Friday, March 29, 2013

SLSU032413A – Wednesday March 27th, 2013


Is this Key West?

 

Here we are in the southernmost part of the continental US and it’s 50 degrees and windy. Not exactly what everyone was prepared for. These temps don’t go well with bare feet and wet bodies. This is supposed to be the coldest morning but that is little comfort right now. The crew will be getting up soon, climbing out of their cozy bunks…surprise! It was the new record low for Key West for this date.

It was another slow wake up because of the weather. We stayed on the dock and had a nice cooked breakfast of pancakes, eggs and sausage. That’ll be the last cooked breakfast for the week. After breakfast we said our goodbyes to dry land, put up the sails and headed out to sea to go to Looe Key. It was quite ‘sporty’ out on the ocean but not as bad we thought it would be. The ride to Looe Key was about 2 ½ hours so most of the crew just stayed below out of the wind and spray. A few braved the cool temps and bitter wind on deck, bundled up in their rain gear. We had lunch on the way and surprisingly everyone ate. When we’re rockin’ and rollin’ on the ocean a lot of people don’t like to eat.

We arrived at Looe Key to find the place empty. There are usually plenty of boats here because it is such a popular dive site. During our dives one other commercial boat and a couple of private boats did show up.

It was finally time to dive. We usually dive everyday but day 1 and 2 were ‘dry’ days because of the late arrival and the Key West weather day. First we had everyone take down the sails. With the wind blowing that’s no easy feat. Next everyone got into their wetsuits. Brrrrrrrrrr. Denny gave a long and detailed briefing on the procedure for gearing up and getting into the water then I gave a dive briefing. We hit them with a lot of information at first….some is new and some is just reinforcement of things they’ve done before or learned while getting certified.

I went in first. I go in first to do a ‘conditions check’; I go to the bottom and check the depth, current, surge and visibility then I return to the surface and report my findings. This time both I and Divemaster Paul hopped in. Everything was good except for the marginal visibility. We could dive but we prefer much better visibility, especially at a site like Looe Key. The first dive is a led dive. The divers stay with the Instructor and Divemaster so that we can address any issues that might crop up and to assess the diver’s skills and abilities. It was a rocky start as a few divers were a little slow getting their ears to clear and there was also a weight issue. After that it was all good. The first dive went very well. We returned to the boat, everyone boarded and we got ready for the next dive.

On dive two Paul went snorkeling with Brian while I took the rest of the divers on a tour. A few people opted out due to being cold. Dive two also went well. There was a large Golioth Grouper waiting to greet us back at the boat which was a pleasant surprise for the divers. For dive three we moved the boat to a different part of the reef. Looe Key is quite large so we can do multiple dives without repeating a location. Dive three went well and we returned to find the same Golioth Grouper waiting for us. It had followed the boat from the previous location. Everyone stowed their dive gear and proceeded with my favorite part of the day…drying off and getting into dry clothes.

We headed in for the day to anchor behind Key Lois. The rumor is that Key Lois once had a research facility that used monkeys as test subjects. When the facility was closed down many of the monkeys were somehow turned loose so now the island is home to wild monkeys. Anyway, we dropped the anchor far enough away from the Key so as not to hear the monkeys and proceeded to have a dinner of what we refer to as ‘crazy dream burgers’. They are called that because people are known to have crazy dreams after eating them. I sure did.

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