A Spotted Fin Butterfly Fish

It happens every year. The Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean shifts. The warmer water migrates north, and with it come tropical fish. Normally the fish here in Rhode Island are a dowdy grey, and even brownish. But in September and October the fish glow yellow, orange, blue and green. Gossip spreads through the dive community about who caught what exotic fish for their aquarium. Last year a friend of ours caught a rare lion fish for his tank. Last weekend another friend of ours caught a sea horse for her tank. I’ve never seen a sea horse in the ocean, and my lucky friend caught one.

Here's a lion fish, like the one our friend caught, photo credit: www.taba-heights.co.uk/DivingSnorkeling.html



On Sunday Todd and I went diving at Fort Wetherhill, on the southern tip of Jamestown, Rhode Island. We saw the usual lobsters hiding in the rocks, and the dowdy looking fish. But this time I saw two spotted fin butterfly fish. Then the same friend who caught the sea horse before, also caught a spotted fin butterfly.

This picture is kind of like the fish I saw on Sunday, photo credit: piddlefish.com.


I am terrible with fish names. I can never seem to get them to stick in my mind. But a few years ago I saw two clown fish--you know, like the ones in Finding Nemo. The kicker is I saw these clown fish on a dive just off of Newport.

This, my friends, is why I dive.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Life has been hectic since we came back from Florida on Monday, sorry about not posting sooner. Here’s the rundown on the adventures we had on vacation.

On Monday we headed over to the boat, and just as we were about to leave the dock two of my co-workers were walking by. They walk every day at lunch time from our office, which is located just a few blocks away from the boat. I catcalled out to them and they hesitated a bit and kept walking. Who knew that they would respond when I yelled out “Hey! Hoochie?” We set sail for Newport and just puttered around town for a few days—no big whoop.

Thursday morning we woke up at 3AM and lamented having ever moved from our old house that was located 3 miles from the airport. Groggily, we boarded our plane then landed in sunny Ft. Lauderdale. We cruised around for the afternoon and then prepared for our two days of eight dives.

The two days turned into three hours. The eight dives turned into two dives. The ocean was choppy on Friday afternoon, and we had two lousy dives. The first dive was to 90 or so feet, and the divemaster on the boat buddied us up with a man who was on his own. Once we got onto the anchor line, I was experiencing some technical difficulties at 30 or so feet. My mask was flooding and I couldn’t fix it because the current was so strong. I was afraid that if I took both hands off the line I would get swept out of position. I struggled with my mask, and looked to Todd from behind my rapidly filling mask. He and our dive buddy were further down the line and eventually they escaped my line of sight. I fussed with the mask some more, and spotted the divemaster pulling himself down the line with one hand while holding his spear gun in the other. He blew right by me as I held onto the line, alone and out of sight from the rest of the divers on the boat. He didn’t turn and flash me the “Are you OK?” sign. Nothing. He made his way down the line, and I jerked against the line to capture his attention. No response from him as he slipped further down the line and out of my sight.

Then I started to get mad. I wasn’t just mad. I was furious. I was furious with Todd for ditching me and I was furious with the divemaster for blowing me off. I made it to the surface, climbed back into the boat and told the captain what had happened. I fixed my mask, jumped back in and made my way down the line. At approximately 50 feet I encountered Todd as he was on his way back, and at that point I didn't get the chance to communicate with him about what happened. At that point, for all I knew, he ditched me. He’s never done that before. Though sometimes on a shallower dive he’ll wait for me at the bottom as I slowly equalize my ears on descent—but in that instance he can see me. On this particular dive he slipped out of sight and I was left alone on the line.

“Are you OK?” he signed to me.

I flipped him one finger, and I’ll let you guess which one it was.

He held up both hands as if to question, “What?”

I pointed to myself, then to him, and then pressed my hands together as if to say “You and me are supposed to be buddied up.” Then I held my hands as if to question him, then propped my fists onto my hips as if to say “What the hell happened to you?”I scowled at him as well as I could have with a regulator in my mouth. We descended to 90-ish, explored the wreck for a few minutes and then slowly made our way back up the line and climbed into the boat.

He asked me what was wrong, and I told him that I was furious with him and didn’t want to get into it just then as I didn’t want to be that couple on the dive boat that fought in front of everyone else. Then on the second dive we were so disconnected from each other and had a lousy time of it. We hauled ourselves back into the boat, and barely said two words to each other all the way back to the dock.

In the car we talked about what had happened on the first dive. Our dive buddy took off down the line and didn’t wait for us, you know, like a dive buddy is supposed to do. Todd, worried for the man’s safety, followed him down to the bottom. He found another buddy pair and told our buddy to go with them. Once he was sure that he was safe at the deeper depth, he started to climb up the rope to find me. His logic was that I was at a safer depth and less of a worry, while our dive buddy was going to be deeper and more of a risk at that depth. My logic was “How on earth could you abandon your wife and chase a stranger down without knowing that I was OK?” We quickly resolved the problem, and resumed our vacation. In hindsight I know he was right. Though in the heat of the moment I was pissed. We said our apologies, and salvaged the rest of the trip.

The weather cancelled the last of our dives. The wind roared and the ocean boiled. We made the best of it by exploring the land instead of the reefs and wrecks. We rented a power boat and explored the Intracoastal Waterway, which is something we’ve always wanted to do. We ate at Dairy Queen so many times that we began to call it “Daily Queen.”

All in all a good vacation, even though we don’t have any photographic evidence. I think I took only three pictures while we were in Newport. I didn’t take my camera to Florida because we hauled the video camera and the underwater housing there, hoping to record our dives. But the dives were cancelled. It doesn’t quite feel like vacation without having the pictures to prove it.

Oh well, we’ll just have to go again.

Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Program

Let’s take a break from all discussion of life changing decisions for a moment and talk about our fabulous weekend. This blog’s title isn’t called “A Life of Adventure” for nothing, right?

Last weekend Todd and I had a whirlwind of fun and adventure. But let’s back up to the weekend before for a moment. There was a robin’s nest in the pretty flowery bush just outside of our workshop. The hen only laid one egg, and we’ve been keeping an eye on it for the last few weeks. Last weekend the egg finally hatched, and my nieces and nephews admired the baby bird that sat under its mother’s body to keep warm. Then this last Saturday I noticed that Nemo was sniffing around under the bush. I didn’t think much of it at the time, as he’s a beagle and can basically be considered a nose with legs. Later that morning Todd and I were outside and I learned what Nemo was sniffing at, the baby robin had fallen out of its nest, and the mama robin was nowhere to be found.

Todd scooped up the robin and put it back into the nest. We left for the afternoon, as I had my workplace’s company picnic down the road, and then we went out to run some errands. When we came home in the evening we saw that the mama robin hadn’t returned to warm her young’s body and to feed it. Concerned, we called a wildlife rescue hotline and learned that we should prepare a shoebox with a heating pad, an old T-shirt and see if we could warm and then feed the baby. We brought the baby in and tried to warm it. Then we mashed up some blueberries and tried to feed it. I am sad to say that the baby bird died around midnight on Saturday night.

On Sunday morning we woke up, still a bit sad about our failed attempt at rescuing this poor baby bird. To ease our sadness we packed up our dive gear and headed to Fort Wetherhill, in Jamestown, RI for our first dive of the season. I am trying hard not to pay attention to the fact that it’s the middle of August and I’ve just gone on my first dive. The dive was wonderful. We only went to a maximum of 28 or so feet. But these 5 white fish with vertical black bars followed us around for the entire dive. They swam circles around us, and we just kneeled on the bottom and watched them for awhile.

Now I can’t wait to go on vacation next week, so we can dive some more.

Labor Day Weekend Sailing and Diving Adventure

Saturday Sean and Heidi met us at the marina, and we loaded the obnoxious number of bags of food, clothing and gear onto the boat, over at least a half dozen trips from the dock to the mooring.

Around 1 we set sail for Tiverton, RI. Tiverton is a small town on the east side of Narragansett Bay, separated from Newport by the Sakonnet River. There isn’t a heck of a lot to do in Tiverton, but the moorings are cheap and it’s a relaxing spot to spend the evening with friends on the boat.

This is Tiverton, RI from the boat

The bridge we went under to get to Tiverton. At high tide we probably would not make it under this bridge with our 55' mast.

We picked up the mooring and headed ashore. We walked up to the tower in General Barton Park, and looked out over the Sakonnet River. The view from up there is gorgeous, and the graffiti on the tower is fun to read. Now we know which couples will be “2-getha 4-eva” and that is always a good thing to know.

This is the view from the tower, you can see the Mt. Hope Bridge in the background, the Sakonnet River and Portsmouth, RI.

This is Todd lounging on the dinghy on the beach in Tiverton.

We walked down the main street of town to look for the shop where a woman sold homemade salsa. The shop was replaced by a dance studio, where I suspect they dance the salsa rather than make the salsa. We decided to explore the waters around Tiverton in the dinghy, and came upon a snack shop/seafood dive on a small cove off of the river that we’ll be sure to check out the next time we’re in town.

The rest of the night was spent with beer, burgers on the grill and Sean’s homemade salsa. We went to bed early to prepare for the dive on the next day.

We woke up with the sun and Todd took Griffen for a swim. We tossed away the mooring lines and set off for Hope Island. Sean, Heidi and I went ashore with the dogs, while Todd scoped out potential dive sites with the handheld depth sounder. We donned our gear and got into the dinghy to head for the rocks on the southeast side of the island.

We’ve never been diving on this site, nor had we heard of anyone diving on this site. Todd scoped it out on the charts and carefully plotted the dive according to the tide schedule and wind direction.

It’s a maximum of 39 feet by this group of rocks. There are interesting rock formations to see underwater, and we saw huge tautog, conches and quahogs all over the bottom. Sean got my attention and got me to help him collect a few quahogs until his catch bag was too heavy to carry anymore. We swam around and explored around the rocks, until we got too tired. We all met on the surface where Heidi and I clipped ourselves into the side of the dinghy while Todd and Sean went down again to collect some more quahogs. They ended up with maybe 20-30 pounds.

Todd towed the three of us behind the dinghy back to the boat. By then the wind had picked up and made the water a bit too choppy for the second dive we’d planned on doing on a submerged tug boat on the southernmost tip of the island. We set sail for East Greenwich and called it a day.
We said goodbye to Sean and Heidi after unloading the ridiculous amount of gear that we’d brought for an overnight. Now I mourn the unofficial end of summer, and want another month to spend on the boat sailing and diving. Oh well, there’s always fall sailing and fall diving.

Already Pining for the Long Weekend

I just got back from vacation 2 weeks ago, and I am ready to go on another trip. We were trying to set up a dive trip in Florida for the long weekend, but waited a bit too long and didn’t get a good price on the fare. So we decided we’d do something locally, involving both sailing and diving.

It’s Thursday, and I am itching for the 3-day weekend. It is also the last week that I can use flex time at work. In the summer they let the employees work 9 hour days Monday – Thursday, and then you can leave early on Friday. I am hoping that my workload won’t be too heavy that I can still leave early on Friday.

On Friday afternoon we’re going to pack up our dive gear and food for the weekend. Todd will be inviting some dive friends to go with us, and we’ll sail on Saturday morning for Bristol, RI. We’ll do Bristol for Saturday, and then on Sunday morning we’ll set sail for Hope Island, in the middle of Narragansett Bay. This island is the one that Maggie and Krys explored on the last day of our vacation. There is a sunken tug boat on the south shore of the island that we will hopefully dive on Sunday as well.

I’ll let you know on Monday or Tuesday how the trip went.

Happy Labor Day, Internet.

I Totally Feel like a Navy Seal

Saturday Todd and I went for a dive off of Gould Island in the middle of Narragansett Bay. Gould Island was a hot spot for torpedo development and testing before and during World War II. Todd and I have recently developed a bit of an obsession with the island, and often speculate about the goings on at Gould Island as we sail by it on the way to Newport and other ports in the southern part of the Bay.

On the northern half of this small island there is a pier and a building from which the Navy used to fire and observe the torpedoes while testing them. They put buoys in the water to mark off the torpedo testing range, though I don’t know that I’ve seen them test anything there recently. (But then, most of my sailing is done on the weekends and at night, when torpedo testing is less likely to occur.) The island has a bit of an eerie feeling to it. Kind of like it’s been abandoned, but you’re not sure if it’s actually been abandoned. Has it been abandoned, or does it just appear to have been abandoned? There are still a few other buildings on the island, along with a large smoke stack. The buildings are vacant now, as far as we know. However the building at the firing pier on the north tip of the island has a security light on 24x7 (Even in the daytime. Waste of energy and tax dollars, anyone?)

When we anchored the dinghy by the firing building, and we could hear a loud hum coming from the building. I am assuming the loud hum is an HVAC unit in the building. The loud hum has launched a fantasy about how the inside of the dilapidated building is really super high-tech, with the most sophisticated computers and surveillance equipment the world has to offer. Why else would the US Navy need to run an HVAC unit on a dilapidated building on a seemingly abandoned island in the middle of Narragansett Bay just a short boat ride away from the Naval Underwater War College in Newport? I am reminded of that scene in the movie “Spies Like Us” where the missile defense station is located in a seemingly abandoned drive in movie theatre. I know that this totally exists on Gould Island. (And if it doesn’t, then I’ll just fantasize about crazy espionage things going on at Gould Island, and it’ll be fun.)

We did the dive, and I actually had a bad gear dive. I couldn’t stay down for some reason, my mask wouldn’t seal. Once I got over my gear hiccups, I actually had a good time. The viz was crap, there weren’t any fish at all. But whatever, I don’t care what I see, so long as I am underwater.

We ended our dive and got back into the boat. We decided that we’d check out the Island while we were there. I had visions of looking in windows of the abandoned buildings on the south side, and discovering some of the crazy espionage-y things that surely are going on there.

We didn’t have any clothes on us, just our wetsuits. We beached the dinghy and hopped out onto the shore, with a loud “squish” of the water trapped in my wetsuit boots.

“It’s like we’re Navy seals! Check us out! We’re infiltrating an island by sea!” Todd exclaimed, laughing.

“Yeah, but Navy seals don’t make this slurpy sound when they walk around in wetsuits,” I laughed.

We walked up from the beach and onto a concrete pad. There was a ramp leading into the water from the concrete pad. Images of helicopters once landing there filled my head. Secret helicopters, containing people carrying briefcases handcuffed to their wrists. Images of people exchanging code words necessary for passage filled my mind, and knowing nods, glances, and secret handshakes of officers departing the choppers. Now there are roughly 463605497 seagulls that have made the island home. Though I suspect even the gulls were squawking in secret code “The squawk squawks at midnight…” or something like that. They were flying around us overhead, circling and circling—making me feel like I was inside some crazy seagull tornado.

“I wonder if the gulls are waiting for us to die here, so they can peck at our carcasses,” I said as I looked up at the gulls, circling like vultures over prey in the desert. We walked onto a path that led into thick bush. Then we heard what sounded like a motorcycle.

“WOW, did they send someone over here on a 4-wheeler to make us leave?” Todd asked. We walked back out to the concrete pad, to see if there was anyone there. Of course there was nobody there; we were on an abandoned island, for crying out loud. The noise was coming from a jet ski that was traveling by the island.

We went back onto the trail, and crawled under the brush to continue on the trail. There were briars, thorns, etc. The brush was way too thick to get to the buildings on the island, which led us to wonder if the briars were actually planted there to keep intruders out of the buildings. You know, to keep the secret goings-on there a secret. We declared the brush impassable, and made our way back to the dinghy on the beach.

I read up on the island later on and discovered that the southern half of the island, where we were, is actually a bird sanctuary, and has nothing to do with the Navy. So, there’s a nice little buzz kill for my little Gould Island fantasy. However what is up with that torpedo firing building on the north tip of the island? What’s up with the loud hum coming from the building, and the always-on security lights? In that building the fantasy lives on.

This is what Gould Island looked like back then. The concrete pad we walked on was actually for seaplanes that were launched from the island. The buildings just behind and to the left of the hangar still stand, the hangar does not exist anymore. The brush is now so thick and it began at the backside of the foundation of the hangar. We could not get through the bush to the buildings that are still there. It is not a far distance to walk, if the brush was not there, it would probably have taken only a few minutes to walk from the hangar to the buildings on the left. The building on the left with the smoke stack is entirely unaccessible from the beach, as it is surrounded by thick brush as well. The buildings are all slightly visible through the trees and prickers. I do not know if the buildings on the right were there or not.

The planes dropped the torpedos in the torpedo testing range at the time. In its heyday, 65,000 torpedo firings have been conducted on this island. In the month of December 1944 alone, some 2,575 torpedos were fired from the island.*

*Source "A Gould Island Chronology" Captain Frank Snyder

Scuba and Chocolate: Together at Last

When two of my favorite things, scuba and chocolate, collide; life is good. Last night I met up with Todd and our friend Dave to go for a dive. Dave is a chocolatier, and an amazing one at that. If you evern find yourself in Rhode Island, Dave's shop is on Main Street in East Greenwich. You cannot leave the state without stopping in, it's SO worth it.

Diving with Dave is always great, not only for the company underwater, but for the chocolate afterward. Dave never shows up to a site empty handed, and he's been known to bring chocolate covered cherries for Todd, and either turtles or chocolate covered strawberries for me.

Todd and Dave met at the site earlier than when I could get off of work. They were already in the water when I arrived, so I hung out and waited for them. Then they got out, I geared up and they swapped to fresh tanks and we all went in again.

Dave and I are both not so great at navigating underwater. Though I think I am worse at it than Dave is, because I am simply unable to swim in a straight line. I watch my compass like a hawk, and still end up pulling to the left or the right. Todd had stayed behind because he had a cramp in his leg, so I went with Dave. My excitement got the better of me, because apparently I was swimming very fast. (Must be all that jogging strengthening my legs!) I was leading, and took us on a heading that was dead south, while Dave was trying to catch me and turn us west. Then I turned us dead west (where we had originally wanted to go, but I kept pulling us to the south due to my inability to swim a straight line.) Todd was watching our dive flag wander all over the surface, and laughed at our goofy navigating.

Then I got cold. I think the water temp was somewhere in the 60's. By then we were headed north, which was kind of on our way back to the start. Even though my navigation was all over the place, and I got cold, it still was a fun dive. We saw a ray, loads of little bitty fish, I saw a lobster, and 2 blue crabs.

Then we got out, and ate more chocolate. We went down to about 35 feet, and stayed in the water for maybe 30-40 minutes. I am hoping that we can make this a weekly Thursday night dive date.

This weekend we'll hopefully be moving aboard the boat for the summer. I will also run a 5K on Saturday morning that will benefit the Rhode Island Food Bank. Hopefully we'll get out for a sail some time over the weekend as well.

Under the Sea....

Todd and I went diving at Ft. Wetherill State Park in Jamestown, RI on Saturday. This time of year is great for diving in the southern parts of RI, and in Narragansett Bay, as the Gulf Stream shifts and carries with it warmer water, and the pretty fish that live in the warmer water.

On Saturday we took our newly acquired from eBay underwater camera. In the car on the way over Todd was loading the film and saying "I don't think we'll actually take 36 exposures. I think I would use up 12 at most...." Well, the excitement got the better of us, especially when I was carrying the camera. Me? Trigger happy? Yes, yes I am trigger happy with a camera and darn proud of it so cram it!

Anyway, here are the pictures that Todd has brilliantly photoshopped, to take out some of the siltiness of the water, so you can see us more clearly. We saw a lobster in its hole, a flounder floundering around on the bottom, some trigger fish, and loads of starfish. I love the starfish the best!


This is me, and man do my lips look huge around my reg.


This is a fish trying to escape my trigger happy ways. Yeah, keep trying, buddy!

Looks like there was a lobster fight and someone lost an arm. So, does that mean that in some restaurant somewhere in RI there may be a one-armed lobster on somebody's plate?

This is a lobster in its home. I spotted this one, and got Todd's attention. I pointed to the hole, and made a motion with my hand, not unlike the motion you make when somebody is talking to much. This apparently is our little signal for "Look! Lobster! Wow!"

I love me some starfish. I love how this picture is artistically off-center, too. We meant to do it that way, really!


More starfish. I wonder what the deal was with them, there were loads of starfish piled up together in different places on the dive. I've also been noticing them more and more when I look into the water from the docks at the marina. These guys were big, though. I'd say they were about 7" in diameter, though underwater things do look 33% bigger than they do on the land--much like they do in my rear view mirror on my Jeep as well.


This is Todd with a starfish. I love the kilroy affect of this picture, again, it was all very artisitic, and purely intentional.


A school of trigger fish.

So, that was our adventure. Stay tuned for more pictures soon!