Our FIRST anniversary! Can you believe a year has flown by already?
We had to celebrate with something adventurous. What better way than diving a shipwreck off the coast of Key West? It was our second time diving off of RumHaven… our first time with just the two of us.
Let’s Roll
As we got everything ready to go and the engines fired up, Will tested the bow thruster and we heard a sad whimper come from the battery. Whomp. The batteries were dead, even after giving them a good charge, we found ourselves loading up the old 120lbs batteries into the dinghy and bringing home two new 120lbs batteries to slide in place (at the very front of the engine room).
Now $462 poorer, we headed to the fuel dock, to drop another $813 on diesel. Can’t you feel the love? We weren’t going to let that ruin our first anniversary, as we knew both costs would come eventually. With cheerful hearts, we headed out to sea!
Diving The Vandenberg
We chose a popular shipwreck about seven miles south of Key West – the USNS General Hoyt S. Vandenberg. The 522 ft. former Navy transport ship that served in World War II was sunk in 2009 and is the second-largest artificial reef in the world. Pretty cool!
Down and down and down we went. For 103ft to be exact. Apparently we hooked up to a mooring ball on the deep end of the wreck (the bow), instead of the stern, which is only 50ft from the surface. Ooops.
Holy Crap We’re Deep
We had just enough time to take our little anniversary photo at the wreck with the $5 veil and bowtie I purchased on Amazon two days earlier. We swam a few feet then Will signaled that it was time to go up.
UP!? I looked at him in confusion. Yes, we had to ascend and do our 3-minute safety stop to help our bodies decompress. If we had stayed down any longer, we would have had to do a longer decompression stop due to the depth of our dive. Saftey first!
Well That Was Fast
The whole dive was probably only 20-ish minutes, which was super fast compared to the 30/45-mins we’re used to on shallower dives. But we were happy to have a new PR – and new knowledge of which end of the wreck to dive. Oy.
Back home we headed, as the sun set behind us. All in all, it was a great day, which we ended with a trip into town to shower, rinse gear, and eat at our favorite restaurant, FireFly!
The Dolphins!
I forgot the mention the dolphins that rode our wake on the way out to the Vandy. That was probably the coolest part of the trip! Check it out in the video below.
1 comment
Comment by Iesha
Iesha February 4, 2020 at 8:53 pm
Happy Anniversary guys!!!