Cozumel México: Deep Diving in the Ocean {Tuesday Dives}

So if you’ve been around me or this blog any time at all, you know I love pictures. So take this as a warning… this will be picture heavy. As in 31 photos for one day. This is just Tuesday…. Enjoy!

I’ve never been on a dive trip with Deb and Grady before, but from the rumors/stories I’ve heard, when Grady says to be at the docks at 8am, that means the boat leaves the dock at 8am. Prior to heading down there, we said that this was a vacation for all of us and we didn’t want to have to be up early every morning. Grady & Deb use Cozumel Marine World to do their dive trips. Those guys know them well… Grady told them to be at the dock at 9am. I guess they didn’t believe him. Truth be told, our group was mostly at the dock by 8-8:15am because we got up and had breakfast and then didn’t dottle. Remember the boat was told to be there at 9, they showed up at 8:30am, 30 minutes early the first day.

Deb requested this boat, the Nuria with Clemente as our dive master for the trip. We got all she requested.

I’ll do a little more in depth about a post about the dive boat, but this boat was really a good size for 10 people. I wouldn’t have wanted more than 14 on this boat or so or it would have gotten snug.

Now, that was the ladder to get back up on the boat, but Grady told me it was the clothes drying rack.

One thing about our group, there were 10 of us and 7 of the 10 dove with steel tanks. Supposedly that is kind of unheard of. So the Steel tanks were toward the back of the boat as they won’t sit up under the deck in the holes for the aluminum tanks.

I absolutely love the ocean. Jared and I were talking one day and were both in agreeance that we could almost move to the coast like this and be happy, but we aren’t sure if we could give up the horses.

The first day on our way back to shore, Karen and I sat on the back of the boat with our feet on the deck letting the water rush over them as the boat zoomed through the ocean. Bad mistake…. We both got sunburned. Karen’s was more knee to upper thigh while mine was knee to ankle. I was as red as a lobster and putting a wet suit on the rest of the week hurt, but it was TOTALLY worth it! Hmmm I just realized this, but between our two sunburns, Karen and I had the whole leg covered.

Now, none of these under water photos were taken by me on Tuesday. I’ve never dove in the ocean and I can tell you, salt water diving is a bit different than fresh water diving when it comes to weighting yourself. I didn’t want to try and figure out diving and cameras in the ocean on my first deep dive. And when I say deep, I hit 100 feet on that first dive. The second dive of the day was 60 feet. I’ll have to ask Deb &/or Grady to know exactly which dives we actually did because I can’t remember.

So jumping off the boat for that first dive… some of weighting yourself is comfort level. They had me weighted at 18lbs and I was so nervous that wasn’t enough. I was one of the last off the boat, I think Jared was off after I was and he was last. So I sat and bobbed on the surface trying to figure out how to get someone’s attention because I couldn’t get down. About the same time Jared saw me bobbing, Deb saw me bobbing but saw Jared headed up toward me. He came up and gave me 2 more lbs to get down with leaving him technically “underweighted” but he’s been diving since he was 12 so he was extremely comfortable and didn’t struggle missing those 2 lbs. Me on the other hand, I struggled. I was an air guzzler and in fresh water I’m not. By the end of the week I was dumping weights because I was weighted to heavy plus I was diving a lot better, but I was still an air hog. <sigh>

Doug or Dan came floating under me on their back to get this picture. I’ll bet I was every bit of 60 feet+ down from the surface. Don’t I look like I’m just below the surface?

Something that was shocking to us is while the floor of the ocean looks just below the surface, typically it is not. There were 3 colors we could observe from the deck of the boat, a real aqua color, a medium blue and a deep blue. The aqua color was about 30 feet, the medium blue was about 60 feet to 100 feet, and the deep blue Grady told me was 5,000 feet.

Also in the ocean you do a lot of drift diving. You don’t have to be certified to do this, but it was extremely helpful to take the class to know a little bit about what was going on.