RRF Dive log
Saturday
First diving expedition to Boynton Beach in hopes of finding an area to survey for the new reef location. Big John Bailed before we even left. Our boat would not start (bad coil). Chance of rain 30% and reported 3-5 foot seas (at Melbourne not WPB). It didn't look good and we almost called off the trip. I found a more accurate local forecast on NOAA's web site (2 feet or less in WPB) and decided to go anyway. I called Splashdown Divers (SDD), whom I had found on a previous scouting trip, and she (Lynn) agreed to take me to the area That Carman had pointed me to (the Humps). She said they normally hit that spot as their second dive on the way back in. It worked out great. For $50.00 each plus tanks we were able to survey the location we were looking for (at least one tank any way). So after a near miss we packed up and headed South at 9 am.
Shawn has a black eye, and chipped bones in his face and nose. (this had to very painful at 60' deep) What a trooper!
First dive 2:00 pm. High tide. Seas 2 foot or less, beautiful day. South side of Lynn's Reef (not sure exactly ware) on the outside reef line. Water temp low 80's. Viz was about 45-50 feet. Depth 45' on top, 60' to the sand. Moderate N current. Some ledges, lots of Octocorals and barrel sponges (as big as a car hood!). A lot of purple, reminded me of diving Purple rain in Grenada with Ginger. Algae present, mostly on Gorgonians. I had never seen algae cover a reef like this before. No white band or black band disease seen on any corals. Some cool tropicals (odd ones) no shooters to be seen (lost a big bug). First dive on a 100cf bottle (100's are good, more bottom time ($10.00 a tank)).
Beautiful reef, nice dive.
Second dive.
About 4-4:30 pm. Water temp low 80's. Viz was about 45-50 feet. Depth 60' on the sand (outside reef line) 43' to the sand on the inside reef line. Current slightly S (odd). We put a flag on the N side of the S hump. Marked the N hump with Depth finder. The area between the two humps is too small (less than 75 yds). This area is ruled out. We started out on the inside of the outside reef line. Near a spot called the Jump. We swam due W (perpendicular to the reef line) towards the Flag on the S hump. Hit a patch reef (not the flag) then swam due N then due E. We hit rock out to about 20 yds from the reef lines. The area in between the reef lines is a few 100 yds. Actual rock bottom must be saddle shaped (as we suspected) sand in the middle was too deep. Shawn had to surface after a few probes to catch his breath. Probing (and fighting the current) is much harder than we expected. We had to learn to probe slowly so as not to over exert ourselves. Breathing hard on SCUBA is not good. We ran into large schools of juvenile gray Triggerfish. They were following us, eating the debris we were stirring up. You had to keep an eye on them (you don't want one to take chunk out of your ear). They were to small to shoot or we would have had mess of triggers for dinner. I ran out of air on our deco stop. Had to buddy breathe with Shawn. We came up 2 minutes short of a 6 minute deco stop. I didn't have enough air to fill my BC on the surface. The captain didn't think we would even make it to the inside reef. We made it there and back. Almost to the exact same spot we left from. The S current blew us off course and we made a perfect triangle instead of the rectangle we tried for. This is a bad spot for the new reef, the sand is too deep.
I don't think too many others could have done this survey except for Shawn and I. We definitely pushed the limits. We gave it our best as it was our only chance today.
Total bottom time about 2 hours.
Brian