This just in - it’s official, Key Largo has been taken over by the Indian Valley Scuba gang!

Forty IVS divers descended on the quiet hamlet of Key Largo last evening, and immediately set up camp at Amy Slate’s Amoray Dive Resort!  Other guests at the resort were aghast at the news - there are NO spots available on the boat all weekend unless you are with IVS!  Team IVS has filled the Amoray Diver to capacity and then some.

Our group started arriving Thursday at the resort, to join the twenty lobster hunters already in position,  We kicked it right off with a night dive to the Benwood wreck, enjoying perfect conditions above and below the surface.  Great viz, 86 degree water temps, lots & lots of sea life to enjoy - what a way to start off the trip!  While 18 of us were enjoying this night dive, another 8 were completing the last lobster dive of the mini-season, helping to ensure that there would be plenty of lobster for everyone at our dinner Friday night.  We ended up with 106 lobster tails in the freezer by the end of the two day event.  This night dive brought my personal time underwater to 15 hours over the last 42 hours - I feel like I am truly a walking talking DAN dive study.

Friday morning, and the perfect weather we have been enjoying all week continued.  No wind, blue sunny skies, all good stuff!  We motored out to French Reef this morning and started off with a  dip on the City of Washington, carefully timed to coincide with a Creature Feature dive that was being run by Capt. Slates.  We got to enjoy the feed, with about 7 or 8 friendly nurse sharks coming in for the feast, along with barracuda and a large green moray.  Nice chance for the IVS gang to enjoy some big animal encounters with plenty of photo opportunities.   Great dive, period!  We followed that up with a visit to the Train Wheel wreck, another nice 30 ft dive on the beautiful reef system.  It’s a lot like Dutch Springs here, with a distinct thermocline in the water column - the difference being that the surface temp is 90 degrees with a big drop in temperature to 86 at about 15 feet - brrrrrr!

Our afternoon trip took us out to visit one of our favorite wrecks, the Spiegel Grove.  As we approached we could see the ominous signs of a strong current with the mooring balls hanging partly submerged and the water piling up against them….hmmm…not the best sign, but hey - we’re here to dive!  So, our teams got themselves geared up, and began the entries into the water and down the descent line.  The current was absolutely ripping on the line all the way down to the wreck - with each diver hanging off the line like a flag as we went down.  Once on the wreck, we used the mass of the large ship to hide us from the current, and each of the teams enjoyed a great dive, with a great first deep/ocean/wreck/nitrox experience for a bunch of the group, including Rob Lunny, Jamie Winchester, Brad Creveling, Tim Brown, Brenden Malloy, James, Jonathon & Nicholas MacKnight, Jenna Murray, and Dave Elmer.  IVS Instructors Ray Graff, Sue Douglass, & Butch loggins, assisted by DM’s Frank Gabriel, Bill Zyskowski, and Csaba Lorinczy, worked together to ensure a great experience for each group.  I took Niki Lorinczy and  John Glowdowski for some wreck penetration training running a reel line inside the wreck.

After coming in from our dive and gussying up, we headed over to the Key Largo Conch House for our third annual lobster feast.  Our friends Ted & Laura Dreaver, owners of the Conch House, went out of their way taking care of us and cooking up our 100 tails and all the fixings to go along with them, making a perfect dinner under the stars for us. Perfect opportunity for a lot of bonding between the IVS group with a lot of new friendships solidifying. 

Saturday dawned with another perfect weather day, and we loaded the boat to head out for one of the signature Key Largo dives - Key Largo Dry Rocks, or more commonly referred to as Christ of the Abyss.  Perfect conditions greeted us, with decent viz and no current or surge to speak of.  Donna Raleigh & Jenna Murray worked on their Fish ID specialty, completing REEF fish surveys on this and the next dive.  A perfect 60-plus minutes was spent exploring this site. The time passed too quickly, and it was time to enjoy a long and arduous 12 minute surface interval while we motored over to our second site, north Key Largo Dry Rocks.  Another great reef dive, more good stuff for all.  These were the last dives of the weekend for two of our lobster assassins, Tricia Healy & Gary Kai.  Gracing the topside and soaking up the sun for our afternoon ride were the designated bathing beauties for the trip, Isabella Gabriel and Stephanie Skelton.

Back at the dock, we had a generous 25 minutes for lunch and then it was time to head back out for another visit to the Spiegel Grove.  If yesterdays current was ripping, today’s was clearly ripping plus!  Like jumping into a washing machine, we entered the water and went hand-over-hand across the mooring line to begin our descent down to the wreck.  “Hold on to the line - don’t let go” was truly the order of the day. We had a few different groups once again, with Dave Hartman, representing IVS South, leading a penetration tour under the well deck, with Frank G, Bill Z, John G & Csaba L gearing up wth stage bottles and working as teams to run some reel lines into the wreck for some serious technical exercises.  The rest of us split up into a couple of tour groups, with Butch, Sue and myself leading each of our groups on nice penetration tours of this fine wreck.  In spite of the conditions everyone came up smiling and laughing, and wiser for the experience.  Niki Lorinczy finally got her breathing under control, nearly matching the gas usage of the much older and much larger Dave Valaika.  The ‘lame-o’ tour, led by me, ended up with the longest bottom time and most penetration time of all the groups - what’s up with that??

We followed that experience with a visit to the Benwood, giving everyone the opportunity to see this World War II wreck in the daytime, and to be able to appreciate the change in sea life that happens each day after dark.  Butch & Bev Loggins, along with Frank G, Mike Conn, Jason Stelle and a few others, headed off the bow to visit the “Benwood Wall” a nice 90 foot sloping drop 150 degrees off the bow of the wreck.  Amazing schools of fish surrounded the wreck today, and just further fueled the question - “where do they go at night??”  And as is typical with IVS, the training never ends - using darkness and night diving to raise the stress conditions a bit, Butch and Rob Lunny practiced running penetration reels as a team.  They performed flawlessly, running nearly 300 ft of line throughout the wreck area, maintaining perfect buoyancy and light communications, and just clicking as a team.  We’ll see the results of their practice tomorrow when we put this to a test in the Spiegel Grove.  While they were hard at work, Donna Raleigh shared her biophosphorescece illuminating gear with several of us, using a special filter on her lamp and polarized lenses over our masks, we were able to see the unbelievable glow of the phosphorescence of certain hard corals, sponges, anenomes, and a few other of the seas critters - very cool study in an area that is unknown by most.  For more information on this check out this link - (insert link here). And Jenna and I had a nice startle - while focusing in on some photography of a nice size crab out for the evening, Jenna looked up and suddenly grabbed my arm, so I raised my light up and Holy Smokes Batman!! - look at the size of the shark, sitting almost on our heads!   A very curious and not shy gray friend, either a reef or bull, out for dinner and not perturbed about us being in his dining room at all!  Very cool, and a great rush too!  And to top it off Jonathan MacKnight shot some super video of a turtle swimming along with us - check out our U-Tube clip here (insert link),

We had a bit of rain during the night, and a light breeze greeted us Sunday morning.  The wind caused some choppy surface conditions, but it was all bark and no bite as the sea was calm below as we visited the Wellwood wreck site on French Reef, followed by Hardbottom Caves on Molasses.  Very slight surge, but viz was super, lots of critters to enjoy, and a couple of great dives overall.   Sylvia Lorinczy ended up with completing two 45-minute dives on a single 65 CF tank, returning to the boat with an amazing 600 psi left - unbelievable!  Julie Antidormi, Steve Monte, Linda Malloy, Tom Brennan, Sandy Stelle, & Don Yowell wrapped up their weekends diving this morning, preferring to avoid the reported rough conditions on the afteroon’s double-deep adventure.  While we motoring back in, we listened to reports coming in from boats on the Duane, our target this afternoon. Not good, it sounded, as divers were aborting the dive and calling them before even starting down the line in the current.

In light of that report from the Duane, we opted for the usually better but still supposedly ripping conditions on the Spiegel, doing a double dip on this wreck.  Well, as usual when you get reports on sea conditions from the locals, everything is bigger and worse than reality, by far.  We arrived at the Spiegel, and you could not have asked for better conditions anywhere.  Near-flat seas, zero current, great viz - we really should learn by now, when you get the local report, divide by four for the actual wave height and current speed.  The dives were great, with more deep & dark penetration for the IVS gang, exploring all sorts of nook, crannies and voids deep in the bowels of this ship.  On an international note, we learned that the Hungarian symbol for “crane” is almost identical to the PADI symbol for “fin pivot”, so you can imagine the blank looks and WTF’s that you get underwater when you use this sign to ask everyone where the crane is while you’re down on the wreck.  Have to admit, the fin pivot exercise on the deck was humorous, but finally the group managed to understand the alternate translation, and make it back to the ship’s crane to return to the Amoray Diver.  And Niki is off the hook on getting the Air Consumption Queen Award on this trip, as her dad managed to make the first dive this afternoon a nine minute express version.  The bottom line for the day- all great stuff.  This afternoon we saw Shelly Liu, Meredith Bernardo, Craig Bentley & Jason Stelle all getting in their fourth Spiegel Grove dives in for the weekend. 

And if all that wasn’t enough, we opted to add a third night dive to the trip, heading back out Sunday evening to visit the City of Washington, after dark.  A light breeze from the East made the ride out a bit wetter and bumpier than normal, but it didn’t detract from the stellar conditions underneath.  Zero current, zero surge, just fine diving with all sorts of fun animals out to entertain and amaze the divers - octopus, lobsters, cuttlefish, eels & sharks - all made for a great last dive for most of the group. With the following breeze the ride back was smooth as can be, and we were treated to a great light show with lightning flashing all around us the entire ride in.  Another perfect day in paradise. 

Monday morning dawned darker and breezier than any day of the previous week, and we counted our blessings for the fine weather we enjoyed every day of this trip.  Never the less, Don Yowell and I headed out for one more visit to the reefs this morning before we had to head up to the airport for the trip home.  The ride out was very wet with a number of waves breaking over the bow of the boat, but we soldiered on.  The reward: two nice dives on French Reef, with Hardbottom Caves and Christmas Tree Caves as the chosen sites. Great quiet relaxing way to wrap up a superb trip to the Keys.  It was not without a moment of sadness, as I had to take my regulator off my tank for the 32nd time in the last 5 days, and this time I had no new tank to put it on.  Finally Don & I headed to the airport, officially turning the Key Largo back over to the locals.  Not to worry, we’ll be back soon enough!

Winers of this trips ‘ADD’ Award (All Dives with Dave) are Jason Stelle, Jenna Murray, Brenden Malloy, Shelly Liu, Mike Conn, Dave Elmer, Rob Lunny & Craig Bentley.  Make sure you visit the IVS website for photos and videos from this trip! 

To call this years two-day Florida Sport Lobster season amazing would be an serious understatement!  Team IVS kicked lobster butt as we caught 106 keepers over the course of the two day sport season, held every year on the last two contiguous Wednesday & Thursday of July. 

We chartered the entire Garden Cove Divers fleet for the entire season, scheduling four 2-tank trips each day.  Yours truly worked as the first mate for Captain Anna on the boat for all dives on both days, ensuring another spot for Team IVS on each trip.  Starting at 4:00 a.m., Mike Conn, Bill Zyskowski, Gary Kai, Dave Hartman, Frank Gabriel & Tricia Healy loaded scuba tanks and hunting gear into the boat, and headed up, geared up and ready to splash at the exact minute that the season open in Monroe County, where Key Largo is located.  The season opens one hour before legal sunrise, and ends each day one hour after legal sunset.  So that translates into 5:47 for this morning, and the divers hit the water the moment the clock struck that hour.  Underwater, the lights were flashing and dancing about, spotlighting the prey as they scurried for cover in the reef system.  Snares, tickle sticks, nets and skilled hands worked in tandem to put eighteen ’bugs’ in the bags over the course of the next sixty minutes.  What a way to kick it off!  This was followed by dive two for the first team, adding another 11 bugs to the count.  After that it was back to the dock, swap out tanks, and have team two board the boat.

Our second team included Jason & Sandy Stelle, Sue Douglass, Shelly Liu, Judy Jaskiewicz, and Tricia Healy again.  This location proved to be a mere shadow of our first spot, producing a lowly 4 bugs total over two 1-hour dives.  Then back to the dock, switching out to team 3, including Bev & Butch Loggins, Brenden Malloy, Don Yowell, John Glowdowski, and Tricia Healy (again!)  We headed out to a different reef spot and although better, still only managed to produce 6 bugs total for the cooler.  Of course by now the reef was filled wth boats and lobster hunters as far as the eyes could see, an amazing number of grabby hands competing with us for the succulent lobsters we sought.  Finally the night crew boarded, same guys as morning shift plus Ray Graff.  Of course, as is customary with most IVS trips, the engine started to falter and the hatch cover was opened up, and our multi-talented Captain Anna crawled right in there, twisting wrenches and making adjustments until the Caterpillar diesel roared back to life.  Great job Anna!  Finally we motored out, and after a false start on a patch of grass that was supposed to be a reef, we re-positioned and nailed another dozen keepers for the evening, ending our hunting at exactly one hour after legal sunset.

The alarm rang all too early for the morning shift again, and there we were at 4;00 a.m., loading tanks and slipping into still-wet wetsuits to head out for another days hunt.  Another strong start for the day, with 22 bugs in the cooler as we came back to the dock.  Team 2 jumped on board, and put another 13 in the bag.  Meanwhile, Bill Z couldn’t nap after the morning trip, so he threw on snorkel gear and went out in the bay behind the Amoray Dive Resort, nailing another couple of bugs from their roosts and adding them to the count.   Team 3 continued the picked up pace, adding twenty more to the catch total.  Finally, the night crew headed out, and after sharing some of the catch with the captain and some of the helpful locals, we ended up with another 8 in the bag, bringing our two day total to 106 spiny lobsters!   Another late evening of cleaning bugs at the dock and bagging them for the freezer, and we were off to the Paradise Pub for a celebration dinner.  Way to go teams!

Be sure to visit the IVS site to see the pictures from this trip! [add link]

Hatfield, PA’s Boy Scout Troop 141 Discovered Scuba Diving tonight at the North Penn YMCA with Indian Valley Scuba!  Richie Kessler led a star-studded cast of IVS luminairies as we introduced the magic and wonder of scuba diving to yet another group of young persons from the area - this time the young men and adult leaders of Troop 141, located in Hatfield, PA.

Another great event, and as usual all sorts of training activities taking place in the pool, with Dry Suit classes, Open Water classes, and some Advanced Open Water work taking place simultaneously!  Team IVS sure knows how to choreograph pool time!

Let us know when your group wants to try diving, and we’ll be glad to bring our show to you!

There is nothing quite like the adventure and excitement of taking that first breath underwater, and there is no better place to enjoy it than with the FREE Discover Scuba Diving programs offered by Indian Valley Scuba!  Our DSD crew was busy this weekend, starting off with Boy Scout Troop #214 from Telford, PA.  Twelve scouts spent almost two hours underwater with the IVS gang, and there was nothing but smiles and empty tanks at the end!  Troop leader Cindy Buckingham exclaimed “What a great time!  The scouts loved every minute of it!”. The event was held at the North Penn YMCA in Lansdale. 

If that was enough, we headed right back out to the Hatfield Aquatic Club again, for our third DSD in as many weeks.  Forty eight participants had a chance to get wet and deep with us during the program.  Once again we were mobbed by the crowd as they lined up to try the magic of scuba diving in this premier pool setting. Coach KB really sets her club apart from the others by offering innovative and exciting programs for the members, and Indian Valley Scuba is proud to be part of the HAC team!

Big thanks to the iVS team - Bev & Butch Loggins, Rich Kessler, Felix Gryn, Tom Brennan, Cassandra Rich, Bill Zyskowski, Jenna Murray & Chris Rich for making these wonderful events possible and for providing a night to remember for the participants!  

Thursday May 27th saw thirty divers from Indian Valley Scuba descending upon quiet Key Largo, FL for a long weekend of diving and controlled mayhem.  Our group’s origins included PA, CA and FL. The weekend weather looks superb, sea conditions are perfect, and the recipe is just right for a great trip for all!

Quite a few of us got in early enough on Thursday to start off the trip with a night dive, including myself and Rich Peterson, fresh in from our deep diving in the Dry Tortugas. Along with Abbie & Bri Pagliaro, Mike Conn, Frank Gabriel and Erle Petrie, we headed out to the wreck of the Benwood, leaving the dock at 7:00 p.m. Night dives from many dive operators range from twilight dives to “rush hour” dives, and you end up out of the water before the sun has even fully set.  Well the IVS gang is clearly not afraid of the dark, and the folks at Amoray Dive Resort leave the dock extra late for us so we are entering black water after sunset to begin our dives.  And the effort paid off – we saw several octopus, turtles, hundreds of sleeping parrotfish, lobster galore, crabs a’plenty, tube feeding anemones, basket stars out and feeding, and all the other critters that make for a fun night dive experience.

Friday morning our group split up, with Frank and I, along with Sue Douglass, heading over to Jules Undersea Lodge with Randee, Kerri & Joe Bates, Rebecca Dyke, and John Herbach for our first two open water checkout dives. Conditions were good, water was warm, and the morning went well.  Meanwhile the rest of the gang headed out to Molasses Reef for a couple of great dives.

Lunch was quick, as usual, and the boat was loaded with Nitrox and fresh tanks as we headed back out to explore the Speigel Grove and the Benwood.  IVS-South Instructor Dave Hartman and Houston-based Instructor Michelle Winkel joined us for the afternoon, and we enjoyed a good dive under less-than-stellar conditions on the Spiegel, with three teams exploring the wreck from different levels and different directions.  Kudos to Don Yowell on his gas consumption improvement!  Good big deep wreck initiation dives for Jim DiQuattro, Richard & Francine Black, Marvin Dyke, Frank, Erle, and repeat visits to the Keys greatest wreck for Dave & Sandy Herbert, Kim & Michel Naucodie, Mike & Lin Gusenko, and Mike Betz.  

The second dive was a visit to the fishiest wreck in the Keys, the Benwood.  After a colorful briefing, we headed in and enjoy nearly an hour of bottom time, constantly surrounded by the full spectrum of tropical fish colors and flavors.  Our OW students had a great dive and everyone returned to the boat with smiles and stories to tell. 

Friday night found us at IVS’s Key Largo Training Center, aka the Hartman Estate, where we enjoyed a splendid offering of pizza, wings, brewskies, and blender-prepared fruity concoctions of all sorts and flavors.  Following that, we ended the evening with a session at Sharkeys, the most local of the local taverns, where we finished the evening with stories, observations and fun.

Saturday morning was even more perfect weather-wise than Friday was, with bright blue skies and not even a hint of a breeze.  Divemaster Bill Zyskowski and Miami-based IVS divers Tamy & Camillo Romano joined us for the day on & in the water.  The inshore weather conditions didn’t change when we hit the open ocean, and the seas were flat, viz was great, and the morning yielded two super dives on French Reef for the IVS crew.  Sightings included turtles, large morays, lobsters, eagle rays, and the usual cast of tropical characters.  Water temp was a balmy 82 and viz was 100 feet or greater.  No surge, no waves, nothing to deter from great diving.

A quick lunch (as usual) and an on-time afternoon departure (not as usual!) had us back out at the Spiegel Grove for a 3:00 entry.  All our new Open Water divers joined us on this traditional graduation dive, getting their first combo Wreck/Deep/Nitrox dive in to start their Advanced Open Water training.  As might be expected, everyone came up smiling from wet ear to wet ear, with lots of good stories and experiences to share with the others.  A second dive to the Benwood for some relaxing fun finished the afternoon off, and we came back in to prepare for our night dive.    

We splashed at the Benwood at 8:30 p.m., already night and dark, and enjoyed  a great 60 minute dive there.  While we were under we noticed a bit if current picking up, and by the time we started heading up it was obvious something was going on as our boat was not where we left it on the mooring; rather it was turned around completely.  A storm front had moved in, whipped the sea into a bit of a frenzy, making it a howling-wind white-capped swim back to the very bouncy boat - pretty cool!  And, on the surface, we then had to deal with a visiting Sea snakes (where he came from no one knows!). The dive was great though, with more turtles, octo’s , rays, and all the other great critters we know and love.

After our night dive a group of us went out to personally inspect the brand new Paradise Pub, and we were not disapppointed!  It is now smoke-free, clean, brighter, and friendly.  Heavily tatted and always interesting barmaid Dawn is gone, but the new management team did a great job.  Lousy new electronic dart board, so we asked management to address that, but otherwise a good evening of fun.  Bri Pagliaro steps up to the line and kicks butt right off the start on the dart board, then falls to the pressure of Mike Conn, who runs a three game streak. Dave Herbert is looking good, but runs a strong second-place’ish performance for the night.  Abbie Pagliaro is off her game tonight, but manages to come up to the line for a bullseye and a 150 point single round, proving once again that even blind squirrels find nuts now and then.  Dave Hartman puts in a disappointing performance for the evening, spending the entire night firmly ensconced in the DFL position. A great time anyway, and we’ll be back.  We wrapped it up and headed back to the resort for some much-needed rest before we start it all over again tomorrow!.

Sunday morning came early, as you might imagine, and it was even more beautiful than the day before.  A slight breeze was blowing, but coming from the north, meaning the ocean was relatively unaffected. We journeyed out to Elbow Reef, to make our first dive on the City of Washington.  As luck would have it, we managed to join in on a Creature Feature dive being run by the folks at Capt. Slates Atlantis Dive Center, so our divers got to enjoy the rush of nurse sharks and goliath groupers coming in for a free meal.  After getting our share of up close and personal shark encounters we got to work doing fish count surveys for REEF.  This is a key part of the IVS PADI/National Geographic Open Water certification, and also a great step towards completing our fish ID specialty and working towards our Advanced Open Water certification.  Our second location was Mike’s Wreck (formerly known as the Tonowanda), and we finished our surveys up there with another 60 minute dive.

After the usual quick lunch we headed back out to do our signature Double-Deep dives for Sunday afternoon.  First stop – the former Coast Guard Cutter USS Duane.  Pretty good surface current due to wind, and it was running completely opposite of the current below the surface.  Fun dive, lots of good photo op’s, big critters, great viz.  Second stop was the Spiegel Grove, where everyone penetrated the wreck to all sorts of levels, including the signature Hartman deep & dark tour through the ship’s innards.  These are the coolest dives for our newest divers, to really get a chance to experience diving on huge intact shipwrecks and also learning how to work in a dive team environment.  All great training and the education never stops!

Monday morning saw lots of hugs and handshakes as most of the group headed back towards the airport, but the “can’t get enough nitrogen” diehards managed to get one last set of dives in on the reefs in the a.m.  Another great trip in the logbooks, and time to plan your next visit to the Keys with IVS!

And the winners of this week’s ADD Awards (All Dives with Dave) are Bri Pagliaro, Mike Gusenko, and Erle Petrie!  Congratulations!

Today Indian Valley Scuba had the distinct honor of hosting the first ever Discover Scuba Diving program at the 42nd annual SCOPE Jamboree held in Furlong, PA.  This event, held each year between Boy Scout and Venture units in the Bucks County, PA and Toronto, Canada areas, brings approx 600 scouts and scout leaders together for a three day camping, educational and cultural exchange event. 

Team IVS team (Randy Rudd, Donna Raleigh, Tom Rebbie & Csaba Lorinczy) met at the shop at 7:00AM to carpool up with the IVS truck and trailer to the Boy Scout camp in Furlong.  A quick stop at the local Wawa for some Mountain Dew, to ensure the team would be up to dealing with the flood of teenage boys, and we arrived at the camp just after 8:00AM.  Doug Ellis (our chief organizer) and Steve Clem met the team at the pool, where we parked the trailer for the day. “How is the temp Doug?” we yelled out looking at the outdoor pool. “Don’t know …. Don’t want to know … but it’s COLD” The water was later measured to be 65 degrees. “Anybody has some extra 7 mil neoprene?”  

The Scout leaders greeted us with enthusiasm. “Everybody is so excited that you guys are here, we never had scuba at the camp. Thanks for coming, here are the signed waivers.” And they handed us a stack of 2-inch thick folders with over a hundred signed waivers. We took inventory in the IVS trailer, scratched our heads a bit than shrugged our shoulders … “Not to worry, everything always seems to work our in the end with IVS events”.

 Csaba set up the DSD video system in the cantina, Donna took control of all the waivers, while Steve, Tom and Randy started to assemble dive gear by the pool. Doug coordinated the arriving troops and leaders.  We were somewhat relieved when only 45 kids showed up to watch the Discover Scuba Video. While the scouts watched the video, Donna sorted and confirmed each waiver. Doug had arranged the scouts into groups of 8 and everybody got their time slot when they have to show up at the pool. We had Steve, Doug and Randy dress in full neoprene and take position in the pool, while Donna, Tom and Csaba providing support from the “shore” helping divers in and out and managing equipment.

The first group with 8 Venture girls at 10:15, who had a great Discover Scuba session and were very exited to be in the pool with IVS, didn’t even care about the frigid water temperature. They wanted more. The next session started at 11:00, and continued with eight new divers jumping in every 45 minutes all day long.  Some of the boys and girls loved it, some gave it a try and said “This is just not for me … but I tried.”  Lunch was served in shifts during the sessions to keep the team’s energy up. We were served with a great camp lunch of burgers, hot dog and funnel cake.

The afternoon went fast with full sessions right until late in the day.  A few older scouts enjoyed one-on-ones with our scuba instructors and took advantage of the open dive-slots that were available later in the day.Everybody enjoyed the opportunity to breath under water, no matter how cold it was. Even when all completed their class, the 3 girls from the first session and 2 other boys from the later sessions came back, got back in the pool and just wanted more … more  … more. We know how that is, that’s how we all got into diving. Randy and Steve stayed in the pool a bit longer where the kids starting to do skills of mask flooding, regulator clearing and buoyancy control.

Day 1

Sunday dawned dark and dreary in sleepy Harleysville, PA as our divers headed towards the Philadelphia airport to begin the journey southward.  Today’s destination was Fort Myers, FL, home of the liveaboard Ultimate Getaway (www.ultimategetaway.net ) and the starting point for this week’s adventure.

All seemed to be going swimmingly well, with the flights on time, and half our team already on site, having driven down on Saturday with the double tank setups, stage bottles, multiple regulators and all the other goodies that good, safe technical diving demands.  Well, not to digress, but things were looking great, right up to the point where I found myself alone at the Ft. Myers airport; staring at the empty baggage carousel after all the other passengers had claimed their luggage and headed on their merry ways.  Yes, dag-nab it, my friends at Delta had let me down, leaving me stranded and somewhat short on gear and very short on clothing to make it through the next five days on board our dive boat.

“Not to worry”, the smiling baggage claims girl said, “I’m sure they’ll be on the next flight at 7:30”.  OK, well with a boat departure from the dock scheduled for 6:00 that was not the greatest of news.  Let’s make a few calls, get a hold of someone, and see what’s happening at the dock.  As luck would have it, the boat came in an hour late from the last trip, so we had a little leeway in our time schedule.  So Rich Peterson picks me up at the airport and runs me over to the boat, to meet the rest of the divers, including Fantasea Scuba owner Jim Joseph  ( www.fantaseascuba.com), who had organized the charter along with Richie & Carrie Kohler, of Shadow Divers fame ( www.RichieKohler.com ).  Greetings, hugs and handshakes for all, and no problem, they are going to be a little late in leaving, so we have time to run back to the airport and pick up my bags on the later flight.

So Rich & I boogie on back to Ft. Myers International, and I patiently wait by the carousel as the crowd of passengers from the later flight start to gather around me.  Yes, this is what it should feel like;  you can the look of anticipation on their faces, thinking as each bag magically appears on the belt, “is that one ours?”, “maybe that one?”, until finally each passenger has been paired up with a matching bag or two and they head off, leaving only me there, alone again!

Well, the confidence in the baggage claim office sags, as they tell me the next flight that my bags MAY be on is at 11:30 that night.  That’s too late to roll the dice and hold the boat at the dock, so we switch to plan B.  What can I possibly be missing that I can’t either borrow on the boat or buy at Walmart?  So off to America’s Superstore we head, grab a cart, race through the aisles, couple of t-shirts, toothpaste, hairbrush, undies, a bathing suit, what else can we need?  Oh yeah, beer!  OK, well you can get it all at Walmart, so we load up the truck and head back over to the boat, with me looking a little like a diving Minnie Pearl with price tags on everything I am wearing.  A quiet cheer erupts from the crowd as we board, and then a quick briefing by the captain, and we push off!  Hurray!

As we head out to sea the talk turns towards anticipation of tomorrows events, thoughts of artifacts to be recovered, fish to be speared, great photo opportunities and everything else that may be encountered.  Gear is inspected, adjustments made, gas is analyzed, cylinders are tied down, and it’s time to review the dive profiles planned for the first dive tomorrow.  Laptop computers are running all over the salon with different profiles and gas mixes being considered for the next day’s dives.

The wreck we are heading towards is the WWII German merchant ship M.S.Rhein.  In December of 1940, the Rhein had sailed east in an attempt to escape from the port of Tampico, MX where she had been hiding since the U.S. Neutrality Act of 1939 had banned all Axis shipping from American waters.  She was in imminent danger of capture by patrolling American warships, when her crew set her afire in an attempt to scuttle the merchant vessel.  As she burned, her crew was picked up by a British destroyer and she was sent to the bottom by a barrage of cannon fire from the warship. 

The Rhein sat undisturbed and forgotten until 1991, when deep diving legend Billy Dean of Key West happened upon her and identified the ship.  They had actually been searching for the wreck of a Panamanian freighter, the Hermis.  Originally they thought they had found the Hermis, until they recovered the ship’s bell from the bridge which proved undoubtedly that the wreck was that of the Rhein.  Since then she has been explored a number of times, but the distance, depth and expense tends to keep the crowds small and few between.  Today she sits upright in 250 feet of water, with her superstructure rising to within 140 ft. of the surface.  The Rhein is 453 ft in length with a 58 ft beam, and displaced 6,049 tons.

Day 2

Morning broke bright and sunny across the near-flat waters of the Gulf of Mexico as we approached the end of our 124 mile, 14 hour run from Ft. Myers.  The seas are less than 2 ft with gentle rollers, not a whitecap in sight.  The sky is bright blue and cloudless, the air temperature a balmy 80 degrees.  A sumptuous breakfast is served up by the crew and the team digs in!

Today our dive plan calls for 25 minutes at 230 feet, followed by 75 minutes of progressive decompression.  Our bottom gas mix will be 15/37 (15% oxygen, 37% helium, 48% nitrogen) with 50% Nitrox for deco and 100% O2 for the final stages.  We’re carrying double 119’s on our back, with two 40 CF stage bottles slung under our arms.  Deco will start at 170 ft and continue all the way to 10 ft where we’ll end up breathing 100% oxygen for a good final “clean-up” of our tissues.  We’ll follow that with a four hour surface interval while we refill the tanks, and then head back down for a second dive with a similar profile.

Finally, the moment we have been waiting for!  The engines slow, the crew activity picks up, lines are readied, and we are finally on-site at the Rhein!  The captain slowly circles the wreck, determing wind & current direction, to best drop his anchor so that our ship will lie directly over the wreck.  A toot of the horn and the clang of anchor chain lets us know we are close to dropping in.  Once the main anchor is set, the crew drops the 80 lb grapple hook and 250 feet of line and it snags the wreck, picture perfect!  Richie & Carrie drop in first and set the hook by tieing it off with an additional line to the wreck, and they signal ‘mission accomplished’ by shooting a lift bag to the surface.  That’s all we need to see and off we go over the side, quick bubble check just under the surface, and then we descend down, down, down. At 160 ft we can make out the wreck, and we hit the deck at 195 ft.  The fish surrounding this wreck are unbelievable in quantity and size, with groupers of all flavors, snappers, jacks, and the usual cast of characters.  The barracdia are sized as one might expect in 250 ft of water – huge!

Rich and I drop over the side of the wreck and begin a slow tour towards the bow, circling it and taking in the mass of this great ship.  Time & nature have not been kind to the Rhein, so many of the hull plates have been torn away or fallen off, revealing the ship’s skeleton and its innards.  Beautiful purple tip anenomes sweep the current for food, and large oysters cover the steel plating, closing their colorful shells as we near.  Two portholes are already hanging fom lift bags as the scavengers among us are busily working away with pry bars and hammers.

Our 25 minutes of bottom time passes all too quickly, and it’s time to begin our slow ascent.  A total of an hour and fifty minutes pass before we re-surface and board the boat, smiling from ear to ear.  Once on board, lunch is served, and the crew gets to work mixing gas and fllling the tanks for our second go-round.

At 6:10 we finally splash for a twilight visit to the wreck.  The fish life is quieting down, the barracuda are starting to stack up above us with their “If anyone is getting eaten tonight it’s not me!” strategy of safety in numbers.  We hit 233 feet as we explore aft of the bridge, and penetrate through a hole under the wreck, passing from port to starboard.  The black grouper abound, and a couple of very sizeable Goliath groupers follow us around to see what we are up to.  The Kohlers locate the ships horn, and have it tied off for an attempted recovery in the morning.  Another porthole comes up, and I locate a ceramic tile from the original cargo – nice find!  Another nice slow ride to the surface, to the amusement of hundreds of bar jacks who constantly buzz us during our deco.

Back on the boat, we break down our gear, and head in for a great dinner prepared by the ship’s cook.  Richie K brings out a bottle of Reisling that was sent to him by a surviving member of a U-boat that he has been in contact with, so we drink a very appropriate toast to the reminder of the Second World War we are diving below.

Day 3

Another fantastic morning at sea after a night of gentle rocking while we slept, and we start to get ready to explore the wreck further.  After breakfast we get to work mixing today’s gas, and prepare to head down, with the plan to travel all the way to the stern of the wreck.

Rich and I splash and head down, all is cool, bubble checks pass, and we swim towards the stern.  We round the stern, check out the rear cargo hold, pass thru the bridge area which is quite collapsed now.  Very nice views, big Jewfish lounging on top of the masts, too bad the camera is in the shop, but none-the-less we enjoy a leisurely 25 minute swim, with a maximum depth of 236 ft.  Ascent is good, but this time we decide to ride the computer up rather than the written plan, and here is where the day turns a bit less than expected.  We end up on the surface about 15 minutes earlier than planned.  Back on board however, Rich and I experience significant pain in our mid-sections and the skin blotches tell the story – skin bends, or epidermal DCS.  Not pretty and definitely painful. 

Lunch and a solid nap help things get a bit better, but Rich decides to sit out the second dive.  I splash in after a four hour surface interval, and enjoy a nice dive at 217 ft for 20 minutes.  Now this time I come up with the written deco plan, even adding a few more minutes at the stops above 65 ft, where I am breathing EAN50.  At 20 ft I switch to 100% O2 and hang there an extra 40 minutes, even dropping closer to 30 feet and pushing a ppO2 of 2.0, while flushing all those nasty gases out of my system with the pure oxygen.  I surface after an hour and 50 minutes and feel great. Mission accomplished, successful in-water recompression complete. Note to self:  be more conservative!

Diving for the day is over, the hook is pulled, the engines fire up and we head over to our second location, that Araby Maid.  Dinner is served up and everyone is excited about the next days dives. Richie Kohler holds court in the galley this evening, sharing some videos and stories of diving the Titanic and her sister ship, the Britannica.  Very interesting and informative, to say the least.

Day 4

What a difference a night can make, as we woke up to a rockin’ & rollin’ boat this morning.  Wind is up, some currents are evident, but hey, what can you expect when you are 130 miles out to sea?  Rich & I splashed at 9:45, and dropped in to see the wreck materialize from 130 feet.  The bottom was 213 feet, so we explored the exterior then jumped inside this fairly intact steel-hulled sailing vessel, which sank in 1906 after a collision with another vessel.  Lots of large marine life, the sounds of hammers a’wailing as the scavengers were hard at work trying to claim more portholes for their collections.  After 25 minutes we headed up, and while we were hanging we were treated to a very large turtle swimming by to check us out, then after that a 7 ft Silky shark cruised through and around us on and off for another 20 minutes, very curious about what was hanging in the water.  His approaches were very close, less than 10 ft, so it was at the same time amazing and unnerving.  Very cool.  We spent additional time taking advantage of the 100% O2 at 20 feet to get a good flush of nitrogen from our system. 

After another great lunch and a nap, we headed back in for our final dive of the trip. This time we were searching for souvenirs and trinkets amongst the rubble of the deck, and we ended up with a few nice items.  On the deco we had dolphins playing around us and African Pompano swimming by, curious about the visitors to their world.

Finally, our last great meal, gear is broken down and packed, and the ship starts the 14 hour run back to port.  Great trip overall, we’ll be back!