It's Dive Season for Sunshine Diva

What a pleasant surprise – I met a really nice guy who just so happens to be a dive Instructor. I’m going to call him “Buddy”. He invited me on a beach dive off Dania Beach at 7:00 a.m. one morning. The water was gorgeous and still. The walk up the beach in full gear was exhausting, but once I was down, I forgot all about it. The dive site is called “EuroJacks”. There are concrete structures, built in WWII to keep out submarines, that resemble giant children’s jacks. Now, of course, it’s a coral reef. The first thing I saw was a sea urchin with spines at least a foot long. I have seen them in different colors, like purple and blue, but never one so big. There were all kinds of fish – angel fish, parrotfish, wrasses, puffers. There was a HUGE porcupine fish that followed us for a while. We encountered a pufferfish that we tried to play with but he was too quick. It was a really, really nice dive. Buddy has the strongest legs I’ve ever seen on a man. He walked around in all his gear like he had nothing on his back. Since diving is his passion like mine – he dives every chance he gets. Now that I know where I can go to do beach dives, I will too! Exiting the water was a bitch. He went up the beach to gather the water that I had so wisely brought and I was left alone to climb out by myself. It wouldn’t have been a problem if I hadn’t lost my balance and ended up on all fours! I couldn’t stand up from that position! The reason was that I had just done an exhaustive lower body workout the day before and my legs were fatigued to begin with. Rather than stay on all fours and wait for help, I took off my gear, which was a mistake. It’s much harder to carry it than to wear it. The next day, I took Jimbo there to snorkel. Of course, he can’t get his lazy butt up until 10:00 and by the time we hit the water, it was choppy and visibility was only about 10 – 12 feet. More legwork. (My quadriceps are going to be like trees soon.) It had been a month or more since we saw one another and it was nice to sit on the beach and talk again. Buddy invited me to dive with him and a couple of students again the next day, so I headed to Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. The parking lot was empty at 7:30 a.m. and it was a short walk across a slim beach to the water. This, too, was a really nice dive. It’s what I would call a “mini-reef” but full of sea life. Buddy spotted a turtle – a leatherback, I think, and we followed it for a while. We also encountered an eagle ray that we played with a bit. It was supposed to be a two tank dive, but one of the students had to leave and go to work and Buddy had to drive him back across the bridge. I could have waited and done a second dive, but my toe was still bleeding. (Long story of no interest)

Hopefully, I’ll be able to dive with Buddy more in the future. He wants to dive the Vandenburg as much as I do. I’m leaving on my “First Annual Roadtrip” next week, so I won’t be diving for a few weeks. I just hope I keep up my fitness routine while I’m gone so I don’t lose any of the muscle tone I’ve managed to build up since I started going to the gym. - I hope you enjoy the pictures and hearing about my first dives of the year.