I would highly recomment the Nitrox. Since ladies tend to use less air, you will be amazed by how much your bottom times will be extended.
As for the wild dive, here's the short version. We went to Tormentos to check out the sea horses. Me and Tony, Mike and his wife with Chucho and then a couple doing some skill for their open water (second time in the water) and an old guy doing his AOW that IMHO should have been back in his room....terrible if not dangerous bouyancy skills (just my opinion).
We drop in to do a deeper profile, Alison takes the students to a sandy spot. All is going great. Current is mild and the plan is for ~60 ft then meet up with them when we get to the sea horses. About 5 mins. in, the current picks up, Alison moves to a gap in the reef to allow them to continue. 7 min in...current is a little stronger, no big deal, bad for taking pics. 10 min in....a freaking UW tsunami hits. Everyone starts flying down the reef. What was freaky about it was that the current was pushing down so we had to move off the reef and try to dig into the sand. All is relatively OK then old dude shoots to the surface like a rocket (said his inflator got stuck or something) Alison has to take off after him. The two students get with us and Mike grabs on to them to keep them from tumbling over the Cancun ;-). So we all try to dig in and wait it out. There would have been no way to safely head up because of the strange way the current was pushing. About 5 mins (felt like an hour) later, no current, we are at the beginning of Chukanaab* and are in a sand out(like a snow out, only sand) with a vis of about 10 15 ft. Alison takes the students up (who didn't know any different and thought this was a normal dive) and then we come up a tad later with Chucho. So we ended up doing the reef plus part of another one in 39 mins instead of 60 to 75mins. Now thats drift diving!
Back on the boat, Alison is freaked by the way the current came out of nowhere and sayinng that its those that cause divers to get lost (i.e. bye bye never seen again) on the wall dives. I do have to commend Alison and Chucho for the way that they kept everyone together and safe. That poor girl was working her ***** off taking care of the old guy and still keeping an eye on everyone else. I don't think that any of us was in real danger (other than ending up in Cancun) because we had a bottom and all of us were cool about it. Heck, I don't even think that Tony noticed it.
See what you miss when you leave mid week?
As for the Throat, nope, nada, never. I will just have to live vicariously* though you all and your vivid reports about it.
The dive that Scott was talking about was a wild!!! wild ride Was a pleasure to dive with you Laura and I will bre more than happy to dive with you anytime....Are you coimng to CSSp on Sat or Friday??? we might be able to come on Friday but not sat
