Test Dive

This post has been waiting for me to get my act into gear, and break my lazy summer mode, put down the beer, and get off of my couch. I finally did it, woke up, got everything set up, had my cousin/dive buddy Chris Leonard come out, and set out on a dive. After a few bumps in the road: filling the tanks I thought were full, and locating a loaner regulator, as mine has mysteriously disappeared (thanks for the loaner Michelle), we were off. It was in no way a big dive, very low key in fact, no game plan, just going with the wind. We set out on my 26.8ft Mako aptly named Double Trouble, cruised through the lengthy Lyford Cay canals, and zoomed off towards the south side of the island. The ride was beautiful, very smooth and quick, shortly after leaving the harbour, we were choosing our spot. After little thought, we choose the dive site containing the wrecks from 007: Thunderball. A shallow dive around 30-35 feet, perfect for testing out my new Sea&Sea MDX-Pro 5D Mark II, with a glass optical dome port, and two Sea&Sea Ys-110a strobe flashes. As for the camera itself, its pretty self explanatory, but I am and will be using my Canon 5D Mk II, with an array of lenses, but today used my Canon 28-135mm lens. We pulled up to the buoy at the dive site, tied up, and hopped in. Upon reaching the bottom, I fired off a few test shots, and came to realize my own stupidity, I had forgotten to set the lens to the auto focus mode, so I could not take any in focus shots. I ascended back to the boat, hopped out, dried off the housing, and my hands, and fixed my error. Back down I went rejoining chris on the bottom, and we were both ready to go. The dive itself was fairly uneventful, very few fish, but some cool shots. A surprisingly bold Nassau Grouper danced around before me for a while, posing for some nice shots, a good sized trumpet fish hid amongst the coral, giving me another cool shot, and some soft coral on the Thunderball frame made for some nice photos.  We came back to the boat after the dive, and headed home. We stopped at the outer marker of Lyford Cay marina, and looked for Lion Fish, I left the camera in the boat for this, and wish I had not. We came across no lion fish, but there was one octopus, and a small school of cuttlefish. After this we returned to port, and went to the local watering hole Captain's Table for some conch fritters, and a beer. All in all I can say that today was a success, after learning how to use my strobe flashes semi decently, the camera gear was a dream. Yes this post is a bit boring, but they should get more interesting from here. Check out the flikr feed at the top for some pics of the dive.