Jim and Sherri's SCUBA Diving Trip to West Palm Beach, Sep. 2018

Finally!! After a hiatus of almost three years, Jim and Sherri were able to get back in the water. We went to West Palm Beach to do some drift diving. While in WPB we dove with Narcosis Dive Company for two days of diving over the weekend.

Captain Alex and the crew were great! We hired a private dive master since we hadn't been diving in 3 years. Our divemaster (DM) Christina Firestone was amazing! We only planned to have her for the first day, but she was so awesome, we splurged and hired her for our second day of dives.

Sherri had been holding at 99 dives since we got back from Roatan, so she finally hit number 100 on her first dive!!

While in WPB we stayed at the Marriott Ocean Pointe in Palm Beach Shores (on Singer Island). We had a room with a beautiful view of the ocean/channel. The resort is spread out so we were hiking between buildings, but our building was a particularily quiet one (thanks Marriott) (Marriott Ocean Pointe Layout).

The following describes the wonderful time that we had - to jump to a particular day, select from the following pull down list

Day 1, Saturday - On our first day of diving we checked in with the dive company and then met our private DM, Christina, to get oriented for our two-tank boat dives. We went out on the dive boat, Narcosis and since we're Nitrox certified and have very conservative Suunto dive computers, we dove on Enriched Air Nitrox (EAN 34%). All our dives were drift dives, since that's all they do in WPB. Our first dive was on Breakers Fourth Window where we spent 44 minutes at a depth of 57 ft. on this dive (this was Sherri's 100th dive - yeah!!). The water temp was 82 deg F and visibility was about 35 feet. After a relaxing surface interval we did our second dive on Flower Garden and spent 49 minutes drifting with the current at a depth of 55 ft. Again the water temp was 82 deg F and visibility was 35 feet. On our dives we saw lots of lobsters, moray eels (green and spotted), trunk fish (Sherri's favorite), file fish, and a scorpion fish.

Since it had been so long since we last dove and our dive trip was abbreviated we didn't bring the DSLR with waterproof case. We did have a GoPro Hero 6 with waterproof housing to try out and brought it in the water on the second day, after we were reacclimated to the water. From the pictures and videos we got, its obvious we need to get some filters or lights for the GoPro.

Day 1 Diving

Hotel	View from balcony	Another balcony view
Sherri	Sherri and Jim	Narcosis Dive Boat
Boat View	People on Boat	Divemaster Christina

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Day 2, Sunday - Day two of diving dawned warm, bright, and sunny (once the sun came up) and we were ready for a second day of two-tank boat dives. The first dive was a wreck dive on the Ana Cecilia and there were tens (if not a hundred or more) Goliath Groupers around and on the wreck. The dive was for 30 minutes to a depth of 89 feet. The water temp was 81 deg F and visibility was around 30 feet. There was a current on the wreck but the seas were flat. We drifted with the current from the wreck to the next one in line, the Mizpah (I think) and then surfaced. We then cruised down to Flower Garden and after our surface interval we dove for 45 minutes to a depth of 61 feet on Flower Garden then jumped over to Turtle Mound. On this dive the current was nonexistant. Again the water was 82 deg F and visibility was 30-35 feet. We saw a huge coronet fish, lots of lobsters, trunkfish, southern stingray, puffer fish, Nassau Grouper, and file fish.

Day 2 Diving

Goliath Grouper	Goliath Grouper	Goliath Grouper
Sherri and Jim	Sherri and Jim	Sherri Fish
Pufferfish	Stingray	Goliath Grouper
Lobster Fest

Day 3, Monday (rest day) Done diving, so now we drive from WPB back to Cocoa Beach to spend the afternoon at the Hilton Cocoa Beach, before flying out the next day.

Hanging on Cocoa Beach

Diving Movie from Youtube