Quiescence Diving Services, Inc., 美国

Smmcdonald

03/09/22 at 10:41

We were back on The Spurs for our final dive of the week. The conditions had worsened slightly, with more thunderstorms rolling in around us. Visibility was dropping and the current was picking up a bit. We hot dropped fairly close to where we started on Thursday and made our way down to a channel between two finger reefs. Jen started the same dive routine as yesterday's dive on The Spurs, but after fighting the current for a few minutes, I caught her attention and swam over the top to begin a drift dive in earnest. We continued to drift, dipping into the channels and climbing over the corals. From this point on, it was a fairly effortless dive. We spotted three eagle rays, several barracuda and many of the common reef fish among the coral, and once again we came across the ealkhorn coral nursery. The current was such that it sped us along at a good pace, but slow enough to fin against to stay stationary whenever we spotted something of interest. I would guess it to be no more than 1 knot, about perfect for drift diving the site. Jenny wanted to practice deploying her safety sausage near the end of the dive. She started her routine just before the hour was up, struggling at first to remove it from her BCD. After a breif time of her and Jen trying, I swam over to give them a hand and quickly realized she did not have a finger reel, so deploying it at depth wouldn't work. Despite that, she gave it a try nearer the surface for practice. I had become more focused on her than where I was when suddently I heard the prop from Q II. I turned to look and was directly under the bow of another boat! Deep enough to be out of any danger, had it started up, but started as I had not been paying attention. I swam back away from it and toward Q II, which unfortunately was against the current. I popped up between the two boats--not ideal!--and the others followed. In hindsight, I should have just let the current carry me away from the crowd to surface at a safer distance and let Burner pluck us out of the water. The boat I surfaced near turned out to be full of snorklers: we had made it all the way to the shallow reef near the tower! Once onboard, Bryan mentioned how he enjoyed the drift dive, and doing so was a "great idea". The others concurred, and I got a good laugh as that is precisely the plan I was trying to dive yesterday! We headed back in shore for lunch, rounding out a great short week of diving. We had successfully completed all nine planned dives, managing to stay out of the path of thunderstorms or, as in one case, stayed underwater while they passed over. The conditions at the Spiegel Grove were such that we wouldn't have dived them regardless of skill levels, so we had no loss there. And I'm not sure I would have traded any of our dives for one on the SG anyway: we encountered more rays and sharks on this trip than I recall ever seeing in the Keys. Perhaps the conditions that made some sites undivable, and visibility relatively low, is exactly what was needed to see so much marine life!

Smmcdonald

03/09/22 at 09:15

Dulcie and Jason decided to sleep in while the rest of us headed out for a couple of morning dives. The weather was deteriorating: partly cloudy skies and scattered thunderstroms with the wind blowing 15 knots out of the northeast. We headed north across four-foot seas, but the seas on The Elbow were calm. The visibility had worsened and was no better than 40 feet on the Anchor Chain. The namesake sits among finger-shaped coral heads between the Hannah Bell and City of Washington. The heavily encrusted chain used to moor a World War II era barge that broke away in a storm many years ago and now rests near the north entrance of Largo Sound. Jen and I found it on one of our first dive trips in 2014 when I mistook it for the nearby City of Washington wreck. Two coral fingers lay between us and the chain; another near a wide sand channel lay in the opposite direction. We went to the latter first to see if we could observe any large animals in the channel. After a few minutes, we turned back toward the anchor chain, exploring the reef along the way. Jen and I hung back while Jenny and Bryan lead. We made it to the second finger and into an adjacent sand channel before turning back in the opposite direction. This we did a couple of times before Jenny signaled to Bryan for the location of the boat. A shrugged reply revealed that neither were sure of the exit point, so Jen guided them back to the tag line. She is a great navigator underwater and doesn't get turned around easily! Jen and I stayed under for a few minutes longer before surfacing. We never saw the anchor chain, but got close a couple of times!