Saturday August 07, 2010 - The Venice, Florida Kayak Fossil Dive Trip
We arrived in Venice on Friday afternoon and stopped by the Florida West Scuba dive shop to pick up a few tanks for the dive. The people at the Florida West Scuba School were very accommodating and helpful. Our plan was simple. We were going to load up the kayaks with scuba gear, paddle out a half of a mile or so, and do a fossil dive using the kayaks as a dive platform.
We had been by the Brownie factory in Fort Lauderdale on the previous day. We picked up a 60’ kayak dive hose kit there which Deanna had planned to use on the Venice dive. She removed the 1st and 2nd stages from her dive regulator setup and installed them on her new kayak dive hose. This allows her to leave the tank strapped to the kayak and do a fossil dive with just the low pressure hose. The only down side to this method is the air pressure gauge stays up on the kayak as well. Since we were planning a fairly shallow fossil dive in some 20’ -25’ of water and since I was around with a standard BC and regulator we felt this was an acceptable risk.
We arrived at the beach near the 3 condo buildings in Venice at 10:00 AM. We unloaded the gear from the vehicle and started hauling it down to the beach. We moved the kayaks, one at a time, and then carried the tanks down to the beach. This was no small endeavor as the beach was quite wide and sandy. When we had all of the gear stowed on the kayaks and were ready to hit the water we were already getting quite hot. The air temperature was climbing past 90°F on this beautiful summer day. There were at least 4 shore divers in the water, as was evidenced by floating dive flags that you are required to drag around when diving this fossil dive. There were also divers in the water a bit farther out who were using the Hammerhead dive boat as their dive platform.
The paddle out into the Gulf was amazingly easy. There were 2’ swells and the occasional boat wake to deal with, but it was no more difficult than our experience in the Wando River back in South Carolina. We were out among the shore divers in very little time and continued on toward the dive boats. When we were roughly half the way between the shore divers and the dive boat (1/2 mile offshore) we anchored our kayaks to gear up for our fossil dive. About this time my wife expressed concern about dizziness and high body temperatures. We thought about getting her into the water to cool down, but then decided that it would be most difficult for me to load her unconscious body back onto the kayak if things went wrong. We decided that it is always best to err on the side of safety and agreed to abort the dive portion of our trip. After all, we were successfully completing our first ocean kayaking aboard our sit-on-top kayaks at that alone would make it worthwhile.
We headed back to the shoreline with a little more haste than our leisurely paddle out. When we reached the shore we poured water over our heads and the cooling helped to keep the heat exhaustion at bay. Dragging the gear back up the sandy beach was an uphill battle. I had the lovely experience of dragging all of the gear back to the vehicle staging area by myself while Deanna recovered from the near heat stroke. This left me extremely hot as well.
We loaded the gear back into the vehicle in the hot Florida sun. Although the dive tanks were still full we did have a good time on the water. In the future, we should take Bonine before hitting ocean waters (although not much of an issue on this trip waves could create more of a problem) and we should start out earlier in the day before the temperatures reach their peak. We will definitely get our dive tanks from the nice folks at Florida West Scuba School.
