This is amazingly timely! Thanks. We, too, are newbies at diving that area, and we're booked for a 3-tank day at JDC in a couple of weeks. I was going to post some questions here, but your post answered them and more. It will just the one day for us, but we'll hit Blue Heron, too.
I'm back in Atlanta from a whirlwind trip to S. FL, including the above-mentioned 3-tank trip with JDC. I have to say my wife and I did not have the best experience--not bad, just not that good.
At check-in, I asked about the thermoclines mentioned in this thread, and they assured me there were none, and that the water temp was 83F. This much was right on the money, and I enjoyed diving in my 3/2 mm fullsuit. As there were quite a few jellies about, I wouldn't recommend less than full suit coverage--the DM had a hood and gloves, and I suspect that's the reason. Another positive about JDC's 3-tanker for us out-of-towners is the lunch bag that comes with it. My wife and I are picky sandwich eaters--we won't eat garbage from Subway--but these were quality sandwiches from a local deli.
In the briefing on the boat, we were instructed to keep bottom time to a maximum of 45 minutes, with a maximum total run time of 55 minutes. Okey dokey. Our choice of aluminum 80s over the tempting larger steel tanks turned out to be fine for us. Others on the boat had larger tanks. As far as I know, everyone used EAN 36.
The first dive was "Area-51." There were a couple of people doing lobster diving, and the captain let them off first, then moved the boat a little and let the rest of us off. So the "10 minute warning" that I think Richard mentioned in the original post above turned into 15 or 20 for some of us. We sat there cooling our heels--or rather, baking in the sun in our gear. After the second dive, I finally realized that when they gave the "10 minute warning," I did not need to rush.
Anyway, on the first dive the DM led the group (minus the lobster divers) to the bottom, around 85-90 feet. We were in the middle of nowhere it seemed. I guess the captain missed the mark. The DM immediately began swimming fast in one direction for a few minutes, then without so much as a signal to the rest of us, turned sharply and swam in another direction when she apparently realized she was off course. The rest of us swam as fast as we could to keep up. Divers were shrugging with hands up in a "WTF?!" sort of signal to each other, and another guy signaled to my wife and me asking if the DM was crazy/narced and whether we wanted to thumb the dive with him. We signaled that we'd continue, and he did too. The DM hardly seemed to turn around to look at us but rather kept swimming at a furious pace, at times disappearing beyond vis range. Granted, there was a moderate current. But the current wasn't so bad that she couldn't have taken a moment to gather us when she realized she was heading in the wrong direction and point in the correct direction we now needed to go to reach the reef. After several minutes of finning over the boring expanse of sand and wasting a considerable amount of our gas, we reached the reef. But did we slow down and look around? Not really. She soon took off rapidly again. My wife was really getting annoyed that we couldn't stop and look at anything without losing our DM--which we considered doing out of frustration. We had been under the impression this was supposed to be drift diving, but it turned out to be a swimming competition. When we actually descended briefly to get a closer look at the reef, we found some juvenile fish--the stuff we like to find. But we decided to keep up with the DM, as did the rest of the group, I believe. At about the 40 minute mark, my wife signaled it was time to ascend, so we signaled the DM, deployed our SMB, did our stops, etc., while the group continued on. It seems that divers drop out of the group this way as the dive proceeds, and the DM ascends when the last remaining divers need to ascend. On the third dive, my wife and I were apparently the last to ascend. The boat then goes around and picks up the scattered groups of divers.
I believe the first dive was the one where we saw a goliath grouper. I guess all the "aggregating" is over, as this guy was just hanging out by himself. That's the only one we saw. Over the three dives, we also saw a small (nurse?) shark, a lot of lobsters, a turtle, a squid, a free-swimming moray, and not a whole lot else of note that I can recall. We didn't get a good impression of the reefs as being very full of life. I dunno--I guess no more or less so than the Keys, where we have dived often.
I believe the second or third dive site was called "Captain Mike's" reef, and I don't recall the name of the last of the three sites. But the second and third dives the DM had the same M.O.--swimming too rapidly for us to see anything but whatever large creature might have happened to be pretty much directly in front of us. I realize that some finning is necessary in these drift dives to keep on top of the reef, since the current isn't perfectly aligned with the reef. But the DM's speed clearly was not entirely due to the current, as my wife and I did not have any problem slowing down or even stopping, except for the fact that had we done so too often we would have found ourselves alone.
We had a much better time the previous day at Blue Heron Bridge. Our dive (in 10-20 feet of water) was nearly 2 hours, and we found all kinds of cool stuff. It is becoming more and more apparent to us that we prefer the small stuff over the bigger animals. My wife is a nudibranch nut.
I am hesitant to draw broad conclusions about the quality of the diving in the Jupiter area from this single experience. The captain may have missed the mark on the first two dives and our DM was perhaps a speed demon and not the best navigator, but you run into that sort of thing from time to time, so I won't slam JDC. We will probably give it another go at some point, but maybe we'll give Captain Slater a try.
