I'm looking forward to hitting up Dutch in a little while - and probably for a little while, too. For the past 2.5 years, I've dived in Hawaii's lovely, clear waters, and even excursions away have been to other warm water spots, like Roatan and the Mexican caves. We're moving back home to NYC in a month - huzzah! - and there's no way I'm going to tackle Northeast diving without a tune-up or three in a quarry. I haven't worn cold-water kit in ages, and consequently have no idea how it will feel to run a reel, deploy an SMB or clip/unclip stage bottles wearing thick gloves - I'm used to doing all that stuff bare-handed. You can bet that as soon as I can afford a drysuit, I'll be back in the quarry learning how to fly the damn thing and ascertaining correct weighting, too. It's so much easier to do all that in a quarry than off a Northeast dive boat, and besides, I'd feel like a complete pillock for turning up on a Northeast dive boat without having confidence in myself and my ability to handle various gear modifications anyhow. My SO has also been diving a rebreather in warm water with only a wetsuit, and has resigned himself to a few quarry sessions for the same reasons.
I also recognize that we're lucky and have open water readily available to us. Lots of folks don't. We dive pretty much for free here in Hawaii, with only gas costs and O2 fills to worry about. If it's a specialized charter, we'll happily give the captain the money he needs, but for the most part, I just tag along if the boat's empty-ish while my SO is working on recreational charters. Back home in NY, we had the money (double income, child-free) to pay for local boat diving and gas costs, not to mention the odd warm-water or cave diving trip. But the quarry's still a mighty good thing to have around, and I'm grateful it's there - as I'm sure a lot of folks are.
= dive where and when u can
