Pompano Dive Center, United States

Orlandosjm

23/01/16 at 11:05

We had our one hour surface interval and the boat moved over to the lighthouse reef which was right in front of the Pompano lighthouse. The water was scheduled to get more choppy as the day progressed and it definitely did. I'm sure the dive captain was nervous about conditions progressing so he chose something a little closer to land. We were diving the lighthouse reef which was one of the better reefs in the area and that the average depth would be about 45 to 50 feet to the sand. It was going to be a drift dive so Lance, the Kiwi, would be the guide and holding onto the dive flag. We splashed in and took our time getting to the bottom. Mark was still concerned about equalizing which ended up not being a problem. I'm so used to diving off West Palm Beach where the current is 3 kt minimum that I was surprised to see no current here. The reef was a beautiful area and visibility was good at about 45 feet. In the water were about six divers including us and we slowly work our way south on the reef. I lost my safety sausage on the way down to my great frustration but we ended up not needing it as there was no current and we all stayed together the entire time. There was an abundance of life there and floating at the bottom of the ledge was very interesting and beautiful. We saw a medium size lobster in a crevice and then moved on. We were down probably about 50 minutes when my dive computer said it was time to ascend so we made our way up again. The water was probably at about 3 to 4 foot waves which made getting on the boat a lot more challenging. We did board though and the dive captain collected all of the divers in the water and we headed back in to the marina. I quickly got all of my wetsuits off and dried so that I would not be chilled. I was pleased with how I handled the coldest time as I became incredibly cold back during the spring but dives a year ago. Marks very experienced with colder weather diving so I just watched what he did and follow it along.

Orlandosjm

23/01/16 at 09:30

We were out on the dive site in about 30 minutes and splashed in at around 9 AM. It was 80’ anchor dive so two of the dive leads jumped in the water and attached a line from the wreck up to the dive boat. When we entered the water we had to work our way down at the anchor line to the wreck itself. Mark was, also, experiencing a head cold so we took it slow moving down the Anchor line to allow ourselves to equalize. It's always fun slowly to descend onto a wreck site as the outline of the wreck itself eventually distinguishes itself against the background of sand. The bottom was about 70 feet. The wreck of the “United Caribbean” was in pieces about 30 yards away from each other. At 70 feet our dive time would be around 40 minutes. To my great thrill we were able to penetrate the wreck though not to a great extent. There was one room on the wreck that actually was very cool to get into and had great accessibility. You had the shimmy through a small door which brought you into a well lit room full of rusted and deteriorate equipment. I had brought a dive light which I was able to use. I feel very confident in doing wreck penetration now. The wreck was quite solid in the areas that we did penetrate and that we did a few swim through this on the aft section of the ship also. We started working our way up the line as my tank was running at about 700 psi at that point. We made our way up the Anchor line stopping at 15 feet for three minutes for our safety stop.