Topside View Jules Undersea Lodge Key Largo

In general, I wouldn’t recommend paying $195 for a pizza or a sub sandwich, although Tower Pizza in Key Largo does have good food. In this case, however, thanks to a friend who bid on “Lunch at Jules” at a charity auction, I finally experienced the three-hour session offered at Jules Undersea Lodge. (http://www.jul.com).  The single drawback to the wonderful diving we have in Key Largo is there is essentially no shore diving because the water is too shallow. (Yes, I know there are a few spots, but not like in places such as Hawaii and St Croix.) This makes it especially difficult for training when the weather keeps boats from going out. On those days, everyone who can’t wait for the weather to clear heads to the lagoon at Jules.

The lagoon is not large, but it has the distinction of being home to the underwater habitat (two actually) that was moved from the original location in the Caribbean. The two-bedroom habitat with a kitchen/dining/living room was of course designed for research to prove the viability of living underwater for extended periods of time. And while researchers do still use the habitat, it’s available for recreational options from three hours to overnight. It’s something I wanted to try, but since Hubby has to spend lots of training time with students in Jules, he wasn’t especially keen on the idea. Having now done it once, I’m not saying I would go again just to go, but it’s definitely the sort of thing I would do in the same manner that I take visitors to South Beach.

Okay, enough intro – I’ll describe the way it works. First, the staff is terrific in making sure you are comfortable and taken care of. (If you have your own equipment, you can subtract the rental fee. In this situation, my friend didn’t have equipment and I didn’t want to mess with hauling and cleaning my own gear.) You either have to be a certified diver or you can sign up for the one-day Discover Scuba – type class and that is a separate fee. Since both of us were certified, we arrived to what was a very quiet day and filled out the initial paperwork, to include our choice for lunch. There is a hot shower on the grounds and a hot shower in the habitat and they provide towels, shampoo, conditioner. I treated it like I would being on a dive boat and wasn’t going to bother with that part, but it is available. I did have a pair of shorts and t-shirt along just in case. You leave your shoes at the dock and anything else you take gets very carefully wrapped and placed into a watertight box. They are especially careful with your phones and any other electronic item you’re carrying.

There are steps that lead down into the water, so you simply sit on the step to gear up then launch into the water. Your Operation Specialist for the day will either enter the water with you, take you over to the habitat to orient you or you can do as we did and go for a dive of X-minutes (in our case about 30), then meet the staff member at the habitat. The lagoon is chockfull of items like old cannon, a second, smaller habitat, and is only about 25 feet deep.  The visibility is not particularly good due to several factors, however, there were plenty of fish and a nice crab. Nurse sharks will occasionally cruise through, too.

When we finished the dive, we made our way back to the habitat, swam underneath and came up into the “moon pool” as our guy was patiently waiting to remove our gear and give the orientation. This is like the foyer. The two bedrooms are to the right, the shower and marine head are straight ahead and the public area is to the left. Yes, there are portholes in the bedrooms and public area. Benches wrap around and there are two tables. The small fridge is packed with water and sodas, a little basket hold packs of snacks, there is a sink, microwave, TV with DVD player, some books, decks of cards, and a couple of board games. My friend opted to take a quick shower and then we settled in to pass the time until our same guy returned around noon with our piping hot lunch brought to us in a watertight container. When the staff called a while later to give us our “ten minute warning”, it hardly seemed like three hours had passed. We repacked our belongings and our guy secured them before we slipped back into our gear for the short swim to the dock to end our adventure.

Moon Pool Entrance Jules Undersea Lodge

This is one of those mornings when the insomnia kicked in at the worst time. Generally, if the 3:00ish a.m. monster awakens me (there’s an old post about that), I can get up for a while, then either go curl up on the loveseat with the TV on or plan to take a nap in the afternoon. This happens to be a day when that schedule doesn’t work because in a couple of hours, I’ll be prepping to go to the TEKDIVE USA show up at FIU North Campus. This will be my first time to attend and also the last dive show where I’m appearing with Richie Kohler for this year. (We have some October events together, but those will be covered in future posts.) Anyway, the reason I’ve never been to TEKDIVE is because it’s a gathering of divers who are at that next level up; some of them incredibly so who go deeper, longer, and use equipment that really was in the science fiction realm when we Baby Boomers were kids. For those who have already read, Mystery of the Last Olympian, Titanic’s Tragic Sister Britannic, (http://mysteryofthelastolympian.com) you read about the extraordinary advances in scuba technology.

I love to dive, but I have no interest in the highly technical side. I rarely venture below eighty feet and quite frankly, don’t particularly want to. I prefer to stay more shallow (sixty and above) and have longer underwater to enjoy myself. Another major drawback is I discovered I can’t deal with being in an “overhead” environment and especially not a cave situation. Let me explain for non-divers. In a shipwreck, you can have “swim-thrus” that are natural or have been prepared if it is a wreck that’s been deliberately sunk as an artificial reef. This means you have a clearly visible entry and exit point while you are inside the wreck and it’s usually not a long swim between the two points. A “regular” diver like me can manage a swim-thru with no problem. If you have an entrance without a clearly visible exit, such as you go down a passageway and come out another hole or you go in for a ways, have to reverse and come back out the way you came in, this is an “overhead environment”. That requires special training and equipment and is one of the factors that puts you into “technical diving”. There is of course some degree of risk with all diving, but it’s minimal as long as you maintain your equipment and follow fundamental safety rules (most of which are commonsense). The same holds true when you do technical diving, but the difference, and this is a big difference, is the equipment becomes far more complicated and when you dive deep (past 130 feet), you get into the whole required decompression stops you have to plan and execute. It isn’t anything that I want to do and  in the crowd I’ll be with today, there will be amazing stories told by men and quite a few women, who happily take the proper training, gear up with a lot of extra equipment and say, “Sure, let’s go down 150 (or more) feet to that wreck. It will be fun.” And for them, it is.

Ah yes, the one thing you really can’t do anything about. The clouds from yesterday disappeared, the sun shone, and the temperature shot up to 70, which for me was great. It was startling for others. The hotel where I am staying is a very short walk from the exhibition center and as if turns out, backs onto a retail/restaurant area that has several nice dining choices. Scheduling kept me from having a normal dinner last night, although that shouldn’t be an issue again. Lunch will be and that’s why I have a protein bar back-up. Anyway, in the relatively short time from when I came back into the room before headed to the evening presentation, the rain arrived. Not a downpour, yet definitive and that’s when I discovered the umbrella I brought is defective. It works, although it won’t stay open unless I hold it open with my hand supporting it from underneath, which is rather awkward. Ah well, at least I only have to go short distances. There aren’t many trees budding yet, although there are some in bloom and daffodils, those bringers of Spring, are brightly yellow and also bring a smile when you see them.

This area of NJ is actually where Richie Kohler “came to fame” as a diver, and he has been a “star” of this show for several years. Trying to keep him on schedule is a little tricky since everyone wants more of his time than he can give and still keep up with other people waiting. On the other hand, there are certainly worse problems to have. It will be a busy day.

Mystery of the Last Olympian is scheduled for a Feb 2016 release.

Well, I have been told that the big dive show, Beneath the Sea, in New Jersey is the largest consumer dive show in the country (and maybe the world). We’ve never attended because we see lots of folks when we’re at the Orlando show every other year and we generally travel (as we did) to Washington every March or April so turning around to make a second trip isn’t something we like to do. This year, of course, Richie Kohler is a featured speaker about exploring the shipwreck Britannic, and we’ll have multiple signings of the book. Hubby can’t go with me since it’s still very busy here in the dive community. Since I’m completely unfamiliar with the area, I’m going up on the early flight, but that was rather than me spending an extra day up there. Although I could have booked a flight back Sunday night, I’m not really keen on trying to leave out of a place and catch a flight that would then cause me to have to drive back from the airport at night after a long day. Not that I haven’t done it, but I try not to put myself in those circumstances unless it’s really necessary.

I also don’t have the faintest idea if I’ll be dining on anything other than hotel food. I will take protein bars as a caution to have one in my purse if I can’t do something like stop for lunch. Evenings should be fine and there could be several good restaurants around. So stay tuned for the adventures to be had at the Meadow Lands Exhibition Center in Seacaucus, NJ. According to the gentleman I spoke with earlier when arranging transport from the airport, at least the rain is supposed to hold off tomorrow. That was nice to hear. Now we’ll see what Mother Nature decides to do.