Molasses Reef

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...