Morning ladies and gents, did a weekend trip to key largo to do some shallow reef dives and dive the USCG Duane.
The weather was perfect Saturday seas were 2-4ft air temp high 80s. Dive one was a shake down dive for my girlfriend and I.
This was her first open water dive with her new gear. Scubapro Bella bcd and mk25 reg set she ended up being quite light on the lead and couldn't maintain depth halfway through the dive. We surfaced thankfully it was only a shallow 30ish feet depth. What followed was a comedy of errors. As she is a very new diver she panicked a bit. I signalled the boat that we were ok and we moved toward the closest oneThere were 3 total dive boats with in 100 yards of us. Due to her panic I picked the closest one. It wasn't ours but with the same company. They were understanding thankfully. They were just finishing their dive so they were all to get us over to our original boat.
This was also a shake down dive with my new set up so I ended up being just a bit light to.
Hog comfort harness with a lite SS diverite plate.
We ended up adding 5lb to her rig and 4 to mine. The 2nd dive of the day went a lot smoother. I was really nervous because there was a question I needed an answer too
see pictures below. The answer was yes BTW
Weight ended up being perfect for me completely balanced she was just a bit heavy but it worked well.
We did 2 more afternoon dives all shallow reef dives. All 3 other red dives were uneventful. Water temp was 81f.
Sunday we started our day seeing up equipment on the boat at the docks. We were diving nitrox today for the first time. We analyzed and signed off on max depth at ppo2 1.4 set our shearwater peregrine computers and headed out the the uscg duane.
Sea state was near calm weather was perfect. After a short 20 minute boat ride we got ready to hit the water. We've up there was very little current going down the line to the Duane. This was our check off dive for deep and nitrox. We came down the midship line and started right at 100 get for the duration of the dive. Visibility was good 60 feet water temp at depth was 81f. Lots of deadlift, couple bull sharks, barracud and countless other fish. The American flag on the superstructure made for some good pictures. I unfortunately haven't pulled then from the GoPro yet I will post then when we get back from roatan.
Our dive ended earlier a few minutes earlier than the others due to my fiance
running her tank down to 1300psi we need to work on her breathing but we made our way back up the line to the boat.
We did one more ref dive that day and finished up right at 1100. Everyone else in our group was headed home to GA. All in all it was a great trip. 6 dives and plenty of time from Sunday morning to noon today before our flight
Out of Miami. Roatan it's going to be a blast