I thought it was going to be a second 4 tank day in a row, but mother nature and freezing cold hands won out, and I succumbed to wine with dinner!
Our first dive site today was Flintstones - we were blessedly on a tinder with very few people, so I thought there would be no issues with rolling off the side. Ha! I’m a classic at causing myself pain!! I tried rolling off the boat away from Jodi, managed to then hit the side of the boat, and then totally tangle with Jodi. What a klutz. But no harm came to Jodi. We really wanted to dive The Chimney, but a smaller boat has its own attractiveness. The site is covered in boulders, and is thought to resemble Bedrock of the actual Flintstones fame. We saw a few rays, but not a lot of big stuff. Matt found another pufferfish (he is batting 100 on this trip) and engaged it in videography. We also saw a few whitespotted filefish, in their orange phase, and the very beautiful (but not aggressive) Queen Triggerfish. Spectacular colors.
The second dive of the day had us going in separate directions. Matt and Jodi did an exploratory dive off of West Dog, and Wayne and I headed to Dolphin Rocks. We were a little too slow to get our fins on the appropriate boat. C’est la vie.
The dive at Dolphin Rocks was amazing - the bottom of the sea was virtually carpeted with soft coral. There were some great swim thrus, and we wound up doing our own guided tour, as Marcus’ tank was only at 1100 psi.
Wayne spent some time trying to photograph me at a swim thru, but I was photo bombed by an exuberant parrotfish. We finally managed to get it done, and then I took Wayne’s picture. Hijinks abounded galore.
Dive 3 was a plane wreck at Coral Gardens, off the back side of Great Dog. It was a fun dive, although not in my top 10 of all time. When we emerged after an hour, I was a shivering mess. Both Wayne and Matt asked if I was planning on doing the night dive, which I was when we started dinner. About 3/4 of the way through dinner I put my very cold hands in my hubby’s armpits. He proceeded to tell me he wouldn’t be offended if we didn’t do a fourth dive. I think if it had been nitrox, or a better dive site, we might have considered going back a final time. As it stood, I told Jodi I wasn’t sold on a fourth dive, and decided to cash in my option to stay on board and have a little wine. Infinitely better choice, I think! And somehow, I do not think that Marcus was upset in closing the dive platform early. He was out to bed very shortly after dinner!!
We are down to one diving day left, with only two dives tomorrow morning. There are a number of people who will be leaving on an early plane on Saturday (not us), so it looks as though the diving is scheduled to give everyone 18 hours of down time before flying.
Sweet dreams to everyone out there tonight!
