jadairiii
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Added an additional day to the 4th weekend and went diving. My dive buddy and I tagged along on the last day a GUE fundamentals class since the boat had two open seats. Potentially it would be an all day trip with the boat tying into the second reef line. We planned accordingly and brought our doubles and two stage bottles along with our Suex xjoy 37s. Plan was to breathe only the stages on the first two dives and if we did a 3rd we would dive our back-gas. This also gave us the ability to really push the scooters and our first 2 dives without ever having to worry about gas since we always had full doubles.
1st dive we hit the triggers and headed due east past a second reef line and into the 3rd reef, then turned South into the current and put the hammer down. Saw all kinds of reef fish, turtles, lobsters and the such along with some great reef structure. After we burned ½ our 80s we turned back west to the 2nd reef then back north to the boat. Total dive time was one hour and two minutes with a large portion of that running into the current. The whole time we were towing a torpedo float with a flag hooked to our cave reel.
After a surface interval and a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches washed down with water we clipped on our second stage and jumped in. This dive we wanted to check out the reef line between the 2nd and 3rd reef since it looked interesting so we headed east till we hit the reef line then turned south again, into the current, and followed the reef. There was some amazing structure on this section and tasty critters that were out of season (for now), lots of fish, more turtles and live conch everywhere. What was interesting is that the reef line merged back into the 2nd reef, so we turned back with the current and headed back north buzzing all through huge undercuts and break offs of the reef. Got back to the boat and picked up a hitchhiker (my other buddy who was the instructor) and we buzzed around the reef by the boat while he picked up some of the gear from the class. Another full hour on the triggers. We surfaced and the students looked tired and not in the mood for us to do a third dive, even though the xjoy 37s had close to an additional hour left on the battery.
2 full hours, (majority of it into a steady current) diving 3 different reefs while never emptying either 80 and never touching our back-gas, not a bad way to spend a Monday.
1st dive we hit the triggers and headed due east past a second reef line and into the 3rd reef, then turned South into the current and put the hammer down. Saw all kinds of reef fish, turtles, lobsters and the such along with some great reef structure. After we burned ½ our 80s we turned back west to the 2nd reef then back north to the boat. Total dive time was one hour and two minutes with a large portion of that running into the current. The whole time we were towing a torpedo float with a flag hooked to our cave reel.
After a surface interval and a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches washed down with water we clipped on our second stage and jumped in. This dive we wanted to check out the reef line between the 2nd and 3rd reef since it looked interesting so we headed east till we hit the reef line then turned south again, into the current, and followed the reef. There was some amazing structure on this section and tasty critters that were out of season (for now), lots of fish, more turtles and live conch everywhere. What was interesting is that the reef line merged back into the 2nd reef, so we turned back with the current and headed back north buzzing all through huge undercuts and break offs of the reef. Got back to the boat and picked up a hitchhiker (my other buddy who was the instructor) and we buzzed around the reef by the boat while he picked up some of the gear from the class. Another full hour on the triggers. We surfaced and the students looked tired and not in the mood for us to do a third dive, even though the xjoy 37s had close to an additional hour left on the battery.
2 full hours, (majority of it into a steady current) diving 3 different reefs while never emptying either 80 and never touching our back-gas, not a bad way to spend a Monday.
