thanks again @pickens_46929
We just wrapped up two afternoons of diving with Quiescense and Captn Dave.
While we didn't get to experience all the people watching the social chatting of a cattle boat, we did get to enjoy the dives without all of that drama, crowds and limitations of the cattle boat. It was awesome to not have to wait to get into the water or get hot and seasick on a rocking boat waiting for stragglers to come aboard.
It was a really great experience and my wife especially appreciated the help and attention that we received.
Captn Dave was great in assisting us in and out of the boat. He changed our tanks out between dives before we'd even worked our way back to the seat!
We dove a site on Horseshoe reef and then a place they call North-North Dry Rocks. The next day we dove the SS Benwood and then an unmarked reef site that was pretty good in that area.
They all had fun, but struggled with bouyancy control a lot more than they did in the pool and on their checkout dives. I think different rental gear had a lot to do with it
We didn't see a lot of big sea life but all in all it was a great first dive experience for my family. We saw all the usual nice little tropicals and reef fish, a few nice barracuda, a very large Southern Sting Ray, and my son found a big Nurse Shark hiding under the stern section of the Benwood. One of the biggest Nurse Sharks I've ever seen I think. No eels, and their biggest disappointment was no turtles, although Captn Dave reported that one was swimming over top of of us at one point....but that's ok. Something for them to look forward to!
I found a really nice spade style anchor on the reef, so I did a little reef cleanup and used to opportunity to practice using my DSMB that is also rated as a lift bag. The first time I've actually used it.
Mine is a 6 ft Halcyon closed bag. It wasn't the most graceful recovery but I learned from it. Used my LPI hose to get it just barely negative, then staged it near the boat's anchor then continued the dive. When ready to head up, I swam it up holding the anchor for control. In hindsight it probably would have been better for me to hold the top of the bag I guess, and just let the anchor hang below. I think it would have been best to add more air into the bag at the surface to get the cargo up a little higher but with the inflator inlet nozzle near the bottom of the bag it's hard to get at, and I didn't want to disconnect the LPI at that point to power-inflate. I gave it a few puffs orally but it takes a lot of breaths to fill up that bag. So it was awkward and felt a little sketchy at the surface but we got it onboard no problem.
Seems to me that one of those open topped DSMB's might be better in some ways. When I've practiced using this thing as a DSMB a couple of times in shallow water, I never seem to get enough air in it using the LPI hose. I'm guessing it would be better at depth where a little gas will expand on the way to the surface, but in shallow water it's hard to get it full
