Great boat. Great crew. Great divers. (Just when you really needed them to be.)Tuesday, May 19, 2009: It’s two days before I leave for a nine-hour drive to Key West to lead Just Add Water’s four-day trip to the Dry Tortugas aboard M/V Spree. And what am I doing? I’m on my back, in bed, trying desperately to overcome the effects of a week-long bout with stomach flu.
I’m dreading what is to come. If you’ve ever had stomach flu (or food poisoning, for that matter), you know that you just don’t wake up one day to find that everything is back to normal. Even when you can start keeping food down, you’re weak, you’re tired — and the last thing you want to do is jump on a rocking boat and go diving.
Naive young dive instructors often buy into the whole “Do what you love for a living…” lifestyle, in part, because they think that, as trip leaders, they’ll get “free” dive vacations. Get real.
So far, I’ve published two articles on DiveRetailing.com that outline some of the myriad responsibilities trip leaders may have. These can (and often do) include activities such as:
- Babysitting less-than-capable divers.
- Interceding, on behalf of group members, with less-than-reasonable dive charter or resort operators.
- Keeping group members positive and upbeat when dives are cancelled due to weather, vital equipment breaks down or goes missing, flights are cancelled and Lord-knows-what other disasters occur.
Believe me, it’s generally no vacation. I even know of one group leader who spent an entire, week-long Bonaire “vacation” dealing with local police and hotel officials after thieves broke into several guests’ room and made off with their valuables. She managed to get in three whole dives in a week’s time. (And here I am in no shape physically to deal with any of this.)
Much of my pre-trip anxiety, however, was relieved when I went to the SpreeExpeditions.com website and spoke with the office manager, Kevin, over the phone. If there was a question the website couldn’t answer, Kevin supplied the missing information.
Thursday Afternoon, May 21: I get my first good look at Spree. It looks clean. It smells clean. And the hardware I can see on the aft deck (fill whips, tank racks, seating, etc.) is first rate. These are good signs.
Passengers continue to arrive and drop off gear. Most I don’t know (more anxiety). In fact, only four of our group are actually from the Cleveland area. For some reason, we’ve managed to attract divers from as far away as California, Texas and Connecticut for this trip. They all seem nice. (This doesn’t mean they can actually dive.) We’ll see.
The first order of business before boarding is dinner at the Rusty Anchor, courtesy of Captain Frank. What a great idea. We get to meet each other, I get to quiz group members about their diving backgrounds, and the crew gets to set the tone for the trip. One thing I discover right away is that, with the exception of our newly-certified guppy, Kevin, this is a surprisingly experience group.
After dinner, we board, settle in — and get the two-hour Everything-You-Need-to-Know-About-Anything briefing from Captain Frank, Divemaster Melanie and the rest of the crew. One thing is immediately apparent: This isn’t your typical dive boat crew (who sometimes look like they’ve been shanghaied from an alley, sobered up, then put to work against their will). Most of these folks are actually IT or tech professionals whose ongoing success enables them to crew the Spree largely for fun. That is unusual — but nice.
Friday, May 22: After transiting the 90 miles between Key West and the Dry Tortugas overnight, we make our first dive at a site called Alice in Wonderland. Typical of the Dry Tortugas, depths range from 65-80 feet and coral, both soft and hard, is plentiful.
It’s here that I get my first good look at how both the passengers and crew are under water. And, in doing so, my anxiety level goes down several notches. Even “new” Kevin (we have two), making his first dives following certification, looks like he’s been doing this forever. We have our one and only instance of divers surfacing away from the boat. It’s not repeated.
Following the first dive, we surface to breakfast. This, too, sets the tone for the balance of the trip. The food is plentiful and good. No one goes hungry. In fact, we most likely all gained five pounds over the next three days.
Following a second dive at Alice in Wonderland, we make our only shallow dive of the week. It’s also our only “bust” as far as conditions are concerned.
Under good conditions, the Avanti (aka the Windjammer Wreck) is a great shallow reef and wreck dive. Not today. Viz is down; surge and current is up.
Despite this, the majority of the passengers find their way back to the boat in one, nice tight group. Nobody gets lost. No one needs a chase boat pick-up. It’s at this point I realize that these divers need a “trip leader” like a fish needs a bicycle.
It occurs to me that, after more than 30 years in the business, I might have actually found the one trip where being a group leader actually is like getting a “free” vacation. Which was good because, after a week-long stay at death’s door (well, that’s what it felt like), about all I wanted to do is sleep.
I should mention that Frank and Melanie also gave us the opportunity to go ashore at Fort Jefferson between dives. This historic fort was, among other things, where Dr. Samuel Mudd was incarcerated after making the mistake of innocently treating John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg.
Saturday, May 23: By now we’d all settled into a comfortable pattern: Wake up at 7:00, enjoy some fresh fruit and juice, then go diving at a brand-new site. We’d surface to a large, filling breakfast, make a second dive at the same site (to see all the stuff we missed the first time around), then move on to another site for the afternoon and evening.
It’s important to note that these sites are sufficiently large that it really does take two to three dives to see it all. Dives at the Dry Tortugas are typically in the 70-80 foot range. If you want to make the available five dives a day — and have more than just a few minutes bottom time on each — Nitrox certification and a Nitrox computer are essential.
In addition to lush, plentiful coral and abundant reef fish, the Dry Tortugas are distinguished by the amount of relief one finds. Reef structures, coral mounds and pillars are typically 10 to 20 feet high, with sharp drop offs and lots of undercutting canyons and tunnels.
It’s also a rare dive in the Dry Tortugas when several divers do not see sharks, turtles and huge Goliath Groupers and Jewfish. Once common throughout the Keys, the Dry Tortugas are among the few places you can count on seeing these mammoth fish. In fact, all of the Dry Tortugas remind me of the way Key Largo looked when I first started diving in the 1970s — only better.
Monday, May 25: It’s Memorial Day and, regretfully, time to head back. This dies not mean that diving is over. Captain Frank has dive sites picked out along the way. so that every couple of hours, we have another place to dive.
The first two of these dives are drift dives — something most of our group has done before. Nevertheless, Melanie provides a very detailed briefing and everyone manages to hit the water as a group, descend as a group and, most importantly, surface as a group. See these and other photos on our Flickr gallery.
Prior to our last dive, crewmember Chris Parsons shows us the video he has put together over the past few days. It’s great. I especially like all the shots he got of me…sound asleep.
Our last dive is the wreck of the Cayman Salvage Master, just off of Key West. The next time we do this trip, this dive will most likely be the 500-foot Hoyt S. Vandenberg, which is scheduled for sinking as I write this.
Back on shore, we adjourned for dinner at Finnegan’s, followed by a night of karaoke and other foolishness. Or that’s what they tell me (I had to call it after dinner).
This was a great trip. And, at a little over a thousand dollars to make 17 dives in four days, one helluva bargain. Shame on you if you miss this opportunity when it comes around again. — Cave Diver Harry
