Dennis, the vis was diveable but not great.
The seas were good tonight though, and we had a fairly strong southbound current. Gooch, my friend Donna, and I hiked down to the jack on the beach and made our entry. We swam out and swam out and tried to stay on the mark, but it got dark on us...we swam out further than where the jacks start and decided to first swim north hoping to catch onto them, then to swim south if we hadn't caught them.
Well, the darn things were elusive so we gave up and dove the first reef. Gooch and I saw two lobsters walking and I snagged one but the other one eluded him. We decided to drift way south of the pier and exit at the big condo at Dania Beach where I would leave my gear with them and hike back for my CR-V then come and pick them up. Alas, we lost Donna somewhere and couldn't see her lit flag among all of the lights on shore. Donna is not familiar with the beach there, and I had her car key, so we decided to swim back north of the pier to try to catch her.
It was a good hard swim to get north of the pier, and still no Donna...by this time we had a pretty good dive in so we decided to swim to shore on the bottom and see if she was waiting for us, or we would wait for her.
We started noticing lots of lures and fishing tackle and oh, what's this? OMIGOSH a leg of the pier! RUH ROH...swam back North as hard as we could then came in.
Just as we reached the beach, we saw Donna's flag at the end of the pier. We ditched our gear in our cars then I came back to the beach to see if she needed a hand. She said that she believes that someone on the pier hooked her flag or was maybe messing with it.
We all agreed it was a rather weird night of diving, but enjoyable nonetheless. Donna hasn't beach dived with us before and she had a blast. She also caught a slipper lobster, and she gave it to Mike.
I really haven't dived that part of the reef before, I usually swim waaaaaay out to the next reef. The inshore reef isn't all that beautiful, but it sure is fascinating. Some of the sights included a nice nurse shark, a pretty blue octopus, a nice juicy hogfish, and dozens of little tiny round stingrays no bigger around than a tea saucer. Donna found a very friendly small turtle.
So, it was a nice dive, a nice night out with friends, not the best dive conditions and we missed the jacks, but it beat being at work!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!
