The Hermaphrodite Brig, Barracuda and Fire Coral

Our next stop was John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park near Key Largo. Aboard the diveboat Reef Adventures we set out on a 2-tank trip to the City of Washington shipwreck (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Washington_(ship) and the Elbow Reef. Both were shallow dives with maximum depths of 25' and extended bottom time.

First up was the City of Washington, a ship which was historically significant because it was moored near the USS Maine in the harbor at Havana, Cuba on the night of February 15, 1898. And the significance of that date is seared into the memory of every red blooded American, right?

Even more important than Feb 15, 1898 was the fact that City of Washington was a "hermaphrodite brig." Go ahead, if you don't believe me, check it out.

Okay, long story short...the City of Washington grounded on the reef off of Key Largo in July of 1917, subsequently broke apart and is now part of the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park . After a waddle across the deck and a giant stride into the water we began exploring the reef and the wreck.

Cameron and I started off trying to move away from the crowd, and for the first fifteen minutes we were generally successful. The boat captain had asked everybody to surface at 15 minute intervals to locate the boat. Since the maximum depth was only 25' yo-yo diving was perfectly acceptable...if you go deeper than 1 atmosphere your dive is over once you break the surface, regardless of the amount of air in your tank.

When we surfaced to check location after the first 15 minutes we were about 30 yards away from the diveboat and completely off of the wreck. After going back down we worked our way back to the remains of the bow. From there we swam about 30 or 40 yards down the port side of the ship. There we saw a barracuda, and down under one of the steel plates of the hull a big grouper was hanging out. We stayed and watched the grouper and the 'cuda for several minutes and then began working our way back towards the boat.



Hanging out directly under the boat was a very large barracuda. As we hovered near the boat waiting for our turn to climb back aboard, one of the divers ahead of us dropped her weight belt. The 'cuda, which I think was between 4 and 5 feet in length, shot down towards the bottom after the weight belt. The speed and agility of the fish was something to behold. A few minutes later we were back aboard, and the boat moved about 400 yards over to our next dive stop, which was the Elbow Reef.



This was another 25' dive, and was pretty unremarkable except I ran my hand through the branches of a fire coral. That stung. Badly.

Specifics for the August 9, 2007 dives:

• Location #1 - City of Washington shipwreck, Pennekamp Park
• Time In - 14:10
• Time Out - 15:10
• Exposure - 3mm full wetsuit with booties
• Weights - 16 lbs
• Air In - 3000
• Air Out - 1000

• Loation #2 - Elbow Reef, Pennekamp Park
• Time In - 15:30
• Time Out - 16:20
• Exposure - 3mm full wetsuit with booties
• Weights - 16 lbs
• Air In - 3000
• Air Out - 1300

August 8, 2007 - 15 dives, 552 minutes of bottom time

Where is the boat?

so where were we...

oh yeah...we had our 2 dives in the Cayman Islands (which today is getting pounded by Hurricane Dean). For me that was the crowning achievement of our 7-day vacation aboard the Mariner of the Seas.

We also went snorkeling in Labadee, Haiti and Cozumel, and tubing on the White River in Jamaica. Great cruise, great ship, great excursions, great food, great company. I look forward to another one next year. Maybe the Eastern Caribbean or Panama Canal.

So now it's August and I'm itching to dive again. We have done nothing since our return at the end of May except for 2 or 3 trips to the pool at Sea Hunt. Work is starting to kick my ass, and the pressure of being at home with 2 boys for an entire summer, plus work and college is really starting to kick Alison's ass.

I thought about maybe renting a couple of tanks from Sea Hunt and just sitting at the bottom of my swimming pool for a day or so, but that ultimately was more of the same. So we decided to go to the Florida Keys.

We had been discussing this off and on for several years, and finally decided to do it. So we rented a minivan (we have 2 boys ages 6 and 14, so 3-row seating for the 8 hour drive was a must,) dropped our dog Lindsay off at the Pet Paradise, and off we went.

Our destination was Hawk's Cay Resort at Duck Key. Nice place. Really nice place.

We scheduled a 2-tank trip with Tilden's Scuba Center for the next day.

So the next morning we sailed out of the marina aboard the diveboat Seafari. Our first destination was a reef in 50 feet of water known as the Channels. We were going to try and find some lobsters, but visibility was working against us. The max depth we reached was 49', and the viz was around 15'. Not very good. I was sticking my tickle stick into the reef poking around for lobsters and suddenly was about three feet away from a very large, very green Moray Eel.

I backed off, grabbed Cameron by the arm and showed him the eel. We then proceeded up and down the reef for a few more minutes searching for bugs, but there were none to be found. We went back to the eel several times before starting our trek back to the boat.

That's when things got interesting.

Prior to getting into the water, our divemaster Bob had given us instructions for getting to the reef and getting back to the boat.

A line was run from the back of the boat to a float, which in turn had a line run down to the anchor point. From there, it was about a 20 yard swim along the bottom to the reef. Bob recommended that we run a hand along the bottom as we swam from the anchor to the reef. I was busy concentrating on clearing my mask to prevent another squeeze as I descended and forgot until I was about 15 or 20 feet from the anchor. Then I started dragging the tickle stick in the sand until we reached the reef. There, I made a big X in the sand, and also made a note on my slate that our marker was a big piece of fire coral. Our instructions were to make it to the safety stop (15 feet for 3 minutes) with 900 PSI of air left in the tank. We were to be back on the boat with no less than 500 PSI.

So, thirty minutes later I checked my miniguage and saw that I was down to about 1200 PSI. I signalled to Cameron and we headed back towards the fire coral, passing our friend the moray eel in the process. Made it back to our marker with no problem, and then set out towards the anchor, and the line to the boat. Our so we thought.

I had thought nothing about not marking the first 15 or so feet from the anchor to the reef. I followed my line in the sand until it ended, and continued in the same direction. While we were on the bottom the current had picked up and visibility had gotten worse. Maybe 10' at best. We must have swam right past the anchor. I spotted what I thought was the anchor a couple of feet later, but it was just a ruined lobster trap.

What to do?

I checked air, and I was down to 1,000 lbs. Time to go up. Regardless of where we were.

I signalled Cameron to circle up. We needed to make sure we didn't come up under the boat. We also needed to look around for any sign of the boat. Slow ascents are the rule when scuba diving. It took maybe 2 minutes to come up to 15'. Long minutes. I was trying hard not to panic, and trying even harder not to show my growing concern to Cameron. At 15' I circled looking for any sign of the boat.

Nothing. I don't remember the name of the movie where the 2 divers are left at sea, and haven't seen it. I remember Curtis telling us during our Open Water course that there was no way a diver would ever be left at sea by a diveboat. Bill (the Seafari's captain that day) and Bob had briefed us on the emergency recall procedures prior to leaving the boat. There were multiple signals used to recall the divers to the boat in the event of an emergency. The most important was if we heard the boat's motor revving 3 times we were to ascend to 15' for 3 minutes, and then surface, inflate our BCs and find the boat.

I had heard nothing. Had they left us?

Cameron was frantically scribbling something on his slate. He swam over to me and held up his right arm (where the slate was strapped.)

"Where is the boat?"

I checked my watch with one hand, and grabbed the pencil from his hand with my free hand. It was 0956. We had started the safety stop at around 0952. I wrote on his slate:

"I don't know."

While I was writing this I began to descend. I had Cameron by the arm and was pulling him down with me. When I finished we were at 25'. He read it and looked at me. I gave him a thumbs up.

Not to signal that things were okay. A thumbs up to a diver means get to the surface.

It was time to surface. I kicked three times and popped right to the surface. Cameron did too. When we broached we were about 50 yards southeast of the boat. We had started the dive by swimming northwest to the reef.

I signalled Captain Bob that we were okay, and we inflated our BC's and started kicking to the boat. Within a couple of minutes we were at the stern, and climbing aboard. We were the first ones back. Bob helped us climb aboard, we pulled off our gear and we drank water. I honestly don't remember if we said anything to each other about what had happened or not.

So what did I learn? For starters, I'm going to invest in a compass before my next dive trip. I dove 5 more times while we were in the Keys without one, but not a single one was deeper than 30', and the viz was 50' plus on each trip. On each trip, however, I came to the surface every 15 minutes to find the boat. More on those dives later.

So what were the lessons learned?

The safety stop is required/encouraged to prevent decompression sickness when you dive deeper than 1 bar of atmosphere (33 feet). On this dive the safety stop also allowed Cameron and I to communicate with each other what we thought was going on, and it helped me maintain my composure. This wasn't a crisis of severe proportions, but the safety stop forced me to concentrate on what I had learned in my training, namely maintaining neutral buoyancy and remaining calm.

My dive instructor Curtis Deyo's' words were also a source of calm to me. He drummed into our heads during training that we had to stay calm when we were in the water. The skills exercises we had practiced at Ginnie were not only to train us on important emergency tasks, but also to help us remain calm if we found ourselves in a bad situation. Again, this wasn't a severe crisis, but it could have become one.

So that's that. We finished off the day with another dive at a place called The Day After. Nice, relaxing 29' dive. Lots of grunts, yellowtail snapper, parrotfish and hogfish. No lobster. Again. But it was a beautiful reef with lots of structure. No current, and the beautiful keel of the Seafari was visible from the bottom. For 43 minutes. I know. I never let it out of my sight.

There was an incident on the 2nd dive as well. While hanging on the line waiting to get back onto the boat I was removing my fins and dropped the tickle stick. Oh well.

Specifics for the 2 dives on August 7, 2007:

• Location #1 - The Channels
• Time In - 0915
• Time Out - 1000
• Exposure - 3mm full wetsuit with booties
• Weights - 16 lbs
• Air In - 3000 lbs
• Air Out - 450 lbs

• Location #2 - The Day After
• Time In - 1020
• Time Out - 1105
• Exposure - 3mm full wetsuit with booties
• Weights - 16 lbs
• Air In - 3000 lbs
• Air Out - 1500 lbs

August 16, 2007. 13 dives. 442 minutes of bottom time

3 Feet for 15 Seconds

Okay...here we go.

I will try and use this blog to chronicle my immersion (pun intended) into the world of SCUBA diving.

I was certified as a PADI Open Water diver on April 22, 2007. That was the date when my oldest son Cameron and I completed our checkout dives at Ginnie Springs, near Gainesville, Florida.

Cameron and I decided to become SCUBA divers so we could have something to do on our vacation this year. We were going on a 7-day Western Caribbean cruise...our destinations were to include Haiti, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and Cozumel...but I digress.

We took our Open Water course through Sea Hunt Scuba, in St Augustine. Our instructors were Curtis Deyo for PADI Open Water and Steve Bohannan for National Geographic.


I'm writing this post nearly 4 months after our first experiences, so I'll try and summarize them in a nutshell

• Dives 1-4 - Ginnie Springs, FL - like I said earlier, not much to see. Skills training and practice. Saw a few brim, bass and crawfish. The Santa Fe River, which is fed by the various springs at Ginnie (we dove Devil's Eye, Little Devil, Devil's Ear and Little Devil), is pretty nasty. I saw a lawnchair and empty beer cans on the bottom as we crossed the river to get to July Spring. Baby steps. I guess the really memorable part of this trip was completing our training, and the mother of one of our fellow students. You know the type. She must have overheard Curtis giving us some last minute instruction before we braved the 5' deep entrance to the spring. As her son was getting into the water she started screaming at him..."Don't forget to do your safety stop! 3 feet for 15 seconds!" Nevermind that we would be going no deeper than 20' for that first dive. Or that a safety stop is supposed to be 15 feet for 3 minutes. Details.

• Dives 5-7 - Pompano Beach, FL - on the diveboat Coral Princess from South Florida Diving Headquarters we embarked on our first real adventure into the big swimming pool. It was a 3-tank trip that would qualify us as National Geographic divers. We visited the shipwreck Ancient Mariner, did a drift dive on the Sea Ranch reef and finally dove on the wreck of the SS Copenhagen. Baby steps. I got a horrible mask squeeze (what is a mask squeeze? Check this out http://www.diversalertnetwork.org/medical/faq/faq.asp?faqid=46) on the trip down the line on Ancient Mariner. On the Sea Ranch we did see a sea turtle. I saw my first trumpetfish on the Copenhagen. Mainly though, this trip was about getting our sea legs (no pun intended) and getting comfortable in the water. More baby steps. The maximum depth on this series of dives was 70' on the Ancient Mariner. These dives were on a Thursday, and we were set to leave for our cruise on the following Sunday. So Cameron and I decided not to drive home, instead staying the night in Boca Raton. Which was perfect, because we got to dive on Friday!

• Dives 8-9 - Lantana, Florida - on the diveboat Starfish Enterprise we made our first excursions into the deep without our instructors. I was still showing the effects of the previous day's mask squeeze, but that didn't stop us from enjoying two excellent drift dives on the Seagate Reef near Boynton Beach and the Briney Gazebo reef. We had max depth on both dives of 65'. Visibility was around 25'...not great, not bad. I saw another sea turtle on this dive, and saw my first blue parrotfish. This was also my first trip into the water without the familiar equipment from our Sea Hunt training, and it convinced me that purchasing my own equipment was a must in the near future.

• Dives 10-11 - Georgetown, Grand Cayman - our raison d'etre...this was why we had gotten certified. SCUBA diving in the Cayman Islands. It lived up to its billing and then some. We rented equipment from the Mariner of the Seas, and it furthered our belief that we needed our own equipment. Off of the diveboat Hawk we did a 68' dive to Round Rock reef, and then a 50' dive to the wreck of the drugship Ossoverde. At the Round Rock, which was at the western end of Seven Mile Beach, we swam through underwater arches, and saw our first barracuda and a large Jack Crevalle. At Ossoverde we saw a loggerhead turtle, grouper, parrotfish and grunts. The visibility was 60' plus. You could read the name Hawk off of the boat's transom while sitting on the bottom. Only bad thing on this trip was having to wait nearly an hour in a driving rain for a tender back to Mariner of the Seas.
  

So there it is...10 dives in, 356 minutes of bottom time. May 24, 2007.