Well, this was the last day of boat diving, and today was up in Jupiter. We used a boat out of Jupiter Dive Shop, and it was a lovely, spacious boat, with a nice ladder. I think the crew was a bit befuddled by a whole boat full of doubles, though, because they didn't seem to have much of a clue as to how much help we needed or wanted, or how to provide it.
But it was a beautiful morning, and the boat ride out of the shop is very pretty, meandering along a waterway lined with enormous, elegant homes. The ocean was pancake flat again today, which was nice. We first went to Juno Ledges, a long, ribbon-like ledge with the top at about 75 feet. I geared up, got to the swim step, jumped in the water and immediately realized it wasn't my neck seal yesterday -- I obviously had a HUGE hole in my dry suit. I aborted and sent Peter off with another team, and I climbed back on the boat and used the hour to leak-test my suit, and find about a 1" rent in the back of it. Given the location, it's clear to me that, when I fell, the bolts from the doubles tore across my back, taking a chunk of the Fusion bag with them.
Somebody else will have to describe the dive, because I wasn't there . . .
For the second dive, my gallant husband offered me his suit. The one problem with that was that I didn't have any wetsuit booties to put over the socks, so I had to lace my feet into his rock boots. I felt like a little kid stomping around in Daddy's shoes, and as it turned out, I was virtually unable to frog kick. But luckily, I could flutter just fine.
Since I wasn't going to be diving with Peter, I teamed up with Cristiana. We jumped in the water and started down, and apparently there were three lemon sharks below us, but I didn't see them. I did see a bunch of angelfish and a big school of small, silver fish on the bow of the barge, which was very pretty. About this time, Cris took off to our left, apparently hell-bent on checking out a big chunk of concrete I could just make out. I followed her as best I could, wondering WHY this rock was appealing . . . until I realized the rock had a tail, and I was looking at a Goliath Grouper about the size of a Volkswagen. My goodness, those fish are big!
We went back to the barge and drifted the length of it, seeing some large barracuda, and then we headed for this area of concrete pillars. This was the most amazing part of the dive. At the base of one of the pillars were SIX groupers, all but one absolutely enormous, and just to one side of them were four or five HUGE lemon sharks. The whole time we were in this area, it was hard to decide whether to watch the groupers or the sharks.
After about 15 minutes of jaw-dropped amazement, we let go and resumed drifting . . . but shortly, everyone was down in the sand, "pulling and gliding" in the bottom sediment. It wasn't at all clear to me WHY we were doing this, but after swimming into the current for a bit, I, too went down and crawled. This continued about 3 minutes or so, at which time the guide thumbed it (which seemed totally reasonable to me!) Up we went, and back into the boat in the sunshine.
Back we went to the dive center, where we schlepped 11 or so sets of doubles up a steep ramp with no handrails
But they were quickly filled, while James (ucfdiver) gave me a ride to a hardware store for Gorilla tape (which generally patches Fusions very well). James's GPS gave us the decidedly scenic route to Home Depot (which was actually about four minutes away, but took us 30 to reach) and I came back with a nice, new roll of the proper tape. Applied to my now dry suit bag, it appeared to have completely sealed the leak. Hooray!
Out we steamed again, once more to the Zion train -- and this time there were no other boats there. I suspect this was in part because the current had come up, and the wind as well. I was doing this dive with Peter, since I thought I had fixed my suit. We were in the second group to drop again, and I leapt into the water, only to realize that I still had a leak. It didn't seem as bad, though, and I did a quick evaluation and decided I wanted to do the dive anyway.
Current was much stronger on this dive. We rapidly drifted to the first wreck, which I believe is the Zion. There was a large school of what I call batfish (look like angelfish with vertical bars) and Cristiana was brave enough to swim INTO the current to photograph them -- the rest of us watched as we blew past. On the wreck, we were able to find some shelter, and worked our way north to what I think was the pilothouse. At this point, the guide pointed out something, and shortly, all of us were hanging onto the rails and looking fixedly into the interior space . . . at nothing I could detect that was of interest. This went on for several minutes, and we kept looking at each other, and back into the ship. I was really happy, in the debrief, to discover that nobody else knew why we were doing this, either!
Having had enough of being flags in the wind, we finally let go and drifted to the second wreck. This one had a large, inviting open space on the south end of it, and one of the other teams promptly vanished inside. Peter followed them, but I looked in and saw no light in the distance. Since my definition of a swimthrough is a place where I can see the exit when I enter, this didn't qualify. So I sat at the entrance for a while, to make sure the others weren't having to come back out, and when I figured they had exited, I went in so that I would at least be able to regroup with them, wherever they had ended up. Just as I got to a doorway, of course, I found all the others coming back at me, in a place where I had nowhere good to move aside and allow the exiting teams right of way. There are REASONS for not swimming into a unknown space in a wreck! Anyway, we all got out and the viz stayed fine, at least until the grouper got at it
And there was a large one under the wreck, so Peter went down and did a bunch of photography.
The sand was at about 90, and I was getting a little nervous about MDL time (not wanting to end up doing a 20 minute dive because we spent all of it on the sand) so I stayed a little above him. Once he was done with the fish, I told him I wanted to get a little shallower, which we did, but of course, that put us in the current with a vengeance again. We ended up ducking behind the wreck, where we had a quick discussion about limits, but at that point, the guide picked up the reel and started ascending, which was fine with me. I was very wet by then, and not eager to do any more midwater hanging than we had to do. It was fun to watch the other team, doing a beautiful star formation ascent. I love to watch divers who are elegant in the water.
Back we went to the dive shop, to discover that low tide had turned the mooring into a sandbank. The captain had trouble getting in, and then the ramp, which consists simply of a textured metal panel, was just barely long enough to reach from the dock to a stepstool they were using to try to diminish the slope. Climbing off the deck onto this thing, with no handrail and nobody to give one a hand, was just plain scary. I watched Karen carry her doubles up, and I was terrified she would lose her balance and fall ten feet to the mud. They need to fix this!
But, all in all, it was a good end to three days of boat diving the beautiful reefs and wrecks off West Palm Beach. I now have a carefully Aquasealed second attempt at a patch on my suit, and I'm still hoping for the Blue Heron Bridge tomorrow. (We canceled today's attempt, because the bacterial count in the water is too high, and there's a health department warning on going in there.)
I cannot say enough good things about the effort Errol and Dan (especially Dan) put into organizing this weekend and making things work. It's a HUGE endeavor to try to host over a dozen divers who dive day after day. Acquiring tanks, organizing fills (especially with limited shop hours), figuring out food and transportation for everybody, and dealing with the inevitable things that go wrong is very stressful. Not only did Dan work like a dog to keep things moving, but he remained cheerful and animated and very good company throughout. He and Errol and Bob showed up each evening at the hotel to socialize and share video, too. It was a great trip, and we would definitely come back and dive here again.
