My So-Called Dive Life
12/24/2006 - Key Largo Diving, Dec 12, 2006
Oops, belated trip report for my dives with the BD taking his AOW and Nitrox.
As he was sick the day before, we left dock with his scolpalamine patch firmly ducktaped in place for a morning dive on the Duane. The 45 minute boat ride was pretty rough but no one was sick. We moored up and splashed down on the Duane. One of the mooring balls was missing, only 2 were in place. I have come to know this wreck pretty well so I didn't care that I didn't know what mooring ball we were going down on. It turned out to be the bow. (the bow and stern were the only mooring balls remaining) I passed the BD and his instructor going down...it was GORGEOUS! Very little current, good viz. Dick from Buffalo was my buddy again, and I led the way through the wreck. Going into one of the cargo holds, I turned a quick corner to enter another, and ended up a foot away from the mouth of a 400 lb Goliath Grouper. It was AWESOME! I turned around to see if Dick had entered behind me yet (he hadn't) so I followed the Grouper as he turned and swam out another door. By the time I reached the door and exited the wreck, he was gone and not to be seen again. Dick followed me maybe 10 seconds later but we never saw the grouper again. I guess he was sleeping in and I interrupted his morning nap. Poor thing. But that was as close as I'd come to one and it's daunting to see how HUGE that mouth is!!! Dick and I stayed as long as possible, and met the others as they were headed up the line. Great dive. The Duane usually is.
Second dive was a spot called Pickles Reef. Named thus for the wreck that lies nearby of a ship that had been carrying wartime contraband cement in pickles barrells. The water and seeped in, the wood had rotted away, leaving only the now concrete shaped barrels. They DM recommended going the other way due to surge and not trying to find the wreck. I splashed down and never did find Dick, so I decided to find the wreck. Everyone else went the other way, I went towards the wreck. And found it quickly....along with the DM pulling up lobster. Hmmmm. Sneaky guy didn't want us messing up his bug spot. But it was pretty cool actually, the wreck was just piles now, the pickle barrels were pretty cool. One nice sized nurse shark swam by, I found out later he had been scared away from his overhang by the divers who had swam the other way. After checking out the wreck, I headed along the channels going the other way, saw lots of life on this dive, several eels, 2 more nurse sharks, one large one, lots of fish. I saw one good sized legal black grouper, and also a nice hogfish. Both looked...yummy. :) The Grouper was under a ledge and fled quickly. The hogfish seemed quite oblivious to the fact that he was a very tasty specimen as well as living in a hunting allowed zone. He hung around entirely too long, he could have been dinner 3 or 4 times over. I tried to scare him a little, just hoping he might think to HIDE the next time a diver came around. Or find the Marine sanctuary closeby. He was quite handsome but as fish tend to be, not overly bright. Anyway, spend about 45 minutes just playing around, never got deeper than 43 feet. Very easy pretty dive.
On Dive 3, (the afternoon dive, we went back to dock.) we went to Conch Wall for Ed to do a drift for his last AOW dive. We went down in about 60 feet and drifted along a wall. We were following Ed, and spent a nice 23 minutes drifting. Ed got called back by the DM for going too deep once. Heehee...usually that's ME getting in trouble for that. After 23 minutes he thumbed it and we started heading up. When we surfaced he showed me his computer...he was totally locked out and showing him in DECO. I couldn't see what his DECO obligation was because he hadn't showed me on the way up, and now we were past the ceiling so just locked out. That made NO sense to me because while I hadn't been paying that close of attention to my exact numbers, I remember my last reading as 18 minutes of BTR. Since we were on the same gas and same profiles and silimar computers, I couldn't imagine how that could hapen. I waited til after the 24 hours were up and tried to read it, but no luck. I called Oceanic, and they explained that the computer is out of calibration, it needs to be sent in. Apparently the computer is reading that we're at an altitude of greater than 14,000 feet. I live in South Florida....I found that hysterical. The only elevation for miles is the landfill. So...no one got bent, just a computer error. Good reason to carry a backup!!
But it was a nice couple of days of diving, BD is AOW and nitrox certified, I got my Keys fix. All is good. :)
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