The early wake up this morning wasn’t that bad and I got to have a good start on the day with a pretty rich breakfast of cereal, some power bars, fruits, and bagels. Right after breakfast, we went to our assigned boats and were briefed about what we’d be doing that day. First, we went out to a small little sandy area and brushed up on some skills, like clearing the mask, removing and clearing the respirator, and removing, letting go of, and retrieving the respirator. After that, my dive group and the diving instructor, Jeff, went on a trip to explore the deeper area, reaching a depth of 55 ish feet at the deepest. Then, once we got back on the boat and took off the gear, we had some Combos and water, drove to a different site, and began the briefing of our second, and final dive of the day. It was at Coral Gardens and we actually got to see some cool fish this time, like lion fish, an eel, some blue chromes, and a couple of squirrel fish, a feather duster worm, among the various wildlife there. On our way back to the boat, we actually couldn’t get the right heading and missed the boat twice until most of us reached 500 PSI and we had to surface and snorkel to the boat. We then took off our BCD’s, and swapped our drained tanks for fresh, already filled ones. Then we drove back to the main land, got a ride with Glen and went to the Devil’s Bay, a quaint little bay hidden behind a labyrinth of massive stones where me and half of the whole group got lost a few times before we actually got to the bay. At the bay, we took the mask, snorkels, fins, and booties that we had to carry through the maze, put them on, and went snorkeling for 45 ish minutes. The bay was nice, slightly warmer than the two dives and I got to see a peacock flounder and a sting ray towards the end. Promptly after we got out we realized that the instructors didn’t know where the keys to the car were and had fun looking for them and, once we found them, we got our gear and went back to the houses, showered up, and went to the internet room and went over our projects with our dive instructor, Jeff, and our group made plans to begin testing tomorrow night. After that, we went to the beach and had lasagna, and then some of us, myself included, played in the sand for a while after the dinner. I’m really looking forward to beginning my testing and going on the next dives tomorrow.
