New Year's Eve Dive Jupiter, FL

[Cavern Junkie]

Here is a quick summary of my dives on New Year's Eve

I went out with Jupiter Dive Center out of Jupiter Florida. The USS Rankin is an artificial reef sunk north off Jupiter in 130 feet of water.

The boat left the dock about 45 minutes late and we headed north out of Jupiter inlet for our 2 hour ride up the the USS Rankin. When we got there conditions seemed perfect. Seas were flat about 1-2 feet, the water was blue and there was only a slight current. Once we hit the water and started to decend, we could not see the wreck. At about 90-100 feet visibility dropped to zero. I could have been 5 feet from the wreck but I have no idea. So much for diving the Rankin. We ended up calling the dive before it even started, and the captain took us south to a site called "the Hole in the Wall", which is a REALLY awesome dive. The site is in the Gulf Stream so the current is always very powerful. Anyway, this site is a reef that starts at 140 feet with a large hole in it that goes up and to the right. Inside there are usually huge grouper and sharks that hide from the extreme current outside. We only saw one shark but there were lots of other tropical fish hanging out inside. That was a short dive but it was a good one. After that, we dove the 3 wrecks of the Zion, the Bonaire, and a third (can't remember it's name) all close together. The first two were basically collapsed but the third one (the Bonaire) was still in one piece. Our final dive of the day was the Tunnels. This was a nice dive with some ledges and a couple of lobster. Overall I really enjoyed the last 3 sites and it made up for not seeing the Rankin.

[dfreeman]

This can really fire a guy up for diving in 2004. The season has started for the hardcore diver.

Doug

[FreediveWI]

I've head of that Hole In the Wall place before. I guess Terry Mass was down there a couple of years ago putting on a spearfishing/freediving clinic and was freedivng it, with gun in hand, looking for some of those monster grouper. :o

Maybe, oneday, I'll get to that level.

Sounds like your New Years dive was a lot more enjoyable than mine was.

jon

[Cavern Junkie]

One of the other guys diving that day took some pictures. His website is