I went diving with my friends Jack and Jane yesterday. When we left the dock, the fog was starting to burn off, but there was still a high overcast. Jack chose to anchor between Lanes Cove and Folly Cove, predicting correctly that we would be sheltered on the northern side of Cape Ann. The water was a smooth as glass.

Perhaps a better simile would be as smooth as a bowl of soup. Whether it was the overcast above, or simply an abundance of plankton below, the visibility was pretty crummy, at only about five feet or so.

For the first dive, I was diving with Karen and Rich. For me it was pretty much starfish and sea urchins.

I tried staying pretty close to them most of the dive, but at 25 minutes in, I turned aside for a moment, and immediately lost track of them.  I tried circling around looking for them, I tried swimming into the silt, thinking they’d stirred it up to no avail. Finally, I decided to surface to see if I could see their bubbles, but no such luck. Since Karen had the homing transponder, I decided to call it a dive. When they got back to the boat, they reported seeing some anemones and lobsters.

For the second dive, I went down with Jack and Jane. I’d lost the connector for the strobe at the end of the first dive, so I was just looking this dive, which of course, meant I saw an anemone this time. Most of the time I was just enjoying being neutrally buoyant and looking around, but there wasn’t much to see. I stuck pretty close to Jack and Jane most of the dive, but at the end, I turned my head for literally 3 seconds and they were gone. Fortunately, we were back at the boat.

It was so nice out on the surface – flat and calm, no pitching or rolling, that we just hung out at the surface for a while before heading back. As I was leaving the marina, I noticed the fog starting to settle back in.