Looking for a dive buddy to enjoy Devil's Den or Blue Grotto

[CedricH]

Hello there !

I'm on family holidays here and I'd love to discover the Devil's Den or Blue Grotto.
I checked the websites and they insist on no diving without a dive buddy - and I'm a solo diver. Is it just about not diving absolutely alone or about not showing up alone? (Where do anyone dive alone anyway?) I wrote to the divecenters to get more info.

So, is there anybody here that would like to go and dive there between tomorrow (29th) and the 2nd of August included?

Just to have your feedback, what do you think about these divesites? Do they worth it? I don't have equipment and it seems quite expensive.

Thank you!

 

[Marie13]

No solo diving means no solo diving - aka have to have a buddy.

 

[Craine]

I haven’t been to Blue Grotto, but I have been to Devil’s Den.

They are very serious about the ”no solo diving”, to the point where they won’t let you check in without a buddy present. They also have a total ban on pony tanks. I would imagine that the policy is there for insurance and liability reasons. They likely don’t want someone doing a swim-through solo, get stuck, and go unnoticed and die because there’s no one looking for them. While I don’t love the policy (I like to solo dive myself), it’s their private site, so their rules. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

As for the site itself, it’s cool if you’ve never dove it before. There’s a bunch of shorter and a couple of longer swim-throughs. The max depth I have in my computer was 50 feet, and that was right around the edge of the bell, I think at the bottom of one of those swim throughs. I am about 2 1/2 hours away in Clearwater/Largo, so it’s not a place I’d make regular trips to, but nice in the winter when the gulf is pretty chilly.

I’ll look at my work schedule and see if I can swing a trip on Tuesday. I’ll PM you one way or another.

 

[fred32176]

There is a group of us going to Ginnie Springs on Saturday. We are meeting at the scuba counter at 9:00 am. We are It's Dive o Clock Somewhere in Central FL. Feel free to join us if you can't get a buddy. I believe there will be about 8 of us.