19 June - Florida Keys

What an unexpected turnout for today.  The first round of diving was full of wind, rain, thunder, lightning, waves, swells, and low visibility.  This made for lots of difficulty getting back onto the boat via the ladder.  Being the last team out of the water for the first round, I was surprised to see the next team in dry clothes.  It turns out they decided to cancel all diving the rest of the day.  I spent the remainder of it eating lunch, reading, napping, watching movies, talking on the phone to Christina, then watching the Heat go up 3-1 against the Thunder in the finals.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day of diving.  I guess I'll find out when I wake up!

18 June - Florida Keys

Well here I am back on the Spree.  Mel is still not my best friend and still has the personality of a ticked off drill sergeant.  I will continue to be nice to her and expect only scowls or complete disregard in return.  This trip is only 7 days, 3 days shy of the last cruise.  The diving is not expected to be world class but at least it's diving.

My dive buddy Katie and team member Amanda both work at Biscayne National Park where Christina works.  I haven't heard anything about Katie but Christina has said good things about Amanda.  The 4th team member, Ben, is the wild card.  He seems pretty cool but time will tell how compatible we are.  Hopefully everything is wonderful.

So here's to another 7 days on the Spree with what is expected to be foul weather.  Let's make thebest of it and have a great time.  Ready?  Go.

8 June - Dry Tortugas

Today was fine.  Nothing out of the ordinary happened.  My wrist is feeling a little better, the dives were uninteresting except for a few nice moments (juvenile jackknife fish, pictured), and I'm looking forward to being home, minus all the yard work that needs to be done.  Two more dives tomorrow will conclude the trip and I'll be back home by about midnight tomorrow night.  Good times.

7 June - Dry Tortugas

Highlights from today: Jean-Ann didn't fill my tank properly last night so when I discovered it this morning I was able to negotiate the nullification/retraction of my beer fine from a couple days ago.

I started reading 1984 again and now I'm 37 pages into it and would like to keep going.

The diving was not interesting at all today.  The Heat won in Boston tonight and will host game 7 for a place to play OK City for the championship.  Unfortunately I'll be riding home from Key West during the entire game.

I still don't think I've found my place on the boat with this crowd but I've had a good experience overall.  I'm looking forward to the last 6 dives, getting home, and coming back out for a week cruise in the Keys in a couple weeks.

6 June - Dry Tortugas

Yes, today was a definite improvement from yesterday.  I decided to start learning the scientific names of the fish, we had great dive sites, Ben saved me from getting yelled at by Mel for having my shorts tied up to dry too close to the life rafts, and I saved Michelle from being swept away by the current.  After the first dive, I grabbed the end of the rope and she somehow ended up behind me and I reached back in just enough time to grab her wrist and pull her back in.

Best of all, my wrist is slightly better and I'm in bed before 9:00.  Now I'll read until I fall asleep.  Only 2 and a half days of diving left and 3 days until I go home and get to see Christina.

5 June - Dry Tortugas

We finished diving early today so now I'm washed, dried, snacked, and waiting for dinner.

It turns out that my wrist is worse today.  I can only put little pressure on it and can't bend it very far.

Today has been the worst day of the cruise.   (I took a nap at this point then had dinner and so now it's much later) It started out with waking up to a dream that Anne Moss was in, reminding me after waking up of how she recently took her life.  I then came upstairs to an average breakfast as I discovered that my wrist is much more hurt than I thought.  It seems to be a mild sprain.  The sun hardly showed itself all morning and only seldom did it appear the rest of the day, of which I was on intern duty meaning I was responsible for helping recover divers all day long.  As I came back from my second dive, in my haste to get lunch, I forgot for the first time to take my first stage regulator off my tank and a group of people publicly called me out on it (forgetting results in owing the crew beers).  Taking it all in stride, I hurried back inside to get lunch.  After about 4 bites, the door opens and Mel in her standard biting, demanding tone hollers in "divers are up and we're lacking in Team 5 interns..."  Of the 5 teams of 4 divers, one is selected each day from each team (in rotation) to have intern duty so there are 5 interns each day.  Instead of asking me to come out and take a break from lunch, she went for the more roundabout approach which really rubbed me the wrong way.  The reason it got to me so much is that it was a buildup of several things.  The worst of all of them, as silly and melodramatic as it may sound, is that I don't feel like I'm closely connecting with people on this trip.  I don't feel like I am quite as qualified to be here as a fish ID specialist.  There are some awesome people on the trip, but I don't feel like I'm really close to any of them.  I'm kind of the odd one out.  It's weird feeling most comfortable here in my teeny bunk behind the cheesy little frog-themed curtain around the bunk instead of being around people, or even diving for that matter.  Honestly I think I'm just being moody and worn out emotionally after 6 full days on board.  This being said though, the Heat loss added insult to injury tonight 90-94 putting them down 2-3 in the series.  Tomorrow is a new day and I will hopefully have a better attitude.  Goodnight.

4 June - Dry Tortugas

The visibility on today's dives went down the hole.  With it, however, did not go the quality of dive sites.  The redeeming factor was the supreme amount of reef relief (topographically speaking).  The sites today had pinnacles, valleys, swim-throughs, walls, plateaus, caverns, etc, enough to rival Shark's Cove in Hawai'i.  The visibility unfortunately did degrade the overall quality of the dive but I still had my favorite dive today.  I think my outlook on diving and quality of dive sites will change when I get back home.  I think I will start to notice fish species and abundance much more automatically than I do now.  A bad site might be redeemed by a rare dog snapper instead of some random big fish.  I'll find out when I get back to diving in Miami.

Two more noteworthy things happened today, neither of which are necessarily good.  First, on the second dive of the day, Oryiey (really not sure how to spell his name) got lost looking at fish.  I finished my count and together with Nathan we found Michelle.  We waited for him then searched for a couple minutes before ascending, with a full 3-minute safety stop.  Sure enough he was at the surface and he had in fact gotten lost but not knowing that gave us a bit of a scare underwater.  The other noteworthy tidbit is that while doing pull-ups (I miss climbing) on a 3"x3" betal beam, my left hand slipped a bit and was pulled in a weird way as I tried to hang on.  The back of my hand below the pinky and ring finger hurt as if I've pulled something.  Hopefully a good night's rest can remedy the situation.  I'll keep posted, but the first step is to sleep and it's already past 11pm.

3 June - Dry Tortugas

It's going on midnight right now so this will be short.  The reason I'm up is because I just finished watching the 4th playoff game of the Heat-Celtics.  Boston won 93-91 in overtime when Wade missed the game-winning buzzer-beater.  Sad times.

As for today, the diving was pretty good.  Not quite as many fish, but there were some big ones like schools of permit and a blacktip shark.  After the last dive today we went snorkeling and saw a nurse shark, permit, dog snapper, and huge barracuda.  I'm still finding my place in this crowd, but it's a great experience.

2 June - Dry Tortugas

I'm beginning to realize how nice it can be to be disconnected from the word for a while.  Sure there are times throughout the day that I wish I could call someone perhaps about a joke or say how something reminded me of them.  Of course I miss family and friends and being with and talking to Christina on a regular basis.  Aside from that, I'm enjoying being out of touch with the rest of the world.  Another thing I am recognizing is the benefit of being alone/having alone time.  I walked all over Fort Jefferson today alone and it was great to go wherever I wanted without considering anyone else.  Allow me to specify however that this is a good thing in moderation.  I enjoyed getting right back to the group after an hour or so and getting right back into fun and games.

1 June - Dry Tortugas

After going to sleep around 9 last night, I felt great waking up at 6:30.  I had breakfast and everything was going well until Mel came bursting through the cabin calmly but deliberately to get the oxygen kit.  It turned out that Dave and Tracy had gotten tangled in their line and shot up from 50ft at the end of a 100ft dive.  We put them both on oxygen and tried to get them to sit still.  They are fine last I checked (some 14 hours after the incident) so that's good.  Apparently they only sat out for one dive before getting back in for another 70+ft dive.
After that incident, another dive team had their float caught in the prop on the descent, my team had our float disappear (but got recovered), and it was 100% overcast all day long with wind and rain for the majority of it.  We've all had better conditions.  Oh, not to mention the Heat lost tonight.

However, the day did have its glows.  The food was great, the sunset was stunning, I found a handful of other euchre players, and the diving was amazing.  The sites today were easily as good as some (not all) of the better spots in Belize but with more fish than Belize.  The 3rd site had pinnacles that were about 20ft high with schools of jacks, snappers, and chub.  The diving here is indeed very good.
I'm fitting in more but still feel like a weak link particularly when it comes to knowing my fish.  I'm going to have to work on that.  It's almost midnight which means it's after bedtime.