Wrecks of the Keys?

[Mikko Ilari Laakkonen]

Cheers,

We are flying with my buddy from up northern winter of Finland to florida next february. We will spend three days in the Keys and rest of the week up in Ft. Lauderdale.

I have found a lot of nice information about the nice wreck dives of the Keys. However i am looking for a good charter operator for our dives. We would like to dive 2-3 days the Keys wrecks. My problem is that all the operators i've found only seem to arrange two-dive day trips. I would like to get nitrox and dive at least three, preferably 4-5 dives a day. Liveaboard style of charter would be great with lunch and dinner but it seems that there are none in the keys. They also seem to have a clausule that the second dive can be a shallow reef dive. I am not that interested in reefs.

So does anybody have suggestions on how could we dive more of the wrecks? Combination of charters or some superior secret operator? I am an instructor and my buddy is also a good diver with solid skills so we need no supervision or divemaster to hold our hands, just good briefings of sites and a lot of diving.

And what are the sea conditions on early February usually in the Keys?

- Mikko Laakkonen -

I love diving and teaching others to dive.

 

[johngayle]

I dive with Horizon divers in key largo. they do am 2 tank trips and pm 2 tank trips so you could dive 4 dives a day. i like wrecks too they will mour to the wrecks and double dip spiegel grove, bibb or duane check em out.

 

[Wookie]

Adirondack Scuba (www.adirondackscuba.com) has a 6 day Florida Keys all inclusive wreck trek on my boat February 16-21 including all of the recreational depth artificial reefs of the keys. You'll dive 8 of them for sure, the ninth, Joe's Tug, is always iffy, as the Spree is bigger than Joe's Tug, and I don't like to move it. The other dive operators have a hard time finding it if I do.

Other liveaboard that operates a wreck trek is Blue Iguana Charters.

Weather in February is always a crap shoot.

 

[sportxlh]

I took the Spree trip to the Dry Tortugas last year and had a great time. If I wanted to dive all the Keys wrecks during one trip, this would be the way to do it!

For the wrecks in Key Largo, I can think of a couple of options...... Silent World does a lot of double dips on the Spiegel Grove and also visits the Duane. If you call the shop, you can determine what their schedule is. Conch Republic also visits the Eagle and the S. Grove regularly.

Quiescence operates six pack boats, so pretty much lets you decide where to go. My bet is that you could ask for trips to the Key Largo wrecks only. Their boats aren't big, so if seas are rough, I wouldn't have much fun bouncing around on these smaller boats.

In Key West, Captain's Corner conducts a double dip on the Vandenberg

All these shops have nitrox. None force you to take a divemaster in the water.

Most operators I've used have morning and afternoon trips (4 dives total per day), but Feb can be a slow month so I wouldn't be surprised if many have afternoon trips cancelled due to lack of divers. In my experience, the weekends in the winter are less likely to have cancelled trips due to the lack of divers. Feb can have some pretty sporty seas too. Aside from the general lack of divers in Feb, weather and the marine conditions might wash out some of the normally scheduled dive trips.

 

[Mikko Ilari Laakkonen]

The problem with liveaboards i found is that i only have 2 or max 3 days time to dive in the keys. I didn't realize that they had two of those two dive trips a day. The days will also be the worst, monday to wednesday. Our flight lands on sunday evening to Miami International. We are renting a car there and i have a first night booked in Key Largo.

I will check out the recommendes ships.

- Mikko Laakkonen -

I love diving and teaching others to dive.

 

[DiveRadar]

For the wrecks in Key Largo, I can think of a couple of options...... Silent World does a lot of double dips on the Spiegel Grove and also visits the Duane. If you call the shop, you can determine what their schedule is. Conch Republic also visits the Eagle and the S. Grove regularly.

Or you can just visit their Dive Calendars to see what their schedules are.

Silent World
Conch Republic Divers
Horizon Divers

 

[tekkydiver]

Adirondack Scuba (www.adirondackscuba.com) has a 6 day Florida Keys all inclusive wreck trek on my boat February 16-21 including all of the recreational depth artificial reefs of the keys. You'll dive 8 of them for sure, the ninth, Joe's Tug, is always iffy, as the Spree is bigger than Joe's Tug, and I don't like to move it. The other dive operators have a hard time finding it if I do.

Other liveaboard that operates a wreck trek is Blue Iguana Charters.

Weather in February is always a crap shoot.

There's that all inclusive again... are gratuities included? If not then let 'em know you are going to suggest customers pony up another 10%.....

 

[Wookie]

There's that all inclusive again... are gratuities included? If not then let 'em know you are going to suggest customers pony up another 10%.....

As always, gratuities are nice, but not required. That's why they are gratuities. If they were requirities, we'd just raise the price.

 

[Tom Winters]

One thing you could do is stop by Nokia's headquarters there in Espoo and ask them to sink a nice artificial reef - something like a smaller aircraft carrier or a larger destroyer maybe centrally located halfway between Delray Beach and Deerfield Beach, Florida. Such a magnanimous act would surely repay itself many times over in increased sales.
I would even contribute my Nexus 4 to the artificial reef on my way to the Nokia store.

 

[Steve_C]

The reefs and wrecks are only a half hour or so out. It is easy to do two dives in the AM, have lunch on shore, and do two dives in the afternoon. Afternoon dives are typically on reefs. If you go with Ocean Divers their shop in the same building as a restaraunt/bar so you can eat real food between the two trips. I have even done 5 in a day tossing in a night dive.

I have dove with Horizon a bunch but Ocean Divers will go as long as they have two divers. Having a couple of divers on their big boats is nice. They will also do drift dives on the outer edge of the reefs if conditions and divers are good.

The big wrecks all sit in 100+ feet of water. There are some inshore wrecks like the Benwood and City of Washington which are interesting and fun dives but they are not very intact. Just pieces of the bottom hull and some metal. Not everybody runs to Washington but Horizon does.

I have even hopped between OD and HD on the same day. They and several other boats go from the same marina.