First, there are only a few ports or marinas along the west coast of Cozumel, which is where almost all hotels and also the one and only town (San Miguel) are. So the boats all start out from a few dispatch places and then go and pick up divers at resort, hotel and dive shop piers. Divers buy individual dives or sign up for multiple dives to get a better rate. Generally, it’s about US$32 per dive. You don’t necessarily have to sign up with your hotel or resort’s dive shop.

Once a boat arrives, prepare for some stampeding and general confusion as no one ever seems to be quite sure what boat they are supposed to be on or are allowed to be on. Sometimes you get a “boarding pass,” sometimes someone simply takes your money and tells you where to go. Reservations seem to mean very little, so look out for yourself.

Chances are you won’t do all your dives on the same boat or with the same dive master, though sometimes a dive master will make efforts to book good customers (i.e. those who aren’t a nuisance above and under water, and who also tip well). Boats come in many different sizes. Before this trip I thought Cozumel dive boats were either big, sluggish “cattle boats” or speedy little boats, each with its inherent pros and cons. In fact, you see the whole gamut from massive catamarans to standard boats with room for 16 divers or so, to smaller pontoon boats for eight or so, to really small boats where you have to enter the water via back-roll. Some boats are fairly new, others are pretty beat up. A particular menace are boats that do not have adequate tank retainer systems (tired/broken clips instead of recessed round holes) and no windshield in the front. This means that tanks are in constant danger of falling off, doing damage to equipment and people. It also means you’re getting sprayed constantly even in moderately rough water.

Cozumel is not a large island and there really are only a few reefs and dive sites. It is, however, still large enough so that where you stay pretty much determines where dive boats will likely take you. Since most boats return to the docks after each and every dive, but certainly at noon time, they don’t like to go to remote dive sites. This means that if you stay in San Miguel, you’ll likely be diving the sites that are fairly close to town. If you stay in a hotel or resort farther south on the island, you’ll be closer to some of Cozumel’s most famous reefs, such as the Santa Rosa wall and the several Palancar reefs and walls.

As for drift, the current varies from barely noticeable in some locations to quite strong in others. Unlike the surge you might experience on some islands close to the beach, the current off Cozumel is constant and steady. You’re not getting buffeted around at all. It’s more like being on a conveyor belt or escalator. You just go along for the ride.

This means that divers need to stay together in groups with their dive master, or at least stay within viewing distance. You get in together, go down together, then follow the dive master as only he will know where he’ll be going and when he’ll be going back up. When the dive master decides to go up, he’ll inflate a safety sausage on a line that signifies to the boat where the divers will come up. If you miss the dive master here, you may end up surfacing a distance away from the dive boat. They’ll likely find you, but it’s not a good idea to take a chance. It can also be confusing because some of the more popular dive sites can have dozens of dive boats in close proximity and it can be difficult to figure out which one is yours, or for the boat captain to figure out which surfacing divers belongs on his boat.

The disadvantage of this system is that you can’t just stay down a bit longer if you still have enough air. It’s frowned upon even if there is almost no current, and if there is current, you’ll drift away from the boat.

As for the dive sites, some are truly spectacular. Be aware, though, that you may not see the same scenery someone else will see on the same dive. That’s because those reefs are fairly large and unlike other places where boats moor, the boat never seems to drop divers off twice in the same location. So depending on your drop-off, you may be treated to spectacular sights or to unexceptional sand chutes and plains and not much else. We did, for example, three dives to the famous Santa Rosa wall. On the first dive, after a ten minute swim/drift we got to see the wall/slope in all its splendor and it was a breathtaking experience. On a second dive, we saw no wall at all and simply labored against the drift over unexciting and mostly flat sea bottom for the entire time. On the third dive I specifically asked to be dropped off at the wall and, presto, instant wall.

In fact, you cannot even be totally sure you’ll be taken to the site you’re told you’re going. While sometimes the destination is agreed on beforehand, most of the time the dive master(s) will ask the group where they want to go and it’s then decided by consensus. What happens then seems to depend on traffic, current, or the mood of the captain. For example, an otherwise splendid dive to the Palancar Brick dive site yielded plenty of great scenery and swim-throughs, but no bricks at all. A next day’s dive to “Colombia Deep” showed bricks but wasn’t deep at all.

The above, and many other instances, require an understanding of the local mentality that differs quite a bit from what Americans may be used to. It’s almost impossible to get a definite answer, you have to take a lot on faith alone, and you really never know what is actually going to happen. You may be asked to arrive at 8:30 and then boat leaves at 10. Or you may be asked to get there by 9 and the boat has already left. Reservations mean nothing as they are usually lost or not honored. Add to that the occasional language barrier and things can get a bit frustrating.

That said, the diving can be spectacular. The strong current along the island means the water is constantly moving and so visibility is better than in most places. 150 to 200 feet is not uncommon. In some places it’s like swimming in an aquarium, it’s so clear. Those accustomed to vertical walls (like in Roatan or other Caribbean islands) will find the Cozumel reefs quite different. The reefs are composed of huge heads and formations that have numerous cuts, gullies, tunnels and swimthroughs. That makes for a dramatic, interesting and very attractive diving experience. As of November 2009, the reefs were in splendid health and condition. We saw a little coral bleaching here and there, but almost everything is in full bloom and without damage or silting or wear.

In terms of critters, some of them are plentiful, others less so. There’s the usual Caribbean variety of parrot fish, damsel fish, angel fish, groupers, spiny lobsters, giant crabs, moray eels, French grunts, Southern stingray and spotted rays, etc. You also see the occasional splendid toad fish peeking out from under a rock, an octopus, a turtle or two, and, if you’re lucky, a nurse shark. We didn’t see any other sharks, though some divers claim they’ve seen some.

So all the bags are packed. Which is no mean feat these days what with the airlines' 50-pound limit per piece of luggage. I had no idea a couple of extra T-shirts weighed that much. And then there's the camera gear, of course, and that always weighs a ton.

The water level at Fallen Leaf Lake, whose name originates from an Indian legend, is at about 6,370 feet, as mentioned in a prior entry. There isn't much information on the lake itself, though American nature writer and lecturer George Wharton James described the area in "The Lake of the Sky," published around 1915 (where he describes the water level as being 6,300 feet, 80 feet higher than Tahoe). A small dam was built in 1934 and some sources refer to the lake as a reservoir, although the water level appears to be constant. Despite Fallen Leaf Lake's proximity to Lake Tahoe and Route 89, it's a remote area where a very narrow and only marginally paved road leads part-way around the lake. There are small (albeit very expensive) cottages along the east side of the lake, and the tiny community of Fallen Leaf at the south end has a post office, but it's only open a few months of the year as is the one and only shop.

Remote though the area is, it has an amazing history. In 1863, a man by the name of Nathan Gilmore discovered mineral springs a couple of miles west of Fallen Leaf, just past a tiny body of water now known as Lily Lake for the water lilies on it. Gilmore eventually built a wagon road from Fallen Leaf Lake, set up a summer camp and log home so he could bottle and ship the carbonated water from the spring, and by 1880, "Glen Alpine Springs" had become a resort. By 1910, the resort, which now even had a post office, could be reached by automobile (it can't anymore). In the 1920s, noted architect Bernard Maybeck designed no fewer than 20 buildings for Glen Alpine Springs, though only six were ever built. The resort was open until the mid-1960s, then eventually became a Federal Historical District.

Today you can drive up to Lily Lake on an impossibly narrow mountain road where you literally have to get off the road if someone comes at you. At Lily Lake there is a small, tidy parking lot nestled into the terrain. There are only about 20 very tight spaces, and if those are taken there is nowhere to go and you have to return. Some sort of "Lot Full" notification system would greatly reduce traffic to and from the area. Anyway, the views around Lily Lake are spectacular and, in my book, compare favorably even with Yosemite, especially if you factor in the complete absence of Yosemite's crowded tourist atmosphere. From Lily Lake it is a short one-mile hike to Glen Alpine Springs, which we didn't do as we got there after our dive when it was already getting late.

But to the diving itself. We parked at the lot by the Fallen Leaf store (and Post Office when it is open) and carried our gear down to the boat ramp. You can unload down there, too, but then have to move the car back up on the lot. It was a beautiful mid-September day with the temperature in the low 80s, and the water a nice 67 degrees on the surface. This was going to be not only our first dive in Fallen Leaf Lake, but also the first with our new Uwatec Galileo Sol dive computers.

The water looked absolutely gorgeous, but as soon as we got under it became apparent that this was not an ideal dive site. The beach instantly falls off at an almost 45 degree angle (James had indicated a depth of 380 feet in his book). The bottom is all silt and gets stirred up if you so much as whirl a fin within two or three feet or so. Once we got underway we found ourself at a depth of almost 60 feet just a few dozen feet away from shore. The water temperature quickly dropped, too, and there was one of those massive thermoclines you can actually see as optical distortions, as if the water were some gelatinous mass. Visibility wasn't nearly as good as I'd expected and it was already getting darker. The steep, featureless silty slope made me feel somewhat disoriented and I also found that I could not easily see the very detailed display of my new Galileo.

We slowly made our way along the slope, ascending to about 30 feet where we found all sorts of discarded beer bottles and soda cans (including a special bi-centennial one from 1976) but not much else. There was driftwood and a few massive tree trunks, but overall it was quite uneventful. Between having to constantly try not to stir up silt while looking for things and the steep slope, I never really got into it, although we actually stayed down for a full hour. Carol emerged with two baskets full of cans and bottles and other assorted trash (though it really wasn't bad at the bottom), and I went up to take my gear off and bring the car down to the dock.

The Fallen Leaf store makes decent burgers and chicken strips (and serves nice, big portions of ice cream), and so we munched on those on the establishment's veranda overlooking the lake. We then made our way up to Lily Lake, taking in the breathtaking vistas.

Even though the dive itself wasn't spectacular, we spent a wonderful day exploring, seeing new things, discovering nature, and realizing once again that you really don't have to travel far to see great things and have a wonderful time. The Sierra Nevadas are spectacular, and diving in some of those lakes is not only an adventure, it is also absolutely free.

So once I got my dive computer back from Scubapro and my gear was back from the annual service, there really weren't any more excuses to put off a day trip to Tahoe, especially since we wanted to check out our new High Pressure 100 cubic foot steel tanks. We decided on Meeks Bay on the California side of the lake because of its easy access. I prefer the Rubicon site at D. L. Bliss state park, but hefting equipment down from the parking lot to the little beach there is just brutal, and getting it back up even more so. So Meeks Bay it was, and it's always nice there.

We went on a Friday and, worrying about having to hunt for a parking spot with the pre-Labor Day crowd, tried to get there bright and early. It got to be 10AM anyway, but our fears were proven wrong; not a car in the lot and we had the beach pretty much to ourselves. It was a gorgeous day but, this being early September, it was quite fresh and so we waited for the sun to warm things up a bit. The water seemed in the mid to high 60s as it usually is in late summer at Tahoe.

After half an hour or so two more divers arrived and we got to talking as we donned our gear. They were old friends and career military, one an experienced diver, the other having just a few dives. I shared what I knew about Meeks Bay and the lay of the land. We took our time and they were in first. Our new Steel 100 tanks made a good first impression. They had the same circumference as the standard Aluminum 80s we had used in Turks and Caicos, and so there was no need to adjust the tank straps on our BCs. And though they were quite a bit taller than Carol's smaller steel tanks, they were lighter and handier than I had expected. We wore 7mil wetsuits, hoods and gloves, and I decided on 14 pounds of weight whereas Carol took 12 (you need a bit more weight than you'd expect because the lower surface pressure at altitude means the closed-cell foam of the wetsuit expands).

The water was wonderfully refreshing and didn't feel cold at all. I used the Liquid Image VideoMask instead of my Scubapro Frameless. We were about ready to go when I realized that our new acquaintances had some problems. One of them was on his back and calling for help. He did not seem in imminent danger and his friend was closeby, but we hurried over there anyway. He had an asthma attack and could not breathe. He'd dropped his mask, snorkel and weight belt and we recovered that. Fortunately, the attack quickly passed, but that was it for his diving plans. It must be very frustrating to have something like that happen, but certainly better above water than during a dive.

So we finally got ready and... Carol's dive computer errored out. Its battery had been down to the mid 50%s and we had contemplated sending it to Scubapro for a battery replacement, but decided against it since it takes Scubapro weeks to get the computer back. So that came back to bite us. I got back out of the water and to the car to get Carol's backup computer. It's not air-integrated and we didn't bring along a pressure gauge, but since she uses less air than me anyway and we had two big, full 100 cubic foot tanks, we decided to go.

The water was clearer than last year, but not as clear as it had been two years ago. It actually seemed fairly murky to me, though Carol later said it'd been in the 50-75 foot range. The southern side of Meeks Bay is quite shallow for the first ten minutes of the dive or so, barely 15 feet. Then, all of a sudden, you see a steep incline and we worked our way around boulders down the slope. Within just a few minutes we were at 85 feet and I saw what looked like a man-made structure. It turned out to be the wreck of a small motorboat. I didn't want to go any deeper but Carol went down to the boat at about 100 feet and took pictures. The temperature had dropped into the 50s, but it still didn't feel cold.

The steep slope probably goes down to well over 1,000 feet and so the temptation was there to descend a bit more, but we were on Nitrox 32 with a MOD of 116 feet, there wasn't much light, and there wasn't much to see. So we did slow ascent back up to 30 feet and swam around the huge boulders, took pictures of crawdads, and looked at schools of silvery fish shooting around the rocks. Diving is always wonderful, but I really did miss all the plants and life of the ocean. Without it, there is just... nothing.

Technically, things went well. My replacement computer worked as it should, the steel tanks felt good, and I probably would have been fine with 10 or 12 pounds of weight. I had started the dive with 3,300 psi and had 1,500 psi left after a 54 minute dive. Carol started with 3,400 and ended with 2,200. So these tanks are good for two dives.

We had a leisurely lunch at Rosie's in Tahoe City, then decided to check out Fallen Leaf Lake on the way back. Fallen Leaf is just a couple of miles off Route 89 that goes along Lake Tahoe, but the lake level is at 6,370 feet, about 150 feet higher than Lake Tahoe. It's a small, longish lake maybe three miles long and less than a mile wide. The road along Fallen Leaf Lake is very narrow and barely paved, and it can be quite an adventure when someone comes at you. There isn't any public parking either, except for a few spots at the village of Fallen Leaf where we stopped and had ice cream. There's a little marina and a small public beach, and we instantly had a great desire to dive the incredibly clear lake. The guy at the boat rental place said the bottom drops off quickly, with the end of the marina already at 100 feet. It was too late in the day, though, and so we decided we'd come back some other time.

Nothing, however, is infallible, and my Uwatec Smart-Z dive computer finally quit on me. Unfortunately right in the middle of a dive trip. One day it was happily humming along, doing its thing, showing a remaining battery charge of 72% after just over three years and over a hundred dives, the next it displayed a little wrench symbol and nothing else. This means it needs service or repair. Not good when you're on a live-aboard in the Caribbean.

Fortunately for me, my dive buddy had been wearing two computers on every dive, and so I was able to use hers. Both of us had used Nitrox, and both of us had gone on the same dives, so using her computer was okay as we were both on the same nitrogen schedule. The backup computer wasn't air-integrated, but the boat had some spare/rental pressure gauges, and so we attached one of them onto my first stage.

I was still ticked off at my dive computer as I had not yet downloaded the day's four dives when it quit. I always use an infrared adapter to download my dive data from the dive computer to my notebook. I then go through the dives, add commentary and annotations, check average depth, average and peak air consumption and so on. For the rest of the week, none of that for me.

On some dive computers you can change the batteries anywhere. A guy on the boat had his done right before a dive, no big deal. Changing the battery on my liquid-filled Smart-Z with its soldered battery is a much bigger deal, one that requires sending the computer back to Scubapro. Not even Scubapro dealers can/are supposed to do it. And without a special rush order, sending and getting the computer back takes weeks.

I really missed my dive computer. The backup worked just fine, but it didn't record my dives so that I could later upload them, so there'll forever be a ten-dive hole in my electronic dive log.

I also realized once again that the plastic dive tables certification agencies use are really relics. Almost no one still uses them for actual dives. They probably still serve a purpose in making students better understand the concepts of nitrogen absorption and how it affects repetitive dives. However, even there PADI with its surly, heavyhanded legal staff is making sure divers remain uneducated by threatening anyone who uses their precious dive tables in an non-sanctioned manner (like explaining them on a website). Shame on them.

Anyway, my dive computer is now at Scubapro and I should have it back within a few days (yes, I paid the rush charge). I am not sure if the computer quit because it ran out of battery despite still showing 72% remaining charge, or if something else went wrong with it. I have come across other references suggesting that some dive computers quit with a lot of charge still remaining. If that is so, then the software should be fixed to display properly.

Postscript: I called the diveshop eight days later when I didn't hear from them despite having paid the rush charge. They told me Scubapro would give me a new replacement computer. It arrived at the diveshop 11 days after the rush was sent to Scubapro. It is certainly nice to have a new replacement computer, but it still cost shipping, a US$45 rush charge, and unfortunately Scubapro didn't report what was wrong with the computer or retrieve any of my data from the computer, so the six dives that I had not downloaded yet are lost forever.

The first encounter came at a dive site called Thunderdome off the Northwest coast of the Turks and Caicos island of Providenciales. The site was named after an underwater dome that had been put in place for a French TV show in the early 1990s. The steel dome, which is at a depth of 35-40 feet, is collapsed now and was perfect for taking one of our waterproof test cameras along, the kind that do not need a waterproof housing. The segments of the formerly hemispherical structure have broken apart and collapsed, but the pieces are arranged such that you can swim inside and underneath. Visibility was excellent and there were hundreds and hundreds of fish, with large schools of yellow French grunts.

I ventured away from the main structure to explore a large piece of the dome that had broken off completely. That’s when I saw my first-ever shark – a five-foot nurse shark that was laying on the sand under a piece of the dome.

Nurse sharks are very different from almost any other shark in that they like to lay motionless on the sand for lengthy periods of time. I was very excited to see the shark and slowly approached it, taking a bunch of pictures. I wanted to alert Carol who was exploring another part of the dome, but was afraid the shark would swim off and I wouldn’t see it again. I also didn’t know what to expect. This was, after all, a shark. So I stayed my distance, taking pictures. At some point the shark moved a little, then some more, but didn’t swim away.

I went to get Carol and she took more pictures. I had wondered for so long what it’d be like to see my first shark, and here he was.

We did another dive at Thunderdome, a night dive. I had expected to be nervous descending into the black ocean, but I wasn’t. We all had green lights to our tanks so we could easily be located, and we all had two divelights. Lights were clearly visible and so it was easy to locate one another. Diving around the dome in the dark was fun and the divelight spectacularly illuminated the structures. We saw the nurse shark again, swimming with a big turtle. Carol later said she saw it hunting and it was quite ferocious.

The next day we did another dive at the North-West side of Providenciales. The site was called “The Amphitheatre,” referring to a smallish patch of sand sitting at the bottom of a first wall at perhaps 85 feet. When you look at the walls surrounding it, it looks like you’re on a stage looking up at the bleachers of an amphitheatre.

This I where I saw my first “real” shark. As we were reaching the edge of the reef and began dropping down the wall, a sleek reef shark cruised by in the distance, elegantly and effortlessly. It didn’t come close, it just cruised by to take a look. I felt no fear, just awe. I only saw the shark for a few seconds, but it gave off this aura of effortless power, purpose and confidence that I had never seen in any other sea creature. It was instantly clear that the shark considered itself on top of the food chain.

We didn’t see the shark again on this dive and the boat moved on to the island of West Caicos where at a wonderful divesite dive site named “The Gully” there were several sharks, just appearing out of nowhere. You'd turn around and there was a real life shark just cruising by, only feet away from you. They circled around, swam right up to us and under us, but never displaying aggressive behavior. It was an awesome site seeing those sleek creatures cruise around us.

And they didn’t just appear for a bit and then leave; they hung around and stayed with us the entire dive. Interestingly, they stayed even though we had about 10-12 divers in the group. Apparently they are used to people. I expected to be hugely nervous and my heart pounding, but none of that happened. It does get a bit disconcerting as they tend to cruise toward you then sort of turn around you, disappear, then appear again and swim a closer circle. It was an incredible experience, and unlike at some of those places where they feed sharks for special shark trips, the ones I saw were totally wild.

We did a second dive at “The Gully,” and this time it was all about sharks. They were there, circling around us from the moment we entered the water, just swimming and circling. Overall there must have been six to eight sharks, and they were between five and eight feet long. They’d come in fairly close, then slowly disappear again into the distance. Next thing you know, the shark is right back. This was a bit spooky, knowing when you get in the water, the sharks are right there. I was not afraid and neither my heart rate nor my air consumption went up, but I must say it can feel eery when a predator this large heads for you, circles around you, swims away, then comes back and swims a tighter circle.

When I later looked at the pictures I’d taken I noticed that almost all the sharks had bite marks on them and Joe, one of the divemasters, said that those marks were new and had not been there a couple of weeks before. The only thing that could leave such deep marks might be mating rituals, or they were inflicted by larger sharks in a shark feeding frenzy. Opinions were voiced as to what might have triggered such a frenzy, and none of them were comforting.

I saw sharks again at a second West Caicos dive site named Rock Garden Interlude. This time a reef shark followed us and circled around us. I got some good video of it, but stayed close to the dive master. One thing that’s interesting is that none of the other fish appeared perturbed by the presence or approach of the sharks. Each of the smaller fish would have made a quick meal for a shark, but apparently there are some rules down there.

We then moved on to the small island of French Key. There were reef sharks in abundance and also a most accommodating nurse shark. The reef sharks did their coming and going routine whereas the nurse shark sat between coral heads, then lifted off and moved around a bit, just to rest again.

Seeing sharks was an incredible experience, and that alone made this trip worthwhile. In Roatan you sign up for a shark trip and then go see a bunch of sharks that are there because they know they will get fed. On Caicos, and especially the island of West Caicos, the sharks are simply there and part of the ecosystem. Seeing both nurse sharks and reef sharks up close was something I’ll never forget.

After a lifetime of reading about sharks, seeing them in person and diving with them was incredible. It’s also clear that while most sharks have common characteristics, the different types of sharks act very differently. The nurse sharks lay in the sand, resting or perhaps sleeping, and then cruise around close to the bottom for brief periods of time. They neither seem afraid of humans nor do they show any interest. Reef sharks, on the other hand, constantly cruise and may come very close. They seem quite interested in divers and sometimes seem on collision course. I am not sure what may trigger one to take bite or become aggressive. None of the ones I’ve seen on this trip showed any aggression.

So we booked a trip with Explorer Ventures for seven days aboard their Turks and Caicos Explorer II. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I have never been on a cruise, I’ve never owned a boat, and I’ve hardly ever been on a boat larger than a dive boat. I had absolutely no idea what to expect. What would it be like? Would I get seasick? But it all sounded interesting and so we decided on the trip. The Turks and Caicos Explorer II would be our home for a week.

Getting there is never a lot of fun. We got up at 3AM to catch a 6AM American flight and finally arrived after a long three-leg ordeal when it was already dark. The airport on Providenciales, the most touristy of the Turks and Caicos islands, is small and homey. Immigration was quick and hassle-free, and our bags arrived promptly. We had to fill out three instead of the usual two forms, the additional being a swine flu questionnaire. Fortunately, neither of us felt sick or had had any recent contact with pigs.

Outside the airport, things were quite well organized. A uniformed transportation guy asked where we wanted to go and led us to the proper line. Another one took our luggage and made smalltalk. How was your flight? First time on the island? And so on. Though there were quite a few people, it took less than five minutes for us to get on a standard size van with one other party. The lady driver of a beat-up van was courteous enough and the ride from the airport to the Turtle Cove Inn where we would stay for the first night was less than ten minutes. The fare was a hefty US$26. I gave the cabbie lady US$30, but she glared at me and clearly wanted more. I handed over another five.

The hotel looked wonderfully tropical, but the office was already closed. Amazingly, there was a sheet of paper stuck on the door, all neatly printed and addressed to us, long name spelled correctly and all, directing us to pick up our materials at the bar and complete the check-in in the morning. The bartender apparently expected us. It was about 8:45Pm and the bar wasn’t crowded, but food was still available. After dinner we walked around the marina and marveled at the awesome yachts moored there. Many had big-screen TVs with people watching.. what? Satellite TV? The water in the marina was clean and absolutely clear. The underwater spotlights on the yachts lit up the water to the bottom and you could see fish. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a marina with such clear water.

The next day we had some time to kill and walked down to the beach, which was marvelous, with clean, white sand and the clearest bluest water I’ve seen on any beach. The sand had little pieces of red coral in it and all the rock was also old coral. The water was perhaps 86 degrees and felt wonderful. Back at the Turtle Cove Inn, we were picked up by a van from Explorer Ventures. We picked up one final guest, driving through some very impressively luxurious developments and then headed for the Caicos Marina that turned out to be a much more utilitarian and industrial affair than the snazzy Turtle Cove Marina where we had stayed (and where Explorer Ventures’ competition, the Aggressor, anchors).

The 140-foot Turks & Caicos Explorer II, however, is a larger boat than the Aggressor by some 30 feet and an impressive craft indeed. After unloading and taking off our shoes and socks and putting them in a box, we boarded the vessel and met the staff. Nissa, a young divemaster from Canada showed us our room, stateroom #7 on the main floor, right opposite the kitchen/mess. The room was small, of course, but big enough for two double beds combined into making a large bed. The bathroom with shower was small but adequate. With all of our electronic gear, I had been concerned about power outlets. No problem there as I found a total of four outlets.

The next couple of hours we set up our dive gear, got weights, put cameras onto the camera table at the rear of the boat, put away our clothes, arranged stuff, and so on. Then it was time for dinner and we got our first taste of chef Stan’s exquisite cooking. Eating on the Turks and Caicos Explorer is buffet style, three tables with six chairs each. The dining room/salon was much larger than I expected and even had a 37-inch flatscreen TV.

After dinner, Captain Ken introduced himself and the crew. There was Sandie, the purser; Doug, the engineer and Sandie’s husband; Stan, the chef, a local from Salt Cay; and then dive masters Nissa, Joe and Dave. Captain Ken himself is a retired oil field guy who’s now living in the Florida Keys, acting as a relief captain for a number of boats. He explained the law of the land, being both humorous and concise.

We learned that the boat doesn’t have a keel but a considerable draw due to its size, so getting in and out of marinas requires careful timing with the tides. It also means that the boat swings while anchored, left to right, so hanging onto the 15-foot stop bar when you come up can make for a wild ride. He also explained that the boat’s water is from onboard reverse osmosis systems, meaning it is completely safe to drink. And that the cooling system, with individual controls for each room, uses an air washing method and not a conventional A/C compressor/condensor, so it wasn’t going to get icy-cold. As it turned out, temperature was never an issue. Speaking with the captain I learned that the boat has a 5,000 gallon tank for diesel fuel. A week-long trip like ours burns about 1,000 gallons. The boat has a septic tank processing plant that should reduce everything to just clear water. The boat can be steered from the top deck, from a remote station on the forward side of the middle upper deck, and, of course, from the bridge.

Later, we socialized and got to know each other. I took advantage of the marina’s WiFi to catch up on email and such. Others talked or watched a movie. Three additional guests joined, meaning there were a dozen guests and seven staff. The T&C Explorer II can handle 20 guests, so we had plenty of room to stretch out.

We went to bed at 11:00PM, with the boat now moving from the marina towards its first destination off Providenciales’ Northwest Point. There was a bit of side-to-side movement, and the vibration from the big diesel engines was quite noticeable. It felt a bit like in an airplane at night, except for the extra light side motion. It took me a while to fall asleep. The bed was amazingly comfortable, and cabin temperature was fine. At some point the ship was pitching a bit more and I felt that in my sleep, but not enough to wake up.

I woke up Sunday morning at 6:28AM, two minutes before the alarm went off. The sun had just come up and was starting to burn through the haze, and the moon was still up. By 7AM we were having breakfast. Stan cooked ham and eggs to order, and there was also toast, English muffins, yoghurt and cereal.

Dive master Dave, a good, humorous presenter, explained the overall dive rules and law of the land (or boat as it were). Maximum depth is 130 feet on air, 110 feet on nitrox. Maximum dive time 70 minutes, and come up with at least 500 psi left. Everyone must have a buddy unless they are solo diver certified (which no one was). The boat has two ladders and also two weighted lines for 15-foot safety stops.

Then it was off to the first dive briefing. The crew draws a dive site map onto a whiteboard and uses that as a visual. One of the three dive masters comes along on each dive. Divers can join the dive master, or they are free to go by themselves.

The first dive site was Eel’s Garden on the northeast side of Providenciales. The reef there was 40-45 feet deep, and there was a wall going down to perhaps 120 feet. Right on the first dive we saw several lionfish. They are beautiful but an invasive species and apparently a real menace as they propagate very quickly and have no natural predators. As a result, they take over and decimate the native species. They just kind of hang around in crevices and don’t seem to swim around very much. They are clearly related to scorpion fish, though they look much nicer with their colorful feather-like plumes. I can see why people shy away from killing them. The water temperature was a pleasant 84 degrees Fahrenheit or so, and my 3mil suit was plenty enough. The 80 cubic-foot aluminum tanks we got (each marked with our name) should generally last for an hour or so, depending on depth and individual consumption. I hit 101 feet on my first dive.

The boat did indeed swing from left to right and back, appearing and then disappearing from view. Going up required listening to the boat’s motor and timing your ascent. As we surfaced, a crew member helped with cameras and fins, and then they recorded our maximum depth, dive time, and remaining tank pressure. And a batch of delicious hot brownies was waiting, too. Yum.

The second dive was to the same location, but this time we turned left at the wall. With the exception of the lionfish that I had not seem before, this first divesite was a little short on the usual sponges and gorgonians and seafans and all the other cool and healthy stuff we were used to seeing in the Caribbean. Like in most places there was some coral bleaching, and it was clear that some areas were still recovering from hurricanes that had hit the area a couple of years prior.

For lunch, chef Stan cooked up some delicious curry soup and served cold cuts for sandwiches. There was hardly enough time to upload pictures from our Olympus and Canon underwater cameras and replace batteries before it was time to dive again. The captain had moved the boat close to the location of the “Thunderdome,” a leftover of a French adventure TV show named “The Treasure of Pago Pago” that ran in 1993/94. The dome had been ripped off its foundation and was damaged during a hurricane and the whole thing now looks very different from the pictures in dive site books. Awesome dive though, and I saw my first ever shark.

After four one-hour-plus dives, dinner couldn’t come too soon and this time chef Stan came up with awesome steaks and baked potatoes, vegetables and salad, all topped off with berry pie and ice cream. We ate with captain Ken who told us a bit of the history of Caribbean liveaboards. Apparently, they all got started when so called “crew boats” that ferried workers to oil platforms in the Gulf went out of service during the oil crises in the early 1980s. Many were repurposed, and some became liveaboards. One problem was that crew boats generally were a bit too small, just under 100 feet and 100 tons, and so many were added on to. I learned that our boat, the Turks & Caicos Explorer, has additions to the front and back, and almost the whole super structure was added as well. These additions are one of the reasons why the boat swings so much when moored. The propellers are not all the way in the back either; they are where the boat originally ended.

What happens is that the boat swings back and forth within maybe a 60 degree angle. Others have written about this phenomenon, but I couldn’t quite picture it until I experienced it myself. As you get back to the starting point, you may see the boat, but it may move away and out of sight before you can catch one of the lines. The crew recommended to just wait until it comes back, as it always will. You can also grab the line and go along for the ride, which means you have to hang on to your hat if you had one (I did have a do-rag that almost came off, I was dragged through the water so quickly).

After dinner it was time for a night dive and we went back to the Thunderdome. I had expected to be nervous descending into the black ocean, but I wasn’t. We all had green lights attached to our tanks (the boat sold them at a small cost) so we could easily be located, and we all had two divelights. The lights were clearly visible and so it was easy to locate one another. Diving around the dome in the dark was fun and the divelight spectacularly illuminated the structures. We again saw the nurse shark we had seen in the afternoon, now swimming with a big turtle. A moray eel was hunting in the beams of our lights. A lot of big jacks swam around us. When it was time to return to the boat I wasn’t sure what direction to go. Carol wrote on my slate “Look for the boat’s strobe!” We found that and swam toward it, with the strobe appearing and disappearing with the boat’s swinging. I eventually managed to grab the weighted line.

So that was five long dives this first day, and, if you were up to it, five dives every day. That’s one of the great things about being on a liveaboard: you can dive to your heart’s content without ever having to heft around your dive gear, hang it up to dry, or even worry about your tanks. That’s all taken care of, always.

The T&C Explorer II’s crew was delightful. Dave, a Brit from Liverpool, is ever friendly, witty and helpful, and does excellent dive briefings and presentations. Of his two colleagues, Joe is very friendly and personable, too, and a total expert at locating small critters. He is very pleasant and patients. Purser Sandy is friendly, personable, helpful and very pleasant, too. They all act like friends going out of their way to be good hosts rather than staff. Chef Stan doesn’t talk much, but the man can cook.

At night we uploaded pictures and then went up onto the two upper decks to watch the stars. That was an amazing experience. Even with the boat lights still on, we could see millions of stars. There were what seemed to be clouds, but it was the milky way AND numerous galaxies. Quite different from watching the sky in suburban California where city lights light up the sky and all you can see is a few stars of the major constellations.

Early the next morning, perhaps 4 o’clock or so, the boat started for West Caicos, an uninhabited island that’s southwest of Provo. It’s a rocky, flat 6-mile strip of land that is protected both inland and along its shores where it is a marine park. You can see some old structures on it, and apparently there have been renewed efforts at developing, but they fell victim to the bad economy.

One thing that really impressed me was the spaciousness of the vessel. I had expected everything to be small and cramped. Instead, the dining room/salon was very generously sized and didn’t look like a cafeteria at all. You felt instantly feel at home here.

The beds were exceptionally comfortable. Maybe it’s because you sleep well after four or five dives, but I have hardly slept better. You get two pillows each. The crew makes up your bed while you have breakfast, and in the evening they even put a chocolate on your pillow. You get new towels every day. They differentiate between inside and outside towels. The ones outside you just take and use to dry off after diving, or after having taken a hot shower on the dive deck after a dive.

The shower in our room was good, though I must admit I hardly ever used it. When you dive all day and shower outside after each dive, it just doesn’t seem necessary. I mean, why shampoo and blow-dry your hair when it gets wet again instantly anyway?

Even though I brought as few clothes as possible, I still brought too much. All you really need on a liveaboard is underwear, T-shirts and bathing suits. You always walk around barefoot. You really only need to pack what you wear for travel.

Money, likewise, is not needed, at least not during the week. All food and drink is provided, and that includes beer, wine, and even hard liquor from the liquor cabinet. No one in our group abused that, so I am not sure if there are limits.

Cabin doors mostly remain unlocked. You don’t even have a key, or at least I never used one. You can lock them from inside at night or when you’re inside so that the crew does not inadvertently walk in on you.

Our airfills were always done on time, with green caps meaning you wanted nitrox, and red caps air. Nitrox was reliably at just about 32%, and air fill pressure didn’t vary by much. The lowest I saw was perhaps 2,900psi, the highest 3,150psi. There was always someone waiting to help you when you came up, the name of the diver coming up was communicated, and once you were out of the water you were asked your depth and remaining air.

My dive time was generally just about an hour, and I usually came up with 500-650psi. Finding the boat often ate up some time as the reefs/sandy bottom were generally fairly deep (45-60 feet) and the boat could be hard to see. Watching the individual dive patterns and styles was interesting. Some almost always go deep whereas others never do. Some almost always come up with less air than they should whereas others keep it on the safe side. Some are hot-dogging underwater whereas others try to move as efficiently as possible. Some are elegant, others less so.

On Thursday I woke up to some pretty heavy rolling and decided I probably better take a ginger candy, just in case. The ride from West Caicos to French Key is perhaps 15 miles and takes less than three hours. The trip is along the fringe of the shallow Caicos bank, but it is open water, and so things get a bit choppy even in good weather. I eventually got up and went on the top deck, sitting in the captain’s chair letting the wind blow through my hair, and seeing nothing but water all around. A bit later French Key came into view, a small, uninhabited sandy patch that barely sticks out of the water by a few feet.

The water was rougher there, so getting in and out of the water was a bit trickier. The dive entry dock at the rear of the boat is almost level with the water, so when it gets rocky, waves just wash over it and the crew has to make sure to close the two doors to the utility room of the dive deck.

With some 20 dives under our belts, we actually skipped the second dive Thursday afternoon because the seas were pretty rough by now. One of the truly nicest dive sites I’d ever seen, and I skip an opportunity for a second dive! I suppose that’s what a total of 20 hours underwater within five days will do. Carol simply fell asleep while watching our latest dive pictures. Those who went on the dive didn’t have a great time due to very strong surge and current at the bottom, and then the heavy seas when getting back to, and onto, the boat. One diver actually missed the sinkerline and had to use his safety sausage.

As it turned out, the Thursday dive was to be my last on the Turks & Caicos Explorer II. The weather that had turned pretty rough in the afternoon got worse and no one went on the night dive, despite its reputation as the best night dive off the island.

The captain gave a farewell briefing and announced there’d be a dawn dive (5AM) Friday morning that would give you a chance to see all the sea creatures go the other way after a night’s feeding and activities. At 8:30AM there would be another regular dive, the last, at a French Cay site named “Rock & Roll.” As is, we had plenty of rock ‘n roll Thursday night while moored at the G-Sport site off French Cay. The captain had said he might move the boat behind French Cay so as to at least get a reprieve from the wave action. There wouldn’t be much to break the wind as the Cay is small, bereft of all vegetation, and only a few feet above sea level.

The rocking and rolling increased as the evening wore on and it became almost impossible to walk. Cans and bottles in the fridge banged around like crazy and the crew used duct tape to secure cabinet doors and such, and also secured the kitchen. In our room, everything that was on the table was thrown off onto the floor, despite the lip that surrounds half the table. A soda fell off and drenched the carpeting.

At 11PM the captain announced he was going to move the boat behind French Cay. The water there was only maybe 8-10 feet, and that required some precision navigation by the captain and the crew. We dropped anchor around midnight. Carol and I went up on the top deck. The waves had calmed down some but it was still quite windy. We went to sleep around 12:45. I felt the rocking motion once or twice, but soundly slept through the night.

Overall, this was a wonderful experience and I am very glad we did it. I have nothing to measure it against, so I don’t know if the little glitches are par for the course, or if the overall family-feel of the crew is normal. I don’t know if everything is supposed to be polished and gleaming or if signs or wear and tear are normal in a vessel that spends most of its time at sea.

The Lonely Planet book on Turks & Caicos said, “many experienced divers believe the Turks and Caicos islands offer the best diving in the Caribbean. They certainly offer a world-class diving experience. Excellent visibility, unspoiled reefs, spectacular vertical walls, and an abundance of marine animals both big and small attract divers from around the globe.” I can mostly agree with that, though the hurricane damage will take some more time to heal.

Some observations: don’t worry about bringing sunscreen and bug repellents unless you have special needs. There is a box with just about anything. I suppose guests leave theirs here. Also, there are dozens of book to read should someone get bored (which I cannot imagine). For entertainment there was the big flatscreen TV, two DVD players, and a Sony sound system. No need for shoes on the boat. You go barefoot the entire week. And though we didn’t bring a lot of clothes, we brought way too much.

The last morning I felt sort of strange. The trip had gone by much too fast. The crew was busy beginning to ready the boat for the next group of guests, and also used their computers to follow the predictions for hurricane Anna, the first of the season. The captain made arrangements in case they had to cut the trip short and seek shelter in the marina.

So that was a week on a liveaboard. It’s a wonderful experience.

"Divers have fierce encounters with sharks," the writer observed. "The only safe course is to turn on the sharks and frighten them. For sharks fear men just as much as men fear them, which means that in deep water they have an even chance. When the diver reaches the surface the situation is critical for him, because he loses his means of attack as he tries to get out of the water, and his safety is completely dependent on his shipmates. These pull on a rope tied to his shoulders. He keeps up the struggle and tugs on the rope with his left hand, as a danger signal, while his right hand holds his knife and is busy fighting."

While one might argue with these observations and suggestions, they are not unreasonable and I've probably read similar in dozens of modern books. I mention "modern" because the above passage was written almost two thousand years ago by a Roman author and philosopher named Gaius Plinius Secundus, also known as Pliny the Elder. I've been reading Pliny's "Natural History," which is sort of an overall compendium of pretty much everything that was known at the time of the Roman Empire, which was quite a bit. Some (though by no means all) of it is spot-on and sounds amazingly contemporary. It really surprises me that I can go to Amazon and order, or download, what a man wrote almost two millennia ago when so much of history has only survived as hearsay or vague, archaic-sounding translations of translations.

Pliny also wrote of dolphins, whales, pearls, sponges, oysters, crabs and many others. Of course, Pliny, who died in 79AD while trying to rescue friends from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, was also of the opinion that "shellfish are the prime cause of the decline of morals and the adoption of an extravagant life style." Take that, you guys on "Deadliest Catch"!

Crystal River, Florida

Snorkeling with Manatees in Crystal River, which is about 90 miles northwest of Orlando on the Gulf coast, is such a unique experience that I’ll take every chance I get to see those gentle, wonderful creatures again. Mid June didn’t seem like an optimal time for manatee sightings, though, and Captain Chris at the Birds Underwater dive shop and tour operator confirmed this. The manatees migrate up the rivers and springs when the seawater gets cold but then leave again when it gets warmer. It might take quite some time to locate a manatee or two, said Chris, and the water conditions were not optimal, with a very noticeable amount of dead algae clumps floating on the surface. There was none of that early morning mist hovering on the water either as the sun was already high up in the sky at 7AM this time of year. Still, the freshwater King’s Bay area was as majestic and serene as ever.

We got lucky with the manatees, though, as Captain Chris spotted the tell-tale small bubbles that signal a manatee grazing at the bottom. Sometimes the bubbles turn out to be just fish or a turtle, but soon we saw a manatee surfacing to take a breath. You never see more than the top of their nose with the two nostrils while the rest off the animal stays underwater.

Everyone pulled up their wetsuit and donned fins and mask and in we went. Visibility was very marginal, perhaps five feet or even less. That was disappointing and I wondered why exactly it was that they called this place “Crystal River” when at least for now, and also on my first visit here, it was anything but. I mean, King’s Bay is where all the water of Crystal River originates is one giant spring, so you’d expect it to be clear.

Despite the murky water we did see manatees. A dark shape would slowly materialize in the water and all of a sudden I’d see the animal within a foot or two, slowly moving through the water, never bumping into me or touching me. I had a chance to touch its skin that felt a bit like rough neoprene. There were a mama manatee with two calves, the younger one perhaps four to five feet long and very curious and playful.

We followed the manatees for half an hour or so, then got back on the boat and headed for the entrance to Three Sisters, one of my favorite snorkeling areas with what usually is truly crystal-clear water. Snorkeling up through the picturesque rocky entrance I saw finned and bare legs and feet stirring up the bottom and couldn’t refrain from reprimanding one of the offenders. He first thought I was just making conversation, then realized that I was chewing him out and quickly turned away. I later felt bad for having done that as I surely didn’t want to ruin anyone’s experience of that magical spot. It just seems so unnecessary to spastically flail around and ruin visibility for everyone else when it’s so easy to stay flat in the water.

Three Sisters was the great experience I remembered, though it’d been infested by wispy green algae that clung to things like giant cottonballs and looked entirely out of place. Carol said she wanted to grab some of the green stuff, ball it up into ugly, nasty clumps and remove it from the water. Captain Chris had said this was normal for this time of the year and I sure hope it’ll go away again.

Back on the boat people took their wetsuits off a bit too soon as we saw another manatee, this time in clear water. I still wore my suit and got to go back in and follow and watch the manatee, which seemed to be a large male. Unfortunately I had left my camera on the boat and could not take pictures.

Rainbow River

Drift diving means that you enter the water in one place and exit at another. Which means you need someone to drop you off or pick you up. Last time, early in my dive career, I had been with a tour where the boat dropped us off somewhere in the upper part of Rainbow River and then collected us again at the end of the dive. Since the boat had been located in Crystal River, some 20 miles away from K.P. Hole State Park, the logistics of getting the boat there (on a trailer) and back were a bit difficult. Our friends at Bird’s Underwater don’t do that anymore, and so this time they made a call and arranged to have a boat take us upriver and drop us off.

Captain Bill awaited us and soon we were on his boat, getting helpful tips and explanations along the way. The trip upriver for our planned hour-and-a-half drift dive seemed very short and so we asked the captain to take us up a bit farther before we jumped in the water.

The dive itself was pretty much as I remembered, with depths varying from just a couple of feet or less all the way down to maybe 20 feet, water temperature a pleasant 75 degrees, and the current anywhere from barely noticeable to quite brisk. Visibility wasn’t great, but good enough to see where we were going. We resolved to stay close together.

A river drift dive is like river rafting, only there's a lot of scenery and up and down as you dive between, through and around what’s at the bottom. It’s easier to stop and look around, and there’s lots to see. There are meadows of sea grass separated by sandy runs and chutes, gulley and valley like rock formations of varying size, little springs with cold water boiling up through the bottom in numerous spots, impenetrable bamboo-like gardens and more. Apart from inquisitive small fish and some funny looking baby turtles we didn’t see much wildlife, though once Carol ran into an alligator gar.

About halfway through the dive I heard a strange sound that Carol later described as like bacon frying in a pan. It was rain, one of Florida's sudden downpours. We were looking up to the surface from maybe eight to ten feet and saw the rain drops hitting the surface, and we could clearly hear it. I'd never experienced that before.

You’d expect a drift dive to simply take you downriver with you going along for the ride, but in reality it isn’t that easy. You tend to meander this way and that, and sometimes there is no obvious current to follow. I’d watch for the eel grass leaning in the direction of the flow, but sometimes it just stands up straight and you have no idea where to go. So you just go forward until there’s a current again.

One time I followed Carol through thick eel grass and it just got shallower and shallower. Carol finned through the grass in an effort to find deeper water again and even her expert technique couldn’t keep things from getting stirred up quite a bit. That quickly turned into a partial and then total silt-out with my world turning all brown. By now I was perhaps in a foot and a half of water but it felt like getting stuck in all the brown and the grass. Though I knew that all I had to do was turn around and stick my head out of the water it wasn’t a very pleasant experience.

Soon the water was deep and clear again and we came upon a powerful spring that rushed out of a cavern. It was so strong that we could barely swim up to it. I forced myself close, holding on to some rocks, when I saw what seemed like glittering yellow nuggets in the sand and rock. I picked some up and they seemed heavy and did not flake. I thought it couldn’t possibly be gold, but who knew what might blast out of the earth and so I picked up a few and put them in a pocket in my BC. It later turned out to be thoroughly ordinary pebbles and I have no idea why they had looked like gold to me down there.

Carol surfaced several times to get directions and make sure we didn’t miss our exit on the river. What had seemed to be just a short distance turned out to be an almost two hour dive. It's shallow, though, and I actually still had air left in my 80-cubic foot rental tank at the end of the dive (and felt pretty good about that). It’d been fun and I’d do it again, but I’d do it on a sunny day. Without the sun shining through the water and illuminating things, the river seemed somewhat flat and a bit dreary.

Chiefland, Catfish Sink, Manatee Springs State Park

After staying at the historic Island Hotel in scenic Cedar Key, it was on to another of my favorite dive sites. Nine out of ten divers would probably take one look at the Catfish sinkhole at Manatee Springs State Park near Chiefland and then quickly pass, or maybe more like 99 out of a hundred. That’s because the entire surface is covered in a half inch thick layer of duckweed, those tiny plants that get everywhere without feeling slimy or unpleasant. Me, I wouldn’t miss a chance to dive into that layer and see the magical landscape underneath. Catfish is also the major entrance to one of the world's longest syphon caves at over 11,000 feet of explored passage.

When we checked in at the ranger booth there was only one other dive party listed up on the board and so the chance for clear water was good. Donning my 7mm wetsuit in 96 degrees and probably near 100% humidity was remarkably less painful than I expected, but getting in the 72-degree water still felt good. An open water diver asked us what it was like in there as he was going to dive the sink the next day. He said he’d been diving all over the world and with all sorts of creatures, but he didn’t know whether he’d like to dive in this dark weed-covered sinkhole. We reassured him that it was quite bright and really wonderful once you broke through the cover.

I went under first and it actually did seem much darker than I remembered. Visibility was marginal for a spring-fed sinkhole, with everything cast in an intense shade of green that I did not recall from prior dives. We headed down for the dark cavern entrance at the side and bottom of the sinkhole. I saw Carol fiddling with the SeaLife DC1000 that we took along for testing. She was frustrated with the unfamiliar menus and buttons, and so we switched cameras. There wasn’t much light down there and the syphon from the underground river that passes at the bottom of the sink was quite strong. People had gotten sucked in there and died, and so I was extra careful not to go too far, making sure I always had something to hold onto.

A party of three divers passed us, heading into the cavern with their dive lights. Using lights is a strict no-no for anyone not cavern- or cave-certified at Catfish, and these three did not appear to be cavers. I saw the dim beams of their lights deep inside the cavern and hoped they knew what they were doing. I made it down to 69 feet, a bit deeper than on prior dives. Looking up to the surface from the entrance of the cavern is one of my favorite views. This is the exact view Sheck Exley had seen many times during his explorations of the Manatee cave system and even included in his book “Caverns Measureless to Man.”

The rest of the 45 minute dive was uneventful as it was just too murky to really enjoy and experience the scenery. There seemed more silty sediment at the bottom and all sorts of stuff was floating around. Getting rid of the duckweed once you emerge from the water is almost impossible, even when using the shower next to the sink. Experienced divers will use a blast of air from their regulator to clear a patch of surface from duckweed before they emerge, but the little weeds will still be everywhere. All you can do is keep enough air in your tank for a second dive in the clear main basin a hundred yards away from the sink.

Chiefland, Manatee Springs main basin

The main basin at Manatee Springs is a popular swimming and snorkeling watering hole just a short distance away from the Suwannee river. The water is usually crystal-clear as the bowl is fed by the same underground spring that passes by Catfish sink. We both had over a thousand psi left in our tanks and so welcomed the chance to play in the clear water, washing off the duckweed in the process. It’s great fun to go down to the bottom where the underwater river blasts out of the rocks. The flow is so great that it’s hard to swim up to the entrance or even holding onto something, and your hair gets blown back and your mask would come off if you held your head sideways. Amazingly, some sort of mossy stuff grows on logs there, getting nearly ripped off 24/7, yet apparently thriving. The mouth was at perhaps 30 feet, yet freedivers came down and even stayed a bit to poke around, I don’t think I could ever do that.

I breathed down my tank to about 250psi, then surfaced, leaving all the duckweed behind. On the walk back to the car to get changed I was looking forward to a serving of delicious chicken strips from the concession stand, and then perhaps a leisurely stroll on the wooden boardwalk down to Suwannee river. Unfortunately, there was a brand-new concessionaire who had just moved in a week ago and was still only selling a few items from a table. So no delicious chicken strips. And by the time we were all done with stowing away our gear, it was too late for a walk.

High Springs, Ginnie Springs

Ginnie Springs, near the small town of High Springs, is a Mecca to cave divers for its massive underground network of mapped-out caves and tunnels. It’s also very popular for certification dives thanks to the gin-clear water it gets its name from and the year-round 72 degree water temperature common to all Florida springs. We arrived on a very hot and sunny Sunday with lots of people enjoying the campground and the main basin. The check-in procedure at Ginny is on the cumbersome side, with youthful staff directing you around to sign releases, pay for things and so on. There seems quite a bit of unnecessary overhead, not all of the staffers seemed on top of things, and it seemed odd that divers had to pay $30 and cavers only $22 when the cave system is world famous and massive whereas open water divers have much less real estate to play around in.

We needed to have our tanks filled, which only cost US$5 a pop. Again, staff was milling around but no one offered to help with the tanks. I finally grabbed one of the guys and he went to get help. Filling didn’t take long and we spent the time perusing the large shop filled with interesting gear, snacks, apparel, books and all sorts of stuff, but hardly any caver gear. Carol said this was because there was an excellent caver dive shop in High Springs.

Carol wanted to show me Devil’s Eye and Devil’s Ear before diving. Those are the two main entrances to the Ginnie Springs cave system, though you’d never know. Both are near the mouth of a small sidearm of the Santa Fe river, with the eye being a bit inside the small inlet and the ear just about where the river meets the spring inlet. The sidearm is extremely clear whereas the water of the Santa Fe is an opaque tannic brown. It's not dirty, it just looks like someone had swirled a giant tea bag in it. The two waters swirl and mix around the entrance, with the tannic waters winning out near Devil’s Ear, which was invisible in the tannic water as opposed to Devil’s Eye just a few yards away. There was a steady procession of cavers returning from their dives, most using rebreathers and lots of tech gear. I was watching two of them slowly finning up the inlet where they could exit at the end, making the walk to the parking lot with all their gear as brief as possible. I was fascinated (and a bit intimidated) by all their complicated, professional-looking equipment. I also thought that this was where Mark Fyvie had entered the Ginnie cave system one evening in March of 2008, never to emerge alive.

We then parked near the Ginnie Springs main basin and geared up in the stifling 100 degree heat. 7mm Scubapro wetsuit for me whereas Carol wore her 3mil. Getting in the water brought much welcome relief from the heat. A lot of happy, splashing, shouting people were swimming and snorkeling, and so the basin wasn’t quite as clear as the liquid from which it derived its name.

At one end of the basin, at a depth of about 18 feet, lies the entrance to a largish cavern called “The Ballroom” for its generous proportions. The cavern is wedge-shaped and at an angle, so there is a substantial drop to about 50 feet at its far end where a thick steel grate prohibits further penetration. The grate was put in a good while ago as too many divers had gotten lost and died in the cave system behind. I don’t know if maps exist of that part of the system, or whether it is connected to the main Ginnie cave system that one enters via the Devil’s Eye/Ear.

The flow of fresh spring water from the grate is very strong. I hung on to the grate, using my divelight to shine into the area beyond while the flow blew back my hair. It’s a great feeling. The rock inside the cavern, which, amazingly, we had all to ourselves for the entire 35 minutes we were in there, is all white and immaculate. I began exploring the nooks and crannies and even entered a side chamber that beckoned. A small dive light is enough to light things up in all the white rock.

The view from inside the cavern towards the entrance is spectacular, with sunlight streaming in, framed by the rock. It’s a sight that seems perfect for pictures, but is quite difficult to catch as the dynamic range between all dark inside and very bright outside is so large.

The water inside The Ballroom was indeed gin-clear. It felt like it wasn’t there at all, without any of the ubiquitous floating debris that’s almost always present in water. My gear worked very well, as it did throughout the trip, but I still feel like I am having tunnel vision and it’s difficult to look anywhere but straight ahead. I resolved trying a clear-skirt mask again to see if it makes a difference.

As we left The Ballroom a good half dozen divers came in. We’d been lucky. After we dried off and got out of our gear and into dry clothes we drove back to the lodge. Though it was still early, the snack bar was already closed, so, again no chicken strips (somehow I associate those with diving). Overall, things seemed to be closed a lot during this Florida trip. Diners closed on Sunday afternoons, snack bars closed, restaurants open only for minimal hours. I’d have thought shops would be extra-eager to serve and sell during tough economic times, but apparently not.

Ginnie Springs left a mixed impression. Carol, who doesn’t like crowds and was put off by the increasing commercialization of the once pristine place, had little patience with the uninspired staff and college spring break flavor of the place. So I am not sure if we’ll be back there. Once we got back to the hotel, the neon-emblazoned Fleetwood diner (formerly Floyd's) was, of course, closed. Which was just as well as we ended up having a truly delicious dinner at the historic The Great Outdoors Café in town.

Williston, Blue Grotto

Like Ginnie Springs, Blue Grotto near Williston, just 30 miles or so from Ginnie, was new to me. It’s located within a quarter mile of Devil’s Den on the other side of the highway. The approach is extremely low key, just a dirt road through a rural neighborhood with a small house here and there. A rickedy sign and poster announce Blue Grotto and the cost of diving there (US$40 per diver). There’s a home on the right and a shack to the left.

The man inside the shack is Ed Paradiso, owner and operator of Blue Grotto. Ed doesn’t say much at first and it’s almost a bit awkward standing there. He recognized Carol after a bit and seemed surprised. Somehow he thought she had died at Ginnie Springs some years ago--clearly a case of mistaken identity and Ed was glad that the news of Carol’s demise was greatly exaggerated.

While Carol and Ed catch up on what’s been happening I watch the very good orientation video, starring Ed himself. I must say that the video intimidated me a bit, what with Ed talking about the bottom of the cavern’s loop dive being at 100 feet. We get our tanks filled and Ed suggests we take along a cleverly designed dive light contraption consisting of two powerful lights attached to a hefty battery. It doesn’t have a mount or anything and so we use plastic zip ties to attach the Canon G10's housing on top of it and then head for the grotto.

The Blue Grotto cavern is another natural geologic formation carved by water from the Florida aquifer into the limestone. It’s part sinkhole and part wedge-shaped underwater cavern going down to over a hundred feet. The sinkhole part, however, is sort of like an open amphitheater on the one side, facing a vertical rock face on top of the cavern entrance. Steps go down from the park/picnic area to above-water decking. Large retaining walls hold back the apparently much softer slope opposite the cavern. There are little fish in the water and some algae stuff, but not much. There is no one else there, and the water seems extremely clear. That’s confirmed as we get in. Wow. It’s always hard to estimate actual visibility in feet, but this was the best I have ever seen. Carol later tagged it at 300-plus feet. It was like air, with no floating debris or particles of any kind.

The exposed side of Blue Grotto is like a large bowl that is part open water and part cavern. The bottom slopes down to a massive plate called “peace rock.” It’s a slab that at some point in the cavern’s history must have broken off the ceiling and now rests at the bottom, inviting you to sit on it and peruse the stunning vista from a depth of about 40-45 feet. Looking up from there, you see the various dive platforms, the sunlight shining through the water as glorious rays, an air bell on the underside of the cavern ceiling, and the myriad of reflections from the scenery above. Carol’s taking pictures of me floating through the clear water, and then it’s time to descend into the dark depths behind Peace Rock.

I had read about Blue Grotto but couldn’t quite get a sense of what the various reports seemed to describe as a circular descent and ascent along a guideline. I somehow envisioned a cave-like tube. In reality, there is a lot of rock in the center of the wedge-like cavern that tilts down at a steep angle. The thick guideline rope takes a counterclock-wise turn around all this rock, making it feel like a real cave dive. My heart rate went up quite a bit as I followed Carol down into the dark clear water behind the rock. The powerful video lighting system illuminated our descent into all the white rock. Blue Grotto actually has a high-wattage lighting system mounted on the ceiling near the entrance, but it was off that day, so I don’t know how much it lights up the darker, deeper parts of the grotto. I had my own dive light with me, of course, and so I soon relaxed and took in the majestic scenery, always making sure I stayed by the line.

The descent from 40 feet to the bottom of the guide line, which is at about 83 feet, took only four minutes or so. Carol explored a bit, touching the sandy bottom and thus logging a hundred foot dive. I had not seen the blue light of the cavern entrance during the descent, though I am told that if you’re looking for it, it’s there, thus making Blue Grotto accessible to Open Water divers as opposed to requiring cavern or cave certification. We then did a slow eight to ten minute ascent with the very blue Grotto entrance coming into view first as a small slit, then growing and shining ever brighter. It is a stunning sight and it’s instantly clear why it’s called the Blue Grotto. After we got back to Peace Rock I regretted not having taken more time, just as in Honduras I had regretted having gone through Mary’s Place and Calvin’s Crack much too quickly on my first time. I plan on being back for sure, but it’s hard to imagine conditions ever being this perfect again and the water this clear.

One of Blue Grotto’s attractions is an air bell mounted on the underside of the cavern ceiling at about 22 feet (depth depends on water level, of course). The bell actually feels a little weird. There is nothing to hold onto, you can’t really see out very well, and the acoustics are such that you can barely understand each other. It’s an interesting curiosity, but not the vista point I had expected it to be.

We surfaced after 45 minutes, having enough air left (after I switched tanks with Carol who still uses less than I) for a second half-hour fun and photography dive.

From what I am told, the number of people diving at Blue Grotto pretty much determines visibility. There are times when the place is full of certification divers, and since the bottom is silty, visibility can go down the drain very quickly. This probably won’t affect the water deeper down, but to get the full effect of this awesome place, come early, and during the week.

Anyone wondering whether to choose Blue Grotto or Devil’s Den, the two venues being so close to each other, do both. They are totally different, each spectacular in its own right. And it’s easy to dive both in one day.

Williston, Devil’s Den

Devil’s Den was the first dive when I took my advanced scuba class and I will never forget it. It’ll probably always be one of my very favorite dive sites. The prehistoric setting with the groves, the sinkhole with just a small circle on top that lets in light, the stairs down into the cavern through sheer rock, and just the whole atmosphere of the place are simply priceless. And the diving is wonderful, too.

Devil’s Den is not a large site, nor is it very deep. You may see 50 feet or a bit more if the water level is high. Management had rebuilt the wooden stairs descending into the sinkhole and terminating on the platform built atop the central debris cone. The water was clear as always, though without the absolute clarity I had seen prior as several teams of divers had used the facility before us.

When you look at the water in Devil’s Devil’s Den, it looks like it is about four feet deep, an interesting optical illusion. We descended into the 72 degree water which seemed fairly dark at first so that we turned on our dive lights to explore the rocks and formations. The cool thing about Devil’s Den is that even though the site is limited, you can dive behind and under rocks and it all looks like you’re exploring cave.

This time we went deeper and ventured into nooks and crannies more than before. We saw the several areas that are blocked off from further exploration. Beyond the grates, the cavern continues for what looked to me like a good distance, down as well as out. I probed with my light and wondered how far the system had been explored. I afterwards asked Rowena, Devil’s Den’s manager, and she claimed it was only a few feet before it petered out. I also asked Bill and Diane Oestreich of Bird’s Underwater, who are very advanced cave divers. They, too, said there wasn’t much, and that it had taken Bill five minutes to get in and 15 minutes to get back out when he ventured farther years ago. Maybe it was an illusion, but to me it looked as if there was much more to it.

We spent a full 45 minutes exploring during one full rotation of the den. As we came back up towards the debris cone, sun rays shone down into the water, making for a fairy tale magical atmosphere. And that was at almost 5PM. I took a bunch of pictures.

Later, after I got out of my gear and stowed it away in the back of our Pontiac Vibe rental (a small SUV that made for a perfect dive vehicle), I walked around the aquatic park facilities that someone had built as part of Devil's Den several years ago. It seems to be just sitting there, unmaintained, which is unfortunate as the whole setting would make for a wonderful, and wonderfully romantic, getaway.

So there. I look forward to my upcoming trips to Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean and to Cozumel later this year, but diving the springs and rivers of Florida will always be among my favorites. And it's a terrific bargain for anyone willing to do their own thing.

The lake level was at 461 feet or just about the same as on our last dive in the lake, which means 930,000 acre-feet, close to the capacity of 975,000 acre-feet. We paid our eight dollars for a day pass and parked at Brown's Ravine with no one else there but the park cleanup crew and a couple of fishermen. The dive plan was to follow the perimeter of the submerged parking lot, then go down the boat ramp at the lot's far side until we found its bottom. We had originally planned on making and deploying some kinds of markers that would be found once the water went down again, showing how deep underwater the marker locations had been. However, we couldn't think of a good way of doing that.

The water looked quite clear from the surface, amazingly so given that there'd probably been thousands of people swimming and boating over the prior weekends. However, as soon as we waded in we saw that the color of the water had changed. It now had a distinctly greenish cast compared to the blueish tint back in mid May. It still felt clean, though, without debris or algae floating around. Water temperature at the surface was 69 degrees.

As soon as we went under I saw that the visibility was poor, probably no more than five to seven feet. There was also considerably more silt and the yellow double line on the submerged road was barely visible anymore. We had resolved to stay close together so we would not get separated, something that can happen in an instant in murky water. Visibility was so poor that at times it was hard to even follow the perimeter of the road, and I wasn't quite sure I wanted to descend down the ramp once we found it as it'd probably be like pea soup there.

One thing we noticed was that the water had warmed up quite a bit. It was 70 degrees at the surface and still 68 degree down at 25 to 30 feet, whereas it had dropped to 57 degrees at that depth just three weeks ago, with a steep drop from 70 to 57 between 15 and 20 feet. Now the temperature didn't start dropping until we got to 30 feet.

Visibility at the top of the ramp was bad, but no worse than during the 20 minutes it took to get there, and so we decided to go down. It feels a bit weird diving down a deeply submerged ramp where you can barely see anything and it gets darker and darker. The temperature also rapidly dropped into the 50s, though it didn't feel very cold with the 7mm wetsuit, hood and gloves, and having started out in fairly warm water.

We found the bottom of the boat ramp at 83 feet -- which translates to an elevation of 378 feet -- where it ended in the silt. The temperature at 83 feet was 50 degrees. I took a couple of pictures while Carol explored a few feet beyond the end of the ramp. Anything farther than that and it'd have been too easy to lose the ramp and then simply be at the murky bottom of the lake, without anything to orient yourself by.

The much lower visibility meant we saw fewer fish though they were clearly there. We did see what seemed like millions of tiny fry. First I'd thought it was just floating debris, but it was schools of little fish, everywhere.

I was surprised at how much more silt had accumulated on the bottom within just three weeks, and so we were careful not to touch bottom with our fins and stir things up. This meant staying close enough to the bottom to see where we were going, but not so close that we touched and caused silt-outs.

We made our way back up the ramp, following the steel cable in its center, and then onto the parking lot where we used the compass to cut across the lot and back to our starting point. On our prior dive the water had been clear enough to explore a bit, but this time it was just swimming in a greenish world that disappeared a few feet away from us in all directions, and all we could do was follow one another.

It was a fun dive nevertheless, and I was happy that we found the bottom of the ramp. But it was amazing to see how quickly the water had gone from fairly clear to quite green. The much higher water temperature in the top 20-25 feet probably facilitated algae growth.

The moral of the story is that if you want to dive Folsom Lake, do it as early in the year as possible, when the new water from the Sierras is still cold and fresh.

Despite the magnitude and proximity, this earthquake appears to have done far less damage. As of May 29, the USGS reported six fatalities, 40 injuries, and 130 buildings damaged or destroyed in northern Honduras, with the earthquake also felt in the entire region.

I read about the earthquake a few hours after it had occurred and worried about how it had affected Roatan itself. The Cocoview resort has a website with two webcams as well as a very active bulletin board. I was relieved when I saw both cameras online, showing no apparent damage to the dock area with the boats nor to the structures on the water in front of the resort.

Apparently, Cocoview had neither lost power nor internet access for any length of time as reports began coming in on the CoCo Chat bulletin board. "Doc" Radaswki reported that everyone on the staff and their families were okay, and that the resort itself was okay as well, except for broken water pipes and major clutter from things falling down. He reported that the home of Jorge, who had been our boat captain the first time we visited Roatan, was badly damaged.

There were also reports from underwater and those sound quite intense. It was reported that the wreck of the Prince Albert had a big buckle and crack in one area, and another new crack running all the way down the ship from top to where it rests in the sand. It was also reported that huge pieces of coral had broken off walls and toppled.

A second report by the same source (user name Habib at CoCo Chat) said that a large number of sponges had simply been sheared off at the base, that there was much damage to Neuman's Wall near the Prince Albert, with pieces broken off the wall and falling to the bottom, exposing edges of long dead coral. It was mentioned again that the Prince Albert had developed large holes, with rust clouds still spewing out. Habib also reported "weird noise we are all hearing underwater...like distant sonic booms reminding me of rolling thunder...you can feel the concusions in the water..."

The underwater reports sound drastic, above water it seems that the area got away with far less damage than could have happened with such a strong earthquake so close. The 6.7 quake that hit Los Angeles in 1994 caused $20 billion in damage.

Doc Radawski reported a couple of days later that two popular dive sites -- Mary's Place and Calvin's Crack -- appear to have survived intact, with sponges sheared off and some new cracks visible on top of the reef, but no visible structural damage or changes.

Dr. Rob Davis of the Whale Shark & Oceanic Research Center on Utila also checked the south east and south west dive sites and found only "minor damage here and there." He reported that the "Labyrinth had a new crack, but overall nothing too dramatic."

Two other divers reported that the damage they saw was depressing, but that for those who don't know every nook and cranny of the sites, there is still a lot of beautiful reef left. They, too, reported that the big barrel sponges do seem to have suffered the worst damage, and that a chunk of Newman's wall closest to the wreck of the Prince Albert came down. They had also gone to the Anka's Place dive site and when they went over the edge of the wall, there was just two hundred feet or so of gray concrete-looking rubble instead of the coral wall and overhang. They also visited Calvin's Crack, and found that other than a couple of big sponges that had come off, the site looked much the same.

Folsom Lake is, strictly speaking, not a lake but a reservoir, with the water held back by Folsom Dam. The dam was built in the 1950s to provide flood control, electricity, and water for irrigation and drinking. When full, the lake covers an areas of about 18 square miles, not huge, but large enough to have marinas with many hundreds of boats. Folsom Lake, however, is rarely full. For one thing, its flood control duties mean that it must always hold some capacity in reserve. For another, it can get pretty dry in California, and so the amount of snow falling onto the Sierra Nevadas to the east of the lake will determine how full the lake will be in any given year.

The volume of reservoirs is commonly given in acre-feet, an acre being roughly 44,000 square feet (43,560, to be exact), an area just a bit smaller than a football field. An acre-foot is the volume that covers an acre with one foot of water, or 43,560 cubic feet. Folsom Lake's capacity is given as 975,000 acre-feet, which is about 318 billion gallons, or for those who think in terms of oil, about 7.5 billion barrels. As far as reservoirs go, Folsom Lake is not a giant one, being dwarfed by Shasta and Oroville that have capacities of 4.5 and 3.5 million acre-feet, respectively. Because of its relatively small size and reliance on snowfall in the Sierras, the waterlevel of Folsom Lake tends to go up and down dramatically. On May 20, 2009, with the lake almost full at 932,000 acre-feet, the water level elevation was 462 feet, but elevation can vary from a maximum of 480 feet to a minimum of about 350 feet, a difference of 130 feet.

I'd gone up to Folsom Lake during times of drought when the waterlevel had fallen to just 22% of capacity with large areas of formerly submerged land suddenly dry. The lake level had gone down so much by the end of 2008 that visitors were asked to stay away from what could be archaeologically valuable sites, such as the remnants of building foundations from farms and other structures that once stood where Folsom Lake is now.

Since the Folsom Dam was designed not only for flood control but also as a recreation area, its designers made sure that the lake would still be accessible for boats when the water level was low. For that purpose they built a secondary parking lot and boat ramp at the far end of the Brown's Ravine marina area. That parking lot is underwater when the lake level is high. When we did the certification dives, instructor Chuck had casually mentioned "the parking lot" but I had thought it was some sort of natural underwater formation, not a real parking lot. But when we went in, we were actually diving and hovering over the parking lot.

Below is an aerial view of the submerged parking lot. You can clearly see the outlines of the lot underwater at 10 o'clock off the dry land. On our dive, the water level was quite a bit higher yet.

This time, the water level was higher yet, with the access road to the parking lot itself flooded halfway up. A lot of trees were almost entirely underwater, so water this high is apparently not something the trees expect. Our plan was to enter the lake at the access road to the parking lot, then follow the perimeter of the parking lot counter clockwise until we reached the boat ramp and then go down the boat ramp if conditions were conducive.

We had no idea what the water temperature was going to be, or what visibility to expect. A web search yielded widely varying temperatures. A triathlon event that included swimming in the lake suggested water temperatures in the high 60s towards the end of May. However, for environmental reasons (fisheries, etc.), the operators of Folsom Dam are trying to release water at a steady 57 degrees. As for visibility, I had thought it might be quite good. After all, 70% of all the water in Folsom Lake was brand-new water directly from the snow-packed Sierras. So I had visions of hovering over the parking lot and being able to see it from one end to the other.

Reality is always a bit different. We had suited up in 7mm wetsuits, gloves and hoods, and that turned out to be a good choice. The water temperature on the surface and down to about 15 feet was a balmy 71 degrees. Though the water was very clean, visibility was only fair, perhaps 10-20 feet. We followed the yellow double line in the center of the road, then the right edge of the road until we reached the parking lot. Between 15 and 20 feet was a fairly steep thermocline with the water temperature dropping from 71 to 57 degrees. It still didn't feel cold, though. 23 minutes into the dive we reached the top of the boat ramp which was now 25 feet underwater. We went down the ramp along its rightside edge. It was getting colder now and there was much less light. At 75 feet we still had not reached the bottom of the ramp, but decided to turn around as the water was now 49 degrees. Amazingly, it felt nowhere near as cold as in San Diego at the Yukon where 50 degrees had felt debilitatingly cold.

Below is a picture of the lot when it is not flooded. The yellow "No Parking" block marks the top of the boat ramp that was about 25 feet underwater on our dive.

Going back up the ramp took another ten minutes and then we followed the perimeter of the parking lot on the other side of the ramp. The whole time we'd seen plenty of fish, mostly bass, and numerous schools of tiny fish. The bass did not seem afraid in the least and easily came within reaching distance. We also found a pair of fully functional reading glasses and what looked like a small, cut diamond (it wasn't real). I am not sure how Carol managed to find it, but she did. A good hour into the dive we left the perimeter of the parking lot and promptly got lost on it. Since we'd been in just 15 feet of water for a while, a quick ascent to the surface showed which direction to go. At the end it had been a 70 minute dive, and a thoroughly enjoyable one.

What surprised me was just how much silt and sediment had formed on the road and on the parking lot in just a few weeks. It wasn't enough for a serious silt-out, but swimming close to the bottom whirled up quite a bit.

A lot of people sneer at Folsom Lake for diving, even those who got certified there. For the most part, they are right. There isn't much to see underwater and during certification it's mostly descending to 30 feet or so and demonstrating skills. But diving the parking lot and the ramp was a lot of fun. It just felt so weird to dive over where we had parked just a couple of months ago. And during the drought last Fall, we even had taken the car down the ramp and parked on the lake bottom, probably a good deal lower than the 75 feet we had reached on the ramp.

With the conditions we encountered, not only is Folsom Lake an enjoyable dive, but it'd also make a terrific place for underwater navigation on the parking lot, and for deep dive training by simply following the ramp down (it probably ends well below 100 feet when the lake is this high). And the price of admission is a grand total of eight dollars for a day pass to the area.

The image below shows the computer log of the dive. Going down and then back up the boat ramp made for one of the more interesting looking dive profiles.

"Dear Mr. Blickenstorfer:

I am with PADI's Legal Department. PADI is the distributor of DSAT’s Recreational Dive Planner. Please be aware that you do not have the rights nor permission to use DSAT's various dive tables on your site http://www.scubadiverinfo.com/2_divetables.html. To be able to use DSAT’s copyrighted materials, a license agreement would need to be in place. At this time, we have no interest in pursuing a license agreement.

We must request that you please take these portions of your site down immediately. Also, we would appreciate a written confirmation from you that you understand and will comply with this request. Thank you in advance for your anticipated prompt cooperation."

The missive was directed at my having a picture of the PADI dive table on our scubadiverinfo.com site. PADI dive tables are quite complex and convoluted, and so I took the time explaining them with examples. Everyone said that was a great idea. Everyone except PADI, that is. Don't these folks realize PADI, and diving, needs all the help it can get?

And not only are those puffy legal eagles threatening me, but then they condescendingly declare that "At this time, we have no interest in pursuing a license agreement."

Get real, guys!

That table said to wear a dive skin in water 85 degrees and above, a thin wet suit for 75 to 85 degree water, a 5-7mm wetsuit for 55 to 75 degree water, and a dry suit for temperatures between 35 and 55. So when it came time for me to get my own wetsuit, I figured 7mm was best as it provided the widest range of protection.

The Telos 7mm suit I picked as my general purpose dive gear certainly did provide good protection, but I soon realized that there were drawbacks. The 7mm material is thick and bulky, making it difficult to pack the suit on trips. The suit was very difficult to put on and I was usually exhausted before I even got in the water, just from getting into the darn thing. And even a bit of sun or exertion on dry land led to overheating.

Still, I wore the 7mm suit on all my early dives, including the rivers and springs of Florida (71 to 73 degrees) and Lake Tahoe which was usually 66 or so on the surface and then ranged from a chilly 48 degrees at 110 feet to the mid to high 50s on most dives. Once I was in the water I felt just fine in Florida, and really wasn't too cold in Tahoe. Getting into and out of the suit, however, was a constant pain, and often what I remembered most. I thought working up a major sweat and being exhausted from putting on the wetsuit was the norm. I did buy a second 7mm suit, one that fit me better and was more stretchy. That made a substantial difference.

I bought a 3mm wetsuit for my August trip to Honduras where the water was usually 84 to 86 at the bottom. That was perfect and there probably wasn't even a need for a suit as the weather was hot and sunny. Putting on the 3mm suit was infinitely easier than the thicker suits. The 3mm suit also dried much quicker and took up much less space in my luggage. After those wonderful dives in tropical waters I thought I had it all figured out. 3mm worked in warm water, and as soon as it got a bit colder, or even quite cold, 7mm would do the trick.

Then I found out it wasn't that easy. When we returned to Honduras in December, the water was still 78 to 80 degrees at the bottom, and usually 80 to 82 at the surface. I thought that was plenty warm enough for wearing my 3mm suit, but I was usually cold. I also found that overcast skies and wind can make a huge difference. It's one thing to emerge from the water and into the warm sun, and quite another to come up to wind and rain. Wind, especially, can be brutal on an open dive boat, and somehow the difference between a sunny and a gray, overcast day is huge, too. I was so cold that I bought a diveskin to wear underneath the 3mm suit, but found that it hardly made a difference. I also bought a Shammyz jacket to keep warm on the boat.

The wreck diving trip to San Diego then showed me that even a 7mm suit with thick boots, thick gloves and a hood was not enough to keep me warm in 50 degree water, at least not when I was staying down in that cold water for 30 minutes at a time. It felt brutally cold, to the extent where I could not enjoy the dives and had to skip some. I felt that the gray, dreary sky contributed to feeling cold once I was back up. I tried diving with the skin under the 7mm suit, but it made little difference.

What I learned is that there's nothing like personal experience when it comes to picking the right suit to wear on your dives. There may be guidelines, but you need to experience how it feels to you and what your personal comfort level is. I really thought that a couple of suits would cover the whole range of water temperatures you're likely to encounter on typical dives, but, at least for me, that's not so. Knowing what I know now, I'd have bought a 5mm suit for my December trip to Honduras, and I am now contemplating dry suit certification so I'll be able to enjoy my next cold water dives.

Why not just tough it out? For some that my be a solution, but I don't think it's worth it. Dive vacations and dive trips are expensive, and not being able to enjoy dives, or even having to skip dives, because of being cold makes no sense at all. As far as I am concerned, it can even be dangerous if you find yourself shivering underwater instead of paying attention.

I should also mention that the type of wetsuit you wear makes a BIG difference on your buoyancy. That's another thing I only learned through experience. I thought there couldn't possibly be much difference between a 3mm and a 7mm suit, but there is, and you have to compensate by adding or subtracting weight from your weight belt or your BC's weight pockets. Even gloves and a hood can make a difference.

No, not the Yukon up north but the HMCS Yukon, a Canadian McKenzie Class destroyer that now sits in 105 feet of frigid water a couple of miles off the coast of San Diego. As far as wrecks go, the Yukon is a big and imposing one. It’s 366 feet long, displaces almost 3,000 tons, and has some menacing looking guns. The ship was launched in 1961 and sunk in July of 2000 to form an artificial reef. Unlike ships that sink all by themselves, the Yukon was helped along, after having been thoroughly prepped for scuba diving adventures by cutting a large number of holes into its sides and decks. The actual sinking of the Yukon was supposed to be an orderly event witnessed by thousands of boats. Maps had been drawn, cutouts were all neatly marked, and there were even laminated “You Are Here” orientation maps in many strategic points inside the vessel. (see article "Map the Yukon" in Geospatial Solutions)

The Yukon, however, had other plans. Rougher than anticipated seas made the ship take on water through the cut-outs in its side, and so she simply sank, ahead of time. She also did not neatly settle on the sandy bottom, but rolled over and came to rest sideways. Some of the planned cutouts remained unmade as the shape charges never went off, and the nice, neat map, while still technically accurate (except for the cutouts), isn’t of much use with the ship now laying on its side. Those who want to see how the Yukon rests at a depth of 105 feet should get Franko’s HMCS Yukon Deck Plan. It shows an exploded view of all six decks as well as floor plans and all the current cutouts.

I had been invited to dive the Yukon early on in my scuba career, but at that time I had not been ready yet. Now I felt I was, and so I had signed up for three days of wreck diving with our friends at Fisheye Scuba. We drove the 500 miles or so from Folsom to San Diego’s Mission Bay area and stayed at the Dana Hotel that was right across the street from our dive charter, Waterhorse. The Dana Hotel is also very close to SeaWorld San Diego, but, in all fairness, why go to an expensive seaworld theme park when a mile away you can see and experience the real thing?

About 16 people had signed up for the trip, some doing their PADI wreck diving certification dives and others, like us, just doing the diving itself. I had no idea what to expect. This was going to be my first time in the waters of the Pacific. Kate of Fisheye Scuba had said the water temperature was going to be in the high 50s on the surface and 52 or so at the bottom. Half the divers were going to wear drysuits and the others wetsuits. Not having a drysuit, I brought along my 7mm Scubapro Form wetsuit. And hood, and gloves. And not one but two pairs of Shammyz to keep warm, one of them with the special windbreaker that zippers on the outside.

Set the alarm for 6am and made it to the dock by 7:30am where there were already a number of folks unloading trucks, donning gear, signing papers and using a big dolly to get tanks and gear to the dive boat. Half an hour or so we were all on the boat, which was a cozy affair with a head, a nice cabin where the captain had set up snacks, fruit and beverages, and even a hot shower. The boat had its own compressor so they didn't even have to take the tanks off the boat to fill them. Carol had brought her two Nitrox steel-80 tanks (US$12 per fill as they had to take those off the boat); I used the rental aluminum 80s that came with the trip.

The weather was typical San Diego, that is all foggy so that it looked like it was a gray, overcast day. It’s just fog, of course, but it feels coldish and dreary anyway. The fog usually burns off around 11am or so, but not always, and sometimes it goes away and then comes back. Kate gathered her wreck class group for a briefing, and then the captain did a dive briefing of his own. The first dive was the big one, the Yukon. She’s a big one, we learned, just look at the bow and stern buoys (they were far apart for sure). Viz isn’t very good, like 20 feet or so. Look out for the surge as it can suck you right into an opening and spit you back out. Other than that, go down the line, do the dive, and come back up. It’s actually refreshing that it’s all so straightforward in something so potentially dangerous.

After having checked all my stuff and gear at least five times, including the Canon G10 in its underwater housing, the Scubapro dive knife I had strapped onto my right arm, and the little dive light, I did a giant stride into the darkish sea. You always heat up quite a bit in a 7mm wetsuit, and so the 56 degree water actually felt quite refreshing. Carol and I had vowed to stay close together and so I waited for her before I descended. Turns out she didn’t have enough weight and had to add another two pounds. I had guessed 24 pounds for me, and that ended up being just right.

Going down, the water was all green. I had a bit of a sinus pressure ache in my forehead at around 15 feet. So I stopped rather than force it and end up with a big nosebleed as I had in Honduras. The ache subsided and I resumed the descent. It quickly got colder and darker, and two minutes later giant shapes came into view, the Yukon. If you are not a diver you may think it must be quite interesting to simply float and look down onto a sunken ship. It is very interesting, but ship wrecks hardly ever sit in crystal clear water so you can really see them. Instead, they may be so broken that you hardly recognize them. It’s amazing what the sea can do to a ship in just a few years. Or it is so dark and murky that you can only see what’s practically in front of your nose. Now imagine a 366 foot vessel lying on its side, and you’re looking at it essentially in the dark and with a visibility of no more than 15 feet or so.

What that means is that things come into view and then disappear again. You don’t quite know what they are or where you are. I had thought the map would help me orient myself, but it was much too dark and murky for that. I was so enthralled with the adventure of it all that I actually completely forgot that the ship was sideways. All I could concentrate on was the encroaching cold, checking my gauges to make sure I didn’t get too deep or run out of bottom time, and, most importantly, not to lose Carol. We both had cameras and I was determined to at least take a few shots.

I was stunned at how much aquatic life had already taken hold on the ship. Anyone expecting a gleaming high-tech destroyer to still look pretty much the same after nine years underwater, not so. There’s a thick crust of coral, anemones and other sealife, with thousands of large and totally white anemones giving the ship a surreal look. Some kelp was floating around, too, showing just how strong the surge was. I tried to take pictures, but between the unfamiliar layout of the button controls of a new camera and the eerie surroundings, I didn’t get much. When the flash did go off, I saw that the coral surrounding the anemones was bright red.

Every dive is different. Even though the surroundings were quite intimidating, I felt calm and free of anxiety. I seemed to spend equal time taking in whatever sight I could of the massive wreck, making sure I did not lose my buddy, trying to take pictures, and checking depth and air. I did not come close to penetrating the wreck, or even come close to one of the openings. I really wanted to see the big guns but there was no time to do any exploring. While the wreck laid in semi-darkness where the lights came in handy, I could see light above and quite a few fish, whole schools. There wasn’t, though, anywhere near the variety I saw in Honduras. I looked at the dark shapes of encrusted metal and felt that anyone who got lost in there would hardly have a chance to come out alive or be found and rescued in time.

Time went very quickly. It was a bit hard to clearly see the data on my Uwatec Smart-Z wrist-mounted dive computer in the near darkness and so I made extra-sure to stay on top of remaining air. After 25 minutes at the wreck, at depths between 65 and 82 feet and at a constant temperature of 51 degrees, I was down to 850 psi and 6 minutes of nitrogen time. Though we had not moved around much, I had no idea where the descent line was and motioned to Carol that it was time for me to go up. Carol did know (it was only a few feet away) and we went up, doing a four minute safety stop at 15 feet. Using less air and being on Nitrox, she still had a good third left, and nitrogen time had never been an issue.

Back up on the boat I felt both elated and quite cold. Even a bowl of steaming hot minestrone soup didn’t eliminate all the shivering and so, after two test divers reported poor visibility at the second dive site (the cutter Ruby E), I decided to call it a day. I had dived the Yukon, and that felt really good.

No two wrecks are the same, and every wreck dive is different. Temperature and visibility can make a huge difference. A wreck in good light and clear water is totally different from a wreck in the semi-dark at almost no visibility. I am glad I did this dive. I enjoyed myself and I did not feel anxious. I did well. But I realized once again that this is not a harmless sport. The margin for error is very little.

Diving the Ruby E

After the very cold, murky dive to the Yukon I wondered what Day Two of our wreck diving trip would bring. I’d been asking myself why the dive boats go out early in the morning when just about every day in San Diego seems gray and foggy until about the time the dive boats return. I’ve heard a number of explanations, from the sea being calmer in the morning, to dive boat captains wanting to go home early, to the tide and such. I still don’t know what the actual reason is. It’s definitely no fun to get up early for a few hours of dreary fog when one knows the weather will most likely clear up around 11AM or so.

Anyway, I really didn’t feel too hot as we made our way across the street to the dock. Everything was damp and clammy and I racked my brain trying to figure out the best way to stay reasonably warm and dry through the process. At 8:15AM we took off onto the grayish sea under a grayish sky. First stop was a lobster trap rescue operation. Seems one of those crude, yet effective lobster trap cages made of chicken wire and rebar had gotten stuck. Ryan of Fisheye Scuba dove into the frigid waters. After a few minutes he re-emerged, mission accomplished. The captain of the tiny fishing boat was happy.

On we went to our first destination, which was the wreck of the 165-foot Coast Guard Cutter Ruby E originally designed to enforce prohibition and launched in 1934. The vessel then had a checkered history (including submarine control, fishing, salvage and even a bit of drug smuggling, and she ran under various names. The Ruby E is a much smaller ship than the massive Yukon and had been sitting on the bottom since her sinking in 1989, 11 years longer than the Yukon.

We geared up, with Carol donning the Liquid Image camera mask. The camera mask was invented by a camera located in the Sacramento area and combines a 5-megapixel CMOS camera that can also do video with a regular dive mask. This sounds somewhat gimmicky, and looks it, too, but the thing seemed well designed and we’d actually had had dinner with Liquid Image executives a few days prior to the trip. They’d explained the device, how it came about, and what it could do. We had offered to take it along for an underwater test. And while this version of the camera mask only had a 33-foot depth rating, we planned to take it down to the Ruby E, which sits in about 85 feet of water.

The water was green as we went down the descent line and it got dark quickly. By the time we reached the sandy bottom we could barely see the bow of the cutter. It was cold, barely 50 degrees, the visibility was poor (perhaps 15 feet), and there was a strong surge back and forth. Without being able to see much, exploring a wreck becomes a matter of slowly examining what appears in front of your eyes. The Ruby E was reasonably intact, but all surfaces were totally overgrown with a dense cover of small strawberry anemones and similar critters. There were none of the giant white anemones here as we'd found on the Yukon. We saw a good number of starfish that come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and colors. Carol, aware that the camera mask was recording, kept moving so that her exhaust bubbles did not obscure the recording and also made an effort to keep her head still, which with the data mask meant the same as holding the camera steady. The mask apparently worked as it wasn’t fogged up and she did not seem to experience any problems.

I tried to get some good shots with my Canon G10, but it was mostly a futile effort. Between the surge and the cold, things just weren’t very pleasant. If a bit of cold and dark does not seem like a big deal, consider that this is a cold one cannot escape from. Down there, you cannot duck into a doorway to get reprieve from an icy blast or wind. You also cannot button your coat or pull up the zipper or a hood. What you’re wearing is all you got, and it cannot be changed. The dark and surge makes it worse. Add to that an unfamiliar place that remains largely hidden from sight, and things can get somewhat stressful in a hurry. I never felt truly anxious, but also did not enjoy myself. It was just too cold. Eventually it got so that I began to shiver. It was time to get back up anyway and, as usual, Carol almost instantly found the descent line (how does she do that?). At the 15-foot stop the water was back to 57 and, comparatively, felt like bath water. I was glad.

Back on the boat I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to do a second dive. Even sitting inside the cabin I was shivering, and even hot soup and a big cup of hot chocolate did little to warm me up. I felt annoyed by that as I am not usually that susceptible to cold. I really did not want to miss another dive, and so I willed myself to stop shivering and get ready to brace the cold water again.

In the meantime, Kate’s wreck diving students compared notes and had a critique, though I am not sure how much people actually heard over the noise of the engines. I don’t think much wreck penetration was done, but they got to practice site surveys, handling their reels, and other wreck diving techniques.

Diving kelp

The second dive was in a kelp field. I had read a lot about the kelp forest off the coast of California and didn’t quite know what to make of it. It sounded quite intimidating and invoked unpleasant memories of fighting off sea weed and assorted algae when I was a child. Whatever I’d read of the underwater kelp forests was invariably positive, though I’d also come across references of people getting caught in kelp and having to use knifes or requiring assistance to extricate themselves. Kelp, apparently, was also where a lot of fish and other critters hung out, and there were many accounts of divers suddenly finding themselves with a big fish or a sea otter or some other creature.

When we arrived at our destination, it really didn’t look very pleasant. A lot of what I used to consider "sea weed" was bobbing on the surface, making the water look murky and somehow not clear or clean. In his briefing, the captain described a ledge and rocky area underneath us and said we might expect to see some larger animals. He said stay below the surface to keep from getting entangled in the kelp once we came back up, and, should we get stuck, to simply drop down rather than fight the kelp. I didn’t quite know what to make of that, but in I went.

The water wasn’t much clearer here, but at least we didn’t descend into darkish depths. Instead, as soon as I dropped below the surface I saw the kelp forest, which turned out to be a magical world of gently swaying leafy plants vertically in the water. Far from being mere “sea weed,” kelp is intricate, beautiful, and unlike anything that grows on dry land. It isn’t just a stalk and leaves ether; instead, the plant makes a multitude of different tendrils, spirally growths, leaf-like structures held up by battalions of bulb-like floaters, and it all sways together in a gentle concert of fluid motion. It is captivating and Carol took numerous pictures.

We quickly reached bottom that looked much like the coral reefs of the Caribbean, only without the variety of fish and colors, or the clarity of the water. Instead, there was strong surge back and forth. Examining the bottom we found a lot of urchins and many starfish, a Garibaldi or two, and some other critters. I had read a book on urchin fishing in California, which had been a lucrative trade and industry in the 1980s and 90s when the Japanese bought up whatever enterprising professional divers could bring up. I somehow thought the urchins were just sitting on the ocean floor, but the vast majority is actually burrowed into the surface in roundish cubbies. I don’t know if they ever come out or simply stay there. Some are quite large, much bigger than I thought they get. Some seemed the size of basketballs.

We swam between rock outcroppings that rose to within 25 feet of the surface, then dropped down vertically to lower ground in the mid to high 40s. The water was colder and less clear on this side, but it was still fascinating to swim between the kelp plants. They were not dense enough to get lost in them or having to fight one’s way through by any means. There was plenty of room. I was getting cold again and began my ascent after 35 minutes or so. I’d found the boat’s anchor line and so had a clear shot straight up. Carol followed, taking many beautiful close-up and macro pictures of the kelp plants and some of the amazingly colorful critters that live on and between it. Some look downright psychedelic and when you look at the pictures later, it's hard to believe that something that beautiful is in the cold and dark water.

Me, I was glad I’d overcome the cold and made the dive.

Another dive to the Yukon

Our last day started like the first two, with a gray sky and a chill in the air. In addition to getting ready for diving, we also had to pack up our stuff, put it in the car, and check out. Logistics can get a bit overwhelming at times.

This time I decided to wear my Akona dive skin underneath the 7mm wetsuit and see if that helped me fend off the penetrating cold. The wetsuit certainly goes on easier when you wear a dive skin, but when you have to go to the bathroom, it’s yet another item to somehow get out of the way.

The first dive was a second descent to the Yukon. That was certainly alright with me, but I wondered whether a repeat dive was due to the wreck diving class or whether there were no other suitable wrecks. This was, after all, “wreck alley.” On this dive we were going to be testing the Liquid Image Camera Mask again, recording and documenting the entire dive. The water was 57 on the surface, but quickly got colder as we descended down the line into semi-darkness. This time our mooring line got us to the center of the Yukon. The world was all green down there and once again, it was difficult to make out anything but darkish shapes at the very edge of the 15-foot or so visibility range we now found ourselves in. They were parts of the ship, but it was mostly impossible to figure out which parts.

The top of the ship had a lush growth of kelp or weeds on it, and they were moving with the surge that washed over the ship. I descended down what must have been the deck surface in front of the bridge and found the water to be both calmer and darker. I was at 91 feet in 51-degree water; trying to get my bearings, trying not to get lost, staying calm, and figuring out where I was. Since it was so dark and murky, everyone stayed reasonably close together and so I was watching dive lights of my fellow divers as they shone into some of the cutouts, tied off lines, handled reels, and slowly entered the wreck.

Though I was very careful I temporarily lost sight of Carol, white fins and all, and felt a sense of frustration over that as I wanted to experience and explore for the precious minutes down on the wreck rather than spend the time searching for my dive buddy. At this depth and under these conditions I really didn’t want to dive solo, and I also didn’t just want to join another group. Fortunately, Carol found me after a few minutes.

My total time down by the Yukon was 22 minutes, from the time I arrived at the bottom of the descent line to the time Carol and I began our ascent. It didn’t feel that long, but it also wasn’t long enough to do, or even start, anything meaningful. So the dive was mostly looking at this and that, and simply holding it together at this murky depth. I took some pictures of the white anemone, marveled at just how colorful the growth was. The ever-present strawberry anemone, whose scientific name is corynactis californica, covered large areas of the wreck, bursting in bright red whenever touched by a flashlight or dive light. These are really neither anemones nor coral, but somewhere in between. Individual strawberry anemone don’t grow larger than an inch, but they can cover something as large as the wreck of a destroyer.

Again, I cannot overemphasize the difference between 90 feet in warm, clear, bright Caribbean waters and 90 feet at 50 degrees, poor visibility and near dark. It’s a bit like the difference between cruising along in sunny daylight, enjoying yourself, and driving at night and in the rain or snow and having to really concentrate on what you’re doing.

The ascent means a progressively lighter shade of green, and also noticeably warmer water. Warmer, of course, is relative as it is only the difference between 51 and 57 degrees. I swam to the dive boat, took off my fins, climbed up onto the deck and plopped down, exhausted, but happy. It’d been a good dive, and it felt like a monumental thing.

Carol thought the camera mask had given up its ghost as it looked like the lens had condensation or water inside. Later I found that the mask had recorded the entire 40-minute dive in one giant 2GB file.

After the dive I was unable to warm up and couldn’t stop shivering no matter what I tried. So I decided to skip the second dive, another kelp dive, and watch the goings-on on the dive, the San Diego coast, and the bubbles of my fellow divers. The bubbles hardly moved. When you’re down there you think you’re moving around quite a bit, but the bubbles tell otherwise, at least when there is no current to carry you away.