120 feet down!

Yes folks, I took my deepest dive to date and broke through 100 feet deep! I know you're tired of all these scuba pictures, but rest assured, it will stop soon when I return to Virginia next week. When that happens, I will probably post bike rides and hikes. Until then, here are a few more diving pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Last weekend was absolutely the most perfect Hawaiian weekend weather I have seen in my entire time on Oahu. Virtually windless, flat glassy ocean, clear blue water, late season humpback whales, spinner dolphins and really great friends.

We dove several interesting sites over the weekend, but the most interesting was the Sea Tiger - a shipwreck off of Waikiki at 120 feet deep. Of course, I took my camera rig to take some self portraits and my friends were really kind of impressed with the setup in a geeky sort of way.

The Sea Tiger is a well-visited site. You can swim into the hull if you like. I did not venture inside the vessel myself, but you can see a movie of my swim-over a little bit further down this blog post. This was my first dive where the water was clear, but I was too deep to see the boat on the surface. It was a fascinating dive!

Taking pictures was (as it always is) an effort underwater. I end up breathing heavier and working harder to "get the shot". That's not good because I run out of air faster. However, at this deep, you can't stay at depth for very long or you will have to undergo decompression which forces you to stop several times while surfacing.

Decompression does limit the NEXT dive you want to take, so it's always best to surface before your decompression limit. I came up with 1/2 a tank and only got to spend 20 minutes at the Sea Tiger. Thankfully, I have a nice dive computer that guides me through the process and keeps me safe while I goof around with my camera!

Here is my short movie of my Sea Tiger swim-over. You can see my buddy Vic exploring the hold of the ship. He searches for Hawaiian Lobsters when we dive.


After the Sea Tiger, we dove another beautiful location off of Waikiki. Being so close to the tourists, the pressure was on to look professional and stylish! Here, you can see that the water was more shallow (or maybe it all looks the same by now). I have become much better at getting the picture in different poses... too bad I'm leaving!

The guys I dive with have the boat dive down to a science. Not only can you use the anchor rope as a guide for surfacing, they also drop a dive line directly to the bottom. It has a 5 pound weight (which helps you control your ascent) and a nifty dive flag to mark the spot directly below the boat. This dive was fun because it was only 40 feet deep and I could stay down longer to play around with the camera!

After diving, the weather was so nice, we cleaned off our gear and got back into the boat for an afternoon cruise along the Diamond Head corridor including Waikiki and Honolulu. Vic and his wife Anna were wonderfully gracious to invite me along for a relaxing warm afternoon. We will be going out this next weekend for one more weekend of diving. I'm looking forward to it, but no matter what happens, it will be hard to beat last weekend!