Advanced Open Water Day 2

After a long delay I'm finally going to finish the last of my Florida vacation posts! On Sunday we did two dives, our deep dive and our Peak Performance Buoyancy dive. I was feeling quite a bit better after some much needed sleep. The weather wasn't being all that terribly cooperative as it was cool. Fort Lauderdale was experiencing a "cold snap" and the temp was in the 60s. It was the first time in Florida that I was eager to get into the water because it was warmer than the air.

Our first dive was the wreck of the Mercedes. We went down to about 92 feet and performed a simple task involving reeling in a spool. We had done the same task at the surface and the point of the exercise was to demonstrate that while working at depth you may become impaired, making it more difficult to perform simple tasks. It's a nice idea and I understand it but in this case I actually performed the task faster underwater with gloves on than I did at the surface. Practice makes perfect I suppose. After finishing the tasks Susan and I were set free to explore the wreck. It's a very nice wreck and there was some interesting sea life, including a sea anenome, on the wreck. I also saw a ray on the sandy bottom. The only stressful time during the dive is when I lost track of Susan for a bit. It felt like a long time but it was probably only thirty seconds or so. As it turns out, she was having ear trouble and was directly above me. I looked in every direction but straight up. About the time I was getting really concerned she made it back down to my depth and everything was hunky dory. While we were preparing to ascend we were treated to a great view of a 60-80 pound Greater Amberjack (big fish). It was certainly the largest fish I've seen yet... very cool.

Our peak performance buoyancy dive was also quite a bit of fun. We went down to a sandy area and practiced hovering in different positions. The one that was the most fun was hovering while vertical and inverted. As you breath in you move away from the sand. As you breath out you drop back until you're inches from the sand. It was kinda fun. As the last task on the dive we swam, first normally then inverted, through a PVC diamond that the instructor held up. I was fairly successful though I think the inverted attempt was a bit of a ballistic path. Susan and I explored a bit before heading back to the boat but we ended the dive relatively early since we were a bit on the cold side.

Once we made it back to the shop we completed our paperwork in a very warm room. Under other circumstances it would have been uncomfortably warm. In this case it was perfect. Susan and I left feeling a whole lot better and more awake than we had the day before. We are both officially advanced open water divers. Life is good!