It was really too early for a boat dive at 8:10 this morning, especially after last night. Everyone was kind of draggy, and in fact, Ralph skipped it. Paul was hoping to do Rappel this morning, but when we got there, there was clearly too much surge there for the boat to be safe, so we headed southward to the next mooring spot, “Bloodlet”. It gained its name when Captain Don, who surveyed and named most of the sites, cut himself up getting out of the water after his boat sank.

It was a pretty dive, but I burned through my air like crazy. I ended up being first one back to the boat.

The second dive was better. Barbara and the dive master both made a point of pointing things out to me. I’m really not good at spotting critters, but Barbara especially, has very keen eyes. There were a couple of times when the two of them would be pointing something out to me, and I just wouldn’t see it. For example, Barbara pointed me toward this flamingo tongue buried deep within some soft coral:

Flamingo Tongue

And the guide pointed out this eel:

Moray Eel

Damselfish and sponge

At the end of the dive we spent some time in the shallows, and the dive guide pointed out a flounder sitting on top of an old barrel.

A Dive Too Far

For the third dive of the day, Ralph, Joe and I did another dive off the Buddy reef. It quickly became apparent I was too fried to be diving. It started out with a leak from my primary regulator, which looked like it had worked loose. I tightened it, but it still leaked, so I took it over to the dive shop, where Martin found that the o-ring was in two pieces. He replaced it, and I was back in business. But I was too tired and in too much of a hurry to realize that I’d forgotten to turn the air back on. Strike One. So I got in the water, and found I had no air, so I decided to take off the scuba unit to turn it on. So far so good, but then I realized the BCD had no air in it, and wanted to sink. Strike Two. I tried the power inflator, but I’d forgotten to reconnect it.  I tried orally inflating it but couldn’t get enough air into it before it started pulling me under. I ended up dropping it. I was resting on the surface, trying to figure out how I would handle it when Joe saw what had happened, hooked up the inflator, and floated it back up to me. Thanks Joe!

The stupidity didn’t end there, though. The final straw for me was when I finished taking a picture, and was trying to scull with my hands up, and swiped my finger right across a coral head I didn’t realize was there. Bad for the coral, and bad for me, because I cut my finger. I found myself quite fascinated by the fact that underwater, blood is actually greenish.

Ralph had a second dive for the afternoon planned that I wanted to go on, but I realized I’m just too tired and making too many stupid mistakes. Time to hang it up for the day.

Update: More pictures here.