Frolicking in the Surf

 West Palm Beach, Florida

 I decide to go diving and take advantage of one of the free hotel nights that we've earned over the last two years by booking though hotels.com. They give you a "free" night for every ten paid nights you book though them. The value they spring for is equal to the average cost of the ten paid nights.

We have enough credit to get an ocean view room with a king bed on the top floor at the Hilton on Singer Island in West Palm..

 The surf is fantastic and the water temperature is a perfect 84 degrees.

 Our room isn't quite ready at check in time so they give us complementary breakfasts and also comp the $18 resort fee which covers Mrs. Phred's Pinot Grigio habit.

The dive master gives the dive briefing, He says the bottom time on the 85 foot first dive will be 60 minutes. My dive table says 24 minutes, so I ask him WTF? He says "everyone" uses a dive computer which results in longer bottom times. However, I am not investing in a computer at my advanced age. The other five younger passengers are all using Nitrox, but I'm still breathing air.... The tables have worked for me since 1965 so I close my mouth and stick with my table (it's in Spanish but with Arabic numerals).

They've opened the locks on Lake Okeechobee and dumped the muck into the gulf stream, so this is the worst visibility dive I've ever experienced. We sink into murk and gloom with 5-10 feet of visibility. We do manage to hit the wreck. I find that with the darkness and my declining eyesight I can't read my watch, air gauge or depth gauge.  That makes me feel uncomfortable. After a while, the dive master leads the other divers off the wreck and then proceeds to become totally lost. I decline to follow him and surface after 15 minutes....this is no fun...I knew the visibility would be poor, but this was way beyond my expectations...The next dive on the trench by the Breaker's Hotel is a little better.

A selfie with Pinot Grigio while waiting to check in.

Dawn on the Atlantic Ocean.

We drove back to the West Coast after the dives....it belatedly occurs to me that I missed the chance to get the great sunset on the same day over the Gulf of Mexico....a lifelong ambition along with:
1. A week on the Thorfinn diving the Truk Lagoon in Micronesia.
2. Seeing the Aurora Borealis.
3. Seeing the Southern Cross (see #6).
4. Catching a salmon on the Kenai River...Wait! I did that in August. 
5. Experiencing one more total eclipse of the Sun in 2017.
6. Carnival in Rio (see #3).
7. Renting an apartment in Chiang Mai for a month.

Gordon and Bob's Excellent Adventure

 West Palm Beach

Gordon and I leave at 6 AM for a dive trip on the East Coast. This is the third time we've done this trip and used the Pura Vida dive operation.

I don't have an underwater camera anymore so I've dug into my archive for a few shots that sort of represent the drift dives in West Palm.

The water temperature is 78 F on January 2nd and the visibility is about 85 feet, both of which are pretty much OK with me.

We can see the Kennedy compound and the Kellogs and Posts. This stretch of Florida Beach is a pretty snooty place. In the 80s they tried to pass an ordinance where the hired help had to wear armbands to get on the island.

Bernie Madoff was a member of the Palm Beach country club. Money doesn't always buy happiness. The following excerpt from the Huffington Post was written just after the Madoff Ponzi scheme collapsed.

People in Palm Beach sort themselves out into the group in which they belong based largely on how much money they have. Even the poorest of the islanders seem to have everything yet joy proves elusive, even for the country club members, because there is always someone richer or better socially connected. Joy is driving out of your 35,000-square-foot mansion in your Bentley and tooling up to the entrance of Mar-a-Lago for your fifteenth ball of the season, the valet parkers salivating at the chance to take your car and the prospect of a twenty-dollar tip. Joy is having a wife younger and thinner than any of the other wives at your table. Joy is subtly announced during dinner that your hedge fund scored 33 percent last year, while that of the arrogant son of a bitch across the table with the fat wife scored only 17 percent.Those with the biggest financial gains generally had their money managed by Madoff. It was an honor having him handle your fortune. He didn't take just anybody. He turned down all kinds of people, and that made you want to give the man even more of your money. When he took your fortune, he told you that he would tell you nothing about how he achieved his returns. He was a god. He had the Midas touch.

Joy is being 71 and still able to climb the ladder into a wildly rocking boat with 100 pounds of gear on your back and fins on your feet. Joy is ending the dive with more air left than the kids.

So the shot below is actually from Puerto Rico...

The Smell of Rainbows in the Morning

Palm Beach, Florida

I love the smell of rainbows in the morning. They have the sweet odor of an improbably lovely reality.

I have learned to make mojitos. It's a Cuban drink that translates to "a little wet".  To make two decent mojitos, take about 20 fresh mint leaves and add three tablespoons of white sugar and the juice of three limes. Crush the mint leaves to release the flavor. Put two or three ounces of white rum in each tall glass and split the mint mixture. Fill with ice cubes and club soda.

The dive trip in Palm Beach was a fizzle. I had bad chest pains and shortness of breath the night before in the hotel. It would have been inconsiderate to go on the dive the next day with the possibility of ruining the trip for 12 other divers by creating a medical emergency or a dead body 100 feet down in the Gulf Stream....

We heard some loud (and fairly good) music at a place called "Two Drunken Goats". It was a very racially mixed listener venue. When you look at what's going on in Ferguson, Missouri right now, it's good to see people with different skins enjoying music together somewhere in America...

Sunrise in Palm Beach.

We found a great place for breakfast in Palm Beach called Debra's. It seemed to be filled with fishermen.  I had the catfish and eggs.

Mrs. Phred enjoys a home-made mojito...

We will definitely be hitting the road Tuesday after seeing my oncologist Monday no matter what he has to say about the whole body positron emissions tomography (PET) scan (old age is not for sissies). Our first stop will be Ginnie Springs....I want to dive some caves (the Devil's Ear), do the cavern and float down the Santa Fe river....we should hit it in the ideal time after school has resumed but before Labor Day.

It's not bad here between reading, drinking mojitos and walking seven miles a day in the 95 degree heat to downtown Sarasota...

The Last Dive?

Palm Beach, Florida

It's just not so easy anymore. Sure, the corals, Loggerhead turtles, Moray eels and big stingrays are still pretty. Getting back on the boat is increasingly difficult.


The ladder is crashing into my chest and then banging back into the boat as the waves bob the dive boat in the five foot seas. These guys follow the theory that you should climb the bobbing ladder with all your gear, including your fins.

Ever try climbing a wildly gyrating ladder with swim fins and 80 pounds of lead weights and SCUBA gear? It used to be so easy. Now at 65 and 40 pounds over-weight to begin with, I'm sort of limited out. I'm pushing 300 pounds up the ladder.

I drove over to Palm Beach yesterday with Bruce and Gordon. The dives were everything you could want, drifting along the reef in the Gulf Stream current at 60 feet. I'm just not sure that what I could do easily at 55 will be feasible at 75.

Maybe I'll try some beach dives or some of the Florida Springs that don't involve ladders. It would be embarrassing not to be able to climb up a ladder.

DIVE! DIVE! DIVE!

West Palm Beach, Florida

I got up at 4:30 and picked up Gordon for the drive to the East Coast. There were only four divers on the boat, including a young couple from Indiana who learned to dive in rock quarries.

The first dive was a drift dive at 90 feet for the allowable 21 minutes. We saw a nurse shark, a couple of loggerheads and lots of tropical fish and corals. The visibility was about 80 feet, with the water temperature at an amazing 79 degrees F.

It was windy with high seas. I had a little trouble getting a hold on the ladder and climbing back aboard with my fins on my feet, 80 pounds of gear on my back and a severely bobbing boat. I guess I'm getting old.

The second dive was at 60 feet on a big sunken barge and debris field. Gordon saw a stingray "as big as a Winnebago", but I missed it. They stand you on the dive platform and yell, "DIVE! DIVE! DIVE!" so you go in fast and don't get swept past the reef or wreck by the strong Gulf Stream current...very cool.

I decided to borrow a couple of pictures from the "Narcosis Divers" website and leave my camera at home. They have a lovely collection of photos.


We went with Pura Vida Divers. They were a lot of fun and very considerate of the abilities and desires of their customers. The sun was out and the air temperature was 83 degrees F for most of the day. Something about pumping extra nitrogen into your tissues is very relaxing.

The Rolls Royce Silver Cloud

West Palm Beach, Florida

The "Owens" is a sunken freighter off West Palm Beach at about 110 feet. Someone has dumped a 1965 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud next to it to enhance the dive. The gulf stream is very strong here, maybe three knots.

In other dives, in the Bahamas, the divemasters sometimes joke that there is a Maserati, Hummer or perhaps an Aston-Martin DB5 on the ocean floor and everyone always laughs at these tired jokes.

I'm doing the dive on the Owens as part of my "Rescue Diver" certification with a "buddy", Alan. As rescue divers we are required to check the gear of other Divers. Alan "checks" my air valve and turns it off completely. There are strong Gulf stream currents in Palm Beach so to hit the dive target (Owens) we need to be overweighted and go down really fast. I'm down about 15 feet and dropping like a stone when my air cuts off completely after an exhale. I kick hard to the top, feeling betrayed. From here on when someone attempts to touch my air valve I ask them if they really want to keep that hand and reach for my dive knife. Also, I always take three breaths before jumping in while watching the air gauge to see if the valve is really on or if maybe I'm just breathing the systems pressurized air from the last time the valve was on.

I don't look for Alan as I go back down to the wreck. The wreck has huge schools of swarming fish and predators like Jacks trying to pick off strays. Stonefish on the bottom are poisonous and virtually invisible. The Gulf Steam current is ripping though the wreck. The Rolls Royce has definitely seen better days.

It's twightlight and approaching night. At 100 feet down it's getting dark. In our dive briefing they say emphatically "do not penetrate the wreck." Therefore, I hide a flashlight in my dive gear and quickly swim into the hold and then into another three by two foot opening in the freighter hold when I see no one is looking.

When I come out of the long small shaft I had used to enter the Owens I find myself in a small room leading to other rooms with steel bunk beds, lockers and many protubances that are snagging my airhoses and making me feel a little claustrophobic. It's really dark inside the wreck. I can only see with my underwater flashlight. I think of EverReady battery commercials. When I touch things, clouds of particles swirl up to obscure my vision within the ship's compartments. Sometimes I'm in complete blackout conditions.

I'm down to my last ten minutes of air at 110 feet and alone inside the Owens, I decide it's time to leave. When I return to the entrance area in the room that I had entered, I see that there are four identical 3x2 shaft openings leading to unknown places. One of them would have taken me back the way I came in. It's hard to know where the other three 3x2 shafts would go.

I am very amused by this situation for a moment, get an adrenelin rush and then begin to imagine old 1960's Lloyd Bridges TV "Seahunt" sound tracks where the music gets very loud once the diver runs into bad trouble. I begin to laugh and bubble which hard to do with a regulator in the mouth.

I take a another minute to look around and up and down and notice a shimmering square from the last of the daylight two stories above me where someone had cut a nice 3x3 hole in the side of the Owens to keep stupid people from getting stuck and lost. "How Thoughtful!", I think and then begin slowly rising to the surface, carefully avoiding the "bends" or a nasty air embolism.

The sensation of running completely out of air after completing an exhalation while dropping like a stone is not one I'm ever going to willingly repeat. Alan did ask me, back on the boat, where I went. I told him about running out of air and explained the correct air valve loosening procedure..."righty-tighty, lefty-loosey". I didn't tell him about penetrating the wreck. He could easily have killed me, but he was always well intentioned. What I learned from Alan was to take two breaths from the regulator, before jumping in, while watching the air pressure gauge...if the air valve is actually off the needle drops about 1,000 PSI per breath.