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 I’ve
been trying really hard to come up with a subject for this article. The
good news is that we have been diving steadily – in fact, we just
counted and since February, we’ve made 20 dives. It doesn’t sound like a
lot to many divers who have done more but we think it is a great
milestone this early in the season.
Just this past weekend, we headed to Looe Key on a Caloosa Dive Club
charter trip. I hate to say it but it is a really long trip from Ft.
Myers to Big Pine Key – the jumping off point for Looe Key. When we dive
in Key Largo or even Islamorada, we have plenty of time to get there and
even include a regular stop in Key Largo to dive with our buddies at
Island Ventures on Friday afternoon. We did the same for the Looe Key
dive trip but after we surfaced from the reef in Key Largo, got back to
the dock, loaded up our gear and headed toward Big Pine Key, it was
another hour and a half before we reached our destination. I was ready
to open the cooler and get my wine way before we checked into the hotel.
We can say that the hotel was “rustic”. The rooms were interesting. When
we checked in, we were informed that the old comforters were a little
worn but new ones had been ordered and would be here by the next time we
visited. Generally, we just don’t care much. We share rooms with
friends; we unpack, drink wine or beer, have dinner, sleep, get up and
go diving. As long as the room is clean and the shower works, we don’t
complain much. We do love our morning coffee. The hotel provided a
coffee pot marked with “Stolen from the “Unnamed Hotel”, address,
telephone number, etc. More interesting was the fact that there was no
electrical outlet anywhere near the coffee pot. I’m pretty enterprising
so I just unplugged Sandy’s blow dryer and balanced the coffee pot on a
narrow sink ledge – nothing gets in the way of morning coffee!
We met other dive club members who brought BBQ’s and plenty of food. We
had to search to find any surfaces to place the food on and quickly
discovered that pool lounge chairs do a fine job as picnic tables. We
fought off a huge “herd” of flies. Not sure that flies come in herds but
it seemed like it when we were trying to eat our food and keep all of
the snacks covered. The flies were only outdone by the “no seeums” that
seemed to congregate at any time of the day. No problem – we are rough
and tough divers – a few bugs aren’t enough to rain on our parade.
We visited the dive shop to sign in and discovered that the cat lounging
on the counter was over 15 years old. If you don’t know anything about
cats, and I don’t know that much, that is very old for a cat. Gary and I
dove with this dive operation back in the 70’s. They had a little
six-pack boat and we loved the arrival back at the ladder when we heard
the music of the Hues Corporation playing “Rock the Boat”. Times have
changed – they are now diving with a “platform boat”. I don’t know the
actual terms, but basically, it is a two pontoon boat with ladders on
both sides. We arrived early, as we always do. The crew wasn’t there so
we just loaded up our gear and were ready to go at 8:00. We didn’t
actually get away from the dock before 9:30 because the crew and tanks
weren’t there and there was some confusion as to our charter
arrangements. When we plan dive trips, we charter the entire boat. The
idea is to get a good price, not overload the boat and only have Caloosa
Dive Club members on the boat. Apparently, this wasn’t clear to the dive
operator so we spent some time working it out. In the end, it did work
out and the captain and crew were excellent.
We did two reef dives on Looe Key on Saturday afternoon. Gary and I did
some diving on Looe Key back in the70’s and we can say that the Looe Key
of today doesn’t quite match up to the good old days. However, it is
still an excellent dive. We had the unfortunate problem of bad
visibility but some of the problem can be attributed to the fact that
lots of little critters were masquerading as “snot” in the water. If you
looked closely at what looked like silt, you would discover that it was
actually tiny swimming creatures – thousands (or maybe millions?) of
them.
On Sunday morning, we set our sights on the Adolphus Busch wreck. The
story is that the wreck was sunk to protect the Looe Key reefs. Its
purpose was to draw divers from the reefs to the wreck and provide some
relief. It was named after the Busch Beer Company because they poured
the money into the sinking and thought it should have that name. The
original name was the Ocean Alley purchased from Port Au Prince, Haiti
by Looe Key Artificial Reef Associates and Adolphus Busch, Jr., grandson
of the founder of the Anheuser-Busch empire. Busch, who is an avid diver
and angler, gave $200,000 towards the purchasing and sinking of the
ship.
We arrived at the site and found there was a very frisky surface
current. We decided it was too much work to take our cameras in. It was
hard work hanging on to the granny line hooked to the buoy where we
would begin our descent. On the bottom, the current disappeared but the
visibility was so bad that we didn’t regret our decision to leave the
cameras on board. Still, it was a very good dive. We explored the entire
wreck in a short period of time. It was a little crowded on the up-line
at 15 feet while we all hung there making our safety stops but we’re a
friendly group so we didn’t mind hanging out together.
We finished up with a very relaxing reef dive where we followed the
fingers of the reef in and out and up and down. We didn’t have great
visibility on any of the dives but we can’t blame that on the boat
captains. We had warm water compared to a few weeks ago and we were able
to view a part of the world that isn’t seen by most people in the world.
Over all, it was a very memorable weekend. To finish it off, we stopped
at Hobo’s for lunch on the way home to Cape Coral. We could complain,
but who would listen?
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