Thursday, February 22, 2007

Today has the promise of a beautiful day. So, we called and made a reservation on the 1:00 snorkeling trip out to Looe Key reef. Got all our stuff together and headed out. The boat took about 45 minutes to get out there. It’s about 6 miles out. They anchored about 100 yards (almost ¼ mile) from the reef. I got in first and started swimming toward the reef. At first it was cold when the water got inside my wet suit but then I didn’t notice it too much because I was fighting the waves and trying to calm down and breathe. Kept waiting for Mike to swim up to me, but he didn’t. He was still at the ladder of the boat and was really having trouble breathing through the snorkel. I kept going thinking he would catch up. The guy in front of me—his wife went back because she was having trouble breathing. So I thought I could buddy up with him. Kept going and finally could see something on the bottom. Not very pretty yet though and the water was getting into my snorkel because of the waves. Looked back and Mike was still at the boat and the other guy was way ahead of me. So, I swam back to the boat. I should have left my wet suit on because they went to another site which was much better. After taking the wet suit off it would have been pure torture to put it back on it was so cold. So my first snorkeling trip wasn’t so great. Thought the water would be much calmer. Mike felt bad, but the conditions weren’t that great. Stopped at Big Pine restaurant on the way back and had dinner. We looked pretty bedraggled. I was freezing because I still had on my wet bathing suit underneath my shorts and tee shirt. Came back and washed out our wet suits and other gear and hung them up. We were going to go parasailing at Key West tomorrow, but Andy stopped us when we were washing stuff out and invited us to go play miniature golf and then go to the pig roast at Boondocks. Think we’ll do that.