Dive Trip Report to: Stuart / Jupiter Reefs
Purpose: To Dive in Florida for Lobster

Dive Reports:

Dive #1: Saturday, 24-Sept-2000, Late Morning Dive. My Dive #339
A. Dive Boat / Location: It's-U-And-I / Off the Loran Towers
Loarz (reef name], 27 03.141, 80 01.788
B. Conditions:
Visibility: 30 - 50 ft
Seas: Flat to 1 ft
Water Temp: 80's on the top, 65 - 67 on the bottom (Brrrrrr]
Skies: Sunny Clear Blue Skies
Air Temp: 80 - 90's
C. Dive Information:
Depth & Time: Me: Genesis Nitrox Dive Computer - 82 ft for 27 min
Air consumption: Me: 3300 lb to 700 lb (80 cu ft, NITROX 22%]
Current: Medium about 1 knot on the top, mild on the bottom.
Description: Well down we went, onto a very beautiful reef line. There was from 3 to 7 ft of releif, lots of fingers of sand going in. The bad part of the dive, I missed about a 3 pound bug! The damm thing was down in a 3 ft hole and walked from one side to the other. It was directly under me about 1 ft - I was poking him with my bug stick and should have just reached down and grabbed him! He not only did it one, he walked under me twice!! I did manage to get one good size bug later on! Great dive, pretty area, but the 80 cu ft air dive cut the dive time short compared to the next dive!

Dive #2: Saturday, 24-Sept-2000, Late Morning Dive. My Dive #340
A. Dive Boat / Location: It's-U-And-I / Off the Loran Towers
Loarz (reef name], 27 03.141, 80 01.788 - continued with the drift!
B. Conditions:
Visibility: 30 - 40 ft (going down some due to kicked up sand]
Seas: 1 ft to 2 ft
Water Temp: 80's on the top, 65 - 67 on the bottom (Brrrrrr]
Skies: Sunny Clear Blue Skies
Air Temp: 80 - 90's
C. Dive Information:
Depth & Time: Me: Genesis Nitrox Dive Computer - 81 ft for 45 min (great dive time - NITROX is great]
Air consumption: Me: 3700 to 1000 (120 cu ft, 38% NITROX], I should have stayed down a little longer, but my dive partner using 80 cu ft tanks was running low and went up!
Current: Again, strong on the top, mild on the bottom.
Description: Same ledge, great spot. We started to really find the bugs when I was looking way under the small ledges with a flashlight. At one spot there was a half dozen along one rock face. Again, I had one 3 pounder in my hands, started to put it in the bad, and my net and bug stick and the bag got kicked up by some current - the bug got away! Did I curse!! Got quite a few on this dive. Had two shorts and missed two big ones - yea, only the big ones get away!!

Dive #3: Saturday, 24-Sept-2000, Late Morning Dive. My Dive #341
A. Dive Boat / Location: It's-U-And-I / Off the Loran Towers
Loarz (reef name], 27 03.141, 80 01.788 - and this was a little further down on the drift!
B. Conditions:
Visibility: 30 ft (vis was going down due to divers in the water)
Seas: 1 ft - 2 ft
Water Temp: 80's on the top, 65 - 67 on the bottom (Brrrrrr]
Skies: Sunny Clear Blue Skies
Air Temp: 80 - 90's
C. Dive Information:
Depth & Time: Me: Genesis Nitrox Dive Computer - 80 ft for 40 min (and I did an aw-shit on this dive! I forgot to reset the computer to 35% NITROX. The computer automatically resets itself to 50% between dives. This means, when I hit the bottom at 80 ft, the computer said O2 overdose! It was now useless for 24 hrs, except for a depth gauge!
Air consumption: Me: 3700 lb to 1000 lb (120 cu ft, 38% NITROX)
Current: Same, strong at the top, mild on the bottom.
Description: Well this also was an interesting dive. While waiting between dives, there was another dive boat that came within 50 ft of us! There was another diver on the same reef, just upstream of us (he was south of us with the current going north). That was really dumb, to go over the same area that we had gone over. About 100 yards south of us, one diver came up and the other got ready to go down. The dive flag was anchored to the bottom. Well, this was a pile of laughs. They drove there boat within 50 ft of us. The new law says you stay 300 ft away from a dive flag. They had one heck of a time getting the diver on board with the twin outboards running. When the one person on the boat was going to drop the diver again, he dropped north of their bouy. The current was tooo strong to swim to the bouy. So, after 5 min, he tried to get him back onboard. This included backing the boat with engines on into the diver. I've got some pics of this coming out later this week on this dive trip report. He almost killed the diver several times, took 15 min to drop the diver south of their bouy, then the ya-hoo on the boat ran the boat directly over the bouy line just where the diver was! Very Very dumb. Later on in our dive, this diver came past us about 20 ft off the bottom. The bugs are on the bottom, not 20 ft up!

Well, after our up time, we went down. Bob motors the boat south into the current to slack up the anchor line. We then go over the side, almost directly above the anchor. This saves a lot of pulling your self down the anchor line. This dive went fast for some reason. There was a lot of silt kicked up. Not as many bugs were seen as on the 2nd dive. It was still a nice location, but my dive computer was useless and my mask was fogging and leaking. There were just enough problems to make it an OK but not a real fun dive. Oh, yea, we did get some bugs!!!