Introduction
We (Sharon and Daniel) received our scuba Advanced
Open Water certifications, with an “Enriched Air” specialty at the end of
August. Wanting to use this newly gained training, we decided to take vacation
in
Friday, September 1, 2006
We arrived in
Later in the afternoon, the rain let up, so we
decided to see if we could find one of the dive charter places
We headed back toward the hotel, and stopped at a
marina where another charter company (Ocean Quest) Sharon had read about online
docked. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find the slip where their boat (
When we finished our beers, we didn’t feel like
eating there, so headed back to the car. On our way, we saw another boat (I
don’t remember her name) with the captain and crew, enjoying beers, and looking
like they were resting from a long day at work. The sign out front said
Narcosis Dive Charters. (The term “nitrogen narcosis” describes the situation
when you dive too deep and absorb nitrogen a little too quickly, and get
light-headed and tipsy, sort of like an immediate drunk/high. The name made us a
little leery about booking with them, but intrigued at the same time.) They
said they were booked for Saturday and Sunday, but had openings on Monday. We
said sign us up, and they said to just show up at 930. We mentioned that we
needed to rent some equipment, and they said that other than tanks and weights,
they only had 2 regulators, and they were on a first-come, first-served basis,
and someone else on Monday’s trip had already said they would need a regulator.
We also needed buoyancy control devices (BCDs), so we would still have to rent equipment
from someone else. We wanted to be sure of availability of the regulator, and
needed BCDs anyway, so asked where was a good dive shop around that rented
equipment. They mentioned that Force-E rents equipment, and also was having a
tent sale this weekend.
Force-E was on our way back to our hotel, so we pulled
in and talked with them. Sharon had also seen their name as a place that booked
dive charters; as it turned out, they don’t have their own boat, but they do
the phone work of calling around to find which boats are going out, and get you
signed up, i.e., they are a broker. We bought some gloves and glow sticks (for
night diving); they were having a sale, and I needed a wetsuit, so I tried one
on, and bought it. We asked about renting BCDs and a regulator, and they said
to show up the day we were diving; they open at 630am (Daniel’s kind of place),
and most dive boats want you to check in at 830 or 930, depending on their
schedule.
Saturday, September 2, 2006
The weather forecast sucked for the week, with Hurricane
Ernesto coming through only a week or so before, and everyone here said the
visibility was only “so-so”, at 40-50 ft. (In the quarry diving we’ve done up
until now, visibility has been 10-20 ft.) But even though all of the weather
forecasts predicted rain, the only significant rain we encountered was a storm
on Monday afternoon, after we started our second dive (and before we came up)
and all day Tuesday.
First thing Saturday morning, we headed back to
The Scuba Club. They were friendly, but made it clear (in a very “business
like” manner) that we were lucky, because there had been a cancellation
(presumably due to the weather forecast), and we got a place on Sunday’s boat. They
asked to see our certification cards, and credit card, and signed us up.
Having booked ourselves for Sunday and Monday, we
decided to drive around some of the dive shops
While we were browsing in the store, a man came up
to us, and said that the store was giving a 20% discount on everything,
including sale items, to customers who went to the Bloodmobile out front and
donated blood. I try to give blood whenever I can (just ask
Sunday, September 3, 2006
Sunday morning, we show up, and it’s a beautiful
day, although the forecast is for rain all afternoon. We sign in, and the front
desk gives us a ticket to take to the back, where we pick up our Nitrox
(enriched air, i.e., air with a higher proportion of oxygen than most dive
tanks, which use compressed normal air (which is roughly 21% oxygen,
79%nitrogen)), my regulator, and our weight belts. (Actually, we didn’t use
weight belts, because the BCDs we got have “integrated” weight pockets; we just
took the weights that would normally go on the belt, and put them in the
specially designed pockets.)
I don’t remember the name of the boat, but the
captain is named
As they explained on the boat (thank goodness they
told us sometime before we got in the
water!), due to the Gulf Stream, it's all drift diving in the West Palm Beach
area, which we weren't prepared for (i.e., we didn't read that section of the advanced
manual). They went on to say that when you drift dive, the captain takes the boat
to a spot where he knows there’s cool stuff to see, and drops the group in the
water. The ocean current pushes you along, so you don’t have to do much
swimming to get around, unless you want to stay in one spot. There’s always a
dive master, sometimes two, in the water, and he or she carries a float,
attached to a line. This lets the boat captain have a rough idea of where the
group is. Of course, that assumes that everyone stays with the group. But I’m
getting ahead of myself.
On our first Sunday dive, I went through my tank EAN36
(36% oxygen, 64% nitrogen) in about 30 minutes. This doesn’t sound like long,
and really isn’t, but as I learned on the last day, it’s not an unreasonable
time, especially for a relatively new diver—I’ll say more about that later.
After everyone came up from the first dive, the
boat moves to a different site, and folks talk and snack on [provided] soda,
fruit and snacks. No one is allowed back in the water for an hour, to make sure
that everyone is staying within safety limits. (When you breathe compressed air
underwater, your body doesn’t dissipate the nitrogen, and if you get too much,
you get “decompression sickness” (aka, “the bends”), which isn’t a good thing.
By having everyone stay at the surface for an hour, they’re pretty much
guaranteed to be within safety margins. (One of the benefits of using enriched
air is that there is less nitrogen to absorb, which allows you to dive longer,
with shorter mandatory surface intervals. (Too much oxygen can be a bad thing,
too, but that’s a different safety issue.)))
The second dive was to around 60 ft, and I went
through my air in about 30 minutes again. On both dives, I went a little deeper
than
Some good news is that my post-dive notes improved
over time. I forgot to mention that these were our first ocean dives, as well
as our first drift dives. So, a lot of our attention was focused on staying near
the dive master and keeping each other also in view, and not getting swept away
by the current. Other divers were watching the sea turtles and hunting lobster,
and such, but other than seeing them do that, I was mostly focused on making
sure I finished the dive breathing when I got back to the boat.
Monday, September 4, 2006
On Monday, we dove with Narcosis Dive Charters. I
didn’t catch the boat’s name, but the captain was Ray, and the crew was Susan
and Elaine. Susan was the dive master, and Elaine stayed up top to help the
captain locate divers, and to help divers get back onto the boat.
Both of our dives were to about 60ft. This time,
my EAN36 lasted 48 minutes, at Paul's
Reef, which makes this my longest dive to date. Due to bad weather, we had
to switch from the planned Casino to The Breakers. Unfortunately (sort of), The Breakers was one of the places we
dove the day before, and not much had changed. (Although, we saw sea turtles at
both locations Monday, and
During the hour-long surface interval, Elaine got
in the water and hunted lobster, while the rest of us let our nitrogen escape.
She caught three, and said, “I only caught the stupid ones, that were out in
the open saying, ‘Pick me! Pick me!’.”
While we were under, the storm got worse. It was interesting to hear
thunder underwater, but I did not see any lightning. Sharon and I learned that
we should have opened the safety sausages and figured out how to inflate them before going in the water. We blew and
blew and blew, but only got my sausage semi-erect (I hate when that happens).
By the time it got inflated to half mast, we were at the surface. Still, the
fluorescent orange or yellow tube is more visible than a diver, so it wasn’t a
complete waste. When Sharon and I surfaced (seeing a beautiful jellyfish as we
were at about 3ft), there were 3-4 boats right around us, and our captain was
on the horn, hollering at them, because they weren't paying attention to who
was coming up, and how close they were to divers. At least two of them were
also dive boats, with divers in the water, also, but I guess their dive
master's floats weren't near us, and our captain was more than a little peeved.
We surfaced very near (maybe 30ft away) our boat, and he picked us up right
away. Still, it was storming out, so I give the other boats the benefit of the
doubt, but maybe that's one more of the many reasons that I'm not a boat
captain. It was raining hard, and the waves were very rough, and just as
Tuesday, September 5, 2006
Tuesday is the day most of the dive boats take the
day off, to work on their boats, or just pretend they have something better in
their life that diving (yeah, right—as if such a thing is possible). So this
day, we mostly just stayed in our room, with
Interestingly, we've only had one place ask to see
our Enriched Air C-cards, though everyone has asked if we have them. I'd be
willing to bet that most anyone could dive with Nitrox around here if they just
answer "yes" confidently when asked. Everyone has asked to see our
regular cards, of course.
Wednesday, September 6, 2006
After Monday’s unfortunate ending with rain and
Pura Vida’s boat is called The Lady Serena, and
the captain (and owner of the boat and the dive shop) is Dean. The dive master
was Ryan Skillman, and crew was Kevin something. Both Dean and Kevin are former
Coast Guard captains, and Kevin is also an EMT. They are all also qualified
dive instructors. By the way, “Pura Vida” is Spanish for “Pure Life”.
Today, the current wasn’t so bad. We dove to
between 50-60 feet at “Teardrop”. My first dive lasted 51 minutes. I saw a sea
turtle, a baby octopus that was less than a foot across (with legs not outstretched), several lobsters, and
two small eels (maybe 1.5-3 ft long).
The second dive, which lasted 45 minutes for me, was
at “Flower Garden”, and we saw a school of 6-9 squid, each about 8 inches long.
We saw more lobster and eels.
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Spiny Lobster |
Eel |
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I should say that on all of these dives (pretty
much, anyway), we saw many, many kinds of fish, most of which we couldn’t
identify, but here are some we’re pretty sure of (these are not pictures we
took—maybe we will have a camera by next summer):
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Queen Triggerfish |
Queen Angelfish |
Rainbow Parrotfish |
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Picasso Triggerfish |
Blue Parrotfish |
Puffer Fish |
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Lionfish |
Spotfin Butterflyfish |
Cowfish |
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There was one incident today. As Kevin was helping
a woman get back on the boat, she turned around to sit, but unfortunately,
Kevin’s toe was where her tank went. We don’t think it was broken, but it was
swollen something fierce, and we didn’t see him Friday when we went out with Pura
Vida.
Thursday, September 7, 2006
On Thursday, we went out with Narcosis Dive
Charters again. This time, Elaine was the dive master, and Susan stayed on
board. Some folks on the boat wanted to see some shipwrecks, so we went to a
place called The Corridor, where several wrecks are in a row. This makes it
convenient for drift diving. Unfortunately, I had reduced my weights, based on
a successful experiment the day before. But, I didn’t take into account that my
suit was wet then, but had dried overnight now. In short, I was too buoyant to
descend quickly, which was a requirement on this dive, due to the strong
current. I ended up actually having to swim downward, head first, instead of
making the usual foot-first descent. While doing so, Sharon and I lost sight of
Elaine and the rest of the group. We stayed down for a while, and saw a couple
of wrecks, but they weren’t very interesting. We tried holding onto the bottom,
where the current is weaker, to see if the rest of the group would catch up to
us. But we didn’t wait long enough, and the current really wasn’t very much
weaker. After a while, I noticed that I had used most of my air already, so we
had to ascend, disappointed. For the rest of the dives, I used the full 18lb of
weights I had used initially. It made it a little harder to get neutrally
buoyant (so I’m neither sinking nor floating up), but at least I know how to do
that, even if it takes a little longer at first.
Following Monday’s pattern, during our surface
interval, Susan went in the water, while Elaine stayed topside. I don’t
remember if Susan was hunting lobster, or just swimming around—probably both.
The second dive was to a place called Juno Ledge.
It was, by far, our best dive to date. We saw a sea 4 ft long sea turtle from 3
ft away, a 6-7 ft bright green moray eel undulating its way across the bottom,
about 10ft below us, and a 6 ft nurse shark below us. Juno Ledge is a nice
place to dive because the depth at the top of the ledge is 60-70 ft, and the
depth at the bottom of the ledge is about 90 ft. So, you can hover near the top
of the ledge, below the current, and watch over the top of the ledge for
interesting things, continually watch the side of the ledge, where many
creatures live, and look down to the bottom for more to see. I found several
spots on the bottom where the current was practically nonexistent, and I just
knelt on the bottom and watched everything else drift by. Well, until Sharon
and Elaine drifted by, at which time I ascended some, and tagged along.
Near the end of our dive (as it turned out), we
saw three Goliath Grouper swimming near the bottom, and a fourth that was
larger than those three, but it chose to remain in a cave/crevice. Goliath
Grouper (formerly called Jewfish) can grow to be heavier than 600 pounds. The
ones we saw were easily in the 200-300 pound range, and considerably larger
than the one in the picture below.
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Goliath Grouper |
Just before seeing the grouper, I had been
ascending somewhat, and the current moved me onto the top of the ledge, and the
grouper were over the side, near the bottom. I couldn’t find a good handhold,
and the current was too strong for me to swim back over the ledge. I tried
valiantly, but ended up using up my air quickly. Since it was just Sharon and
Elaine and I, and Elaine was the dive master,
Friday, September 8, 2006
On Friday, we dove with Pura Vida again. They
didn’t have any unchangeable plans, and asked folks if they had any
preferences. Sharon and I went on about how much fun we had at Juno Ledge the
day before. The Pura Vida boat isn’t as big as the Narcosis’ boat, and June
Ledge is farther away than they usually go, but I guess we made it sound like
fun, so Captain Dean headed out to it. The dive master for the first dive was
Jeff Hawes. Ryan was there also; they hadn’t heard from Kevin, or about his
toe.
We saw a sea turtle fairly soon after getting to
depth (around 60ft), and while following it, we lost sight of Jeff. We were
getting good at this being lost thing, and since we had been in this general
vicinity, decided to just keep on diving.
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We saw a grouper, but not as huge as the ones from
yesterday. This one weighed maybe 100 pounds. We also saw a school of 10
barracuda, but they weren’t very close.
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While talking with the captain, during the surface
interval, he explained the (now obvious) fact that when you dive deeper, you go
through your air quicker, simply because it’s more compressed, but your lungs
take in the same volume. This means
every breath removes more molecules of air from the tank, than would be removed
when breathing under lesser pressures. So, on the next dive, we intentionally
didn’t go very deep. (We ended up going down to 90 ft again, but didn’t stay at
that depth very long.) Ryan Skillman was the dive master this time.
We saw two nurse sharks;
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Barracuda |
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At one point, I saw a small eel, and a spiny sea
urchin. A man we were diving with, Jonathan Frank, said there were many, but I
only saw the one. He won a trip to
Sharon and Ryan and I ascended together. While we
made our 15-20 ft 3 minute safety stop, Ryan pointed out a baby crab, which was
about ½ inch across, and an even smaller baby jellyfish. While that was going
on, there were two small yellow jacks swimming circles around his head. Every
now and then, they would make a pass around Sharon or I, but they seemed to
like Ryan best. Even as we were getting onto the boat, they were swimming
around him.
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Spiny Sea Urchin |
Adult Yellow Jack |
Saturday, September 9, 2006
While diving, breathing compressed air at depths,
the body absorbs nitrogen, and then releases it when returned to the surface. Releasing
the nitrogen too rapidly can cause what’s called decompression illness. That’s
the reason for the safety stop before coming all the way to the surface. That’s
also why divers aren’t supposed to fly for 18 hours after diving. Going up in a
plane reduces the pressure rapidly, which causes the nitrogen to escape too
quickly, leading to decompression illness. That’s a long way of saying that
Saturday, we stayed on land, and didn’t do any diving. It’s just as well, since
we had to drive to
Sunday, September 10, 2006
We made it through airport security without
incident. The scanners at the
We were enjoying waiting at the gate for the plane
to arrive, watching the minutes count down with intense anticipation. At one
point, we noticed that there wasn’t actually an airplane at the end of the
ramp. And yet, the monitors, and the attendant at the desk, said the flight was
still scheduled to leave on time. About 2 minutes before departure time, they announced
that the plane was having maintenance troubles, and we would have to wait a
little longer. We asked if there was time to go get some lunch and a beer (it
was nearing lunch time, after all), but the attendant said, “No!”
So, we hungrily sat back down, and waited for the
maintenance to be done. After a while, they announced that the maintenance was
going to take longer than expected, and they were going to reroute another
plane to our gate, and we would take that one back to Ohio. My guess is the maintenance
crew was taking their lunch break, even though there wasn’t time for us to grab
a bite. We were fed up with not being fed, so we went to the Applebee’s (or
whatever franchise it was) and ordered a beer and an appetizer and waited,
figuring we’d see the plane pull up. We had plenty of time, and when we were
finished, the plane still wasn’t there. Not having anything to do, we went and
sat again. While waiting, we met a man who traveled a few times a year, and he
said it seems whenever he travels, there are maintenance problems on his
flight. So, we joked that it was entirely his fault. No too long later, the
plane arrived, and those passengers debarked, and they looked pretty
aggravated, and all went to another gate, just down the way. I don’t know why the
airline didn’t just send us all to that gate, instead. Eventually, the plane
was emptied, and they let us board.
We taxied out, and were next in line for takeoff,
and the captain comes on the speaker and says that he can’t get one of the
engines to start. I stood up a little, and saw the fellow we had met earlier
and caught his eye, and wagged my finger at him, joking again that he was
delaying us. He laughed, but I think we were the only ones doing so. The
captain said he was going back to a gate, for the engine to be started by hand
(okay, he didn’t really say that), but we would not be allowed to leave the
plane (he did say that). Fortunately, the repair didn’t take long, and it held,
long enough for us to take off, fly to
Conclusion
We’re home; we both loved scuba diving, and are
looking forward to the next trip. I apologize for the anticlimactic conclusion.
I think by taking so long to write this, I was still on vacation in my mind.