With one last weekend in the Keys before we head back, we decided to go back to our favorite dive spot so far—Looe Key—anchoring again at Newfound Harbor. We stayed at Newfound Harbor on Friday night and got up early on Saturday to head to the reef. We arrived before any other boats, before even the commercial dive charters, and thus we had our pick of mooring balls. It was quite swelly-ey as usual. The three of us suited up and got in the water and headed to the front of the boat towards the mooring line, I went to use my regulator and it started free flowing. This is bad—it means additional air is being pushed out through the regulator than needed and will result in loss of air (plus, it’s quite uncomfortable to use). I’ve been plagued with dive gear issues on this trip, probably because it sat in storage for the past 5 years, so this dive was no exception to the gear woes I’ve had thus far. I actually purchased a new regulator prior to this dive because my old one broke. I also purchased a new underwater housing (Watershot pro) for my iPhone to replace the flooded Nikon point and shoot I was using. So, I was super excited to get in the water with my new (functioning) regulator and snap some shots with my new underwater housing. It was looking like it wasn’t going to happen this day.
Randy and I both got out of the water and hauled our gear out as well (which isn’t and easy task) and went about trying to hook up my octopus to use instead. It free flowed as well. We tried Corey’s octopus and the same result. This meant one thing—my first stage was bad. Nothing we could do about it at this point, so Randy offered to let me dive with his gear and go down with Corey and he would snorkel above. He’s such a nice boyfriend, isn’t he? I was very thankful because Corey and I had a great dive and got to see awesome stuff, such as a huge loggerhead turtle, 2 sharks (one a hammerhead, the other a lemon), a bottle nose dolphin and another Melvin (Goliath Grouper) siting.
After our dive, we headed back into shore to anchor again. Once we returned, Randy managed to take his hookah rig (for diving the boat) apart to use as a first stage for me. He somehow managed to get it working with my new regulator and octopus—so cool! This saved our next dive on Sunday! He put it in the water to test it out while diving the boat with Corey. After the boys were done cleaning the bottom of the boat, we piled into the dinghy and headed to the sandbar to float and have some drinks. I decided I wanted to use my new iPhone housing again to shoot some shots of us on the water and some video of Sophie swimming. We strapped Sophie’s life jacket on and put her into the water. I took some video of her from underwater which is hilarious if you’ve ever seen a wiener dog swim. On the way to the sandbar and returning, Corey got to do some “dinghy surfing.”
After our fun on the sandbar, we returned to the boat for a couple of games of Jenga before dinner and bed.
On Sunday, we headed out again to dive. All three of us got to dive this day which was great. The dive was wonderful, but the visibility wasn’t as good as the previous day and we didn’t see quite the large creatures. We did see Melvin again and we also saw his twin! Apparently, there are 2 Melvins on this reef and they both like to hang out on under our boat. I took some great video of them, but somehow all the photos I took that day have gone missing after download. Anyway, it was a great dive and great way to spend our last weekend in the Keys.
