Day 4:
Dive 11: Nice reef, no name again.
Tough morning, lots of rain and a waterspout. We scurried out of the way and went to a smallish reef at 9:56AM.
This was a shortish dive. I accumulated a lot of N2 yesterday and didn't feel like pushing the envelope. Tons and tons of conchs here. I grabbed 2 shells. One nice, one not so nice. I dropped the nicer one on my SS. It hurt to watch it go tumbling down. Sigh.
There were some big ledges and holes here. How do those big assed groupers fit into those things?
Good hunting for the hunters. Tons of medium lobsters.
I really need a goody bag if I am going to play shell collector.
I went to 107 feet for 26 minutes.
We had a dolphin swim after this dive. Bad idea.
The dolphins dig scooters. So if you don't have a scooter you have to dive deep to get anywhere. You also have to chase the people with scooters. I am a good swimmer, but I can only pace a scooter for a short distance. So the people without scooters get the shaft, or mild DCS, or both.
If you have a scooter it is great. I will not do this again if anybody else has a scooter.
Dive 12: Yet another anonymous reef.
The dolphins burned a lot of valuable dive time. Dive started at 6:40. Tons of coral here. Lots of gourgeous sponges. Fingers, fans, starfish, eels, brain coral, huge grouper.
I had brought a pole spear to hunt with. I hate the damn things. Always vibrating away. I much prefer sight seeing.
A shark came by to check me out. Neat! A school of jacks chased it off. Strange behavior. I saw it on a previous dive too.
Big crab here. Putting on its threat display. I was tempted to poke it with my stick just to let it know that I was amused. I decided to leave it in peace instead.
I was down at 47' for 21 minutes. Lots of N2 in the blood....
Dive 13: Ledges - Night/Reef
Dive started at 10:07PM. This is a really nice reef. Tons of really long ledges here. I actually had a buddy this dive. Rob joined me. We were the only two in the water.
We found all sorts of cool stuff here. Tons of shells. I begged a goody bad off of another diver and promptly filled it with a large dead conch. Those things are like anchors when they are clipped off to you!
Big, big nurse shark sleeping on the bottom. I got to bet him a bit. There were hogfish sleeping all over the floor. Every pit seemed to have a hog in it.
Found a beautiful tulip conch gliding across the bottom. This was the first time I had seen one active. Really cool.
A big lobster was crawling in the open. We checked him out. He just ignored us.
We found a big, big moray under a ledge. About 5 feet long. Nice! Very brilliant green.
We spent about 10 minutes under the boat with our lights off (well, shielded in my case). Just watching the big schools of fish swim by through the night. So relaxing and cool.
One of the other divers had prepared the most disgustingly strong drinks about the boat. I drank some and immediately went to bed. Compuetely exhausted and satisfied.
Day 5:
This was a great day!
Dive 14: Grouper Mountain Hole Reef/Deep
Dive started at 9:23AM. This site is fantastic! Coral heads start at around 50' and bottom is at 100'. There is a wall here that goes down to 500' or so.
I had already down the deep thing and was more interested in seeing the sights. And what sights there are!
Turtles and sharks and rays and eels and incredible coral and incredible sponges. They really stood out in the sun and HID light. So cool! I wanted to stay down forever.
I was solo, Rob had gone down with the girls and went into deco digging one of them out of the wall. She had not been monitoring her depth gauge!
I was down at 90' for 40 minutes. I wish I could have stayed until my air ran out. Back in the boat with 1500psi.
Dive 15: Grouper Mountain Hole
Dive started 12:35. This is the same great reef! I went down to investigate some caves and swimthrus that I have noticed on the first dive.
About 10 minutes in I heard someone free flowing. I tried to figure out who it was and couldn't. They all looked like they were free flowing. What the heck!?!
So I went to do my penetration of the first cave. I could still hear that damn diver's reg. Don't these people ever check their equipment? I arrived at the cave entrance and checked equipment before entry. Hmmm.. air is way low.
Wait! I look up. Hell that is a lot of bubbles for me... I put my hand around my 1st stage. Bubbles everywhere. I doff the rig and sure enough, blown DIN seal. Shoot.
So I don my gear and make a normal ascent and SS.
The lesson is: If you can't figure out who is having a problem, it is you.
I replaced the seal, had the tank filled and re-entered....
I was down to 72 feet for 20 minutes.
Dive 16: Same sight, Grouper Mountain Hole
Dive started at 1:31PM. This reef is gourgeous! I resumed my cave plan and this time all my equipment was at 100%. The cave was full of little shiny spinners. A big ball of them. I don't think they knew what to do about me. Really pretty.
The cave had an exit about 30' higher than the entrance. Not really a cave... The exit was very hard to see. I did a really good job swimming thru it. One easy motion.
While I was in the hole the others were busy putting out food boxes and a large number of sharks had arrived. One grabbed another diver by the valve and shook him around. We named him Nibbles. Two other named sharks were there. A very large female named Sandy and a smaller female named Nacho.
One of the smaller females tried to nibble on one of my fins. I chased her around for a bit and she stayed away.
This was a wonderful dive. Rivers of fish, sharks, rays, coral, sponges, etc. I hated to go up. Finally, I hit the NDL limits and had to leave.
I was at 69' for 58 minutes.
Dive 17: El Dorado - Reef/Shark
This dive started at 4:25. Not as good as Grouper Mtn. Better than W. Palm.
A 18' tiger frequents this area. She is named "School Bus". She didn't show
I did find a gourgeous dead tulip conch. Perfect! Great find!
There is an old float ball mooring here. I guess it was cut a few years ago at least.
Lots of neat caves and swimthrus here. I found a medium sized spiny lobster on the top of a coral head. How did he get up here? Found a hermit crab in a large conch shell near to him. Do they levitate up here?
I did my normal horiz. free ascent off the back of the boat. There had been no current earlier.
In the meantime a mean storm had kicked up. There was a big current now! I got blown off the boat by a 1.5kt current. What a pain. I surfaced about 600 feet or so off of the aft port of the boat. Aargh! I didn't want to swim that far, but it sure beat being blown out to sea.
After an exhausting swim, I got back on board with 400psi. Glad I came up early. I chewed through 600psi on the surface swim! Yikes!
This was to be the last dive of the trip. The weather just didn't cooperate at all. 8 foot waves, waterspouts, pretty nasty.
I was down at 57 feet for 89 minutes and used 2300 psi.
Peter
