possibility of current here so do a current assessment before descent.
