In researching SoFL diving, I found a thread here that pointed me to the Gold Coast Scuba Meetup group. My sweetie Jim & I drove down from Jacksonville on Fri, 10/15, for an unrelated event later in the weekend. We had Saturday free, so we joined in on Gold Coast Scuba's free Shore Dive clinic at LBTS.
We're really impressed with Gold Coast Scuba. When we rented tanks and regs from them on Fri, Brian at GCS hooked up Jim's Air2 to test it out on the rented reg, and he encountered a slight free-flow issue. Jim and Brian worked for about 45 minutes to address the problem, and Brian went above-and-beyond, even calling another shop to see if a brand-specific specialist could assist us. What great service. In the end, it was easier to ditch the Air2 and rent Jim a BC from Gold Coast, anyway.
Jim and I met up on Saturday morning with the other group participants and DM Tom Carpenter, who provided a nice dive briefing and tips for those of us new to the area.
The dive itself was fun. Viz was around 20-30 ft, in my estimation, and our max depth was only 17 ft. Saw a lot of fantastic reef fish (a list will have to do, since I don't yet have a digital uw camera) - many stoplight parrotfish, sharp-nose puffers, surgeonfish, goatfish, four-eyed butterflyfish, porkfish, several blennies (can't distinguish specific ones yet), french angels, gray angels, at least one blueheaded wrasse, a few high-hats, sgt majors, fairy baslets, a solitary cowfish, a turtle swimming away from us (doh), and a few yellow stingrays. Saw lots of sea plumes, sea rods, and sponges.
Upon returning to shore, we realized that the car key was no longer in the underwater "lockbox" that I had clipped to my BC. It took a AAA-contracted locksmith about 5 HOURS to respond to our call, break into the car, remove the lock from the car door, create a new key complete with security code, and bring it back to us. I won't even get into what it cost.
Lesson 1: Do not carry the car key on a dive. Sure wish I'd invested the $3.19 in a magnetic hide-a-key beforehand! I learned the hard way.
Lesson 2: Buy a domestic car that's easier to break into and requires less-expensive replacement keys.
Despite the car-key challenge, it was a great day, and we're glad we made the trip. I'm really envious of you SoFloridians who have reefs close by! We're going to check out some of them that are more north and closer to Jacksonville, though we'll definitely be back down to South FL to visit your reefs again.