Friday July 4th, Datura Scooter Dive

Andrea and I wanted to try out the new Gavin on an easy dive. The weighting seemed really good in the fresh water tank so I added the 1lb to the nose and packed it up.

It was a nice calm morning, the parking was packed for fireworks at 7:45 AM. Luckily someone left as we waited. We had breakfast and then went diving. The scooters staged by the shower generated a lot of comments from the locals. At least no one asked me if there were sharks out there.

We headed out to the snorkel trail where Andrea adjust here leash to get it just right so the scooter tracked straight an didn't pull up or down. I made up some extra leashes to give away. Most are going to be too short for my team members, but it was good practice getting my own readjusted and adjusting a few new ones.

We took off for the second reef and were there in 5 minutes. Much better than the 20 minutes it takes to swim it. We turned south. We went all the way past Palm Street until the reef flatten out in about 40 minutes at an easy pace. We turned North, past Datura and went to the big corals past the peir. We found the school of Surgenfish and schools of baby Jacks 3 inchs long. They hung was us for "protection". We turned back and headed for Datura. At the first reef line, I decided to go for it all and head back South to the big coral with all the glassy sweepers. We found it with ease and I was surprised with how many were there. There was three big schools of different age ranges and sizes in the area.

We cruised back to the snorkel trail and then in to Datura. 122 mintues round trip with 18ft max depth. Visiblity was about 30ft, A- conditions for beach diving. We crawled out, hauled the scooters up the beach, rinsed and then put out the beach chairs for 90s minutes of relaxation. We missed the boys, but had a great day!