Well I haven't been in salt water since August, been too busy diving in them caves in north Florida. But I'
ve started working on my DM and needed to do some salt water boat kinda dives.
I met up wiht my two buddies down in Jupiter, Florida. We were planning on doing a 2 tank boat dive on some ledges. We used jupiter Dive Center (www.jupiterdivecenter.com). The boat was nice and the crew both friendly and helpful. The only thing I had a problem with was it was more like a giant group dive rather than a buddy dive. I like it better when everyone has a buddy. I kept seeing divers by themselves lobstering or whatever and I flet like I had to watch them in case they had a problem. Maybe I just have a natural DM outlook. Just like making sure everybody is ok, solo divers make me nervous.
There was probably about 12 to 15 dives on the boat, I didn't count them. It had to be at least 90ºF outside, sunny, just a great day. I had heard the water temp was around 75ºF, so I opted to dive a skin and a long sleeve shorty. I don't like to get hot on the boat, gives me that icky sick feeling and makes me unmotivated to dive. The water wasn't cold at all. My instructor and other buddy were wimps and dived in dry suits! My max depth on this dive was 81'. The ledge started at 60' and most of my dive was at 72'. The vis was about 40'. I never saw the DM with the flag and because the vis wasn't great me and my buddies decided to deploy a lift bag so the boat knew where we were. I saw the biggest turtle I've ever seen! Saw the biggest spotted moray I've ever seen! Saw one of those flying gerand things. And saw this huge trumpetfish that was yellow with these bright glowing blue spots. Very cool dive!
The plan for this dive was to work on navigation, checking compass headings, do some OOA drills on the safety stops and then surface rescues back to the boat. However one of my buddies had some weight/over bouyant issues at the end of the dive got kinda floaty. Maybe needed more weight or had some air trapped somewhere in the drysuit. I did my safety stop and headed back to the boat.
I ended up not wanting to do my second dive and the buddy that had the problems decided to sit out, so the instructor did the second dive with the rest of the group.
So that was my boat dive. It was nice. I had developed a shark phobia from being out of the salt water for so long and I've taken up shark fishing, so I was afraid of having some bad shark karma, but I didn't get eaten and didn't see any, so that's a good thing.
ve started working on my DM and needed to do some salt water boat kinda dives.
I met up wiht my two buddies down in Jupiter, Florida. We were planning on doing a 2 tank boat dive on some ledges. We used jupiter Dive Center (www.jupiterdivecenter.com). The boat was nice and the crew both friendly and helpful. The only thing I had a problem with was it was more like a giant group dive rather than a buddy dive. I like it better when everyone has a buddy. I kept seeing divers by themselves lobstering or whatever and I flet like I had to watch them in case they had a problem. Maybe I just have a natural DM outlook. Just like making sure everybody is ok, solo divers make me nervous.
There was probably about 12 to 15 dives on the boat, I didn't count them. It had to be at least 90ºF outside, sunny, just a great day. I had heard the water temp was around 75ºF, so I opted to dive a skin and a long sleeve shorty. I don't like to get hot on the boat, gives me that icky sick feeling and makes me unmotivated to dive. The water wasn't cold at all. My instructor and other buddy were wimps and dived in dry suits! My max depth on this dive was 81'. The ledge started at 60' and most of my dive was at 72'. The vis was about 40'. I never saw the DM with the flag and because the vis wasn't great me and my buddies decided to deploy a lift bag so the boat knew where we were. I saw the biggest turtle I've ever seen! Saw the biggest spotted moray I've ever seen! Saw one of those flying gerand things. And saw this huge trumpetfish that was yellow with these bright glowing blue spots. Very cool dive!
The plan for this dive was to work on navigation, checking compass headings, do some OOA drills on the safety stops and then surface rescues back to the boat. However one of my buddies had some weight/over bouyant issues at the end of the dive got kinda floaty. Maybe needed more weight or had some air trapped somewhere in the drysuit. I did my safety stop and headed back to the boat.
I ended up not wanting to do my second dive and the buddy that had the problems decided to sit out, so the instructor did the second dive with the rest of the group.
So that was my boat dive. It was nice. I had developed a shark phobia from being out of the salt water for so long and I've taken up shark fishing, so I was afraid of having some bad shark karma, but I didn't get eaten and didn't see any, so that's a good thing.