theskull
August 7th, 2007, 09:40 PM
This was the trip planned around the scattering at sea of Gary Miller’s ashes per his last wishes. (Gary was a long-time instructor and shop employee of The Dive Shop and Water Sports in St. Louis.)
Four of us left St. Louis Friday with plans to do some serious ocean diving on Saturday and Sunday before meeting up with a group of app. 20 on Monday afternoon for the burial ceremony and group fun-dive at Christ of the Abyss at Dry Rocks of Key Largo.
We booked our fun dives with ScubaDo with a glowing recommendation from another dive op, and were extremely pleased with their service—their maximum number of divers on board is 10, allowing for some excellent site selection and catering to requests. All our ocean dives had 50 ft. visibility, 90+ F air temp, and water temp of 86 F down to about 60 ft. depth, where it dropped a bit to 81 F.
We started off Saturday morning with 2 dives on the Spiegel Grove using 32% Nitrox. Both were to a max depth of app. 100 ft. with mild current, and some minor wreck penetration on the second dive (beautiful, with sunlight pouring in through multiple window and doorway exit points)—sealife highlights were a grouper and a barracuda. Saturday afternoon was 2 shallow dives on reefs with air—1 on the wreck of the Benwood and 1 on French Reef, both to a max depth of 40 ft., and both dives lasting an hour—sealife highlights were a sea turtle, spiny lobsters, spotted drums, green moray eel, hogfish and filefish.
Sunday morning we had planned a wreck dive on the Duane, but currents were prohibitive, so we substituted a drift dive off the deep end of Molasses Reef, drifting along at a depth of 50-60 ft. on 32% Nitrox and seeing an incredible amount of reef in the 50 minutes we drifted—not to mention a huge Eagle Ray!! We followed up with another Nitrox dive on the shallow portion of Molasses Reef, where there was very little current to deal with, and the depth was a max of 32 ft. Sunday afternoon we did 2 air dives on French Reef, 1 on each end of the reef, including some very cool swim-throughs—sealife highlights on Sunday were the eagle ray, a scorpionfish, and more green moray eels.
Monday’s ceremony was touching, and after all divers were in the water, along with video camera and several still cameras, the ashes were released underwater at the feet of Christ of the Abyss. A fun-dive followed, with an hour bottom time and max depth of 30 ft.—sealife highlights were a crab, a brown-spotted moray eel, and fabulous colors everywhere on the reef. Horizon Divers took us out for this excursion—they have a large dive boat—and the entire event was memorable.
Fantastic dives, great weather, delicious seafood, and the best of dive buddies.
theskull
Four of us left St. Louis Friday with plans to do some serious ocean diving on Saturday and Sunday before meeting up with a group of app. 20 on Monday afternoon for the burial ceremony and group fun-dive at Christ of the Abyss at Dry Rocks of Key Largo.
We booked our fun dives with ScubaDo with a glowing recommendation from another dive op, and were extremely pleased with their service—their maximum number of divers on board is 10, allowing for some excellent site selection and catering to requests. All our ocean dives had 50 ft. visibility, 90+ F air temp, and water temp of 86 F down to about 60 ft. depth, where it dropped a bit to 81 F.
We started off Saturday morning with 2 dives on the Spiegel Grove using 32% Nitrox. Both were to a max depth of app. 100 ft. with mild current, and some minor wreck penetration on the second dive (beautiful, with sunlight pouring in through multiple window and doorway exit points)—sealife highlights were a grouper and a barracuda. Saturday afternoon was 2 shallow dives on reefs with air—1 on the wreck of the Benwood and 1 on French Reef, both to a max depth of 40 ft., and both dives lasting an hour—sealife highlights were a sea turtle, spiny lobsters, spotted drums, green moray eel, hogfish and filefish.
Sunday morning we had planned a wreck dive on the Duane, but currents were prohibitive, so we substituted a drift dive off the deep end of Molasses Reef, drifting along at a depth of 50-60 ft. on 32% Nitrox and seeing an incredible amount of reef in the 50 minutes we drifted—not to mention a huge Eagle Ray!! We followed up with another Nitrox dive on the shallow portion of Molasses Reef, where there was very little current to deal with, and the depth was a max of 32 ft. Sunday afternoon we did 2 air dives on French Reef, 1 on each end of the reef, including some very cool swim-throughs—sealife highlights on Sunday were the eagle ray, a scorpionfish, and more green moray eels.
Monday’s ceremony was touching, and after all divers were in the water, along with video camera and several still cameras, the ashes were released underwater at the feet of Christ of the Abyss. A fun-dive followed, with an hour bottom time and max depth of 30 ft.—sealife highlights were a crab, a brown-spotted moray eel, and fabulous colors everywhere on the reef. Horizon Divers took us out for this excursion—they have a large dive boat—and the entire event was memorable.
Fantastic dives, great weather, delicious seafood, and the best of dive buddies.
theskull