Diving with Leo Paez and Luis Monroy off Tower 20

Today was Saturday and Leo would be up from Miami.  As is necessary now, I got to the beach a little after 5:00 am in ensure that I had one of the few remaining parking spots on A1A.  Sure am glad I bought the parking pass at the inflated rates just before this construction project decimated the parking. Luis came about 8:00 am and got a spot that just opened up. This road repair project has certainly interfered with my diving. There are now only about six parking spots available on either side of A1A North of Sunrise to 20th Street.  Though the construction crew is not working on the West side of the road from Sunrise to the Park Tower building, they have blocked off all of those spots. Someone just wants to be malicious.

Our first dive was a Search & Recover dive, which was part of Leo's divemaster program. Leo, Luis and I met behind Tower 20 and discussed the search patterns we might use and the knots would likely need to tie off the lift bag. We then discussed our dive plan, which was relatively simple: we would swim on the surface out to the Ledge, descend, the swim East staying within sight of each other and looking for a tire. Leo would then tie off the tire and take it to the surface using the lift bag. Then we got in the water.

As planned, we swam out to the Eastern Ledge off Tower 20 and descended.  We were, at least for a time, about 20 ft apart and headed East. I spotted a tire and signaled to Luis, who, in turn, looked for Leo, but Leo was no where to be found.  I headed for the surface to see if he were looking for us, but saw him swim in from the North, which was odd since he had started out South of Luis, who was South of me.  Anyway, Leo tied the tire off and I pointed out that he needed to shorten the lines or the tire wouldn't get lifted very far.  He did.  He then attached the lift bag with a sheet bend.  Finally, he took the tire to the surface, but had some trouble because he couldn't get the air out of it near the end.  Dive Time was 120 minutes and the Respiratory Minute Volume was 0.36 ft3/min.

The guys wanted to make a second dive, even though Leo and I had Cesar Souza's scuba review class scheduled at 2:30 in the afternoon. So we did. They took their cameras. We swam out to the Rock Pile to descend, then swam at 120 degrees to the Ledge, except the current set us North a bit and I spotted the comfortable rock as we swam by. From the rock, we swam SW to the Ledge of Turtles. We hung out there for a good while, then went to Shark's Rock and Sharks' Rocks East. Then back to the Ledge and back to the beach.  Dive Time was 125 minutes with almost 1000 psi still in my tank. RMV was 0.35 ft3/minute.