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Dive on the Spiegel Grove 134fsw. WELL.. I can guarantee that I had the lowest Visibility of anybody this weekend. I spent 1 1/2 days at Jules Lodge with some nice people... Three borg folks who drove all the way from Coral Springs to learn how to dive, and then on Sunday Two awesome little borg boys who had the best time waving from outside in the water at the other kids who were inside in the underwater hotel. It was so awesome to see them trying to put their hands together on either side of the window they were having a blast. We really made some realistic navigation dives, only finding the different items in the lagoon by compass bearings until we bonked our heads on them. You know that kind of Vis where you have no clue where the bottom is until you suddenly see it 6 inches in front of your face.. well this was it.. but great training grounds.. I think everyone deserves an advanced card at least :-). Finally on Sunday afternoon I broke loose and my new Borg Buddy and I dived the Spiegel Grove in at least 80ft Vis. WOW what a change!!!! We had planned a multilevel dive, and so started our exploration at about 120ft and worked our way upwards. There was a slight current but nothing dramatic.. We visited both ends of the wreck and then since my buddy is also a cave borg, we went inside, and followed the yellow line, turning left at the green line which runs parallel to the blue line, then we got out at the red line, and realized I was following a map of the London Underground.. (OK just kidding). I was interested to see that a bunch of stuff had fallen down on the line already, but it was way to large for us to move and rescue the line. However it is still passable. I went by that part pretty quickly though wondering if there was any more up there waiting to fall? Something I noticed on my last SG dive, but was even more apparent on this dive was that this wreck seems to have a preponderance of thermoclines, and inside the wreck you could actually even see the different layers of water.. BRRRrrr. I did get quite cold on this dive due to the cool temperatures lower down. The fish really seem to be populating this wreck already and I found it extremely interesting to see juvenile reef fish playing on the upturned large expanse of hull. I spotted the most beautiful juvenile queen angel. about 1/2 inch long. Now how in the world did he get there off the reef??? In a couple of years this wreck will be one heck of a dive. I think it will be unique due to the combination of both reef fish and large shoals of pelagic species. I also saw many schools of jacks on the wreck. At one point I peeked into a hole and startled a huge grouper that fairly shot out of the wreck at top speed. We followed this spectacular dive with another spectacular one on the Benwood Wreck at about 35ft. The vis was so good that I spent most of the time in the large debris field yet could see most of the wreck clearly at the same time. It must have been close to 100ft vis. The highlight of the dive was an enormous shoal of african spade fish. Slowly I moved towards them and hovered in mid water so close I felt as if I was part of their group they really didn't seem to care that I was joining them and even appeared to follow as I left. They were almost at a standstill keeping pace with the current and looked just like a big silvery cloud, very surreal. Then reality returned as we watched a band of bikini clad girl divers all following one T. Shirt clad guy with a sqeaky regulator, apparently they could not keep up with him and swam around the wreck a couple of times and headed directly back to their boat. As we returned to our boat we found that it had been replaced at the mooring by a private boat from which the bikini clad girls were emanating.. so we swam to the next ball, but found a large Catamaran moored to it.. We surfaced anyway and spotted our boat circling waiting for us to surface. Amid streams of strange and wild instructions coming from the obviously concerned Catamaran captain... my buddy and I calmly let go of the mooring ball and drifted comfortably over to our own boat. I guess he was shocked to see two borg ladies in double tanks pop up from a 30ft reef right next to him.. ;-). Oh well, just another day at sea :-), but the dives were truly awesome, and definitely one of the best dives I have ever had on the Benwood.
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