What a great day of diving! My boss / friend Joe, came to work and said that we needed more pictures of wreck diving for our brochures and for a diving convention in March up in New Jersey! He said everyone get ready we are going diving. WEll.. lets see it was either sit in the office all day answering phones or going out on the water... hummm... I of course chose diving! Let me tell you, it was cold and windy out.... the waves were rolling!! it was 5-6 feet and occasionaly 8 feet out there! The air temp was 60degrees and the water was 75. The day before we had went to the Spiegel and we were very cold.. so we were expecting the same conditions. The only difference this time, as opposed to the pic of Jackie and I above was that we could NOT wear wetsuits! The pictures were supposed to look TROPICAL! Since we are a tropical climate and it barely stays cold for long.. the advertising had to reflect such!

Soooooo we were planning on going to the Duane and then the Spiegel grove. The Duane is one of my favorite wrecks here in the Keys. I've been to it now about 5 times, and I love it. It's an old US Coast Guard Cutter (built 1936) that was donated as use for an artificial reef. She was sank November 27, 1987 at Molasses Reef. She lies upright on a sandy bottom 120 feet deep. She is 327 feet long and the deck is at 90 feet. She is awesome to look at!! Lots of goliath grouper and eel and shark are all over the place. Tons of fish and coral as well! Just beautiful!

But... instead of going to the Duane first we went back to the Spiegel... to do the first photoshoot. We had heard it was really rough at the Duane so we thought lets try the Spiegel first and get some pictures taken down there. Sooo.. as we pull up we see some of our other friends out there on different boats. Steve told us that there were ton of Man o Wars all around and that we need to keep an eye out before we jump in... and yes.. we saw them EVERYWHERE! That wasn't what REALLY worried us.. it was the COLD WATER! So as we kept telling our selves it was going to be hot... we all took shifts in jumping in.. two groups every 10 minutes. Austin and I were the last group! I told him to stay close.. and he did. Austin is 18 and has been to the Spiegel Numerous amounts of time.. and I have not. So we go on down the decent line..and it wasn't cold at all.. even being in our bikinis!1 It was beautiful but the viz wasn't everything we had hoped!

Here are a few pics of us from the shoot.. I am the first two.. Jackie is the 3rd..and Joe is the last two!

I missed the next dive on the Duane... cuz I had a really bad ear squeeze.. and yes.. the viz was apparently 100ft on the duane and the no current! OF COURSE.. I missed my favorite one.. The boat was rocking bigtime.. but that puts me to sleep (the waves were 6 and 7 feet..) but it was still fun!!!