MgicTwnger

First of all, I have just gotten back from a week in the Keys to the ice box known as the Midwest. IT SUCKS!!!!

Tavernier is just south of Key Largo, primo diving territory. My dive op for the third consecutive year was Conch Republic divers, a fine shop that is one of the few that does well with more advanced divers.

The weather was in the high 70's to low 80's with almost no rain. The problem was the wind: it produced 6 -8 foot seas every day. I managed three good penetration wreck dives:

The Spiegel Grove is a the 510' amphibious troop transport ship and was intentionally sunk May 12, 2002 six miles off Key Largo to form the backbone of a coral-reef ecosystem. Life around the reef range from algae, sponges, and coral, not to mention the legions of tiny tropical fish to large barracuda and jacks. I saw a large manta ray.

The Eagle is a freighter sitting on its side in about 105' of water. The blast holes in the bottom give an interesting perspective on the rest of the ocean.

The Duane sits upright in about 120' of water and is one of the most dove wrecks in the world. It is an advanced dive and is often visited by strong currents. A large hawkbill turtle made an appearance.

On top of the rough seas, the current was strong all week. My last dive was on the Bibb. The seas were so bad that the captain decided to drop my buddy and me up current of the line tied to the wreck's bow and let us drift into it. My buddy was dropped perfectly and made his descent, while I was dropped twice a little off and could not get to the downline. That was enough for me, and I called the dive. We were the only dive boat out that day (8+ foot seas) and the captain said that he would not have gone out at all except for the fact that he knows my buddy and myself quite well, and knew we could handle it.

I think I set some kind of record for tossing my cookies.

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I am not the one who needs mental help. I just need to vent.

Ally

Sounds like a great time, despite the waves, Ken. Thank you for the insight

Kev Martin

Glad you had a good time.

Three wrecks - I'm envious though it's a pity about the last dive having to be called. That said, knowing when to call it a day rather than pushing ahead and overstepping the limits usually means that it is a dive that you can always come back to in the future.

It has been a while since I dived Florida but I remember diving the Spiegel Grove and another wreck called the Benton. The Grove was fantastic. It was laid over on its side when I dived it. Something like an 18 metre drop down to the hull and then we dropped over and swam straight into the bridge. I remember the boat skipper setting a 30 metre / 30 minute limit on the dive as he wanted to move us straight to our second dive of the day with very little surface interval. Right!!!

I wont tell you what my depths and bottom times were for that dive but we had time for lunch in between both dives for the day.

The Benton was a nice, easy dive - very shallow but I think my overiding impression of that wreck was that it was something like moving through the streets of London. The wreck was packed with Japanese divers - hordes of them all following their Divemasters. Unfortunately we were going against the traffic!