Patience is one of my virtues, but probably not my best one or my most exercised one!  However, I did get to wait a year to take the MV Fling to the Flower Gardens, but it was worth the wait.  I love being on boats and on the ocean, so I was absolutely in my element.  Some of the better pictures that I took are below, and I have more of the dive log below the pictures. Please enjoy :-)

 

 

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I am a 'fusser' and I fuss before I go on a dive trip.  Tom's Dive and Swim told me to be at the 'On the River' Restaurant in Freeport at 5 pm....so I was there at 4 pm and spent an hour opening and closing bags, checking gear, worrying about what I did and did not have - the fact is that I had at least 2 of everything and 4 sets of spare parts for each, and I really wanted to pack it all.  I had a drysuit as well as an 8/6mm, a 5mm, a 3mm, and a 2mm shorty, but I still could not decide what to take.  And then there were the clothes - 2 sweat shirts? A wool hat? Oh no - no talc for the drysuit seals - pack everything up again and head to Walgreens - crap, I hate having time to think! 

 

At exactly 5 pm my new dive buddies started turning up, and I did my best to look cool while we had dinner and then headed to join the boat.  As we wait to board the boat, I have to go into stealth fussing mode, the need to balance looking like I know what I am doing and checking and rechecking gear.  Should I add another t-shirt....hmmmm.  As a post script (and I am sorry to my crew mates) I think that I wore the same clothes all trip!

 

I don't care what anybody says - we do eye up other divers - what gear they have, what does their t-shirt say....how do I match up?  Hell, I have over 1,000 dives, and I still worry! 

 

The Fling did not care, 100 ft long and fully equipped to allow people to deliberately fall overboard.  A wide spacious (with 17 people) back deck gave us plenty of room for gearing up, gearing down, slipping, sliding, and occasionally vomiting in relative but mobile comfort.  Top deck was the lounge and galley, from which GREAT FOOD spilled forth.  'If ya go home hungry, that is your fault', and the below deck area was separated into 6 separate bunk areas.  Here is an important point - three good heads that worked and did not fill you with fear that the things that have passed through you would not pass through the heads.  Well kept, clean and nice all trip - the sign of a good boat. 

 

With gear stowed and bunks chosen - HINT - run if you want a bottom bunk, we went through the safety briefing and were issued our white 'deluxe' vomit catchment devices.  To the everyday person on the street, these would be trash can liners, but on a boat they are invaluable, because sea sickness is not like other sicknesses in that often you just don't get any warning...one bead of sweat on the forehead and BLEUGH it is upon you!  So, everybody was issued with a personal sack and had to fluff it before we left the cabin!.  Fluffing insures that the device will open immediately when deployed, and the little red handles fit perfectly over the ears - the automatic/no hand version.  Consider it the sudden vomit equivalent of the car airbag.  Our thanks to Capt. Bland for the demo that would have left the best SW Airlines hostess jealous. 

 

While we all drifted off to sleep with dreams of diving, the captains guided the Fling to our first dive stop on the West Bank, 110 miles south of Freeport.  Once the boat was in place, we were briefed on the dive - bad current - don't take cameras on the first dive....AND I LISTENED!!  It was quite a pull down the line to the bottom, but once there it was easy to hide behind the coral heads and stay out of the current.  I HATE being without my camera, but I listened to the briefing and did not take it on the first dive.  There is a dent in a large brain coral where I banged my head as I sat there moving from rock to rock, slip streaming and PRETENDING that I had a camera...ooooh that would be a nice shot  One of my fellow dive buddies came past me with a video camera and a sling bottle!  I vowed to take my camera on the next dive and not go without it again on the trip.  A camera really changes the way that you dive.  You slow down, you look more, and you become the world's worst dive buddy for someone that does not have a camera!  But luckily, at that point and with a camera in your hand, you really do not care!!

 

The first thing you see is the 70 ft viz.  Then I was surprised how much the coral structures reminded me of the Galapagos.  The water temp was 62 degrees, and I was glad to have my drysuit on.  There was a moment on the deck when I felt bad that I was in a drysuit and others were in wet suits.  That passed - quickly!  The currents were strong on both the first and second dives, and blue water safety stops resulted in the launch of the pick up dingy and in the movement of the boat, but all was done with good humor and no dive time was lost.  I have to tell you that on the surface the sky was blue, the air temp was in the 70's, and I was starting to build up a sunburn that by the following Thursday would leave me looking like a peeling, scaly lizard that may have been living peacefully in the shadow of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986. 

 

With the first two dives completed, the boat was moved to an oil rig.  If you have not done a rig dive - DO IT.  The life on a well established rig is amazing (see the Little Sara tab).  Add the fact that the rig is on the edge of the Flower Gardens, and you are in for a TREAT!.  Large barracuda, jacks, silky sharks, angels, sergeant fish, soap fish...everything a diver's, and a picture talking diver's, heaven!!  I really did not want to leave the water.  The current had dropped away; the sun was shining through the risers and pipes.  I have some great pics and great memories from that dive.  The quantity and diversity of fish life was amazing. 

 

One dive on the rig, and we were off again to the East Bank for a twilight and a night dive there.  The one thing that we were told was that the night dive would not be permitted if there were any large predators in the water.  Well, I guess that you have to define what large is....personally, I do not think that 10 ft is large.  Please forgive me for the next paragraph! 

 

So I was the first off the boat, and I rushed down the bridal line to the mooring line and down to the bottom.  We had been briefed that you drop down on coral and take a right turn to the sand.  I did as I was told, because sometimes I do that.  I adjusted my buoyancy and hovered above the sand in amazement.  I looked out through a sea of tiny critters that looked to me like mycid shrimp at 7-8 manta rays sweeping across the sand.  They split up and swam past me, and as I looked up, I saw three hammerhead sharks swimming over my head.  To be honest I was a little dumb-founded at the time.  I managed to get two poor shots of the mantas, but they were too close for a good pic.  As I looked at the hammerheads and started to move my camera upwards, I got that sense that I have felt twice in 40 dives on the La Jolla shores in San Diego. At that point I was kneeling on the sand, and I knew that feeling, I turned slowly around to look over my shoulder to see a 10 ft tiger shark swimming straight at me.  I leveled my camera and took two quick shots, not good shots as it turned out,.  As he passed me I pushed up from the bottom, and as if dragged by my camera that was hungry for another picture, I found myself trying to chase the shark.  That did not last for long!  All of this happened in the space of no more that 2 minutes.  I returned to the bottom and sat in the lotus position on the sand for 5 minutes to recover!

 

So getting back on the boat I am faced with a dilemma - do I tell anybody about the tiger shark ahead of the night dive -  HELL NO, I did not tell anybody!  I wanted to do the night dive!!

 

I am relieved to report that the night dive went off without a hitch.  It was fun and safe, and nobody got eaten by a 10 ft tiger shark.  I am assuming that if someone had been eaten by a shark, I would have had a rather uncomfortable feeling for the rest of the trip, BUT would really have had something to confess on one of those stupid after dinner games.  Oh, what is the worst thing that you have done?  Oh, well I lied about a shark and several people were mauled and died horrible crunching, biting drowning  - oh no my screams were never heard - deaths.  But in the end none of that happened.  BUT I would still like to apologize to my fellow divers and the crew of the Fling - Please, can I come back and dive on another trip?

 

Fishing and diving are similar in that at the end of the day we sit under the stars and tell dive lies...well, I still did not tell anybody about the shark, but we may have exaggerated some of our dive stories,  But just imagine being on the sun deck of a ship 110 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico with a nitrogen-filled brain, warm, sitting under the stars, and this is February!  All I can see is that shark :-)

 

Over night we moved to the Stetson Bank, several degrees colder and a totally different environment.  I really liked the rock structures and minimal coral (due to the 2 degree colder water temp), but there was a lot of life, including a nice speckled moray, a huge lobster, parrot fish, etc.  The down side of the first dive on Sunday morning was that the sea was starting to get up and the ladders on the stern were becoming more of a rodeo ride than an elevator to food and warm cocoa!  By the time we were ready for the second dive, it was getting really rough, and call me weird, but the colder, the darker, the harder the diving gets, the more I enjoy it!  Ok that is weird, but getting back onto a bucking boat ladder takes patience and timing, and is all part of the experience. 

 

With my 8 seconds on the ladder done, I was back on deck and we were headed for the shore.  I could have stayed there all week.  It was a great trip!  I enjoyed all the people that I met, nobody was eaten on the night dive, and I perfected my Chernobyl tan on the way back to the dock. 

 

On landing we all say that we will stay in touch - we always do that - and sometimes we actually do stay in touch!  What do I think of the trip?  I loved it!  The crew did a good job, the food was great, and I will be sure to go back before the summer hits and the boat is full. My thanks to:

 

 

Dive details:

 

Dive 1, West Bank, 71 ft, 41 mins

Dive 2, West Bank, 77 ft, 42 mins

Dive 3, Rig dive 309A, 64 ft, 50 mins

Dive 4, East Bank, 75 ft, 44 mins

Dive 5, East Bank, 76 ft, 45 mins

Dive 6, Stetson Bank, 83 ft, 38 mins

Dive 7, Stetson Bank, 91 ft, 43 mins

 

Again, a BIG THANK YOU TO THE FLING CAPTAINS AND CREW AND MY DIVE BUDDIES ON THE TRIP.  I WILL BE BACK!