Dive Boat
Well, Jason left today to return to Michigan, which is kind of a bummer. But we had a fantastic vacation with him so that was awesome. You can also read about some of our adventures over at Roland's blog or Jason's blog. Jason flew in last Saturday and stayed for the entire week. The highlight of his stay was the trip down to Key Largo to go diving. Jason was awesome and investigated all sorts of places to stay and dive shops and even booked everything for us! How great is that? Pretty much all I had to do was show up and jump in.
We dove on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday and each day was better than the last. The first dive was at North, North Dry Rocks, and no I don't really understand why there are two Norths. It was nice, but I did get a little chilly down there. Also the second tank of the trip was canceled due to imminent lightning, which was a little scary. That evening we went to the Fish House for dinner. It was very good. We each opted for fish or seafood which turned out to be a good choice. Apparently they not only purchase their fish fresh from local fishermen, they purchase the fish whole and fillet it themselves. Needless to say, that was some fresh fish.
Wednesday, we dove at the wreck of the Benwood and the Banana reef. I put on my 3/2 this time so I wasn't cold. I'm totally ridiculous though, wearing a 3/2 in 88 degree water? What is wrong with me? Oh well, I guess I'll just have to be the weird one putting on a wetsuit when everyone else is diving in just their swimsuits. I think it was on the Banana reef (which is crescent shaped and as our captain said...it has appeal) that Jason suddenly signaled rather emphatically that I should look behind me. And there was a four foot nurse shark! Mega-cool. We also saw some baracuda and a small goliath grouper, well small for a golaith grouper, it was still huge for a fish. This evening we ate at Snook's. We just had some of their appetizers, but it was very good and kind of fun, although I think the waitress thought we were nuts.
Thursday was probably my favorite diving day, although that shark makes it a tough call. On the first dive of the day at Outer Grecian Rocks we saw a bunch of eels, a sea urchin, a largish spiny lobster, and some nice Christmas tree worms. I was on fire on that dive, and just kept pointing out cool critter after cool critter. The last dive was back at North, North Dry Rocks since the Statue of Christ of the Abyss was full of divers. It was cool to go back and see the tall coral formations. That reef sort of has canyons that you can swim through and have reef walls on either side of you. It was pretty sweet.
Jason and I are well matched on the diving, using air at about the same rate. Each time we asked each other what our pressure was we were within 100 psi of each other...except once and that was because Jason had a bit of a leak. We were more limited by the time than air on these dives. We surfaced each time with like 1500 psi left. He also is totally cool with me getting caught up staring at the eel and just watching it for like 5 minutes. We also have about the same tolerance of buddy separation. I really liked the dive op that Jason picked and think that Dave would like to dive there. It was very laid back and rather than the DIVE, DIVE, DIVE mentality the captian just repeated over and over again: Slow down, there is no need to hurry, you'll miss stuff if you don't slow down. It was very relaxing.
Both Jason and I took some pictures which I am in the process of getting up, so look for those in the near future.
We dove on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday and each day was better than the last. The first dive was at North, North Dry Rocks, and no I don't really understand why there are two Norths. It was nice, but I did get a little chilly down there. Also the second tank of the trip was canceled due to imminent lightning, which was a little scary. That evening we went to the Fish House for dinner. It was very good. We each opted for fish or seafood which turned out to be a good choice. Apparently they not only purchase their fish fresh from local fishermen, they purchase the fish whole and fillet it themselves. Needless to say, that was some fresh fish.
Wednesday, we dove at the wreck of the Benwood and the Banana reef. I put on my 3/2 this time so I wasn't cold. I'm totally ridiculous though, wearing a 3/2 in 88 degree water? What is wrong with me? Oh well, I guess I'll just have to be the weird one putting on a wetsuit when everyone else is diving in just their swimsuits. I think it was on the Banana reef (which is crescent shaped and as our captain said...it has appeal) that Jason suddenly signaled rather emphatically that I should look behind me. And there was a four foot nurse shark! Mega-cool. We also saw some baracuda and a small goliath grouper, well small for a golaith grouper, it was still huge for a fish. This evening we ate at Snook's. We just had some of their appetizers, but it was very good and kind of fun, although I think the waitress thought we were nuts.
Thursday was probably my favorite diving day, although that shark makes it a tough call. On the first dive of the day at Outer Grecian Rocks we saw a bunch of eels, a sea urchin, a largish spiny lobster, and some nice Christmas tree worms. I was on fire on that dive, and just kept pointing out cool critter after cool critter. The last dive was back at North, North Dry Rocks since the Statue of Christ of the Abyss was full of divers. It was cool to go back and see the tall coral formations. That reef sort of has canyons that you can swim through and have reef walls on either side of you. It was pretty sweet.
Jason and I are well matched on the diving, using air at about the same rate. Each time we asked each other what our pressure was we were within 100 psi of each other...except once and that was because Jason had a bit of a leak. We were more limited by the time than air on these dives. We surfaced each time with like 1500 psi left. He also is totally cool with me getting caught up staring at the eel and just watching it for like 5 minutes. We also have about the same tolerance of buddy separation. I really liked the dive op that Jason picked and think that Dave would like to dive there. It was very laid back and rather than the DIVE, DIVE, DIVE mentality the captian just repeated over and over again: Slow down, there is no need to hurry, you'll miss stuff if you don't slow down. It was very relaxing.
Both Jason and I took some pictures which I am in the process of getting up, so look for those in the near future.
posted by Susan at 8:02 PM
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