The Captain Tony

Tomorrow we head out to Dutch for two days of diving. I’ll be getting my Nitrox books from Ryan and will hopefully have that specialty nailed within a month or so. When I dove on the Captain Tony down off Boynton Beach I was the only one on the dive boat on air, the rest were on Nitrox. That dive was also my first with a new computer, the Aeros Atmos 2. I almost ran out of air because I was so preoccupied with monitoring the computer and keeping an eye on my no-deco time that I neglected to keep an eye on my SPG. I suppose in the back of my head I thought that I would just head up when I saw other divers making their way up the anchor line, not fully realizing that I had less bottom time due to me sucking more air at 89 feet than my Nitrox friends. Of course If I had a buddy this wouldn’t have happened but I was down in Florida on my own and the DM said we should all just “dive as a group”. I thought that irresponsible and I guess I should have opened my mouth at the time. I stuck relatively close to an instructor and student so if I had run into any serious problems I think I’d have been ok. Still, I did not like hitting the boat with 250psi in my tank. I left myself a very thin margin of error. The bright side? I got long bottom time and on every subsequent dive I check my SPG every minute. Every dive teaches a lesson.

The wreck itself was incredible; the ship is sitting upright in about 85 feet of warm water. There was an abundance of marine life and the superstructure was covered with colorful coral and sponges. The viz was at least 100 feet and the water was about 82 degrees. I was completely comfortable in a 3mm wet suit with no hood or gloves. Seas were calm, the sun was out and I was totally narced at the bottom. The accompanying picture is the Captain Tony when she was still known as the M/V Becks just prior to her sinking.