The 5th of September Julie and I again went out diving on Harlin’s boat with a couple of others. We went out of Palm Beach and dove directly offshore from The Breakers Hotel which we could see from the boat. Little did I know at the time but later in the year I would be staying the Breakers and looking out over the ocean where we were diving. The visibility was poor at the fist dive site so we moved out to deeper water which an amazing 60 foot visibility due to being in the Gulf Stream which flows south to north off the coast of Florida. I wrote in my dive journal, “Reef 5-12 feet high, beautiful fish and coral.” After moving the boat to a new location we did a second dive where I reached the bottom and then had to wait at the anchor rope for ten minutes for Julie to descend. She later told me she was having trouble equalizing the pressure in her ears. One of the other divers then became low on air with a good ten minutes of dive time left so we all had to surface and return to the boat. It was not a very satisfying dive.
I could see that Julie was struggling with diving and did not feel all that comfortable with it and, while I continued to do an occasional dive, Julie did not go diving again. I had considerable admiration for her for trying something that was out of her comfort zone, and trying it for me.
Updated: 06-04-2023