Dive #5 - Thursday, Oct. 2
Location: Delilah Reef
Depth: 55 feet
Bottom Time: 1 hour 33 min.
I guess you can call this a mid-morning two-tank dive. I missed the boat in the morning
and when Memo tried calling my room, the front desk said that I wasn't at the hotel. I
later found out that the resort misspelled my last name, their mistake. It was my mistake
also because I should have told Memo what my room number was.
Lisa and I soaked in some sun in the Jacuzzi hoping that Memo will cruise by. I finally
saw the boat and figured that they would be doing their surface interval at Playa Sol, so
Lisa and I went for a walk. When we got there, Antonio from Aldora Divers spotted me and
we talked for a few minutes. He told me that he just broke Aldora's record of longest
bottom time at 2 hours and 16 minutes, now that's a bottom time. I also introduced him to
my wife and told her that he was the first Divemaster to take me out here in Cozumel.
Antonio is one cool dude.
I then headed over to Memo and John and told them I woke up a little late and when I
got to the dock, they had started off already. Memo asked me since I missed the first dive
if I wanted to do two dives and I said "Hell Yeah". I guess that both Memo and
John would do three dives that day. It was only going to be John and I on this dive. We
dropped off Lisa at the Diamond and headed for Delilah Reef. Since both John and I are
advanced divers, Memo suggested we play a little game on this dive.
He had these two devices and they were called Dive Trak. One is a receiver while the
other is a transmitter. I suppose that this is used for dives that are anchored and sure
beats the hell out of using a compass. This dive was very slow and relaxing, I think I
almost fell asleep on the ocean floor because everything was so calm and serene. Saw lots
of angels, triggers, pufferfish, and we hung around the reefs and observed all the little
cleaner shrimps and spider crabs. Memo then gave John the transmitter and we gave Memo a
one minute head start. John and I started our journey to finding our divemaster.
We were alone for about several minutes until the transmitter started to finally click
and we were getting close to Memo. Then from a distance I spotted Memo's air bubbles
floating to the top of the surface and we found our prey. This was so cool. What other
dive operator can you do this kind playful games, I am sure you can, but with about 6 or
more people, I don't think so. What a great way to end this dive. We did our surface
interval back at the Diamond where my wife and sisters snuck some pizzas and burgers for
Memo, John, and our Captain.
Dive #6 - Thursday, Oct. 2
Location: Santa Rosa Wall
Depth: 63 feet
Bottom Time: 54 min.
Since this was going to be Memo and John's third dive for the day, it wasn't going to
be as long. Memo told me that I would be using Nitrox for tomorrow's dive and to go over
some formula's and to quiz me on what I have been studying. After hitting the water and a
couple of minutes into the dive, we saw a nice sized nurse shark. I would say that it was
about 6 feet in length, this is right after my wife was asking Memo about sharks in
Cozumel and Memo told her that they are really deep and that it would be rare to see one
on a shallow dive.
This was one of those rare moments. We were flying through the wall and didn't get a
chance to see much of the little creatures up close, but we were able to watch a cleaner
shrimp do some buffet eating on top of a spiny lobsters head, pretty cool man. We also
caught sight of this large ass crab, this was a big fucker, all I could think of was how
cool it would be to eat this thing, mmmm yummy.... This was a short dive so I played
around a lot, drifting upside down, right-side up, pretended that I was Superman, this was
a fun dive, as all the dives are and then we did a long safety stop, and headed back.
Dive #7 - Friday, Oct. 3
Location: Santa Rosa Wall
Depth: 92 feet
Bottom Time: 51 min.
Today was the "family video" dive day, so my wife Lisa and my other two
sisters Jacquie and Cindy were going to be on this dive. Memo had supplied us with an
extra set of gear because Jacquie didn't have her set and Lisa and Cindy did. The boat
picked us up on time as usual and we met Tony Tate who is our videographer. He has been on
Cozumel for about 20 years and is a real pro at what he does. The company he owns is Twin
Dolphin Productions.
I brought my own Hi 8mm tape because I wanted an original which I could capture little
clips of Memo and Cozumel and put them on my web page as soon as I get everything
together. Tony told us to follow Memo's profile and that he would be diving his own
profile. We headed out to Santa Rosa Wall and Cindy and Jacquie buddied up with Memo, as I
buddied up with Lisa. Since John was a pro, he was like the second divemaster watching out
from behind.
Like yesterday's dive, we had a very mellow drift. On our decent, we gathered on the
bottom floor to make sure everyone is ok and we headed out and followed Memo's direction.
Tony came up to each one of us and took close up's of our faces and after a few minutes he
disappeared to about 250 feet. He took some shots of Queen Angels and Gray Angels, Black
Corals, Red and Orange Sponges, Anemones, and other little creatures. Tony met us back at
the entrance of our first swim thru. It was really incredible, I love swim thru's. Coming
out of the cavern, Jacquie was starting to get a little edgy and breathing very fast. Memo
then held her hand and signaled to relax. Memo then sat on the floor crossed legged and
held out his hands like he was meditating or doing some yoga type exercise. That broke a
lot of the tension Jacquie was feeling and she began to relax much more.
What a crack up Memo is. I started laughing so hard that I had a big grin on my face
and water just filled my mask. There was a couple of groupers that followed us on this
dive, I guess they thought they may just get lucky enough for us to feed them. At the end
of the dive, Jacquie almost landed on top on a spotted moray eel. I pulled her up to make
sure that the eel doesn't have an early breakfast on my sister. Tony swam right up on top
of the eel and shot a footage of the eel. We spent our surface interval at the Diamond
Resort. Memo, John, and Tony jumped right into the Jacuzzi, as we all did.
The girls went to the bar and brought us some virgin Piña Coloda and Coke's. During
our stay I had accidentally took off one of my wrist bands, so I had an extra one and so
did my sister, so we gave it to Memo and Tony. I gave the one I had on wrist to John. When
the Little Diamond Restaurant opened up, the girls brought us back lots of food..
mmmm..yuummm... we had ourselves so stuffed that our surface interval took longer than we
expected. I think we kicked it back for about two and half hours. After checking up on the
kids and making sure that they were ok, we headed out to do our second dive.
Dive #8 - Friday, Oct. 3
Location: Tormentos Reef - EAN 36
Depth: 61 feet
Bottom Time: 1 hour 13 min.
This was awesome. My first Nitrox dive. Before we headed out to the reef, Memo got some
fish bait from another boat that docked next to us. I guess that the boat was going on a
fishing trip, they had all the poles and everything set up. Memo sure knows a lot of
people. The bait he got were baby swordfish. They were about 7-9 inch in length. He cut
them up and put them in his knapsack for the dive.
After a thorough briefing on the next dive site, we geared up. It wasn't long till we
hit the water when we were approached by several groupers and angels. They sure can smell
that food from a distance. We swam behind a reef to keep from drifting and Memo began to
feed the groupers and angels. We spent sometime petting the angels and groupers. There was
quite an abundance of fishes around us. On the way to the next reef, Tony spotted a
Cozumel Toad Fish under a coral - see what twenty years of diving Cozumel can do to you.
He was able to get that on the video, what a highlight, this is the only second time I've
seen a toadfish during the day. Usually at night they are easier to spot.
At the end of the dive a Green Moray Eel had snuck up between Lisa and I. John quickly
pointed towards me and when I turned around I saw the eel go back to its hole. Lisa got
freaked out and quickly hovered above us. Tony swam up to it trying to coax the eel for a
video shot, and to my amazement, my sister Jacquie actually swam up right next to Tony and
began to pet under it chin. Boy, she sure got brave pretty quickly, see how Memo just does
his magic. Jacquie was so tense during the dive, that Memo helped her relax, and her
confidence level just shot up. After finishing up on the eel, Memo had instructed us all
to hold hands, so Lisa, Jacquie, Cindy, Memo, John, and I all held hands, as if we were
doing a skydive formation, and Tony swam straight up towards the center of all of us,
doing a close-up on each of us. What a great way to end an awesome dive.
