Welcome to Thunderdome

They allow open containers on their version of Bourbon Street.

Lots of hootchie mamas walking around. I may retire here. Spend my days as a dive master on some charter boat. Spend my evenings Adam Sandlering tourists.

GORDON wrote: They allow open containers on their version of Bourbon Street.

Lots of hootchie mamas walking around. I may retire here. Spend my days as a dive master on some charter boat. Spend my evenings Adam Sandlering tourists.

Lotta weird sex shops too? I remember that being the thing teenage Troy noticed on his first visit to Key West. The gays too, but after ATL and SF it's probably tamer than I remember.

Haven't noticed sex shops, nor gays. I get a strong hippie vibe here, though. Old men with long beards tooling around on recumbent bikes, for example.

Granted, I've been here 8 hours so far and was out on the ocean for 5 of them.

Strong hippie + burn-out vibe is what I remember.

Beginning to organize pics and vids. Here's a screenshot from the Ginnie Springs video.

This makes me want to be in the water, bad. Water vis looks great. How cold are those springs?

In northern Florida, 72 degrees year round.

Ok... the springs are fine, and good for refreshing the skills after a long break. Before this trip, the last time my kid was on SCUBA was September, 2017. I hesitate to just have him jump in the ocean after a 6 month break. SO, we hit the spring first, and I make him run through the drills real quick. And he took to it like he last dove yesterday, he was relaxed and comfortable and confident, and it was all fine.

So two days later, we got on an early morning boat for two dives out on Molasses Reef. 78-79 degree water... warmest he's ever dived in. About 60 feet of visibility... and that's pretty good.

The first dive in the salt ended up being the one with the shark.
It had gotten a little closer at one point, but by the time I got the kid's attention to it, then got my camera on it, it was already moving off. But I asked later what he thought, and he felt excitement, not fear. Just right.

Continued tooling around on the reef, and spotted a free-swimming Moray Eel. This is somewhat uncommon, during the day... usually they are chilling in their coral cubby hole, maybe their head sticking out. Again, I was pointing it out for the kid. Eel is right at the end of my finger, top of the screen, swimming right to left.
They give a dive brief before every dive, they let you know the lay of the reef depending on where we're tied off. You get directions like, "Swim out to the left, see out there where the ball is tied off 150 yards out? Go there then take a right, keep the reef on your right arm, and circle around to the boat." Well, the problem with that is once you're down in the big coral canyons, on about two turns you lose your sense of direction. And that's usually fine... this reef is huge, and even going off course you're still seeing shit everywhere. But, he and I were half air, and I had no idea where we were... so I popped up to get bearings.
I'm not sure how much it comes across in this pic... but there are three other boats between us and ours, the furthest to the right. And we were at half air... yikes. Technically, you're supposed to turn around at 1/3 air, and use another 1/3 getting back, and then have 1/3 left in case of emergencies. But we were having fun, and lost track of everything. So we headed back in as much of a beeline as we could. Ended up going directly over some mounts with only about 10 feet of depth... it's pretty neat sailing a foot above the soft coral fans, swaying with the wave action, and you sort of just sway along with it. The kid says he was having a hard time with that, he said he's smaller and the waves were pushing him back and forth more. I don't know. Seemed fine to me.

Here he is chilling on a mooring line when I popped up to get bearings.
Anyhoo, we burned more air on that dive than we ever have before... usually he gets cold and we finish with well over 1/3 of a tank left... usually I have 2/3 left, and that's slightly irritating. But this time we were both at about 25% air, and that's a lot of bottom time. Fun.

Saw this guy chilling under our boat as we approached. This barracuda was about 4 feet long... biggest I saw this trip was about 6 feet. It's fun to get close and see their teeth jutting out of their mouths.
That's the end of the first dive of the morning. I'll trip report dive 2 tomorrow (or whenever I organize the pics and vids).

GORDON wrote: swaying with the wave action, and you sort of just sway along with it. The kid says he was having a hard time with that, he said he's smaller and the waves were pushing him back and forth more. I don't know. Seemed fine to me

My wife has a similar issue.

Sounds like an awesome trip.

Sorted out pics and vids of Day 1, Dive 2... nothing dramatic or exciting. Just a nice little dive with reef fish errywhere.

Easter Day 2018, Key Largo, Dive 1.

From FB: "Day 2, Key Largo, Dive 1. Easter Day, 2018.... so of course the charter went to THE STATUE. "Christ of the Abyss." During the dive briefing, they said that peeps may be feeling emotional and religious, but they urged us to not hug Jesus, as he is covered with Fire Coral. Sound advice.

We three were the ONLY people on a boat of 20 who weren't guided students doing their open-water dives, so the random, lone guy in some of the pics got assigned to Will and I to be dive buddies."

Nothing exotic, this dive. A couple barracudas. We saw another Moray this day, under a shelf, this time, but I haven't found a pic of it yet. I may not have gotten it for some reason.
What I wanted to say about this one on FB... but didn't because I have a few pious family members friended on there, still... was, "Hey look, two sons of gods in one picture!" edit - this forum software is weird about embedded pics. They post all out of order... even though when I posted them, and previewed them, and edited them, they list in the correct order. Weird.

Awesome to follow along on your trips. Hope to dive again some day. Maybe next time you'll take me up on the tickets offer?

Question: I bought a Go Pro Hero (2018 model) last night. I know nothing about these things, and was thinking of reselling it, but we're going to St John in June, and will be snorkeling. Maybe a dive, but unlikely. Are there anything accessories I should buy for this thing? It looks like it's waterproof out of the box. Any extra battery? A camera stick?

DOes it have a waterproof housing? CLear plastic and you put the camera inside it.

Or, just link me the amazon page of what you have.

Great stuff Gordon. Lol at people wanting to hug the fire coral. I wonder if it really happened or it’s a joke?

Catt, I bought floating, retractable pole for mine. It has exceeded my expectations for what I paid for it by a LOT. If you let go of the stick it will just float to the surface with a orange float that is hard to miss.

It lets me get shots of critters I don’t want to get close to with my fingers. I’ve also used it to deter a tiny shark who was acting real weird and aggressive. Like really small, barely worth a story.

Of course it’s out of stock now that I pull it up : https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B011HRCE ... b_pd_title

GORDON wrote: DOes it have a waterproof housing? CLear plastic and you put the camera inside it.

Or, just link me the amazon page of what you have.

Go Pro Hero (2018) - Says waterproof to 33', which is probably good enough for snorkeling?

Catt, I bought floating, retractable pole for mine. It has exceeded my expectations for what I paid for it by a LOT. If you let go of the stick it will just float to the surface with a orange float that is hard to miss.

OOooo, sounds like a really good idea, especially if I let the kids use it. I'm sure there's others

Accessory packs for those things are plentiful and cheap. You can prolly get both the waterproof housing.... if you're extra paranoid about snorkeling... and also a couple handles, and lots of different mounts.

Easter 2018, dive 2. Last dive on Molasses Reef.
They attached us to that solo diver, again. This irritated me more, today.... we were supposed to enter, swim out to a buoy about 100 yards out, then hang a right and circle the reef back to the boat. Supposedly there's a grouper "the size of a Volkswagen" that hangs out on the far side of the reef, and I was looking forward to seeing it. Well, he takes off, in the lead. My kid follows, and I follow them both, behind my kid, staying close. The other guy goes to the buoy. Then instead of taking the right, he turns around and heads right to the boat. I couldn't catch up to him with my kid in the way to tell him to go the other way, and my kid was following him, so we ended up just retracing our path and not seeing the same animals we didn't see on the way out.

Grrr.

I don't like being assigned to randos. Hey let's grab that and start a society. Get it? There's that son of god, walking on water...
Fumbled the camera on entry. I wasn't concerned, the water wasn't deep and I knew I'd find it, but the rando dive buddy saw and retrieved it. It's fine. Too bad it wasn't video recording, that would have been neat.

Ok, Key West. In Key Largo we had calm seas and maybe 80 feet of vis... Key West was SLIGHTLY rougher, and vis was maybe 50 feet. Still pretty good. Hand-held camera had a dead battery, so these are all screenshots from the forehead camera video.

Mr. Krabs spotted. Thre's a moray eel in there... near the center... a darker shadow among the fish, sort of elongated, head on the left, body on the right. Newbies spotted in the wild, running through their skills. You can tell from their bright plumage (snorkels). Baby grouper. "Hey Dad... YOU are NUMBER ONE." That's what he was signaling to me. Brain coral. Sea urchin. Don't know what kind of fish this was, but it was hidden and the only one I saw the whole trip. Currently at 25 feet of depth, max that dive had been 27 feet, up to that point. Off the bottom of the screen would be dive time, and current water temp. Boat check. There's something pretty cool about floating around in the middle of the ocean, no land in sight, and hoping you can find your boat. I wasn't sure what I saw there to the right of the lobster, but my kid's immediate guess was "Scorpion Fish." He may be right.
http://www.flkeysnews.com/.../diving/ar ... 35354.html

We left the Keys the next morning.... would have been fun to stay a day or two longer in Key West, but that was by far the most expensive 24 hour period of the trip, by a factor of three. KW is expensive. Checked out of the hotel, and hit that neat, long highway from island to island. At one point we almost got taken out by a Jeep hauling a travel trailer... we all had to stop short, and he was behind me and couldn't, and locked his wheels. I saw him coming, veered left into (thankfully no) oncoming traffic, and he squeezed between me, and the barrier to the right that keeps us out of the ocean. By the time he finally stopped, the jeep was next to the car in front of me, and the trailer was right next to us.

Holy shit.

Anyway, we drove 8 hours back into northern Florida... we were going to do 2 days in our customary springs... both because we wanted to, and to give the gear a good dunk in fresh water after 3 days in salt water. We hit our (heretofore) fave spot, Devil's Den, first.

And the problem is... after three great days on the ocean... in warm water and lots of biodiversity... DD is getting kind of boring. This was our fifth and sixth (at least) dive here, and we're getting to know every boulder and catfish. Sigh.

It was still nice, but 2 dives for 50 minutes total just seemed....

Yeah.

The next morning we were going to dive the Blue Grotto, but changed our minds, in the morning. BG had even less to see than DD, to be honest. So in the future we won't plan 2 days in Williston, Florida, any more.... just maybe a stop while travelling, to rinse the salt off.

The kid's in love with the ocean, now.

We got super lucky with the weather, for a change... but we were due. That was our first ocean trip not plagued by high winds and/or cancelled charters. And the kid saw pics of the Vandenberg, off Key West... which is too deep for his certification level... but now we have a planned dive, for when he's 15.

It was a great trip, overall.

Before this trip, it took us two years to log 25 open-water dives. (I don't count my zoo dives)

This trip, we added 9 more. Most dives in... like... a 5-day period. And first time we ever dove 3 days in a row.