This was a decompression class that I had booked for the first week of March.    It was a very exciting class and I can only say that the story of this class should be entitled Magnificence in Hell, In this class I had the worst and best experience of diving in one single dive.  It was also a special class, as I had people coming from allover to take it.    Wisconsin, New York and even Mexico.   The guys were a great group but there was just one problem

The weather truly sucked and was a complete bust. We spent 2 days in jules lodge, and managed to get out only three times on the boat for the week. The wind blew 20-30 kts most of the week, with a couple of tiny windows of opportunity with the wind at 18kts (interject sarcastic tone here).  However those few dives we did get in, were really worth remembering.

We managed to dive the Duane on Wednesday.. Somewhat unusually large waves made it impossible to gauge the current, and we missed on the first drop encountering almost 3 knots. I was carrying a camera for one of my students but took it off for the 2nd drop, realizing the conditions and not wanting any more drag than necessary.

We dropped 100ft up current of the bow, and barely snagged the stern when we hit the wreck... I looked up to see one of my students dancing allover the deck of the wreck waving his arms in excitement as a 20ft whale shark appeared above us. The shark hung out for our whole dive which was inordinately short due to tough conditions, and turn pressure was reached.

The whale shark hung around, and reappeared on the surface. While the students were climbing back into the boat which was pretty tough in the snotty weather, one of them turned to float on his back when we all realized he was laying on top of the whale shark that had come up underneath him!!! He did not notice the whale shark because of trying to get back into the boat!!!

I was the last in the boat and as I was waiting to be picked up, I was the last one floating out and about in the blue with my little lift bag, I looked to my left and saw the whale shark paying me a visit. After recovering from my adrenaline rush and the minor heart attack, I checked it out some more. It was about the length of my arm away from me and I could have reached out and touched it but was too scared to do so. This creature was tremendous, I was floating by the gill slits that were occupying a region of it's body about the same length as my own!!! I also saw he was being tagged by two large cobia, and I had to do a double take to realize they were cobia and not some other kind of shark. It flashed through my mind that I was now experiencing what it must feel like to be out there alone floating and be approached by these enormous creatures... and I had taken the *&^%$ camera off on the boat :-(....

Eventually the shark surfaced in front of me and I saw it's fin break and it sped away, the boat came and I was picked up!!! In a situation like that, trying to pay attention to the boat, the students and a giant shark all in one, It feels as though I had one of those rolls of film in my brain as a fast sequence of snapshots and this is mostly what I remember.

I can only say that it was the best and the worst dive all rolled into one!!!

Finally on Saturday the weather broke, I extended the class by a day, we got a super nice dive on the miller lite off Pompano..I hope everyone had  a good time, after all who else can go home saying they rode on the back of a whale shark!!!!!!

Alan wrote up a nice report to be found here   you might want to check the other pictures on his site too, he has some nice ones.