|
Comments:
oh, the siren that is West
Palm. Third time's a charm.... right? wrong! - waaaaaa
- I want a sunny day!!!! Got down to West Palm and there's
a small tropical like disturbance over the lower keys
that reaches right up to the top of West Palm. But that's
OK, as tends to be the case, West Palm is always full
of surprises. Met some really great people from the
the Altamont Scuba Quest and few new faces from the
Tampa store. On the way to Foster Park we passed a SUV
full of drunk hootin' and hollerin' guys. It would have
been so easy to roll your eyes and dismiss them, but
heck it's Friday night and all good. So I give them
a big HOOT and thumbs up and that just pours gas on
the fire! We end up next to them at the next stop light
and one of the guys hollers over to us. I look up and
lo' and behold there's a sweet chickee driving the SUV
that's leaning out the window with her tube top down
and jugglin' the jubblies!!! hehehehehe....
A
while back I had purchased about 7 years worth of Scuba
magazines from a guy on eBay. I found 1 called Southern
Diver. It was all about diving in Florida and others
that I have spoken to since said the magazine didn't
last long, only a year or two. Well both Gus and I read
the article about diving Foster Park after dark and
we were ready to give this bad boy a try. Unfortunately
we had misread the tide charts and we were there a bit
too early at 8:00PM and the tide was still rippin'.
We came back a few hours later around 10:00PM and e
decided to just gear up for snorkeling and see just
how bad the tide was. Well plan your dive and dive your
plan is absolute, 'cos as soon as we got around the
corner of the boat launch we were pretty much flappin'
like a couple of flags in the breeze.
We
decided that since we were already wet, why not just
snorkel around the West boat launch. Well we're sure
glad we did.... saw a nice 4' sting ray a couple of
groups of needlefish a large pin cushion starfish and
scads of little silver eyed, blue bodied don't know
what's. Found a baby SeaRobin. Haven't seen one of these
since Mobile, AL. I'm not sure if it was a FireWorm,
but some slinky slug like fellow about 6" long
came cruising by in midwater.... A few minutes another
did the same.
The
best though was a nice 5"~6~ Caribbean Reef Squid that hung around
forever. It was totally awesome. We were both impressed
on how 'clean' it was; even at a boat dock. The seagrasses
were doing real well and I actually found my very first
'freeRange' shrimp! I'd only ever seen a shrimp in a
baitbucket!
Gus
got a great laugh out of us snorkeling around and I
give him the thumbs up, "LET'S GO UP" signal.... He
got to use it in a few minutes though as he started
to notice that the dive flag kept passing him while
we were swimming. The bay was seriously turning up quickly
as a very extravagant lightening storm headed our way.
Quite a site as we huddled under the bridge.
WHAT
WE LEARNED: To get a real appreciation of the "EVERYTHING
seams 25% larger underwater bring something that you
know the size of but seams out of place in the water.
We found a ball under water and we both had to touch
it to believe that it was a golf ball and not a baseball.
25%, there ya go!
|
