This weekend saw my first dives off the North East Florida Coast.    I had been scheduled several times before but "stuff" and weather had always thwarted my efforts.      Now this trip finally seemed to be working out, despite being threatened by a rescheduled fishing tournament at the last minute.    I managed to get out of Miami  destined for the Daytona area at around 3:30pm  on Friday,  with enough dive gear to keep me at least entertained for a couple of days diving as I was planning to drive over to the caves on Saturday night to dive Madison Blue Springs on Sunday.

I arrived around 6:30pm and found my hotel room, a cute but nice place called the Sea Horse Inn at New Smyrna Bch.    I set up camp and waited for my dive buddy Heather to arrive.    She arrived shortly after 9:00pm.  We then met up with a few others from the group and searched high and low for some food but crashed at around midnight after being scared off our nightcap  by the weird and wonderful local nightlife!!!!

We had chartered the whole boat and after some early morning renegotiation with the crew, we headed off towards the wreck.    The ride out to the wreck was quite long and I slept most of the way, keeping one eye open wary of the practical jokers we had aboard :-)... I did actually catch one of them wearing one of my depends on his head on the way back!!!!! (fortunately it was a clean one ;-)...).

Nobody really knew what to expect as far as temperature for the dive and there was a wide range of wetsuits around on the boat.    My buddy and I were the only two in drysuits.    We discovered to our delight that there was minimal current and the two of us lazily dropped off the dive platform tugging our scooters after us, it was so relaxing.   We dropped down a few and the vis was quite nice, it was easy to find the line and scooter down along it.      BUT then OUCH on the descent we hit some evil thermoclines and by the time we got to the bottom I had the biggest ice cream headache, and it was about 55 degrees... BRRRRRRR......   At least the visibility made up for it.     We started off at the bow and decided to make a loop around the wreck first and then check into any penetration options for our second dive.   Of course the first annoying thing was that my light refused to turn on... I gave it the nasty evil hand signal and stowed it.. there was plenty of light but I thought... s#@$t and kissed goodbye to any exploration of the inside of the wreck that day.  Probably a good thing after hearing about the oil sludge inside (see Mike's report)..   The wreck is almost totally upside down but twisted so that the bow is more on it's side than the stern.     I found it fascinating that it seemed to have made a huge crater along one side, in the bottom and seemed to rest a few feet below the sea floor.    There were huge jacks everywhere, and the minute we stopped moving they would surround us and swarm allover.   It was a great sight to see the large prop sticking up at the stern and I went over and checked that out,  wishing I had a camera with me.     We then rounded the stern and started looking at the broken side of the wreck and a part of the debris, when I saw my buddy frantically flashing me.    The next thing i saw she was jamming her scooter into the side of the wreck.    I figured out instantly what the problem was, her scooter was stuck on,   I tried to get over there to help her out but of course you gotta catch up with someone who has a runaway scooter before you can do anything.    She hit the sea floor, and jammed the prop then dialed it back, and I just arrived in time to help her hold it in place while she got re-organized.   She called the dive and I gave her a tow back to the line.    It was a bit of an uncomfortable deco with the wayward scooter, but not a big problem.

When we got back in the boat everyone was sitting around in their wetsuits with teeth chattering exclaiming about the cold water....

After a couple of hours surface interval we went back for our second dive.     We re-arranged the teams a little and my buddy joined a non-scooter team since she was now out of a scooter.   I tagged along with a different team making three since  one of the original guys had declared it was too cold to get back in.    This time we had a mission, one of the guys had spotted a porthole on the first dive and was going back to retrieve it.    We found the porthole easily and Cris started to attach his lift bag,  it was REALLY heavy, and eventually we had to use two lift bags for it.    While I was waiting around for Cris to finish messing with the bags I spotted some interesting stuff on the bottom,  one was a spent bullet cartridge and the other was a small sign that looked as if it had fallen off the wreck,  it said "Fresh Water".     Pretty weird I thought because it didn't look very old or encrusted.     Anyhow both objects went into my pocket.   The rest of the dive was interesting mostly just looking around and then watching the massive numbers of fish swarming us.    We had planned  only a 20 minute bottom time due to the cold,   but we barely even made it to 20 minutes, all of us were completely freezing and almost willing each other to end the dive.    We had a very nice decompression on this dive,  fully appreciating each thermocline as we ascended from one stop to the next.    I was thinking now nice they were as opposed to thinking of them as evil on the way down.

Eventually we clambered back onto the boat, but Uh Oh... where was the porthole.    Nobody had picked it up and we spent about 10 minutes discussing whether or not the closed lift bag had split on the way up and sunk again,  and Cris was looking really sad about the whole thing.  Eventually Dave broke down and couldn't keep a straight face any longer and broke out into a big fat grin. Yes of course they had hidden it in one of the enormous coolers in the center of the boat :-).   Then I showed Cris the little sign I had found and he said... Hey that was the thing I found on the hydro last week.. It must have fallen out of my pocket... <G>.. I couldn't believe it.. so much for my treasures..

We had a nice long ride back, and spotted both a turtle and some dolphins, while sitting around relaxing and enjoying ourselves.    It was a nice end to a great day of diving.

After a very cool video session and an outback dinner about 11:00pm or so Cris and I got in our cars and headed over to the caves for the next day's dives.  Thanks again guys for diving with me :-)

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