Drive South - Part 4

originally published April 21, 2018

So. We've established that boats and I don't get along all that well. Saturday evening, I met up with Guy and we shared our dive stories du jour. His day had gone much better than mine. He got to dive The Benwood (which made me super jealous) and he was super jealous that I got to see Christ of the Abyss. He was supportive of my decision not to force myself to dive when I wasn't feeling physically able to handle it. This was something we had talked about on the way down, the "any diver can call the dive at any time" mantra. 

That night, I obsessively checked the surf reports for Sunday, which were expected to be worse than Saturday. In fact, our Saturday night dive was called off due to rough conditions. I was deep in over-analyzing mode: talking to Guy, to Will, to Isabelle, to myself. Ultimately, I decided not to go out on the boat Sunday. Isabelle called me Sunday morning and I explained that I felt if I went out and spent another day throwing up instead of diving, it would put me off boat diving for good. She understood. Then Will called and I explained the same to him. I felt like I was letting them down, like they would be disappointed in me somehow. But I just couldn't see myself enjoying being out on a boat in choppy seas once again. 

Instead, Guy and I decided to try something a little more predictable - Jules Verne Undersea Lodge. It's an underwater hotel hidden away at the bottom of a lagoon. They also host training classes and allow open water divers a chance to peek into the hotel (only hotel guests are allowed to go inside) through the porthole windows. The water was murky but there were tons of fish. Some of the other divers had seen manatees and nurse sharks earlier in the day. We suited up and headed into the tanic waters. 

My buoyancy issues surfaced again (pun?). This time I couldn't get down past about five feet, despite the extra weight I'd added. God, it was so frustrating! I just would not sink, and I was getting really mad. Guy kept motioning for me to go lower and I couldn't. I have this habit of touching my regulator with my hand (a hearkening back to my early training when I tended to get tangled up in my hoses and pull my own regulator out). Guy, a rescue diver and Master Scuba Diver, interpreted this as me starting to panic and trying to take it out of my mouth, so he held it in place and signaled for me to stop and breath slowly. My exaggerated eye-roll and emphatic "I'm okay" signal made him back off a little.

With me tired of fighting my way down and Guy having seen everything there was to see at the Undersea Lodge, we surfaced, stuffed ourselves with coffee and bacon at the local Denny's and hit the Overseas Highway for a journey to Key West proper. As we arrived at the iconic "Southernmost Point" landmark, the skies opened up, putting a damper on any further outdoors Key West explorations. Maybe next time, Duval Street. It may have been a frustrating day for me but at least Coby and Guy had a good time. 

Monday morning I was booked for another dive but I had already told Will I would not be going. I told him that on  Day One. They were going to the Spiegel Grove, an advanced level shipwreck I had read enough about to know I had zero interest in diving it. 

Instead, Guy and I packed up our gear, cleaned up our boat-home away from home and bid Key Largo a fond farewell. Once we made it through the Turnpike Thunderdome (AKA Dade and South Broward. Luckily, this was where I learned how to drive so I know how to hold my own) it was clear sailing back to Central Florida. In fact, it is a mere five hour drive to Key Largo, definitely reason to go again.

While my first diventure may not have been all I dreamed of, I decided not to beat myself up for my decisions. They were the best things for me in the moment. I didn't want one bad experience to turn into a fear of diving, so I jumped right back in, taking Guy on another weekend dive getaway after we got home. More about that, next time here on ScubaNewb central. Thanks for reading!