Florida Keys - Day 06

THIS was the one I was really looking forward to. The General Hoyt S. Vandenberg. Second-largest artificial reef in the world at a whopping five hundred and twenty two feet long, sitting in about 150 feet of water. Two big radar dishes on top. I was jacked. Pumped. Stoked. Other positive adjectives. Plus, it was nice to go out with the same boat and the same folks two days in a row.

Got to the dive shop early am after a good night's sleep. Ah! The first of precious few! What a DIFFERENCE a good night's sleep makes! I was hoppin' and boppin' around in the car, sippin' my coffee and listening to the Ricky Gervais XM radio show of olden times. Felt amazing. Cruising down the Overseas highway.  Watching the sun come up.

The sun cracked open like a soft-boiled egg over the big clouds low over Key West. I rolled into town, right up to the dive shop like I owned the place. Parked, grabbed my camera, and strolled through the Hyatt, past the turtle tank, past the quiet parrot, and out onto the dock.

I saw some familiar faces from the day prior, both in the crew and the participants. Made fast friends with a british family not afraid of cold water, but sad their son with ear trouble couldn't join them on their dive. We chatted, and because there were an uneven number of us, I got tacked on to a buddy pair as the big ol' third wheel. But we all had cameras, so somehow it seemed right.

We hopped into the water and were immediately surrounded by jellyfish. Tons of them. The current was mild though, in spite of what we'd expected. Those of us not wearing wetsuits or exposure suits raced down the line as fast as we could, trying to escape the terrible tingling sting of the unknowing jellyfish. Before we could even get halfway down, the ship began to emerge from the blue, in all its massive splendor.

We settled down on the deck, and almost immediately, the current started up. We were on the wrong side of the boat for it to, in danger of being blown off the wreck altogether. I tried to duck behind the side of the ship to stay out of the wind. This thing was huge. 

The craziest thing about the Vandenberg is that because it hasn't been down there very long, it's remarkably intact...and thus, really eerie. It feels like at any moment, someone's going to step out of a doorway and onto the deck, ready to do a days work at sea, oblivious to the fact that their ship has indeed sunk.

There are still ladders, doorways, flags, ropes, all things that belong above-water. It's very bizarre to see...somehow it's like it just doesn't belong...or you don't belong. Maybe you've slipped into the afterlife where all the world is flooded, and you were none the wiser. Maybe this is what it's like to be a ghost, floating lightly through the graveyard of a world that's moved on, leaving ships and human endeavour behind.

We also saw a barracuda on the hunt, hustling to stay still in the current, eyeing up a school of fish nearby.

And hilariously, a jellyfish, caught up in the current, got stuck on the side of a pole on the ship, like a newspaper on a telephone pole swept up in the wind. 

It couldn't move...it was trapped in the heavy current, like a cartoon.

There were a number of elevator shafts that just went black after a few feet. Apparently most of them go right to the seafloor, at 150 feet. That's deeper than divers can go, until you get into the tech side of things. 

This massive satellite dish is called the skeleton dish, and was the smaller of the two satellites on board. We didn't make it across the the second one, sadly. 

It was an incredibly haunting experience, and I don't think i'll forget it as long as I live. It's very strange looking at these pictures and saying to myself "I was there...I was actually there."

The second dive of the day we were hoping for Vandenberg part 2, and the Captain of our boat said that's what he was hoping for, but some internal shop politics got in the way, and the shop radioed out to say that we had to go to Joe's Tug. Nobody was really happy about it...the captain says usually it's captain's call, but someone had booked the charter today, and it was Joe's Tug for sure. We were sad...I could've done 10 dives on the Vandenberg and not been bored. Truly, this was a dive deserving of the moniker "Awesome". It genuinely inspired awe. 

Joe's tug was no Vandenberg, but it was no slouch either. The Captain told us this fantastic story of how it was sunk by a few Key West drunks in the middle of the night. It had been sitting, rotting in the harbour for ages, and the plan was to intentionally sink it (on the site the Vandenberg now sits), but it had been put off, put off, and put off. Finally, a number of the local boat captains, after a heavy night of drinking decided that now was the time. 3:30 am, the captain of our boat handed them a case of beer and set them off into the night. He opted not to go along. With the coast guard boat just across the harbour, these three maniacs towed Joe's Tug out into the bay, aiming for their targeted site. However, the ages it had spent rotting in the harbour meant it was taking on a lot more water than they'd expected. Eventually, there was nothing to do but cut the lines with hatchets and let it sink - they'd pulled it as far as they could. One of the guys threw on his scuba gear and rode it down to the bottom.

The next day, during a dive, one dive boat radioed the other, shouting "Hey! Come this way! Joe found a tug-boat!!!" And Joe's tug became a dive site from that moment on.

It's seen better days, Joe's tug. A few hurricanes have blown through Key West, and it's been broken up and strewn about liberally. But a number of big chunks are still in tact.

We came down right on the bow, careful to avoid the fire coral on the end of the descent line. It was quite a bit bigger than it had looked on the surface. The best part is, the whole wreck is surrounded by reef, so you can't lose. It's either tugboat debris, or excellent reef. 

Big, filter-feeding barrel sponges soaked up the nutrients from what little current there was. We saw all sorts of little fish, darting in and around the coral. 

The rear of Joe's tug is also more or less in tact, though partially buried in the sea bed. We found all sorts of bits and pieces. Ropes, gas tanks, coils of cable. Very cool.

Some fish took refuge in a crevice that had opened, to stay out of the current. 

My dive buddy also spotted a puffer fish! It was tucked in a little crevice, but decided to come out for a swim. We had a look, and I followed him around a little bit for some footage. Just a little guy, but with the most incredible eyes. It looked like there was a whole universe in those eyes. 

A mighty barracuda presides over his domain, in the gloom.

More fish take shelter from the wind, tucked behind the boat. 

I'm not sure what kind of fish this was, but it was extraordinarily well camouflaged. My dive buddy spotted this one too...I don't know how people spot these things sometimes. It's slightly more visible from me altering the contrast, but to the naked eye it was nigh unseeable. It makes you wonder about all the things you don't see when diving...things your eyes have roamed over a hundred times.  

The fuel tanks were particularly cool to see...very sobering, reminding you that this was a real ship that did real work, and not just a decoration for divers to enjoy. You can see the fire coral all over the prow of the ship...that I managed to avoid all the way to the end of the dive, until I was taking this photo above. Suddenly, the current surged and I was pushed into it, and came out with a nasty welt on my shoulder. Fire coral means business. Ow. 

That was the last of the diving in Key West, and sadly, the last of the diving on this trip as well. Tomorrow it was off to meet my family up in Sarasota, to begin the rest & relaxation portion of the trip. It was a departure, but at the same time, I was excited to stop waking up early, driving for hours, and rushing about to pack in everything a day needs. I already missed diving though. I missed it so much. The idea of not getting underwater the next day made me genuinely sad. If I were to do this trip again, I think I would just dive the Vandenberg and the Spiegel over and over and over again. Those giant ships are just in a category of their own...it's too much to even comprehend, and you spend your whole dive in awe and disbelief. You are here, and this is real, regardless of how bizarre and unlikely it might feel. This ship had a life once, and the people on it had lives as real to them as your life is to you. It's a whole other world, and now, it's only experienced by the lucky few who have the chance to descend to its depths. I won't forget it. 

Hopefully, next year, I'll return to do it again.

-Jeff

Florida Keys - Day 05

Yet ANOTHER false start! This one was in NO WAY my fault. And it's probably just as well.

After the long, long drive last night, and prepping my camera for diving, I got to sleep at about 3:30. I then woke up at 5:30 to drive down to Key West for my dive. Two hours sleep was not really enough. I snagged a double espresso at the gas station. Still stopped for a 15 minute nap en route.

I finally rolled into Key West a few minutes later than I needed to. Pulled up to the dive centre around 8:30 and raced inside asking if I was too late to catch the morning boat. "We didn't go out." he says. "Why?" I asked. "Too rough. 4-6 foot swells."

I was diving those in Key Largo! Why not here? The guy was grumpy too, and didn't have a great attitude. I was frusturated. AGAIN, I'd gotten up super early, and AGAIN, I would not dive. Unbelievable. I stormed down the street to another dive shop, and asked if the conditions were so bad that they wouldn't go out in them. The guy goes "Nah, our boat's out right now. We went out." Could you take me in the afternoon, I asked. "Well we're full up...but if you wanna stick around for a little, there's always cancellations. Come back in a bit when i'll know for sure."

He seemed like a really nice guy, and he was really trying to help me out. He even called a couple of other shops to see if anybody else had room. I cooled my jets and went to have a good breakfast to try to relax. I'm a breakfast person, and normally a relaxed person, so I figured one return to form might bring along another.

Wasn't much in terms of a greasy spoon breakfast joint in Key West...it mostly operates at night, so at 9 in the morning it's largely a ghost town...with the exception of the giant novelty tour bus shaped like a train that drives through the streets, towing little carts shaped like train cars. It rumbles along at all hours. I wound up at a Denny's, which was actually pretty good.

At the risk of being offensive...down here in South Florida, being ludicrously overweight could be a sport. People go hard. It's a little bit scary. I saw a woman in Dennys who easily is the largest human being i've ever seen in real life. How do you get to be that size? Isn't there a point where you see yourself and think, you know, maybe I should eat a bit less. It's like there's no filter. She struggled to her feet over a period of minutes, every movement accompanied by laboured breathing. She genuinely had trouble just standing up. It was obscene. It made enjoying a greasy Denny's breakfast a little more difficult than usual. But I digress.

Key West is the southernmost point in the United States, and boy do they want you to know about it. Everything is "The Southernmost Dive Shop!", "The Southernmost Ice Cream!", "The Southernmost Duck Tour!". Because if there were two coffeeshops, why would you drink coffee at the Second Southernmost coffeeshop? You wouldn't want to come that far and then fall just short, after all. So I had breakfast at the Southern Most Denny's.

You better believe it!!! Don't think even for a second that anyone was having breakfast south of me. Not at a Denny's in the continental United States, that's for goddamn sure.

After breakfast, I stepped into a little local coffee shop across the road (the southernmost, i'm sure) and sat down to write the blog I'd missed the previous day. I sipped a nice coffee, and relaxed. It was good. I checked out some of the footage I'd gotten. I was pleased. Once 12:45 rolled around, I went back to the dive shop to see if I was going to get in the water today.

Lo and behold, Southpoint came through for me and got me out, full gear, on an afternoon boat. The swells had subsided significantly, so the seas were pretty reasonable on the way out. This did not stop a number of people from getting seasick. I've never seen so many seasick people on dive boats in my life as I have in Florida. It's bizarre. But I got in the water! We did two dives at Eastern Dry Rocks and at the imaginatively named Sand Key.

Saw a big, BIG barracuda that I tried to mostly keep away from. He kept prowling around the place like a wolf.

The surge was up big time so most of the dive was spent trying not to crash too violently into the coral. All the sea fans and other filter feeders folded gently in the rocking breeze.

It was nice though. Really shallow, so very bright, colourful, and full of fish.

The nice thing about shallow dives, is the colour red. You see, red is the widest wavelength, which is why it appears first in the rainbow; and as such is the first to be filtered out by water. It's so wide it gets refracted out all over the place, and then removed altogether. At around 60 feet it starts to appear desaturated, by 90 it's almost completely vanished, and at 100 red simply appears gray to the naked eye. When you shine a flashlight on it at depth, you can see it vibrantly, because only a small amount of water is between the light and the red object. But shallow dives let you see all the reds in all the fish and coral, and it's quite vibrant and a noticeable difference.

The big highlight of this trip was on the second dive. We surfaced after the first and compared notes with the other divers. Some folks had seen a Nurse Shark, others saw Dolphins tear by at full speed...the boat was full of chatter of all the wild and dangerous wildlife we'd all seen below the sea. I'd only seen the barracuda...and...well, I mean a parrotfish might give you a nasty nip. But on the second dive, I saw a big 6 or 7 foot Nurse Shark.

Not an amazing photo but I was trying to stay at a reasonable distance. A real nurse shark this time, by daylight it was easy to identify. It was tucked under a little overhanging bulge of coral, doing its best to stay out of the surge. It still was tossed around a little bit though, but man...what a cool thing. We got right up close to it. Maybe...four feet away? So cool. I've seen precious few sharks diving, so it was a real treat. My dive buddy was similarly impressed, holding up his arms like a fisherman would, in awe of the size of this fantastic animal. The rest of the dive was not highly eventful, but very nice. Beautiful reef, beautiful coral formations, and lots of fish. All bundled together trying not to be tossed about in the surge. Like schoolkids waiting for the bus in a blizzard. The sunlight broke the water's surface and we leisurely swam back to the mooring line to make our ascent.

 We were the last two back on board for the first dive, so we made a point of getting back in decent time for the second one. I'd lost track of what time it was, since my computer likes to show you how long you've been down, and not what time it actually is...though i've since learned how to see both. We powered back to Key West in the afternoon sun, warm and happy and a little soaked from the spray coming over the side of the boat. Today was a good day.

I stopped outside Key West for some good mexican food just off the Overseas Highway. Eating in restaurants by oneself is a bit weird...though something you get used to when travelling alone. Especially in a place as tourist-thick as this...servers usually know. The bill arrives as i'm finishing the main course, with still half a beer to go. Doesn't matter that I haven't asked for it. They seat you by the window, if there is one, but often in a corner where there's room. You get great service, because they know you won't be there long. Not talking whilst eating really shortens your visit. Good food, though. 

As I travelled back to my hotel room along the highway, I pulled over to remark on something I'd seen before...a little zeppelin, coasting along above the keys. It was much further east than the last time I'd seen it, and it reminded me of a lonely little fish, in the sea of the sunset sky.

As it coasted off into the moonrise, I couldn't help but think about the vastness of the earth...just as you've gotten a peak into a world that's not ours, you're reminded of the size and magnitude of the world that is. Key west is ever so small, in the grand scheme of things...and we have so many places still to go. The sun is hot, and the night is warm.

It's nice.

-Jeff

Florida Keys - Day 04

I did it! I got in the water.

After an exhausting and exasperating day yesterday, dashing all over Jupiter and spending most of my time reading, I finally managed two dives. Thank goodness.

Woke up early at the Super 8 and scarfed a continental breakfast. What was continental about it, i'm not sure. It might as well be called the "minimum effort breakfast". But I digress.

Drove up the highway with the stupidest name in the world; US Highway A1A Alternate (there's no US Highway A1A regular, just to clarify) and arrived at the dive centre with time to spare. Loaded my free rented gear onto the boat, calibrated my dive computer for the Nitrox mix I would be diving, and off we set!

For those that don't know, Nitrox is sort of the opposite of what it sounds like. It's not extra Nitrogen, but extra Oxygen in your air mix. Standard air is 21% Oxygen, 70% Nitrogen, and 10% miscellaneous. Nitrox can be anywhere from 24% Oxygen, up to 50% Oxygen (for the truly brave, and the tech diving crowd). The reason you would want this in your tank is because often, it's not lack of air that limits your bottom time, it's loading too much Nitrogen into your blood. After a dive, you have a surface interval before your next one, so that your body can off-gas the excess Nitrogen it's built up by breathing air at depth. Because the air is being compressed by the ocean, the deeper you are, the more air you consume in one breath, and thus, the more Nitrogen you take on in one go. Nitrox lets you stay down deep longer, and lets you have a shorter (or non-existant) surface interval. But as always...there's a catch.

You want to avoid building up Nitrogen in your blood because of a fun thing called Nitrogen Narcosis...it's basically like being a bit stoned. Like when the dentist gives you Nitrous Oxide, and you feel silly and giggly. This is a problem because people will do things like offer their regulator to a sea turtle, and then drown. With Nitrox, you avoid this risk, but you get a much scarier one...Oxygen Toxicity.

Because you're building up extra Oxygen in your body rather than extra Nitrogen, you get to fear the demon of Oxygen Toxicity. When the Oxygen Partial Pressure of your body reaches 1.6 (this is the pressure the extra oxygen in your blood exerts on the rest of the gasses in you) you'll tense up. Your limbs seize, you have convulsions, sometimes blackouts, and of course then there goes your regulator and you drown. So - you can stay down longer, but you have a very, very serious maximum depth to worry about.

Fortunately, you can just punch the mix into your computer, and it'll tell you your Oxygen Partial Pressure at any given time, and warn you if you get too close to your maximum depth. It's a little nerve wracking though when you're skirting the edges of it. Picture this:

You'll be at the side of a sunken ship, and you see something cool on the sand below it. Maybe a goliath grouper or something else amazing. You want to go check it out. You look down and your computer says you're about 5 metres above your maximum depth. The oxygen sat numbers patiently flash 1.21...(1.4 is danger, 1.6 is extreme danger, over 1.6 is convulsions, and likely death). You're well within your limits...and it doesn't look that far. How tall is this ship anyway? So you descend. Slowly.

The number rise and sink accordingly...4 metres, 3 metres, 1.24, 1.28...and you're torn between looking where you're going, and looking at your wrist. You pop your ears to relieve the pressure. Another diver swims by below you, and you feel better. Then you think wait...is he diving with the same Nitrox mix as me? Your eyes snap back to your computer, 2 metres, 1.5, this is getting a bit too close for comfort. How far is the bottom? Your oxygen numbers rise. Out of the corner of your eye, the other diver below you leisurely swims along the bottom, poking his head under the ship to see what secrets he can ferret out. Your computer starts beeping, startling you. You stop your descent, a little shaky, fearful of what's next. 

Why did I even come down here again?

It's very easy to be swept away but all the amazing things the ocean has to tease you with. Everything is foreign down here, even man made objects are transformed into fish villages, new reef, and predator stomping grounds. But you have to remember that you do not belong here. We're so luck to even see this much. We have to know our limits. Especially the ones we impose on ourselves. 

It's not all so scary as that though. If there's something interesting, and it looks too deep to go...you just leave it :P

Anyway... I got WAY off course there. I was talking about these dives. The first one was awesome - they called it the Wreck Trek. Three shipwrecks, all within a couple hundred metres of each other. The weird thing is, due to some odd Atlantic undercurrents, some days the water's beautiful, other days it's quite cool, and today in particular it was 25 degrees....right up until about 80 feet. Then you pass through a thermocline, and it abruptly drops to 19 degrees C. Glad I took a full-body wetsuit.

 

It was a pretty cool dive (no pun intended) and in spite of the current up top, the bottom current was pretty easy to deal with. We drifted over each of the three wrecks in turn, doing a couple neat swim-throughs and seeing a couple of massive Goliath Grouper. They were each about the size of a person. I didn't get a good photo of one, but I did roll a bit of footage on one that came right up close to me. That'll be still to come. 

The first ship was called the Zion, but I can't remember the names of the others. Fairly small, except for the last, but with a lot of wildlife hanging out. We dove with a spearfisherman who spotted and killed 6 lion fish (they're an invasive species here, and you'll see wanted posters for them). He was an interesting character...first one down and last one up on each dive, and going deeper than most of us. Must've been part fish. All in all, a pretty excellent dive.

After surfacing, we found most of the Americans so shaken by the cold, that no less than six people opted out of the second dive. I couldn't believe it! 19 is a little chilly, but hardly freezing, and these people were all in wetsuits! I felt as the only Canadian, I had to make it known that 19 degrees does not constitute cold water. I was met with mixed reactions. Anyway, more reef for the rest of us.

The second dive we did was on a reef nearby. It was pretty good, but not stunning. Though we did  have a few very spicy moments. The first came almost right away.

He was a little camera-shy, but this big 3 foot loggerhead turtle hung out with us for a little bit, before clumsily lumbering off to...whatever it is turtles have going on at 11 in the morning. That was a cool encounter.

We also saw a couple of massive goliath grouper, and again, I wasn't able to get great shots of them, but we did get to see them hustle at top speed under the reef, and they are fast for a fish that size! Must've been like 400 pounds. Although I kept hearing afterwards that for Goliath Grouper, those were quite small, and that there are ones seen often the size of a Volkswagen Microbus. That's crazy to imagine. These ones were big enough, thank you. I'd love to see one though. Maybe tomorrow...

Anyway, most of the ledge looked like this (above), coral, and small fish life. One or two lobsters under some rocks, and one crab who had seen the losing end of a serious fight. Maybe an eel? If so, he didn't come out to play. It was not a bad dive, but not an unbelievable one. And not as cold as the first!

I was relieved to finally be in the water, and diving all morning made me feel a lot better. I looked at my options for the afternoon...I needed to make up yesterday's dives, but I wasn't sure I wanted to do more diving in Jupiter. It was neat, but not amazing. I felt like the keys would have more to offer, so I figured I'd do a morning and an afternoon dive in Key West tomorrow.

In the meantime, I had a whole afternoon and evening to kill, and so when I realized I was 3.5 hours from my hotel, but only 3 hours from where my whole family had just arrived today, I decided to go surprise them for dinnertime.

I drove across the state of Florida, from the Atlantic side to the Gulf side, in just under 3 hours, and arrived just in time to catch my family sitting down for a beer before dinnertime! They were sufficiently surprised, and it was nice! We all went to the Outback, and had a great dinner together.

After coming back, I showed my Uncle my underwater shooting rig (he's a big cameraphile as well), gave my Dad the details on my arrival Tuesday, and took off back to the keys. It was a long, long night of driving, and I was really, really tired. I stopped a few times for naps.

Upon finally arriving (LATE) back to my hotel, I dumped my camera's cards, charged my batteries, assembled my housing and threw myself in bed as soon as was humanly possible. I had to wake up early to drive two hours to Key West in the morning, and it was looking like I was doing it on very little sleep. Oh well...warm water and big shipwrecks awaited me in the morning, and I couldn't wait! Another great day under the sea.

'till then!

-Jeff

Florida Keys - Day 03

As Alexander would've said...today was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Ugh. Let's begin at the beginning.

Wake up...at 4am. Three hour drive from Islamorada to Jupiter, where i'm diving today. I haul my butt out of bed and hit the road early. The drive is nice...there's no one on the road. I sip a fancy coffee and make good time getting to Riverwalk dive centre.

7:30 - Arrive at riverwalk a half hour too early. No biggie. I sit down on a bench and read some Stephen King. It's a nice morning. I even managed not to walk into the giant spiderweb in the parking lot.

8:00 - No one from the dive centre is here yet...I knock on the door to the shop but it's empty. There's no one. I start doing laps around the area, over to the harbour, back to the other side of the store...nobody.

8:30 - Still no one. I drive down the road a bit to McDonalds to leech the WiFi. Yes, this is the right address. No, there's not another address anywhere on their website. No, I don't have any e-mails from them.

9:00 - Still no one. The boat was supposed to go out at 9. I am running out of ideas. I start driving up and down the road to see what I can see.

9:30 - I spot another dive centre across the road. They're not open yet. I figure okay, i'll wait until they're open and see if maybe I can dive with them. In the meantime, I turn on my cell and in spite of the roaming charges I phone the hell out of the Riverwalk dive centre...but get no response.

10:00 - The other dive centre opens. They let me know that the Riverwalk boats go out of a marina about fifteen minutes away. How was I supposed to know that? I get in my car.

10:15 - I arrive at a place marked "Jupiter Dive Centre". They have their own website. I was booked to dive with them tomorrow, but apparently, the Riverwalk dive boats go out of here as well. Nice and easy for the lay person to figure out. There's no afternoon boat, but they offer to put me on the afternoon boat tomorrow. I say let's hold off on that...i'm determined to dive today.

11:00 - I return to the other dive shop. They say they can put me on a shark dive at 4! Amazing success. I pay my dollars, gear up, load the car, and confirm (and double confirm) where and when to get the boat. It's a little sketchy though...he keeps asking how experienced I am, I say well enough I s'pose. He says he just wants to make sure I know what I'm in for, and that it will be a crazy adventure and not a leisurely dive. I say that's fine. When I ask if it's a shark feeding dive, he says, this is the type of boat where what happens on the boat, stays on the boat. I'm skeptical...and a little uneasy, but at this point, I've been awake for 7 hours and still haven't dived yet. I'm getting in the goddamn water.

12:00 - I have a mini-breakfast/lunch. It's bagel and egg, with spinach. Suits me just fine. I hop on the wifi and find a Starbucks with a patio to hole up at until it's time to dive at 4.

3:00 - I'm powering through this Stephen King book. I don't want to miss this boat, so I head up to the marina early. The directions take me exactly where i'm supposed to be, first try. Awesome. Boat's not there yet, but i'm early. No biggie.

3:30 - Boat should be here to load up by now...but it isn't. Bartender at a nearby bar lets me know where they park and where they come in, but both spots are empty. A cop, armed with dual pistols and wearing body armor is skulking about, but I think nothing of it.

3:45 - Boat still isn't here. I wind up standing next to the cop at the refueling dock. He asks if i'm waiting for the dive boat to come in. I say yes. He asks if I know anyone on that boat. I say no, and ask why? He says he wanted to ask me to call and find out how close they were to being back in port. I told him they should've been back by now, and call the dive centre to see what the fuck is up. They say they'll get the captain on the radio and call me back.

4:10 - Dive centre calls back. Says they're so sorry...but there IS no 4:00 boat. They don't know what happened. Apparently the captain cancelled 'cause there weren't enough people to go out. He's a 3rd party charter. Communication breakdown. Seems somewhat suspect, if you ask me. They say maybe they can put me on a night dive somewhere and ask me to head back to the shop. I leave the cop by the seaside, without saying anything. I'm suspicious, but don't want to be anymore involved than I already seem to be.

4:30 - Back at the dive centre, no one's got a night dive happening tonight. They apologize and apologize. They offer to book me tomorrow, but i'm already booked with Jupiter Dive Centre. They do a really nice thing, refund all my money and let me keep the equipment to take diving with their rival dive centre the next day, as an apology for not getting me on a boat. I've now been awake more than twelve hours...i've spent three of those driving, and another 3 at a Starbucks. None of them have been spent diving. What a colossal waste. I'm glad i'll get underwater tomorrow for a lot less dollars...but now i've spent a whole day on vacation on very little sleep....doing....NOTHING. I'm pissed.

5:00 - I return to the Starbucks for lack of another place to go (I'm 3 hours from my hotel room), and over the next hour, finish my book. They gave me a half-price coffee 'cause of some promotion. It's small consolation for the absence of diving.

6:00 - I angrily sit and eat at the Outback. Everything tastes like butter, fried in butter. It's made pleasant only by the giant beer and low price. I play candy crush by myself at a table, and don't know what my next move is. I drink my beer and try to get a handle on my frusturation.

6:45 - I've decided not to be angry...it's only going to make an already irritating day worse. I check the sunset time, and it's scheduled for just after 8. Plenty of time to find a good vantage point.

7:15 - I find a beautiful lighthouse at the river's edge. It's very nice, but the bend in the river hides the sun, so I go back across the bridge and find a small fishing pier instead.

7:30 - I finally feel good, for the first time today. The sunset is really beautiful, the weather is nice, and tomorrow, I will dive again. Deep breaths. Serenity now.

8:00 - The sun sinks behind the clouds, and then the horizon. It's a nice note to end on...but it's no dive. No sir. I check into the cheapest motel in Jupiter with the money i've saved on renting gear. Might as well save myself 6 hours of driving, and several hours of sleep. It's only a few dollars more than what I would've spent on gas, anyway. I turn on Shark Week and blog my frustration away, and I feel a tiny bit better. One thing's for sure...

Come hell or high water, I am diving tomorrow.

-Jeff

Florida Keys - Day 02

Day 2! The wild whirlwind continues after sleeping only 5 more hours before waking up to head out again. My hotel's in Islamorada, and I'm diving out of Key Largo, so it's a short 30 minute jaunt up to where I've got to get in the water, and I have to have my housing assembled and ready to go first! I scrambled everything together quickly in the dark of my hotel room, making sure seals are watertight, aligning the focus gear, hooking up the plant velcro that's keeping my housing from swivelling apart, and bolting on the handles. I'm ready.

I arrive at the dive shop with time to spare, and get a leash for my housing so I can let go of it without fear (for a moment, anyway). Today i'm diving the Spiegel Grove - a 500 foot shipwreck sunk in 2002. It was intentionally sunk, to create artificial reef for the keys, however everything that could've gone wrong, went wrong. It wound up sitting with its bow sticking out of the water, and they couldn't get it to go under properly. When it finally sank completely, four days later, it rolled over on its side...not at all according to plan. Luckily, a few years later, hurricane Dennis swept through Key Largo, turning the Spiegel Grove upright...just how it was always meant to be. It now sits comfortably in about 130 feet of water...but the current can be mighty fierce. 

I spoke to the two gents from North Carolina about the Spiegel Grove, they'd been on it the day before. They were saying that the current was so fierce it could blow your regulator out of your mouth. That people hanging on to the descent line looked like so many flags blowing in the wind. 

The worst part was, they were right.

We got out to sea to discover 6-8 foot swells, shaking the boat up and down like crazy. Tanks were in danger of flying out of their holders, and people were holding on to whatever was nearby. The crazier folks were smiling. "It's like a ride!" said Don, my dive buddy. "You've just got to enjoy it!"

I don't get seasick, and no heavy objects were flying at me just yet, so I felt allright about it. I allowed myself a grin and enjoyed the insane leaps and drops of the boat (which was starting to feel awfully small in the very large ocean). They briefed us on what we were into, repeating over and over to USE THE LINE. If we didn't, we were likely to be blown clear by the fierce current. What a perfect dive to take my camera underwater for the first time.

I jumped off the back of the boat, grabbed the line, and hauled myself in so they could hand me my camera down. The boat reared up about six feet in the air before I could reach the handle and then crashed back down. I kept one hand on the line and grabbed my camera with the other. That was the easy part. 

Then, I had to pull myself along the line, more or less one-handed....WITHOUT sliding my hand along it, because since fishing is allowed there, there are often hooks in the line. Oh, goody.

Imagine, if you will, a game of tug-of-war. It's you, against the twenty largest people you've ever seen in your life. But you can't see those people, so you have no idea when they're ready to pull. And there are no rules...they can pull you up, down, sideways, even back behind you. You are a fish on the end of a line, and the fisherman is having a grand mal seizure. 

I was able to use two fingers on my camera hand to try and hand-under-hand my way to the bottom of the rope. Don, my buddy, went first. I followed as quickly as I could. Luckily, once at the bottom (31.8 metres down) the current completely stopped.

The ship was really something to behold...we came down on the stern, and the very end of the ship is a huge, open-top cargo bay. I remember looking across the water and seeing what I thought was another wreck in the distance...but it was just the opposite side of the cargo bay...that's how massive this thing is. I think the biggest ship i've dived on was a barge, and it was maybe 100 feet long. This dwarfed it. You could've parked that barge in the cargo bay.

Sadly, being on the stern meant we missed out on a lot of cool swim-throughs near the bridge, and at the bow. But we still did a few that were amazing. I'll post footage once I can parse through it all, but we did one where we went through a door in the side of the ship, and then up and out of a hatch in the top of the room. That was pretty cool. Also, the still flying American flag was something to be seen. 

It was AMAZING. It blew my mind. It's such a deep dive that it had to be relatively short, but I think I could do all the rest of my dives on this trip on just this wreck, and still have an amazing time. What an incredible thing. It's hard to imagine it up above the water, in service, full of human beings. It was intentionally sunk, so no one died when this ship went down, so you're spared the apprehension of thinking on the lives lost in the rooms and decks around you. But you can't help but wonder...what was this thing? What did it do? People had jobs here. They lived lives here. And now it's just one more piece of reef, as far as the animals are concerned. Something for the silly divers to gawk at. 

The ride up the rope was a little less strenuous. There were a few big jellyfish near the top, but in the still reasonably serious current, there's not much you can do to avoid them. Just hang on to the line, and hope they don't come any closer. I managed to get my camera going while we were doing our safety stop. Here's Don flapping like a flag in the breeze.

If you look carefully at his bubbles, you'll see them streaming off to the right, instead of up. Pretty serious wind. 

We returned to the boat only to discover that two people had gotten awfully seasick, and two more had panicked in the intense current and gotten back on the boat. I felt bad...poor folks were stuck at sea for another dive, and the seas were not making it easy on them. 

Our second dive was on a reef called French Reef. The current was way less serious, but there was some intense surge (surge is like a rocking-chair current that goes back and forth). Surge is a lot more manageable because you don't have to fight to stay in one spot, but it kicks up a lot of silt and debris so visibility was less than ideal. We still made some friends.

These fish seemed unperturbed by the surge, and were content to let us get right up close and personal. 

As well, I saw some of the larger parrotfish that i've ever seen. Quite cool to watch them peck at the reef and eat.

All in all, this dive was uneventful, especially after the awe and splendor of the Spiegel Grove. It was a shallow dive, so we were able to stay down over an hour, but we didn't find too much to pique our interest. There was mention from the captain of a cave called hourglass cave, but we couldn't find it. The one saving grace was that we did find a number of very cool (very tight) swim-throughs.

A swim through is defined as any overhead passage where you can see your exit from the entry point. So no corners, no long tunnels, nothing that requires a dive light to see. That way, you're guaranteed two ways out that you know are there and can see. You don't need a cave specialty or a wreck specialty to do swim throughs. You can just swim...through. 

Anyway, the surge mucked up the vis a bit, and there wasn't a huge amount to see, but it was still a beautiful dive, and whenever we found those swim-throughs we made the most of it. I certainly enjoyed myself, and got some cool footage too. After coming back on board, we had a brief adventure en route back to shore...where one of the engines on the boat died...and then the steering gave out. 

There was a brief moment of "Uh-oh" between passengers, but no one was really in a hurry (save the poor seasick folk from earlier) so we lounged and waited for the dive centre's other boat to come help us out. I made friends with another videographer. We showed each other some stuff we'd shot. 

After a while, a wrench from the other boat, and some MacGyver tactics from the crew, we made it back to port. I snacked on the dock at the restaurant next door, then headed home for a much needed afternoon nap. 

The rest of the day was pretty lazy. I had a bit of a headache, and was still recovering from the awkward sleep schedule, so I loaded the footage off of my camera, read my book, and went for a bite to eat at this great waterside pub called the Lorelei. A live band played and everything! It was a nice way to wind down after a hectic couple of days. Tomorrow i'm diving on the mainland in Jupiter, and i've got a long...long...early drive to get there. I probably could've planned this a little better. 

Anyway, early to bed. The early...diver...catches the...fish? Okay...that's reaching. 

I only took a few photos today and mostly video, but the photos turned out great so tomorrow i'll aim to take more!

See y'all soon!

-Jeff