Article Author:

Captain D.J.
Master Instructor

Howdy!

Something finally happened yesterday that I’ve been trying to work out for almost 3 years! We could never seem to get it together before now, but it has finally happened! I managed to get George Yates from Team Divers in Miami to go diving just for fun! Of course, he has fun every�weekend when�he visits us to go diving, but he always visits us with students, which means he is working. You see, when you are in the dive business and you are diving with customers and students every day, you are always “on the job”. You are watching them, helping them,�making sure everyone is safe, teaching a class,��etc..� There is always that responsibility. Diving professionals take it very seriously, so we have a little less fun than you do when you are a customer just diving for fun.

So, as you can imagine, when we get a chance to take the boat out, all by ourselves and just go diving for fun, it’s really quite nice. So any time we had these windows of opportunity, I’d always call up George and say “Hey, the weather is great, and we have a boat that isn’t being used, we can go anywhere we want, leave any time.. let’s go!” He would always have a previous engagement and couldn’t make it. Yesterday, George, his friend Barry and myself just jumped on the Tropical Explorer in the morning and took a ride up to Elbow Reef. We jumped in at Mike’s Wreck for about a half an hour and found the anchor chain, then went over to the City of Washington and tooled around with the friendly nurse sharks and very curious barracuda.. After that we stopped at the Civil War wreck for a few minutes as Barry and I had�never seen it before. George stayed on board and putted around in the boat! Oh no! It’s Captain George!! Anyway, It’s a very small wreck, with some timbers steel from the hull still very much in tact, so it’s interesting, but not a site you can dive for an hour. Unless you were shopping for lobster, there were so many on there it would take an hour to get them all! On the way back we decided to stop at the Horseshoe, which is near Double North(proper name is North North Dry Rocks).. It had 2 minnow caves with tons of fish.. We swam through one cave and a big old grouper was in there too fat to move from eating so many minnows, so it was tight quarters! Visibility was decent everywhere. Best we had was about 70 feet and the lowest was about 40 feet. No current, and the waves were not more than 1 foot, if they were even that.

In all we hit 4 sites, and just fooled around.. It was quite fun, and it’s good to do, because it really makes�you remember why we dive..Diving is�always fun, but any dive professional will tell you it’s more fun when we get to do it STRICTLY for fun, just like you do when you are a customer! Well, it wasn’t just like being a customer, I still had to wash the boat and fill the tanks when we got back! hahha.

Click here to see the VIDEO!!! (requires Flash) and get on board with us to check out a few minutes of our little adventure.

Article Author:

Owen
Master Scuba Diver Trainer

Good visibility, warm water, calm surface, no current, sunny skies, yada, yada, yada, yada……..Sorry, I hate to sound like a broken record (That is what music used to be played on for you youngsters) but the diving has been consistently great here in Key Largo. Today we went to Winch Hole and and Fire Coral Cave on Molasses Reef. Our hosts for today, a Goliath Grouper, Sea Turtle, Nurse Shark, Juvenile Drum Fish, Lobster, etc……… Thank you once again Mother Nature. Brand, spanking new PADI Open Water Divers LAVINIA MACKALL, and ALAN TRUSDELL, were utilizing their newly-acquired diving skills to view the show at the reef. Also diving with LAVINIA was her boyfriend (Rainbow Reef Intern) SANDY. Also teaching on the dives was Rainbow Reef’s Newest Open Water Instructor JASON. You might recognize JASON from his photos on a recent blog entry celebrating his successful completion of the PADI Instructor Exam. Enjoy the photos.