Executive Summary:
Weather and boat problems (not CR) seriously impacted this trip.
Conch Republic Divers (Dive Op): Recommended.
Lake Conch Republic (the north end of their parking lot) in heavy rain: Not Recommended.
Silent World new ownership (Dive Op): No decision, we'll try next year.
Overview:
My wife and I made our eighth dive trip to Key Largo starting July 17. This was planned for six days of diving, about the same as the past few years. My last two reports are here, and they have links to the older ones.
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/fl...ip-report-key-largo-looe-key-july-2012-a.html
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/fl...report-key-largo-looe-key-7-11-7-18-11-a.html
Since weather prevented us from diving with Conch Republic, one of our faves, in 2012, I booked 5 trips with them, and one day (AM and night) with Silent World, to see how the new ownership was working out. In 2011 we tried the Spiegel Grove and my wife wasn't interested in that again, so we took advantage of CRs two boats and scheduled one day where I would do a double dip on the Grove and she would do a reef trip. So that was the 6-day plan. Very little of it happened that way.
The keys trip, as usual, was in the middle of a visit with my wife's family in Orlando, so between being on the road, and the generally negative vibe from this trip, it's taken until now to post this trip report.
The first day, Wednesday Jul 17, we woke early to loud thunder and lightning. From the thunder delay, estimated 2-3 miles away. When it was time to drive to CR, it was pouring out. We were pretty sure they wouldn't go out, but they were close so we drove down to the shop. The wipers on high really couldn't keep up for part of it. After hanging around for a half hour or so, they scrubbed the AM dive, said to call about the PM. But on our way out of their lot, we flooded the engine in the rental car. I could write a few pages on that experience, but it took 7 hours for Alamo to deliver a new car from Homestead, which we spent mostly sitting in the dead car in the rain in the CR lot, add that Capt.Gary was as helpful as I could ask for, and I'll leave it at that.
Second day, more rain and some, but less, thunder and lightning. This was the day we scheduled my Grove trip. CR decided they will go out, but my wife felt that the combination of the weather, the prospect of an instabuddy instead of me, and this now being the first dive of the trip, is too much stress and scrubs her reef trip. My Spiegel Grove trip did not work out as planned, to the degree that I'll discuss it in more detail below.
Third day, still gray but mostly clear, and the seas weren't too bad, we do a shallow reef trip at Davis Reef and Davey Crocker. But there was significant surge, and I've been here before. It doesn't affect me, but my wife is prone to motion sickness, and I even anticipated it when I saw the surge. She fed the fish, and sat out the second dive, which I did with a guy and his teenage daughter who were nice enough to let me hang with them.
We were scheduled to go out with Silent World the next day, Saturday. Conditions were forecast about the same, not great but diveable. Also, they hadn't been sure a week or so earlier when I confirmed our booking, made in June, that they would have enough divers to do the night dive, or go to the Benwood as we requested. So I called, and was told that their boat was out of service and they didn't expect to be going out. I was quite surprised that they hadn't called, but was told that they had. When we got home to San Diego, I found the message on our machine! I know I gave them my cell with instructions to use that number for while we were in Florida, but they fumbled that piece of it.
We could have tried to rebook with another operator, but it almost seemed like an omen we should heed. We just took a day off, went to the beach with my non-diving BIL and his wife who joined us from Orlando for a couple of days before heading down to Key West. In the afternoon, I drove up to the SW dock and saw the boat clearly undergoing engine repair (fuel pump, I think the mechanic said). Stopped in at the shop and got squared away with John, one of the new owners. All in all, not a great performance by them, but I'm inclined to give them another try next year. New owners, engines break, etc. We've been diving with SW since 2007 and did our Rescue certs with them in 2010, and even if Chris is gone, I'd like to have another KL operator we feel at home with.
And then next door to the KL visitors center where I got to spend a few minutes chatting with Pete and Elena (Scubaboard's own NetDoc and mselenaous ) who I'd met a couple of times at the Long Beach scuba show. They were doing the free gear check for the Mini Lobster season prep event.
Sunday and especially Monday were mostly sunny and flat, nice easy diving, shallow reefs. My wife even got the smile back on her face, and is less inclined to put her gear up on Craigslist. That's what we were hoping for for KL in July, but the last two years have been uncharacteristically mixed weather-wise. If not July, when? Tuesday as we drove north was pretty nice as well, but we really didn't have the option of extending the trip.
So, we had scheduled 13 dives. I got 8, and my wife got 5. Dive trips are like a box of chocolates ...
My Spiegel Grove Trip
I got hooked up by the DM, Curt, with a group of three; I think it was grandad and a 24-year old and maybe a 16 year-old. I was nominally partnered with the older grandson, let's call him Jack, not his real name. We compared notes; I'd dived the Grove once before in 2011, he'd done it (and other KL wrecks) multiple times. I thought my previous experience was ok; not very hard except for the line-crawling against the current, and that wasn't anything that had me concerned. This trip was maybe even a little less current, and it was all going quite smoothly until the descent. I generally have some difficulty clearing my ears. I've never not been able to get down, but it sometimes takes a couple of minutes, especially early in a dive trip.
So I'm following Jack and family down as fast as I can, and I get to the bottom of the line where it's tied off to one of the ship's cranes, which means not much wreck is visible. Nobody in sight, but there are some bubble trails rising close by. I'm at 60 feet, about 3 minutes into the dive. So I try to descend towards the bubbles. That was probably my third mistake. A minute later at 70 feet, there is absolutely nothing visible anywhere but blue water, and not very clear at that. 5 minutes in I realize the dive is over and start my ascent, do a safety stop, and surface. Spot the boat (and another) what seems like a couple of hundred yards away.
I took a compass heading and ducked down for a minute, but decide that I'm likely to run out of air before swimming back against that current, surface again, and deploy my safety sausage, the first time I've had to do that. Just over 15 minutes under. I still have 1900 psi. I thought I might have to wait awhile, but the other boat already had its divers back aboard, so I was picked up pretty quickly, taken back just up-current of the CR boat and I get back there just fine.
My evaluation of the things I did wrong:
1) I should have hired a DM as buddy for this dive. Not depended on an instabuddy. For me, this is a challenging and unfamiliar environment. Given the overall cost of the dive, the incremental few dollars is worth it. Next time.
2) I should have discussed my need to descend slowly with Jack. I've even done that with instabuddies on other occasions, but didn't this time. Yeah, he should have stayed in sight, but he might have if I'd mentioned it.
3) On reaching the point where the line was tied to the wreck, if I really was going to try to catch up, I should have stayed in constant visual contact with the wreck, not chased bubbles in a current that strong
If anyone else has other opinions or observations, I'm all ears.
Soooo... It was a double-dip trip, I'd get another try on the Grove. Ummm... not so fast....
As we waited out the SI, there was nasty looking skies, a little rain, and thunder and lightning a little bit too close. The captain, Adrian, decided it would be prudent to scrub the second dive on the Grove. He had reports of clear blue at the site of the Bibb, so we motored off to there. That's the second time I've been on a Spiegel Grove double-dip trip, with different operators, and the second time the Op scrubbed the second dive. I wonder how often that happens.
When we got to the Bibb, the skies were pretty clear, but Adrian decided that the currents were "insane", and that diving it would be a bad idea. So, we ended up at a deep reef site called Conch Wall. There was enough current that we still used the granny line for entry and descended on the mooring line.
I was buddied with Jack again, and he was indeed staying with me on the descent to 50' in a couple of minutes, and we maxed at 85'. No problems, and I was comfortable and relaxed and we just buzzed around looking at fish. About 10 minutes in we got separated from Jack's family, but it was all good. When I hit 1500 psi, I communicated that, and Jack said he had 2000. Wow. I'm nothing special, but I'm not an air hog, and my sac for the whole dive was 0.56, significantly higher than my normal, but given the current, residual stress from the Grove dive, and the end-of-dive mess, not terribly shabby. Jack really is a fish. Anyway, he surfaced, took a compass reading on the boat, and we were there in a couple of minutes.
Then the mistakes began again. Jack made a circular motion I took to mean he wanted to stay on the bottom near the boat, and I really had some reserve air, so I followed him a bit, still very relaxed. Then I realized he was really swimming off away from the boat, and not paying any attention to me. I looked back and couldn't see it. I spent a minute swimming back up-current but still didn't see the boat. I decided that my dive was over, that I would surface and find the boat. But I was at about 1000 psi, so I did my safety stop on the way up. I surfaced with 800+ psi.
The boat is about 40 yards away. I started my surface swim, and I thought I was making reasonable progress against the current, and hadn't yet started thinking about contingencies, when Curt, the DM, popped up next to me with a line. He asked about air, I told him I had 800, he said to put my reg in and just pull myself in. Worked fine, and I finished with more than 800 psi. Curt said they didn't think I'd make it, and maybe they were right. At least I didn't need to deploy my sausage again.
The rest of the week I was hazed about managing to find the boat at the end of dives, which I credited to my wife being with me. More adventure than I wanted, but thanks to the alert CR crew, I cheated death yet again. :cool2:
Accommodations & Food
We tried something new, renting a house from a VRBO listing. A manufactured home near MM95. Two bedroom, two bath, so my inlaws could stay with us for a couple of days. Recently we've stayed at Ocean Pointe Suites or Kawama. This was considerably cheaper, and really suited us just fine, we're happy not to pay for a pool or tennis courts we're not going to use. It had all the conveniences we needed for a week of diving.
Always a crap shoot dealing with a private party, but it worked out very well, and we'll probably try to stay there next time, or be inclined to try another VRBO if that doesn't work out.
We ate all but one meal in the rental. One night we and the inlaws went out to Mrs Mac's Kitchen (original location). Pretty good fish, and plenty of it.
Weather and boat problems (not CR) seriously impacted this trip.
Conch Republic Divers (Dive Op): Recommended.
Lake Conch Republic (the north end of their parking lot) in heavy rain: Not Recommended.
Silent World new ownership (Dive Op): No decision, we'll try next year.
Overview:
My wife and I made our eighth dive trip to Key Largo starting July 17. This was planned for six days of diving, about the same as the past few years. My last two reports are here, and they have links to the older ones.
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/fl...ip-report-key-largo-looe-key-july-2012-a.html
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/fl...report-key-largo-looe-key-7-11-7-18-11-a.html
Since weather prevented us from diving with Conch Republic, one of our faves, in 2012, I booked 5 trips with them, and one day (AM and night) with Silent World, to see how the new ownership was working out. In 2011 we tried the Spiegel Grove and my wife wasn't interested in that again, so we took advantage of CRs two boats and scheduled one day where I would do a double dip on the Grove and she would do a reef trip. So that was the 6-day plan. Very little of it happened that way.
The keys trip, as usual, was in the middle of a visit with my wife's family in Orlando, so between being on the road, and the generally negative vibe from this trip, it's taken until now to post this trip report.
The first day, Wednesday Jul 17, we woke early to loud thunder and lightning. From the thunder delay, estimated 2-3 miles away. When it was time to drive to CR, it was pouring out. We were pretty sure they wouldn't go out, but they were close so we drove down to the shop. The wipers on high really couldn't keep up for part of it. After hanging around for a half hour or so, they scrubbed the AM dive, said to call about the PM. But on our way out of their lot, we flooded the engine in the rental car. I could write a few pages on that experience, but it took 7 hours for Alamo to deliver a new car from Homestead, which we spent mostly sitting in the dead car in the rain in the CR lot, add that Capt.Gary was as helpful as I could ask for, and I'll leave it at that.
Second day, more rain and some, but less, thunder and lightning. This was the day we scheduled my Grove trip. CR decided they will go out, but my wife felt that the combination of the weather, the prospect of an instabuddy instead of me, and this now being the first dive of the trip, is too much stress and scrubs her reef trip. My Spiegel Grove trip did not work out as planned, to the degree that I'll discuss it in more detail below.
Third day, still gray but mostly clear, and the seas weren't too bad, we do a shallow reef trip at Davis Reef and Davey Crocker. But there was significant surge, and I've been here before. It doesn't affect me, but my wife is prone to motion sickness, and I even anticipated it when I saw the surge. She fed the fish, and sat out the second dive, which I did with a guy and his teenage daughter who were nice enough to let me hang with them.
We were scheduled to go out with Silent World the next day, Saturday. Conditions were forecast about the same, not great but diveable. Also, they hadn't been sure a week or so earlier when I confirmed our booking, made in June, that they would have enough divers to do the night dive, or go to the Benwood as we requested. So I called, and was told that their boat was out of service and they didn't expect to be going out. I was quite surprised that they hadn't called, but was told that they had. When we got home to San Diego, I found the message on our machine! I know I gave them my cell with instructions to use that number for while we were in Florida, but they fumbled that piece of it.
We could have tried to rebook with another operator, but it almost seemed like an omen we should heed. We just took a day off, went to the beach with my non-diving BIL and his wife who joined us from Orlando for a couple of days before heading down to Key West. In the afternoon, I drove up to the SW dock and saw the boat clearly undergoing engine repair (fuel pump, I think the mechanic said). Stopped in at the shop and got squared away with John, one of the new owners. All in all, not a great performance by them, but I'm inclined to give them another try next year. New owners, engines break, etc. We've been diving with SW since 2007 and did our Rescue certs with them in 2010, and even if Chris is gone, I'd like to have another KL operator we feel at home with.
And then next door to the KL visitors center where I got to spend a few minutes chatting with Pete and Elena (Scubaboard's own NetDoc and mselenaous ) who I'd met a couple of times at the Long Beach scuba show. They were doing the free gear check for the Mini Lobster season prep event.
Sunday and especially Monday were mostly sunny and flat, nice easy diving, shallow reefs. My wife even got the smile back on her face, and is less inclined to put her gear up on Craigslist. That's what we were hoping for for KL in July, but the last two years have been uncharacteristically mixed weather-wise. If not July, when? Tuesday as we drove north was pretty nice as well, but we really didn't have the option of extending the trip.
So, we had scheduled 13 dives. I got 8, and my wife got 5. Dive trips are like a box of chocolates ...
My Spiegel Grove Trip
I got hooked up by the DM, Curt, with a group of three; I think it was grandad and a 24-year old and maybe a 16 year-old. I was nominally partnered with the older grandson, let's call him Jack, not his real name. We compared notes; I'd dived the Grove once before in 2011, he'd done it (and other KL wrecks) multiple times. I thought my previous experience was ok; not very hard except for the line-crawling against the current, and that wasn't anything that had me concerned. This trip was maybe even a little less current, and it was all going quite smoothly until the descent. I generally have some difficulty clearing my ears. I've never not been able to get down, but it sometimes takes a couple of minutes, especially early in a dive trip.
So I'm following Jack and family down as fast as I can, and I get to the bottom of the line where it's tied off to one of the ship's cranes, which means not much wreck is visible. Nobody in sight, but there are some bubble trails rising close by. I'm at 60 feet, about 3 minutes into the dive. So I try to descend towards the bubbles. That was probably my third mistake. A minute later at 70 feet, there is absolutely nothing visible anywhere but blue water, and not very clear at that. 5 minutes in I realize the dive is over and start my ascent, do a safety stop, and surface. Spot the boat (and another) what seems like a couple of hundred yards away.
I took a compass heading and ducked down for a minute, but decide that I'm likely to run out of air before swimming back against that current, surface again, and deploy my safety sausage, the first time I've had to do that. Just over 15 minutes under. I still have 1900 psi. I thought I might have to wait awhile, but the other boat already had its divers back aboard, so I was picked up pretty quickly, taken back just up-current of the CR boat and I get back there just fine.
My evaluation of the things I did wrong:
1) I should have hired a DM as buddy for this dive. Not depended on an instabuddy. For me, this is a challenging and unfamiliar environment. Given the overall cost of the dive, the incremental few dollars is worth it. Next time.
2) I should have discussed my need to descend slowly with Jack. I've even done that with instabuddies on other occasions, but didn't this time. Yeah, he should have stayed in sight, but he might have if I'd mentioned it.
3) On reaching the point where the line was tied to the wreck, if I really was going to try to catch up, I should have stayed in constant visual contact with the wreck, not chased bubbles in a current that strong
If anyone else has other opinions or observations, I'm all ears.
Soooo... It was a double-dip trip, I'd get another try on the Grove. Ummm... not so fast....
As we waited out the SI, there was nasty looking skies, a little rain, and thunder and lightning a little bit too close. The captain, Adrian, decided it would be prudent to scrub the second dive on the Grove. He had reports of clear blue at the site of the Bibb, so we motored off to there. That's the second time I've been on a Spiegel Grove double-dip trip, with different operators, and the second time the Op scrubbed the second dive. I wonder how often that happens.
When we got to the Bibb, the skies were pretty clear, but Adrian decided that the currents were "insane", and that diving it would be a bad idea. So, we ended up at a deep reef site called Conch Wall. There was enough current that we still used the granny line for entry and descended on the mooring line.
I was buddied with Jack again, and he was indeed staying with me on the descent to 50' in a couple of minutes, and we maxed at 85'. No problems, and I was comfortable and relaxed and we just buzzed around looking at fish. About 10 minutes in we got separated from Jack's family, but it was all good. When I hit 1500 psi, I communicated that, and Jack said he had 2000. Wow. I'm nothing special, but I'm not an air hog, and my sac for the whole dive was 0.56, significantly higher than my normal, but given the current, residual stress from the Grove dive, and the end-of-dive mess, not terribly shabby. Jack really is a fish. Anyway, he surfaced, took a compass reading on the boat, and we were there in a couple of minutes.
Then the mistakes began again. Jack made a circular motion I took to mean he wanted to stay on the bottom near the boat, and I really had some reserve air, so I followed him a bit, still very relaxed. Then I realized he was really swimming off away from the boat, and not paying any attention to me. I looked back and couldn't see it. I spent a minute swimming back up-current but still didn't see the boat. I decided that my dive was over, that I would surface and find the boat. But I was at about 1000 psi, so I did my safety stop on the way up. I surfaced with 800+ psi.
The boat is about 40 yards away. I started my surface swim, and I thought I was making reasonable progress against the current, and hadn't yet started thinking about contingencies, when Curt, the DM, popped up next to me with a line. He asked about air, I told him I had 800, he said to put my reg in and just pull myself in. Worked fine, and I finished with more than 800 psi. Curt said they didn't think I'd make it, and maybe they were right. At least I didn't need to deploy my sausage again.
The rest of the week I was hazed about managing to find the boat at the end of dives, which I credited to my wife being with me. More adventure than I wanted, but thanks to the alert CR crew, I cheated death yet again. :cool2:
Accommodations & Food
We tried something new, renting a house from a VRBO listing. A manufactured home near MM95. Two bedroom, two bath, so my inlaws could stay with us for a couple of days. Recently we've stayed at Ocean Pointe Suites or Kawama. This was considerably cheaper, and really suited us just fine, we're happy not to pay for a pool or tennis courts we're not going to use. It had all the conveniences we needed for a week of diving.
Always a crap shoot dealing with a private party, but it worked out very well, and we'll probably try to stay there next time, or be inclined to try another VRBO if that doesn't work out.
We ate all but one meal in the rental. One night we and the inlaws went out to Mrs Mac's Kitchen (original location). Pretty good fish, and plenty of it.
