Category: Boat Diving

Trip Report: USCGC Duane & Molasses Reef with Rainbow Reef

macado

So I had been having multiple conversations back and forth with the Rainbow Reef staff about whether or not they could rent me rebreather cylinders and a bailout bottle.  I even tried using words like “small tanks” and “pony bottles” to no avail. Unfortunately I couldn’t get anywhere with them.  It was a little disappointing since my other interactions with the staff and experience on the boat was fine so I don’t want to paint them in a bad light but just give a little constructive criticism. The email response…

Trip Report: Wreck of the Northern Light & Duane with Horizon Divers

macado
Stern of Northern Light

Arrived at Horizon Divers in the morning at 8am to check-in for Northern Light dive and grab my rental tanks.  I was pleasantly surprised to see my friend Doug at dive shop; He was completing his open circuit trimix class with Dan at Horizon Divers.  Since I was unfamiliar with this wreck I would be tagging along with his group while they did their class. As such it was a shorter runtime. We planned a 25 minute or so bottom time with a total runtime of around 65 minutes due some gas constraints…

Why is my skin burning when I put my clothes on? Spilled sorb in suitcase

macado
rEvo in airport

I made it to Key Largo, Florida in mostly one piece with one small exception, one of the containers of Sofnolime (sorb) that I packed had somehow cracked and split open spilling sorb all over most of my clothes and towel that I used to pack them.  Not a huge issue but I had to mostly dump a couple pounds of sorb out of my suitcase and clean off all the dust from my clothing. Since I was flying Southwest I had two checked bags for free. I packed a…

Why does your dive gear smell like rotting fish?

macado

I noticed a faint smell emanating from my rubermaid dive bin on Thursday afternoon that deserves some mention. Actually perhaps the rubbermaid container deserves some explanation first. In New England and I presume lots of other places rubbermaid bins tend to be the ubiquitous dive gear container on most dive boats.  They fit nicely under most dive benches, have plenty of room for storage and all of your gear can easily be rinsed and washed out inside the container.   They also help keep your car dry instead of using…

Trip Report: Bottle diving, scallop diving & Chester Poling

macado

The weather this weekend turned out better than can be expected for New England winter boat diving.   With the winds blowing for most of the week I did not have high expectations for the conditions but I was pleasantly surprised when the winds finally laid down on Friday and I was greeted with flat and calm seas Saturday morning.   Although I have been diving most weekends in January and February all of these dives have unfortunately been shore dives since pretty much every charter has been blown out this…

Bringing your rebreather to Cozumel

macado

As someone who just recently switched to a rebreather this year I had not had the opportunity to fly on a plane with mine yet although I’ve taken it on plenty of other trips that involved driving. Nevertheless I decided to bring my rebreather down to Cozumel for this trip to see how much of a pain it would be since I frequently visit Cozumel 4-5 times a year. I wanted to see if it is worth lugging down for most trips. This will be a long post so I…