I just got a call from Denise K. She is in the Boca Raton, FL area this week. She posted on here a few weeks ago to see if anyone wanted to dive with her while she was in the area. We are going to meet up tomorrow morning in Boynton Beach to do a couple of drift dives together. I will take my camera and post a couple of pictures tomorrow evening.

Dr. Doo

Kewl Doc! Looking forward to the pics!

Yay! Dr. Doo to the rescue!

I, too, look forward to the pics.

Have some great and safe dives,

Mare

Yay! Dr. Doo. I wuz a wonderin' what you wuz getting up to lately. I wanna see the pics too. How's that Woody doin', hope he's a feedin' ya reular like and keeping you under control.

Dr. Doo...do you think you might find the red angel food (or cheese cake?) pan during your drift with Denise?? Keep an eye out for it, it might just show up in your pics once you post them...you know how hard it is to spot these pans with the "naked" eye but they can better be seen with photos once they are posted.

Have fun!! Carole

Most recent sighting of the red pan

DDDDD (Dr. Doo and Denise Drift Dive)

Denise and I met up at the marina in Boynton Beach this morning. We did two drift dives with Dive Charters International, Inc. DCI



They did a really good job. Nice boat, good service. The boat was full of locals with Denise and I being the only two outsiders that had not been diving on the boat. I think that says something about the opperation when they get that much repeat local business. You northerners will get a giggle from this: the water was 79 on the bottom to 82 degrees on the surface. The locals were wearing 5 mil wetsuits, gloves and one or two hoods. I used a 2 mil wetsuit. Denise (from Maine) dove in her T-shirt.

Here we are just as we are pulling out of the marina.



Here is one of the divemasters talking to us. He must have been new. Nice attitude but not exactly full of information yet. The rest of the crew was very helpful and informative. This guy was trying to convince us to get certified and use nitrox. We were the only two using air on the boat. He said his chest hurt when he used air. I think it might have had more to do with the nipple rings than the air. When he was asked which way the current was going, he told us that it was going west. I was thinking, "If that is so, we are going to wash up on the beach in a matter of minutes." He was quickly corrected and told that the current was flowing north (as it always does in that area). But the big give-away that he was not a dive expert was that he had never heard of Bonaire. The other dive masters had been there and knew how great the diving is there.



When the boat dropped us off, we were the last two to go into the water. The captain told us he was going to drop us over the best coral in the area. It was nice. Lots of variety in coral and tons of fish:















This queen angel was following Denise for a while. Maybe he saw the tattoo of a queen angel on her leg. Every time I tried to get close enough to get a good pic, it swam away.

|image{d angel}

This midnight parrot was a big one;



We also saw a few young angels:



image{queen young}

Denise was in charge of the flag. When the current picked up, she was getting pulled along faster than I was. We had a mild current on the first dive and moderate(almost 1 mph) on the second dive.

When we surfaced, the skyline of the Boynton Beach highrises was not far away.

Oops! Here is the small queen angel:

I even thought I saw Cynde Lee:

On another matter:

I was reading the July/August 2005 Alert Diver and on page 56, there is an article about Kelly's husband.

Kelly, you have never told us that Steve is a talented underwater filmmaker and photgrapher. I can't wait to get dive with him.

Dr. Doo

Very big thank you to Mike for driving all the way from Tampa to Boynton Beach, on the holiday, and for the qick report and posting pictures, for our drift dives !!! Mike, your report hit on everything very well. I liked the small queen angel following me for a while :-) The young guy who told us the current was heading West was so obviously new at what he was doing, but he was tring hard. BTW all, my diving t-shirt was a Bonaire shirt :-)

Mike, thanks so much for this nice report. I am glad you folks were able to meet and enjoy diving together.

Denise, I look forward to seeing you and Teddy in a few weeks:-{)}

Tom,

I am glad that I got to meet and dive with Denise, too. She is a nice lady and very good diver.

Another story about the young dive master: He came over to talk to us as the boat was pulling out and he asked if we were new to diving. He may have assumed that because Denise has some nice new equipment. When he found that we had both been diving for about 10 years he was surprised that we were still using air. After our dive he was amazed that we were able to stay down for an hour on air.

I forgot to post the pictures of Denise underwater.

This is as close as I could get to the her and the queen angel that was following her. When I tried to get closer it would swim away.



Here are three more Denise drifting along as she holds on to the flag.

Mike, Thanks for the trip report!!! It's nice to see the pictures of Denise under water. I only get to see her on the surface! Glad that you guys had got to get together and have fun on your dive.

Great report Mike & Denise! Thanks for posting the report and pics!

Yay!

Dr. Doo, once again, to the rescue.

Thanks for the pics and the report.

Mare

Dr. Doo. Loved the trip report and the pictures. Thanks for sharing with us.

Denise, I always end up carrying the flag as well. lol Looks like you guys had fun! That's a dive we'll have to try sometime soon.

Great pics, great report! Love to see BTers hooking up.

Mike, I saw that article and showed Steve... he "says" he works overtime, I think he has another life.

Great trip report and even better pics! Loved hearing you both had a great time and got a chance to meet as well! Thanks for sharing the pictures. Debbie

Thanks for letting us enjoy your dive with you, Dr. Doo and Denise! Nipple rings, indeed!! LOL. Carole

PS Any pan sightings at all? Annie was the last one to see it....cb

Kathy, carrying the flag was a new one for me.

On a drift dive the person taking the flag down has to go straight down quickly. And, because I sometimes have a slow time getting down, equalizing, Mike nicely offered to take the flag down. (my ears were just fine this time though) Then because he was videoing, I took the flag the rest of the time. Other than when needing to slow down for Mike videoing and when the direction of the reef veered off from the current direction, it was kind of like going along for the ride :-)

Mike, thanks for the picture with the angel!!!!

The nice thing about being the person carrying the flag with DCI is "you are never lost". It is the job of all the others in your group to keep you in sight. I know because I have "diven" (new verb - past tense of dive) as a non-local several times with Leo Sand and DCI on each his boats: Little Deeper (since stolen), Deeper and Little Deeper II. And sometime I got to carry the flag. Have found DCI and Boynton Beach to be a reasonable alternative to Bonaire when you just can't get to Bonaire.

I personally don't mind carrying the flag because if anyone gets lost in bad vis or on a fish chase (lol), they have to find ME instead of vice versa!