Sunday, I was fortunate enough to go on a boat dive with my friend Jack, along with his wife Jane and their friends Barbara and Karen.

As we approached the Gloucester drawbridge, we could see a bunch of sails in the background. Sunday was Schooner Sunday, and there were a ton of schooners in the outer harbor, plus the Dock Landing Ship USS Fort McHenry.

The first dive of the day was at the Dry Salvages, a small rock outcropping outside of Rockport. Karen and I were buddied up for the first dive. We swam through the urchin covered gullies paralleling the outcropping. Shortly after the start, Karen found a huge lobsterzilla under a rock.

While Jack and Barbara were doing their first dive, the water started getting choppy. Once back on board, Jack decided to do the second dive off Thacher’s Island. We anchored in the lee of the island, where the water was much calmer, fairly close to one of the lighthouses. At one point, we saw someone on the catwalk around the top of the lighthouse, and it gave a sense of scale to the lighthouse — those windows are tall.

For the second dive, Jack and Jane dove together,  I was buddied with Barbara, who was lobstering, and Karen supervised the boat while we were all down. It was clear that it was September as we were preparing to go in, as the sun was getting perceptibly low in the sky.

For the second dive, I concentrated mainly on the small stuff — feathers of algae, a small red starfish, though Barbara did find another large lobster wedged into a small hole. It took me a couple of tries to get the strobe aimed and powered properly, but eventually I got the shot above. Soon, it was time to come back up to the boat, and head for home.