Torontonian
Contributor
Its been a few weeks since the trip. But I need to write this up before I forget.
We flew to Tampa on Fri. Aug. 25/06, 2pm (before Aug. 27 cruise trip), rented a van and drove to Crystal River. We originally had two couples, then mother-in-law joined in making it 5 people in our group. Im the only diver and the rest are snorkelers.
After researching and communicating with a few shops, I booked with Adventure Diving for the Manatee snorkeling/Kings Bay diving, and then Rainbow River dive/snorkel combo trip. I also booked a night dive for Aug. 25. Carl in Adventure Diving answered my questions patiently, in detail, and that made a big difference in choosing to go with them.
Adventures web site actually did not come up in my original search.
Adventure Diving
but Im glad I eventually found it. Their smaller group and free air fill were attractive. We ended up very happy with them.
We got to Crystal River and checked into the Best Western hotel around 5pm. I had booked to go on their 7:30pm night dive with Adventure. My wife and friends decided to wait for me to come back for dinner, and can go on the boat to ride if theres room. I went to Adventure (virtually a one minute drive away) a bit after 6pm to do my paperwork and get the rental BCD/reg. The BCD looked fairly new and the DM Shawn said the reg set is the set his girl friend uses when she comes diving. So I was happy with the good rental gears. They were also ok for others to ride along, for $5/person, quite reasonable. It also turned out that due to the afternoon thunderstorm (we also had that while driving), all other divers (5-6 of them) cancelled for that night. I was going to be the only diver, but theyre still going. (Im sure our booking for two trips the next day helped.)
I went back for a little nap before getting everyone together and went to Adventure at 7:30pm. Their big pontoon boat was 20 seconds across the street from their office. It wasnt complete dark when we were leaving just before 8pm, so it was like a sunset cruise. Dave was the captain and Shawn was the DM, both nice people. It was about a 15min. good leisurely cruise, before we get to the Kings Bay "King's Spring" site. This is a site for cavern diving. There is also a Manatee monument that was sunk there, outside of the cavern.
Another Adventure staff also came out. It turned out Dave the captain was also coming down to dive. So it was like I had two DMs. Air temp 87F and water temp about 75F at surface and 72F at bottom. The Crystal River temp supposedly remains at a constant 72F year round. We went in the water around 8:15pm. Dave reviewed the signals with the flash light, and down we went. I then found I could not sink no weights. They just had the boat maintained that afternoon and moved everything out, so did not bring the weights or most stuff back into this boat that evening. We all forgot I need weights (I had my own wetsuit, mask/fin/snorkel, flash light, etc.) But Dave then took 6 lbs from his to put in my pocket. He said he can actually sink with no weights.
The water was not very clear, maybe 6 viz. We quickly got to the cavern entrance and the viz begin to be better. Dave placed a marker light near the entrance. Inside the cavern it was about 30 viz. This is my second night dive (first time last year at Makaha Cavern, Oahu). The better viz inside the cavern makes it much easier to follow the DM. Although this is classified as cavern, not cave diving, I didnt expect some of the passages to be as narrow as they are. In a few places its only room for one diver to pass through.
There were some sea grass/sponge floating around in some of the bottoms. Not a lot of fish. But we found some blue crabs. Yes there were blue in color. In quite a few places we were just kneeling down, looking for things. I did find a very big crab and signals for them to come over. We followed that crab for quite a while. There were a few places where it looked like water bubbles/puddles. But it was air pockets. That looked kind of neat.
Both Dave and Shawn had been down this cavern many many times and are familiar with the passages. This wouldnt have been for people going for the first time, doing an unguided night dive. I quite enjoyed this dive. The deepest was about 50-55, and they said the viz was about 30, but we could not see further because we were inside some caves after all.
We came out of the cavern and surfaced about 50min. later. Dave asked if I want to see the manatee monument. I checked my gauge and said I had a bit under 1000psi left and if that would be enough. He said sure, and we went down. It was only a very short swim down. The monument is really a plague mounted about 1.5 x 2 mounted on a concrete slab. It has words asking people to treasure the manatee and nature we have. When we surfaced I had 800psi left. From beginning to end, that was the longest dive I had, at 57min.
On the way cruising back, I found I was getting mosquito bites. My wife also got some, but other people didnt get any. Must be our better smelling flesh
I'll be writing up our Crystal River manatee snorkeling experience and also the Rainbow River drift snorkeling/diving separately.
We flew to Tampa on Fri. Aug. 25/06, 2pm (before Aug. 27 cruise trip), rented a van and drove to Crystal River. We originally had two couples, then mother-in-law joined in making it 5 people in our group. Im the only diver and the rest are snorkelers.
After researching and communicating with a few shops, I booked with Adventure Diving for the Manatee snorkeling/Kings Bay diving, and then Rainbow River dive/snorkel combo trip. I also booked a night dive for Aug. 25. Carl in Adventure Diving answered my questions patiently, in detail, and that made a big difference in choosing to go with them.
Adventures web site actually did not come up in my original search.
Adventure Diving
but Im glad I eventually found it. Their smaller group and free air fill were attractive. We ended up very happy with them.
We got to Crystal River and checked into the Best Western hotel around 5pm. I had booked to go on their 7:30pm night dive with Adventure. My wife and friends decided to wait for me to come back for dinner, and can go on the boat to ride if theres room. I went to Adventure (virtually a one minute drive away) a bit after 6pm to do my paperwork and get the rental BCD/reg. The BCD looked fairly new and the DM Shawn said the reg set is the set his girl friend uses when she comes diving. So I was happy with the good rental gears. They were also ok for others to ride along, for $5/person, quite reasonable. It also turned out that due to the afternoon thunderstorm (we also had that while driving), all other divers (5-6 of them) cancelled for that night. I was going to be the only diver, but theyre still going. (Im sure our booking for two trips the next day helped.)
I went back for a little nap before getting everyone together and went to Adventure at 7:30pm. Their big pontoon boat was 20 seconds across the street from their office. It wasnt complete dark when we were leaving just before 8pm, so it was like a sunset cruise. Dave was the captain and Shawn was the DM, both nice people. It was about a 15min. good leisurely cruise, before we get to the Kings Bay "King's Spring" site. This is a site for cavern diving. There is also a Manatee monument that was sunk there, outside of the cavern.
Another Adventure staff also came out. It turned out Dave the captain was also coming down to dive. So it was like I had two DMs. Air temp 87F and water temp about 75F at surface and 72F at bottom. The Crystal River temp supposedly remains at a constant 72F year round. We went in the water around 8:15pm. Dave reviewed the signals with the flash light, and down we went. I then found I could not sink no weights. They just had the boat maintained that afternoon and moved everything out, so did not bring the weights or most stuff back into this boat that evening. We all forgot I need weights (I had my own wetsuit, mask/fin/snorkel, flash light, etc.) But Dave then took 6 lbs from his to put in my pocket. He said he can actually sink with no weights.
The water was not very clear, maybe 6 viz. We quickly got to the cavern entrance and the viz begin to be better. Dave placed a marker light near the entrance. Inside the cavern it was about 30 viz. This is my second night dive (first time last year at Makaha Cavern, Oahu). The better viz inside the cavern makes it much easier to follow the DM. Although this is classified as cavern, not cave diving, I didnt expect some of the passages to be as narrow as they are. In a few places its only room for one diver to pass through.
There were some sea grass/sponge floating around in some of the bottoms. Not a lot of fish. But we found some blue crabs. Yes there were blue in color. In quite a few places we were just kneeling down, looking for things. I did find a very big crab and signals for them to come over. We followed that crab for quite a while. There were a few places where it looked like water bubbles/puddles. But it was air pockets. That looked kind of neat.
Both Dave and Shawn had been down this cavern many many times and are familiar with the passages. This wouldnt have been for people going for the first time, doing an unguided night dive. I quite enjoyed this dive. The deepest was about 50-55, and they said the viz was about 30, but we could not see further because we were inside some caves after all.
We came out of the cavern and surfaced about 50min. later. Dave asked if I want to see the manatee monument. I checked my gauge and said I had a bit under 1000psi left and if that would be enough. He said sure, and we went down. It was only a very short swim down. The monument is really a plague mounted about 1.5 x 2 mounted on a concrete slab. It has words asking people to treasure the manatee and nature we have. When we surfaced I had 800psi left. From beginning to end, that was the longest dive I had, at 57min.
On the way cruising back, I found I was getting mosquito bites. My wife also got some, but other people didnt get any. Must be our better smelling flesh
I'll be writing up our Crystal River manatee snorkeling experience and also the Rainbow River drift snorkeling/diving separately.
