We arrived at Newfound Harbor on Saturday afternoon and anchored the Blue Turtle. Corey set out for a paddle on his kayak while Randy and I cleaned up the boat and I got dinner ready. When Corey returned, he told us he met a group of folks on Picnic Island who were playing ukelele and invited us for a uke jam on Sunday afternoon. How cool!
Dive conditions for Looe Key have been perfect—low wind and calm seas—and we dove all day Sunday and Monday. We plan to dive the rest of the week and I’ve already shot loads of videos and photos. I have so much content, I’m only posting photos (from Sunday only) for now but plan to put together a video of the best video clips. Looe Key is awesome, it is by far my favorite dive/snorkel spot in the Keys. It’s large and has about 19 mooring buoys within the Sanctuary Preservation area. You could literally dive this reef all week, picking up a different mooring ball each time. There is a very large Goliath Grouper that lives on the reef that locals named Melvin. Last year, we discovered that there were two “Melvins”. The other one is a little smaller. Today (Monday) we saw 3 reef sharks (5′-7′) that cruised around us and the reef. It was unnerving at first, but they were just curious and not threatening in any way. It was very cool to have these large “fish” cruise the gorgeous reef and of course, I have video 🙂 that is coming soon! Oh, I also have video of Melvin coming within 4 feet of me.
The coolest thing that has happened to us in Newfound Harbor is being invited to the Uke Jam on Picnic Island. Three of the players are in a band that plays around the Keys, called Ukes in Paradise. They were very talented and the woman had an amazing voice. When we arrived, they invited us to pick up a uke and play along. They would call out the chords ahead of time so we could follow along. Corey and I both played along for a while until they took a break and Corey got up and played and sung “Riptide” by Vance Joy. Scroll down to the bottom of this post for a video of the uke jam. It was so awesome to meet new folks and play in such a beautiful location. This was definitely a great start to our week.
