Sunday, May 23, 2010

Jessica's Birthday

Today was Jessica's birthday. What she wanted to do today was swim. I think she also did not want to hear any sarcastic comments about her age or getting older. I told her we could probably accomplish one of those things.

This day has been absolutely calm and still. And unbelievably hot. I had a first today as well. We swam all the way to the wall.

We decided we would swim off the Bohio and then swim down the beach as far as we could go. We swam out over the Bohio wreck, which I finally found last weekend.

Visibility was about 40 feet. Past the Bohio wreck the bottom became sandy. A few minutes later small clumps of rock and coral began to appear. I swam along these until until I was in front of Mitch's house. I looked out of the water and could see the mooring float marking the Black Forest dive site. As I swam out to the marker the water moved from teal blue to a very deep blue. With visibility at 40 feet the bottom moved out of view.

About fifteen yards passed the marker the color of the water began to feel ominous. Actually a little freaky. It was hard to tell if this was the wall, at the edge there is usually large coral outcroppings that rise to 20 or 30 feet below the surface. At Black Forest the reef just drops over the edge about 50 feet. I swam down about 30 feet, and sure enough there was the edge and out passed that just the blackness of 1000 feet ocean.

That was enough. Been there done that.

I turned around and swam back down the beach and came out of the water in front of the Mitchel's. They invited us in and we sat on their porch until sunset.

In the water today 2 1/2 hours. I think we swam over 2 miles. Happy Birthday.

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