Florida

Today was the last day of diving this trip. Nobody was sure what the name of the dives were, because it’s a holiday weekend and we were lucky just to get moored on a ball somewhere along Molasses Reef. The reality is that all the dives are pretty close to each other and you can be moored above one spot, but wind up doing one or two of the spots right next to it. So both dives today were somewhere on Molasses reef, but they probably didn’t follow any officially named dives. We just went were we could be a little further away from all the other divers. ...

It’s a holiday weekend. All the boats are packed. Ours was no exception. We had 20 divers, 4 dive masters, and even a couple snorkelers on board. We were among the first to board and we got the premium seats close to the back. We also managed to get the best guide on the boat. If only I remembered his name so I could write it here. Unfortunately, I am terrible with names and his is now lost. But he had a plan to make sure we were the first group in the water at each dive location and it worked. There were a ton of boats at each location, so our dive master took us in a slightly different direction than all the other groups and it made all the difference. ...

Brett and Jess arrived yesterday and joined us on our dives today. It was so calm yesterday and I hoped it would be as good today, so they could enjoy some of this sweetness. It was. And they did. Both of our dives were along Molasses Reef today. Our first spot was at a place they call Ryan’s Beach. I suspect it has another name, because when they said it, the rest of the crew laughed. It’s probably something like Valerie’s Beach, but I can’t seem to look it up anywhere. ...

When we woke up this morning conditions looked epic. The trees and flags were still. The water was as flat as you can reasonably expect the ocean to get. We were worried if we let our excitement show that we might jinx it. Both dive spots this morning were on Molasses Reef, which is a fairly shallow reef, so I hoped the calm water and shallow depths would lead to some good pictures. When we arrived at Spanish Anchor, it wasn’t as clear as I thought it would be, but it was as calm as anywhere I’ve been diving. ...

We hit two spots on French Reef today. We started things off at Woody’s Ledge. The surface was calm, but the visibility wasn’t good – 25 to 30 feet at most. They put us in a group with a bunch of folks that hadn’t been under water in a while and needed to do a weight check before we got going. So we all jumped in the water and Alison (our dave master) started helping them do their neutral buoyancy checks. Charmaine popped her head up and yelled “a huge turtle!” and immediately descended to check it out. I decided to follow her instead of staying with the group. The group was going to be fine, but I needed to stay with my buddy. ...

It rained again last night. I worried that the water would be rough again today, but it wasn’t. We bought some dramamine yesterday and took some before bed. We took another round this morning before heading out. I’m not sure if it was the drugs or the calm waters, but we were both fine all day. We did our second deep dive today. We decided to do all our deep dives before Brett and Jess get here. I don’t think Jess enjoys going deep and there’s certainly no need to go deep to see anything other than wrecks. The wreck we saw this morning was the USCG Duane. I took the camera down inside the enclosure for the first time. I brought the big flash because I knew there wouldn’t be a lot of light at depth. That full rig is pretty heavy. Speaking of heavy, I took 18 pounds of weight today, which proved to be way too much. It’s easy to compensate for too much weight, but there’s no way to compensate for having too little. Tomorrow I may try a little less. ...

I really like how Rainbow Reef runs their scuba business. Everything is top-notch and professional. The rental gear is always high-end and brand new. They make you do some of the work, but it helps you do things right. I really like them. They are why we came back to Key Largo. We were so impressed with the way they did things when we were here doing our Advanced Open Water certifications last year. ...

We took a taxi to the airport. It costs about $40 each way (after tip). Parking at the airport is $15 per day, so the $80 taxi ride is a money saver for any trip longer than 4 days. This trip is going to be a bit longer than that. When you hire a taxi to take you to the airport, you never know if they’ll pick you up or drop you off on time. Will they drive the same route you drive? Do they drive faster or slower than you? So you plan on a little extra time. We also allowed a little more extra time because we knew we would be checking a bag filled with our scuba stuff. We had scheduled the driver to pick us up at 9:30. He called at 9:20 to make sure he had the right address. He showed up right on time, drove the shortest route, and got us to the airport by 9:50. We walked straight to the self-check kiosk, checked in, turned in our bags, walked through security without stopping (there’s never a line in San Jose) and sat down at our gate. I guess we didn’t need as much buffer as we thought. We had nearly two hours until our flight was scheduled to leave. ...