FLORIDA KEYS, USA

We arrived in Fort Lauderdale on Monday morning December 26th at around 5:30am EST. After renting our car we drove down to the shop. Neither the shop or hotel were open yet. Man we were tired. We NEEDED sleep! So we drove a little future down the highway and pulled off the road and caught up on our MUCH needed beauty sleep. After our nap, we checked in at the shop and at the hotel. After awhile we got in the car and drove north just to get the lay of the land. We eventually pulled off the road at about mile marker 116. We found an area in the Everglades where people were fishing. We went exploring. We walked deep into the canel system. We eventually saw 2 mantatees and a large crocadile across a small strip of water. We were so pumpled up! We need to get closer. We worked our way back up the dirt trail and got to the other side. Now where was that crocadile? Mr. Crocadile where are YOU. Just about when we were going to turn around, we heard a LOUD spash a few feet away. We found HIM. Wow!!!!!

Tuesday: 12/27/05:North Molasses Reef (Depth=35ft, Time=66 min, Temp=72 and Viz=35-40ft), South Molasses Reef (Depth=27ft, Time=71 min, Temp=72 and Viz=35-40ft), and Night Dive on Davis's Reef (Depth=27ft, Time=62 min, Temp=73 and Viz=Clear). We were asked to keep our dives to about 1 hour in length. At the hour mark we should surface and check with them. Then if we wanted we could stay down longer. We just needed to check in with them. Generally on the shallow reefs we could EASILY do on hour and some times went longer.

For the most part we saw crabs, several types of eels, crabs, lobsters, spotted trunk fish, booloon fish, blue stripped grunts, yellow tailed snappers, parrotfish, and blue tangs on every dive.

Wednesday: 12/28/05:Conch Ledge (Depth=25ft, Time=60 min, Temp=73 and Viz=25-30ft), Davis Ledge (Depth=25ft, Time=64 min, Temp=73 and Viz=25-30ft) Stern Round trip - Eagle Wreck (Depth=116ft, Time=30 min, Temp=73 and Viz=35-40ft), and Bow 1-way - Eagle Wreck (Depth=112ft, Time=29 min, Temp=73 and Viz=35-40ft). We were very busy on this day. We really lived the dive enthusiest mantra "Dive, Dive, Dive, Eat, Dive, Dive, and Sleep". Basically we dove are asses off! The first two dives I just floated around looking at the reef. My camera was back at the hotel because I 'F-up' and bent a memory pin (Thank to Brian the camera was not terminal!). I did play DM to 2 kids that were on these two dives. When I saw something cool, I would point it out to them. That was cool!

We had GREAT service all week. As an example of that; in the afternoon the shop gave us a private boat. It was just Brian and I. That was REALLY cool! We had our pick of dive sites. We choose to do two dives on the Eagle. It was great to do something other than a reef! We were getting reefed out. The current was blowing pretty good when we dropped in. We got some relief along the wreck, as we used it as shelter. For the most part we just explored along the outside of the wreck during both dives. On one foray into the wreck I did find a black Princeton Tech shockwave dive light. I am now back to even in my dive career. I had ONLY last one peace of dive gear. A yellow shockwave dive light. See I am back to even! We both really enjoyed the Eagle.

Thursday: 12/29/05: Spiegal Grove (Depth=104ft, Time=34 min, Temp=73 and Viz=40ft), CG Cutter Duane (Depth=105ft, Time=29 min, Temp=73 and Viz=40ft) , and Snapper Ledge (Depth=27ft, Time=53 min, Temp=73 and Viz=25ft). Today was the only day we did not have calm seas. We did hot drops on both wrecks. I was glad to get off the boat as my stomach was starting to not like things. The first dive did not start off two well. I dropped in and drifted over to the moring ball. Just as I was deflating my bc and starting to sink, a swell crash into the ball and the ball.......You guess it, SLAMED into my head. I was REALLY foggy the first 50-60ft of the dive. In hind sight I should of called the dive but, I was not really thinking clearly so, on the dive went. Despite the conditions at the surface both dives were calm and gave us plenty to look at. We both were working on taking natural light shots. I learned a lot on how to do that from Brian and I put it to work on these two dives. Snapper Ledge was probably the best or 2nd best reef all week. More fish than you can shake a stick at. Wow!!!!

Friday: 12/30/05: CG Cutter Bidd (Depth=131ft, Time=28 min, Temp=73 and Viz=30-40ft), Spiegal Grove (Depth=99ft, Time=32 min, Temp=73 and Viz=30-40ft) , and Benwood Wreck/Reef (Depth=25ft, Time=60 min, Temp=73 and Viz=30-40ft). Today, the seas calmed back down and we did 3 wreck dives. The Bidd was deep and our navigation/communications needed some work. Brian and I spent most of our botton time mid ship taking pictures of barracudas and part of the wreck. The Benwood was the other co-number one reef dive of the week. The reef was 'built' on the back bone of the Benwood wreck. Again we had tons of very photogenic fish. Basically Brian and I floated around taking pictures. Nice!!

Saturday: 12/31/05: 1-Way French's Reef (Depth=54ft, Time=61 min, Temp=73 and Viz=20ft), Christmas Tree Ledge French's Reef (Depth=48ft, Time=66 min, Temp=73 and Viz=25ft) , and Pickles Reef (Depth=28ft, Time=62 min, Temp=73 and Viz=30ft). Our last dive day. The viz drop today. The first dive was DESIGNED as a drift dive. Unfortunetly someone forgot to tell the current. We had about .25 knot of current. So we slowly kicked around way along the reef. Near the start of the dive I could see Brian quickly setting up his camera for something big. I just could not see WHAT. I started to get myself ready......Man, I wonder what was coming. Maybe a big shark........Not it was a LARGE turtle. It flew right into Brian. He had to duck and it still ran into his tank. It almost hit me...I had just a second for a shot. I took it. Man, it is going to be a GREAT shot......Well, NO! My last picture was a macro shot. In the split second, I had forgotten to zoom out for the turtle shot. Darn it no picture for you to see....Unless you like an extreme close up of the turtle's right flipper and ear. LOL

Sunday:1/1/06: Flight Home Time to fly home. We slept in an extra hour. Drop by the shop to say our good bys and collect our dried scuba gear. We knew we had till 3:30pm before our flight so we took our sweet time! We got to the ticket counter just after 12 noon. HOUSTON we have a problem! The proper flight time was misread. Instead of 3:30 our flight left JUST before noon. Ups. Well, the silver lining to the story is I had never flown 'stand by' before and had wondered what it was all about. Now I am expert. We ended up getting home about 4 hours late.

To quote a good friend of our:'A good time was had by all!'