Mon18May2009

May 16-17, 2009

Information
Bob Diaz | SpearBlog 2009 | May 18, 2009

Seas: 5-8 feet
Winds: 20-25 ESE
Temp: 78 F
Viz: 5 feet
We pulled in late Friday night after a brief (who am I kidding?) legal discussion of highway driving with a friendly Monroe County Sheriff's Deputy. According to friends that arrived before us, the winds picked up around 9p. There weren't too many storms, but the winds didn't let up all night. Up before the crack of dawn Saturday morning, we found the conditions had actually deteriorated even more from the night before. High tide was too early to dive so we sat around trying to stay out of the wind waiting for everyone else to wake up and prepare breakfast.

After breakfast, we did some maintenance on our equipment seeing as how it probably wouldn't be getting much use today. We actually did have a casualty to the wind, our portable canopy got flipped into the marina (believe it or not, it was actually staked down). Luckily, there weren't too many boats in the water and the only damage was to the canopy itself (which we had to toss). It was shaping up to be a steak weekend in the keys.

We headed out around 11a to check out the tide and the viz. The conditions at low tide were so abysmal that not even our voracious appetite for this sport was going to get us in the water today. The seas were just too rough to head offshore in the bay boat and the viz closer to shore was probably less than 5 feet (at its best). We headed to the store to buy dinner and figured we would just relax today and see if the winds lay down for Sunday (I'm not holding my breath).

Sunday - As I write this, the weather outside is absolutely perfect. The winds laid down and the rains have passed. Unfortunately I am writing this as I am leaving the keys to head home. Considering the high winds and rough seas of yesterday, I wasn't sure how it could get much worse. Well, it did. Up until about 3p, the winds had held up all day at about 25 mph and the rain... the rain just kept coming and coming. The rain doesn't usually bother us too much, but this set of storms would have made being out on the water unbearable. It appeared to be some sort of closed system that kept the lower keys under siege by rain and wind for most of the day.

If the weather is bad on a weekend and it clears up at all, it always seems to clear up just in time to make me despise leaving when I have to. It ended up being a steak weekend just like I predicted. Damn I hate being right all the time. No diving, no spearing, no pictures and stories about weather. Talk about a slow news day... Until next weekend (hopefully).