Finally I felt comfortable enough to go on my very first dive trip. My trusty airplane partner Reece was also a certified diver, so we decided to go out with his favorite dive shop, Brass Anchor, on their live aboard trip on the Nekton Pilot. Unfortunately, when he called the dive shop, the boat had 10 places open. When the dive shop called the boat, those places were taken. Also unfortunately, we already had the non-refundable flight to Ft. Lauderdale booked. So, we decided to fly to Ft. Lauderdale, and then rent a car and drive to Key Largo and get some diving in. I had tentatively planned about 10 dives for the week, and had found out about an amazing guy in Key Largo named Jerry Burcham who captains the H.M.S. Minnow, a small 6 passenger dive boat. I phoned Jerry and set up dives for all but one day of the week we would be staying. It would have been great if not for one thing.....Hurricane Mitch. Mitch kicked up the surf enough to have small craft advisories posted.
We arrived on Saturday late afternoon at the Holiday Inn overlooking the canal. The canal looked nice and calm. Unfortunately, the dive sites weren’t. We quickly found out that the waves were 4 to 6 feet inside the reef, and up to 9 feet outside the reef. Being a newbie diver, I didn't really know what that meant, but Jerry Burcham did, and told us that most likely we wouldn't be diving tomorrow as planned, but we should call him early in the morning to make sure. Bummer. On the drive down from Ft. Lauderdale, we had run into a few dive shops where we found that there were basically two alternate places to dive when the weather was rough. One was Tarpon Bay that was basically a dark boring hole lovingly referred to as "the pit" by one dive shop. The other was Jules Underwater Lodge, which was basically a salt water quarry. I was chomping at the bit to dive, so we arranged to dive at Jules on Sunday since it would have been impossible to go out to the reef. Seas were still 4 to 6 feet and the small craft advisories were still up.
Jules was my first exposure to salt water diving, although it truly was like a really small quarry (about 1 acre's worth) with a few interesting things sunk in it. I found that salt water tastes yucky. I found that there were a few fish that were completely unlike blue gill (including the fact that they didn't attack my ear). And I found that I needed about 10 lbs. to be neutral. We found a cannon (after Reece pointed out what it was), we found the underwater lodge (looked rather strange from the front door and in the windows....don't think I'd want to stay in there), and we found that our air consumption is just about even. This, of course, is a great thing in a buddy team :-).
Unfortunately, this was our last opportunity to dive for awhile. We could have gone back to Jules, but when you see it once, it's hardly worth it to go back. The ocean was not cooperating, however. Seas were still unchanged. The first possible day looked like Wednesday. So we settled into hanging around the hotel, looking around the Key, checking out dive shops, and trying to find a nitrox class for Reece. One of the places we checked out had a nitrox class on Wednesday that seemed to work out ok. He could take the class in the morning, and I could take the boat with him in the afternoon. This was a place called Ocean Divers, so we headed for their shop to sign up. As usual, however, we were distracted along the way. Reece found a brochure in front of a shop called Hyperbarics, Inc. that had a picture of one of the old Mark V hard hat dive helmet things. He fell head over heels with the idea of doing this, so he called the number on the brochure and found himself talking with Dick Rutkowski, the man responsible for the proliferation of nitrox for recreational diving. It was his fault that I had to work so hard on formulas to get my IANTD nitrox rating. He wrote all of their manuals for nitrox. He has now become the god of hyperbarics. We scheduled his class for Thursday.
That night we also got our bird "fix" by going to eat at Anthony's Italian restaurant. They had an outdoor cage that contained multiple cockatiels, parakeets, a Moluccan cockatoo, an Umbrella cockatoo, and a Sulfur Crested cockatoo. They had all been hand fed babies, and loved to be scritched and petted. The food was good too. This obviously helped.
Wednesday morning things looked a little better, so Reece went to his nitrox class. After he learned some really silly PADI propaganda, he picked me up to take me to the boat so he could do his dives, and I could do a bit of diving as well. The boat looked nice enough, although it was a typical cattle boat. The Divemaster was very nice, the Captain looked competent, so Reece found some spots for our 4 tanks and put our gear down while I was getting my nitrox tanks. When Reece went to load his tanks on board, he found out our gear had been moved. Someone had taken our spots. Reece then moved the gear somewhere else, and went to get his tanks. Someone else moved our gear again. He finally got the gear and tanks into one place, turned around to get my tanks, and found someone moving the gear yet again! This really was annoying. Instead of being in the back of the boat, we were stuck in the front. This, of course, also meant that we would be among the last ones out. Given Reece's penchance for seasickness, this was not a great idea. My own penchance was only slightly less extreme. I had taken a bonine an hour prior to the trip, and I was hoping it would hold.
The weather started getting rough. The tiny ship was tossed. If not for the courage of the fearless crew.....oh, wait a minute. Wrong trip. The rough and the tossed part were right though. What was worse, though, was stopping. The boat stopped and was being sloshed around in 3-4 foot seas, while all we could do was sit there and wait for people to get going so we could get off the boat. By the time we finally got out, Reece was looking rather green and I wasn't feeling so great either. Then, it got worse. The 10 lbs. that worked so well at Jules was NOT working here. I could not descend, regardless of what I did or how hard I tried. So I swam back to the boat to get more weight. Well, more like bobbed around. This made Reece even more nauseated. I got some more weight, then finally descended. Unfortunately, this didn't make it much better. The surge was really nasty. I remembered to slow down my breathing, and started looking at interesting things, like some beautiful fish, some nice coral, and all the things that I'd hoped to be able to see, although a the colors were just a little bit duller than I'd thought. I learned later that was because of poor visibility, but after the quarry, I had no idea how this could possibly be poor visibility.
As the dive progressed, I noticed it was a bit difficult maintaining position with the surge, and it was rather difficult to look at the surroundings getting closer, then farther, then closer, then farther like really bad Saturday Night Live effects. It certainly wasn't making me the happiest of creatures. When I looked over towards Reece, it seemed he was doing even worse. He had his regulator in his hand, and was getting ready with the purge button. This was a sure sign he was thinking about....um....feeding the fishies. He gave me the "let's go up" signal, so we started up. It wasn't too long until we were back on the boat, where Reece lived up to his nickname (Kermit the frog because it's not easy being green). This prompted me to follow suit (although not quite as enthusiastically) and we decided to sit out the next dive, spending it lying across the bow of the boat and not moving much. Luckily, I was feeling much better by the time we got back to port. Reece felt a bit better too. After a bit of a rest, we went out for some pretty good sushi at Sushi Nami.
Thursday morning, the thought of boats made us kinda want to hide under the bed. Since neither of us would actually fit under the bed, we decided to just stay horizontal for the morning and relax. Afternoon, we had an appointment with Larry the instructor from Hyperbarics, Inc. Reece had talked me into taking the course too, but since I couldn't lift 275 lbs. worth of equipment, I was going to skip the first part, the Mark V. Reece started to get suited up in this thing for his little trip into the nice calm harbor, and I found a place to sit. It was going to take a long long time. However, it was most amusing to watch, especially the.....ahem....cinching.
I almost even felt sorry for him. Almost. I think this was the REAL reason they wouldn't let women use the Mark V.
First they put on the suit part, then the huge heavy boots, then the nasty looking hard hat that they had to bolt on with this huge wrench. Since it was surface air supplied, they had to make sure all the hoses were working, and there was air going into the helmet, and all kinds of fun stuff. Then, Reece had to walk to a ladder, and climb down it into the harbor. Easier said than done with the heavy mess on. Slowly he lumbered. Step by step. Inch by inch. Groan by groan. Then he reached the ladder. Rung by rung. Whimper by whimper. Then the "sploosh" of the first leaded foot, the "splock" of the second, then the bubbling gooshing sound of the suit as the huge metal hulk with cute little windows slowly sunk into the water amidst a torrent of bubbles. Unfortunately, the helmet had full communications, so Reece was able to communicate with the surface. He was most excited, and it showed from the narration from the bottom. It would have been nice to be able to take pictures underwater of Reece lumbering around in this get up, but unfortunately the visibility wouldn't have been good enough. Oh well.
You may have noticed that these pictures aren't the greatest either. I was so busy packing for diving that I forgot to bring a good camera. Instead, this is a disposable. Thank the gods for Photoshop :-) I always try to remember that it could be worse. In this case, the disposable camera was also waterproof. Good thing too, the way we were splashing around with the equipment.
Next thing was the Kerby/Morgan Superlite. It was a cute little yellow helmet thing that covers your whole head and lets you look around out the window, and breathe surface supplied air. I got to try this one too, since it only weighed 200 lbs. (well, not that much, but I digress...). It was most interesting. Unfortunately, my "scrawny neck" let the air kinda bubble out the back a lot, and I wasn't able to invert or move my head around terribly much without it semi free flowing out the back of my neck. This one had communications as well, so it was fun to hear the surface asking if things were ok, and letting me know when to come back. Seemed like they didn't let me play long enough, and I was called back to the surface where we got to play with the next toy.
Our next plaything was the Aga full face mask. This was a lot of fun. This mask would make it possible to dive in the frozen quarry without even getting my face wet. Combined with a dry suit, I'd have a great time. Course, they're expensive and annoying if they stop working. The regulator is built into the mask. You have to ditch the mask in case of a failure. Of course, this means you need to carry another mask and a spare air supply.
The final toy was the one I was looking forward to - a Drager rebreather. If I ever get to do photography, I'll want to use a rebreather eventually so I can take pictures without bubbles. This was a closed system, so I had to do a lot of breathing in through the mouth and out through the nose so I could fill the rebreather and hoses with the pure oxygen it was feeding out. It was a bit difficult to exhale off of (especially for me, with the insane lung capacity), but it was quite interesting. I think I'd like to get a certification in this thing someday.
When we were finished hanging around in the harbor and playing with all the toys, we got our little certificates of completion, our logbooks signed, a cute little t-shirt, and a beer with Larry and Dick Rutkowski at their outdoor office, Sharky's bar. We had many interesting discussions about many varied subjects including why PADI is silly about nitrox, how awful lawyers are, and how women supposedly talk too much despite evidence to the contrary :-).
Friday we finally got to dive with Jerry Burcham on the H.M.S. Minnow. We explained how we were unable to even think about boats the day before, and how our stomachs were a bit....fragile. Jerry knew just what to do. We were the only people on the boat, so we didn't have to worry about waiting for other people to get into the water. We also got to choose where to go. Jerry recommended the Benwood wreck, since it was out of the normal surge, was a bit deeper, and had lots of wonderful fish to see. We had taken another bonine the night before, and yet another one in the morning. This was actually enough to make the trip to the wreck uneventful. The seas were down to about 2 to 3 feet, and Jerry was very good at trying to go through the water without upsetting us too much.
After about 1/2 an hour, we made it to the dive site. I did my first backroll entry into the water, forced myself to descend (next time I'll take a bit more weight), and we got down to the bottom rather quickly. As promised, the place was wonderful for fish watching. There were lots of wonderful bright creatures including grey angels, queen angels, and all kinds of other fish I don't know how to identify. There was also a 2 foot barracuda who followed us around quite a bit. He was rather cute. We explored the wreck for over an hour, then returned to the boat. We declined the second dive because we were feeling pretty good and wanted to keep it that way. The return to the harbor was also uneventful. Jerry was indeed a wonderful Captain and Divemaster.
On the way home, we stopped at Parrot Jungle. Ask me about the bird bite someday :-)