Having some fun on vaca down here in the Florida keys. Planned on renting 
a boat and doing some wreck diving but my partner in crime caught 
pneumonia, but what better place to recoup,huh? At any rate I was forced 
to get on local tourist barges to get to the wrecks. What I had in mind 
was to do some penetrations and some mild deco, big no-no's with the 
local cattle trucks.

So what do you do? Lie like hell and involve innocent bystanders. On the 
first dive on the Eagle I enlisted the help of a husband and wife team 
sitting next to me. After listing to the stern remonstrations against 
such wild and crazy ideas such as diving solo, penetration and deco I 
asked these guys if I could "buddy up" with them and mentioned that, by 
the way, after we hopped in the water it was likely the next time they 
would see me would be when we got back on the boat. All went well, I went 
to the interior of the Eagle and marveled at doing a wreck dive and 
actually seeing more than just 10-15 ft. in front of me. What a fine 
dive, boat sits on it's side and is completely intact. When I got back up 
to the boat, the dive master looked at my AUL and all the dirt and rust 
streaking my tank and wetsuit and asked 
"WERESYOURDIVEBUDDYANDYOUWERENTINTHEWRECKWEREYOU?" I pointed at the nice 
couple and said, "those guys, and gosh no, I would never think of doing 
something so insidious and patently dangerous as penetrating a gosh darn 
wreck". He mumbled something about a lying sack of shit and went off to 
tend to other divers.

Second dive on the Duane (today). Of course I got the same shpeal from 
the captain of this boat, and he looked at my 120 with the H valve, 
backplate and wings, and the giant AUL light, and singled me out as a 
trouble-maker from getgo. The damn boat did not even have a fin ladder, 
just a platform a couple of inches in the water. I sat down on the deck 
and he tried to help me into my rig, but the long hose had him completely 
befuddled. After lecturing about what a pain in the ass "technical dive 
rigs" were, he suddenly stopped and said, "Hey, wheres your dive 
buddy??". I pointed to the guy (whoever he was) sitting next to me 
donning his gear "er, him?" The guy looked confused and said, no, he had 
someone else as his buddy. At this point my cover was blown so I said 
"Look, I want to do some penetration and decom and am the only person on 
this boat setup to do this, how 'bout it skipper?"

The poor guy turned red and started spluttering about "absolutely not, 
you must have a buddy blah blah, etc." The boat was loaded and people 
were stacking up behind me and the scene was getting ugly, the skipper 
started to weaken "er, uh, well, er, I suppose if I get the dive master 
(a beautiful stacked blond bombshell, well, maybe I will do this buddy 
thing, heh heh) to keep an eye on you (yeah, right, snubbed again, must 
have been his ol lady). This sounded like implied consent to me, so over 
the side I went.

Well, it was a terrific dive. Fantastic. I don't know what everyone is so 
uptight about, the wreck is dummy-proofed with only the upper decks 
available for entry, the rest is welded off. Had a great time exploring 
all the cabins and other areas, the fish life on these wrecks is super. 
Made my mouth drool, if only I had a (horror of horrors) speargun! I 
would have loved to have seen the look on the skippers face as I plopped 
a stringer of grouper onto the dive platform. In the skippers favor, he 
did not give me a hard time about the dive. Did a shallow dive at 
molasses reef after with (gasp!) no safe second as the 80 I rented did 
not have a H valve. What a sad fucking diver I am.

Look. Whats the first thing these damn cattle boats make you do when you 
sign up for a dive? Sign a fucking fine print disclaimer which absolves 
them of all blame and guilt for whatever might happen to your ass during 
the dive and for 10 years thereafter. Why do they have to freak out over 
a solo diver who wants to do his own thing? They all sing from the same 
psalm book, verbatim. The only thing I can figure out is that this 
guarantees 2,4,6 or 8 divers instead of 1,2,3 or 4. This BS about solo 
diving is a bunch of crap which I hated going through. In my case it is 
going to hurt these operations and increase business for the boat rental 
companies, as that is where I will head in the future (pneumonia or not).

Signing off from the Keys-

   Jim



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