Road Trip: Key West! Underwater Views

You might remember we headed to Key West for Birthday Week.  In fact, the last post was about the treacherous bicycle loop around the entire island.

We took our SCUBA/snorkel gear with us and had a blast exploring the underwater sights.  Here's a pretty brief video of our dives.

We went with a local dive group and, well, it was interesting.  We have been diving in a number of places - and the crew is usually nice, and always helpful. This group - well, they were nice.  And they hooked up/swapped our tanks for us.  But other than that, we were on our own.  We were given a brief description of the reef below us, and then tossed into the ocean to fend for ourselves.  

It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, it was just odd.  There have always been guides on paid dive trips we've taken.  And we could get a guide for an additional fee per person - somewhere in the $50 to $75 per person range.  And we had 4 people.  And Mark is a Dive Master.  So guess what route we took!  Yep, the self-guided tour. (Keep in mind, the cost of this dive was still on par with those other guided dives we have taken every other time.  It's not like it was a bargain dive shop...) 

The first dive was kinda random and all over the place.  We lost our friends, there wasn't a lot of life, and we got discombobulated down below and kind of ended up circling.  But my first dive always sucks - you just really are not meant to breathe below water. (One day maybe I will get over this - when I can dive everyday if I wanna, and don't get out of the routine)  So it wasn't a big loss to me.  I am used to it.  But the others were not expecting a sucky first dive, and were understandably a bit disappointed. 

The second dive was better.  We stayed together and looped around the fingers on the reef.  We saw lobsters, parrot fish, barracuda, spade fish, jacks, grouper, a fish (snapper?) eating a lobster (the Unicorn Fish in the video!), pin fish, blah blah blah.  It was murky and low vis and still so cool.  

We are currently researching small air compressors that we can run with our Honda generator.  It would really be nice to be able to fill our tanks onboard Luna Sea and dive on a whim.  We've looked into bigger setups, but just don't have the space on our 39 foot deck for something large.  We have to keep room for all of our other toys, too!  Anybody know of a set up that fits our limited space situation?

We really did have a great trip.  But I think from here on out, we'll just try to dive off of our own boat.  Who needs a stinking guide when you've got your own Dive Master on board?!?