Scuba Diving Vacations

With every business, there are good days and there are bad days. The other day was expecially poor. Luckily, those days are few and far between, and I've seen other companies have their share of "bad" days too.

.....So I'm fueling up the boat, and when I walk around the back of the boat I heard a "tink". I looked around and didn't see anything on the ground but did notice I'd walked over the parking lot drain grill. After I finished I paid and went back to the truck to take off and found I had no truck key... apparently it was 7 or 8 feet down in the parking lot sump along with several inches of oil and other yuck. We couldn't get the grill up, looked like it hadn't moved in years, so it was time to call Bob and let him know what happened and let the customers decide if they wanted to cancel the day or stick around. They were all good humored about it and waited for the locksmith to do their thing (darned electronically chipped keys these days) and eventually we were off, way late.

Anyway, we had wierd water conditions for the last week or so. That particular day was one of those days where nobody cancels the day dive, but the night dive might be cancelled. We have about a 2 month span where we can potentially see swells from north, west and south, right now we seem to be seeing all of them at the same time, which is rare. We set up at lone tree arch, around which several other dive boats set up, and did the dive. Then it got really sucky... the boat had trouble starting. We've already just replaced the entire fuel system, and most of the ignition/electrical system just before that. I saw a bunch of corrosion on the coil terminal connections and took them apart, replaced a connecter, wire brushed off a bunch of junk and put 'er back together and it started. I left it with the mechanic after the day's washdown and he wentthrough a few things to make sure it's OK to go out. One of the passengers for the next day was on and he'd been a customer for a few years, he's real cool about such things and said he'd go out to act as a guinea pig customer, and I'd spoken with our other passenger for the day and he was willing to see what happens... turned out OK. We've had charters since that haven't been so eventful thankfully.

Anyway, the surf conditions have been much less than ideal the last week or so, even with that we've still had pretty decent viz on the dive sites. The water temperature seems to be hanging out right at 75 or so.

So here's a picture of a Yellow Margin Moray (Gymnothorax flavimarginatus). They are our largest commonly seen moray, however we do have a really large one called a Java Moray that we see on rare occasions.

later,

Steve