Mother Nature is a Bitch

Hello all, here’s a Key Largo update. Raging seas, 20-30 knot winds and thunderstorms have been keeping our intrepid band of divers tied to the dock since yesterday. The scheduled afternoon dive yesterday and the morning dive today were both canceled because of 6-9 foot swells in the Atlantic. That kind of rocking will make even the most intrepid of seafarers weak in the knees and feeding the colorful fish over the rail. In lieu of diving, all 23 members of the group took a 2.5 hour ride to Key West yesterday to have dinner at the Conch Republic. It was a lot of driving for a piece of Grouper, although the raw bar selections were tasty.

Never one to take things lying down, me and four other members of our group went and booked a reef dive for this afternoon, weather be damned. Only time and our inner ears will tell whether we’d have been better off sitting by the pool drinking margaritas. The problem with diving on a 30 foot reef in this kind of weather is that the sea surge is probably as bad on the bottom as the top which presents a set of challenges relative to buoyancy not experienced on an average dive. Visibility is said to be a mere 30 feet; pretty weak by Caribbean standards, a limitless vista compared to what the north Atlantic mud-hole divers are used to. Assuming I can still focus on a computer screen when I get off the boat I’ll give you a complete review of the experience. A picture of molasses reef, where I'll be diving this afternoon, is at the upper left.